Lovely Luang Namtha

So I was a bit surprised to be able to make it here in one day's worth of travel from Chiang Mai. I was relying on my L.P. guidebook and the time schedules that they gave for the buses. I left at 6:30 AM from Chiang Mai and didn't arrived at the border town of Chiang Khang until after 1:00 so it was quite the long trip. I was expecting to be the only westerner on the bus but at the last minute two other guys got on so when we arrived we shared a tuk tuk to the ferry terminal. This was by far the most relaxed border crossing I've experienced to date. After getting our passports stamped at a building near the river the group of 7 of us western people walked freely down the road to the place where the boats were, where we bought a ticket to cross the Mekong River to the town of Huay Xai in Laos. The river really isn't wide so it took us a whopping 5 minutes at the most to cross. I would bet that we spent more time loading and unloading our bags than it took for us to cross. After we arrived on the shore we had to walk up a rather steep road and then some even steeper steps (everything being really steep when you are carrying all of your belongings) to reach the "ïmmigration" office where we stood outside, under the shade of a roof while they processed our passports and we all got our 30 day visas.

As I said, I wasn't expecting to be able to make it to Luang Nam Tha, my chosen destination in Laos that day. In fact, I was considering taking a boat trip which would have taken 2 days to reach the city but I quickly found out that the boats weren't really going so my options were the bus or a minivan. Of the 7 of us that crossed the river together, 3 of us were heading north. The river trip down the Mekong to Luang Nam Tha is a very popular option that most people choose. After walking around with a Czechoslovakian couple looking for a room we determined that a minibus driver was looking to leave NOW to head back to Luang Nam Tha. After the couple negotiated the price to around 8 USD, and the driver assured us that it only took 4 hours to get there, we set off.

Now while I was walking around looking at guesthouses I had this continual feeling that something was off. Now it generally takes me a bit to adjust to a new country, different language, customs, food, etc. but I just had this weird feeling that I couldn't figure out what else was different. So I was completely shocked when we were a good 3 minutes into driving when I realized that I was sitting on the righthand side of the vehicle and we were driving on the righthand side of the road!!! This was my first country since being in India in December of last year where they drive on the same side that I am familiar with. I went through a brief moment of shock when I tried to make sure that I was right, I even resorted to the old, hold up your hands and make the letter "L" just to check before saying something to the couple in the car. They pointed out the obvious that this was a country that was once under French rule, thus the cars would be on the right unlike the British influenced Thailand. Oh yeah, good point.