Visa run to Laos
My visa run to Laos all went well.
It started at the bus station (Nuoc Ngam) where a man came up to me and was extremely friendly.
I’ve travelled enough to know that usually means a scammer, so I asked if I could take his pic. He said sure, so I did and sent it to my agency, and they said that’s the bus driver/ticket agent man. We had a wonderful conversation, and I helped him a bit with English. During the time that he drove, he rarely honked the horn, so I could sleep, but when they switched drivers at 1:50am, the next driver was honking about every 15 seconds, and sleep escaped me.
Sleeper bus to Lao Bao/Densavan Laos border towns
The bus didn’t have any seats (!) 
It was all capsule/coffin style, where a 5’7″ (168cm) guy could stretch completely out horizontally and still have about 3 inches left over. If you lie diagonally, even a 6ft (180) person should be able to flatten out. There was a non-functioning monitor/TV in it, but I did see one other person was playing a game on theirs somehow. There were curtains, a USB plugin to charge your phone, and a slide down blind on the window side to shut out most of the light. It was kind of funny seeing other buses go past you and seeing some people sleeping. 
There was one huge church all lit up I could see, which was quite amazing. 
Early in the morning near the border the rain let up and the most beautiful rainbow appeared. 
I thanked God again and again for this beautiful sign of his protection and love.
After a 13 hour ride we got to the border, and the only other foreigner, an Indian man and I went across. 
I asked him point blank if he had considered the claims of Jesus Christ. He said “Don’t give me that”, and that was about the end of the discussion between this follower of Jesus and that follower of some Yoga guru. So sad. But the bus driver seemed happy earlier when I said Jesus watched over us.
In Laos
After going thru the border I was surprised to see tractor-trailers carrying containers all lined up. A lot of the trucks were Freightliners from America, and I even saw 2 with Statues of Liberty on them! 
It immediately hit me that China was rerouting its stuff thru Laos and Vietnam in order to avoid tariffs. So many things happening that the news never reports because they don’t go out looking for news, and then when national leaders make some decision, everyone thinks he’s crazy because they don’t have the intel that he has. Seriously, I would guess a container-laden truck is going thru that border at least one every 3 minutes.
It took a bit over 10 minutes to walk the 1km to town, and of course everything looks interesting to me, even this public bathroom (I guess, it was the only one I ever saw in Laos) with a man doing his business right outside – ha! I sure don’t want to go in there, because if your smartphone drops in, you aren’t ever recovering it! The river under the bridge looked nice, but the banks, not so much. 
Finding a hotel in Densavan
Microsoft Bing map showed nothing in the little town of Densavan on the Laos side, so I texted the agent and she said her former clients had no problems. I then checked Google, and sure enough, it showed 5 hotels/guest houses. The 1st one was guarded by noisy dogs, 
so passed by. The 2nd one said full. Same for 3rd and 4th. As far as I know, there are only 2 options left, so was getting a bit anxious about how to get past the dogs at the 1st place, but just then a lady standing there asked if I was looking for a place, and my face brightened up, and after waiting around about 100 minutes, I was proud occupant of a ghost/guest house for a touch less than 8usd. It looked like it was probably the nicest thing in town 30 years ago, but nothing had been done maintenance wise since then. 
My bed was concave, and cigarette holes and weird stains were visible here and there on some other fabric in the room, 
but the balcony had a great view of the far-away mountains, and of course the little street and neighborhood where dogs, chickens, goats, and humans all kind of got along together. 
The faucets in Laos were really art-deco. 
Actually, the whole guest house experience was pretty good, as I watched for hours and hours from the balcony. I really wanted to climb the mountain in the background. I asked the owner if he’d climbed it, and he said he’d lived there all his life and never climbed it. That sounds impossible for me, but I guess others have different things to do in life.
Village life in Laos
Basically everybody had a motorbike, and it appeared not much else. It looked like the people of Laos don’t care if they prosper or not, as they don’t work very much. No doubt those with ambition go to the capital city, or off to Vietnam or Thailand to work. Everybody took Vietnamese dong, and most of them spoke Vietnamese too, so I could communicate numbers with them and they never laughed at me like native speakers do in Vietnam – ha!
Food in Laos
The only thing that really looked like food to me was “Banh mi” sandwiches (think subway sandwich), so that plus what I brought was about all I ate there. 
I was hoping I could get the pdf file of my invitation letter by Tuesday morning so I could catch the 2pm bus back, but it didn’t come until Tuesday nite, so I left Wednesday morning. When I left, I gave a Vietnamese pamphlet about Jesus to the Banh mi lady, and to the owner of my guest house. They both thanked me, which was surprising, since the owner had a big spirit house where he put out incense and bananas. Oh yes, in town I saw some goats ambling thru and eating bananas off the spirit houses – so funny! The only thing to do in town other than just walk around and look at the junk, was see the Buddhist/Naga temple. It always grosses me out how people think putting up a big statue of a 7-headed snake and then bowing down to it is going to help anything other than stroke the ego of demons. 
No smartphone – no camera, alarm, communication, search, visa, li…..
Living without a smart phone just isn’t a workable option for living in 2025. It was my camera, my means of communication, and the only way to get my visa info. But it all worked like clockwork on Wednesday morning, and after paying my 25 dollars in 5 Lincoln notes that I’d been saving for years in Japan, I was back in Vietnam. The bus station was about the same distance away from the border as Densavan was – around 1km. The town of Lao Bao was pretty sleepy, but there was one market where I saw a few of the hill tribe people selling bananas, root vegetables, and some other unusual plant-based things. They were dark-skinned and looked dirt poor. 
Back to Hanoi
The bus ride back was 14 1/2 hours (was told before going that it would take “9-10 hours”) and the typical “If you have A/C, then USE IT!” mentality of SE Asians that I met 20 years ago was still alive on this bus. The temps got down to an icy 16C (61F)!!! Fortunately I had prepared my long tights, heat-tech shirt, and hoodie for just such an emergency, so didn’t catch a cold from it, but heard a little kid coughing a lot. I didn’t sleep hardly at all, and still two days later feel like I’m being jostled around when I lie down – ha! I chowed down on rice, bamboo shoots with some chilies, boiled leaves of something, some soup, and slices of cucumber at a rest stop. 
Tasted really good, and cost about 1.20usd. Bus let us out at 4:35am, and I’m groggy and everything, but ignored the taxi/grab touts and headed off walking down the streets and finally reached my apt. at 5:50. The city is certainly different early in the morning with bakeries pumping out lots of rolls for banh mi all across the city, 
and the traffic moving swiftly. There was the butcher with half a swine draped over the back seat of his motorbike – gross. I took a shower, dropped into bed, and was out like a light for 2 hours, then time to get up and do some work for the day.
Learning from the visa run to Laos
I’m just so glad that everything worked out well, I could see some of the countryside and get detoxed from city life (lots of Vitamin D made there!) It motivated me to tell the director of the school that we need to think about following inspired counsel Ellen White wrote, and rent a house out in the countryside for us workers to go at least once or twice a month. We shouldn’t be always in this noisy, polluted, yucky city all the time.
I know many church members have supplied funds for this school to prosper, and I wish to use their money wisely. I could see the countryside, get a little vacation, and save the school probably 200usd to boot. 🙂 Hopefully within the next 90 days I can get a longer visa so won’t need to do this run again, but it was a great adventure. Thanks to everybody who made this possible, and thank God for the travelling mercies!