{"id":2536,"date":"2026-02-27T00:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T00:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=2536"},"modified":"2026-02-27T01:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:37:07","slug":"mon-23rd-feb-chiang-rai-to-huayxai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=2536","title":{"rendered":"Mon 23rd Feb – Chiang Rai (Thailand) to Huayxai (Laos)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DW: Caitlin has been increasingly apprehensive about Laos as the deadline approached. However, despite many concerns from Thai parties we met, getting into Laos is easy. Do your eVisa ahead of time, pay your last minute 50THB “administrative fee” in cash and negotiate a ride into the city with another Thai traveller who seems somehow less prepared than us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thailand has too many rules and too much structure. There are only so many surprises you can have there. Laos thankfully looks like it has resolved these issues. I am looking forward to seeing what it has in store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DW: From the quality of welding in the tuk-tuk you can already tell the type of place that Laos is going to be. This fills me with excitement.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: We can look back on Thailand now from the other side of the border. These views and in the highlands let you understand just how porous the border can be.
CR: I freak out about the haze but a rainy day sorts it out a little later.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: High street of Huayxai (spelling varies depending on what you are looking at). The town has a few restaurants, a few guesthouses and is mainly of tourist interest for the Gibbon experience, boat cruises and being the mass transit entry point at 7am for multiple buses trying to make the run to Luang Prabang in a day. Laos follows a Mediterranean approach to lunch with many shops shutting up for an hour and children riding their scooters home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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CR: I wish my financial services firm had a motto this cool. Laotian Kip is very interesting as it is a non convertible currency. I learnt about these in my first year of work and I remember thinking – wow, what foreign places! You cannot buy or sell Kip outside of Laos. If we leave the country with Kip, we cannot get it back to AUD in any way that is not a black market.
Essentially the government maintains an official exchange rate (versus USD, which nearly all of their international trade is done in) that is set once a day. On a daily basis this will not match supply\/demand because the price is not a result of market trades.
But if the rate is out of whack with real life forces for too long, two things will happen. Everyday people won’t be able to access the official rate (it is given only to special parties, like government officials) and a black market will open. The black market rate for USD will differ from the official rate and be a more accurate reading on supply and demand. Secondly, the currency will depreciate and become essentially worthless. Lack of faith in the currency leads to a scramble for USD as a safehaven.
It seems to me there would be a very real chance that the Laotian Kip disappears in the future. In theory, having your own currency gives you the lever of domestic monetary policy but having such strict control of your currency feels like it comes from a bad place – overcompensating on top of an exceptionally precarious economy – and it can’t last forever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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CR: Lunch is surprisingly tasty. We’re not meant to eat fresh vegetables because they get washed in local water, which we’re not meant to drink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: We take a walk around town and find the slow boat pier. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: Above the slow boat pier we enjoy a coffee from the Young Bokeo Entrepreneur Association and read a guidebook from the early 2000s that makes it very clear Laos is not the most exciting place in the world.
CR: Two ten year olds run this cafe and it functions as you’d expect. You place an order. The order is made. Cash is then exchanged. The next person places order. The order is made. Cash is exchanged. There is no parallelisation of tasks. Instead, in downtime, such as when the shot is being pulled, the boy plays on his phone while his sister stares at you coldly. In an hour they duo sell two drinks. It’s not helping me understand the Lap economy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: An assortment of goods from Thailand flow through the rigorous customs process. Later on, when one of the slow boats arrive a team of 6 Laotians move a massive hardwood slab onto the back of a ute. There is so much timber construction (furniture, doors, panels) that is obviously old growth rainforest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DW: We share the Big BeerLao.
CR: I love that the view of the Mekong is obscured by three Jerry cans. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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CR: The view behind the Jerry cans.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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CR: Tomorrow we do Gibbon Experience. I don’t break a sweat signing this waver.
DW: I struggle to understand how we would even begin suing a Laotian company in the event anything did go wrong. I suspect there is no chance. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crossing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2536"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}