Lak Sao To Veintiane And Mysterious TIP.....

From Lak Sao it started to drizzle, then rain, I decided to jacket up with wet gear which turned out to be a great decision as the heavens opened on us full swing.

No stress, I don’t mind wet riding and it isn’t cold here although having acclimatized 23 degrees in rain feels cold now.

Reaching the main drag saw us back up to Paksan and in the dry, we returned to the guesthouse that we stayed at on the way down, the lady was very excited to see us again and thanked us for choosing her place again, truth is it was because of her polite, friendly and welcoming attitude coupled with undercover parking and quiet made it a gem for us.

Into Vientiane which is the capital of Laos we chose a Hotel/Hostel with a pool, in 33 degree heat that was excellent.

As part of our mission we had to get documents printed and tried our hardest to find someone to notarize them as done by me etc but the two different Lawyers office we went to would not touch what they could not understand because it was in English, we also went to the Department of foreign affairs…..nup and another office wanted a few days to translate in Laos first and make a meal of it, of course there are plenty of people in New Zealand in our Court System that can read Laos, ຂ້ອຍຈຳເປັນຕ້ອງເຊັນເອກະສານສຳລັບນິວຊີແລນ. (spell check went mad at me for this LOL)

What a mission for a seemingly simple task, Plan B now which has been printed etc and sent to a JP in Kiwiland.

Some monuments from our walks

And a statue

Just for reference...that black cloud is real and did this

Part of the night market area we didn't quite get to due to the above the previous night so this time was good

Now the main task was to extend our Temporary Import Permit for Xiao Lyu, we as humans get 30 days but Xiao Lyu as metal motonoid only gets 14 days, brilliant work by customs.

So, we found the immigration building and found someone who could speak English, he informed us the we cannot do it there and it must be at the immigration at the border control, more fine outstanding simplicity at it finest, the border was 20 km away across the biggest city in Laos…FFS, riding in 33 degrees on a moto with shit tonnes of traffic lights.

In the morning we saddled up to get across town and go to the border to get the paperwork sorted as we did not want the TIP to expire or we are in the shit and subject to fines or worse if they feel so.

This time and several offices later being told to go from pillar to post and finally …”you need to go to room 105”, we did this and found a lovely lady who could speak English and much gibbering between 4-5 customs agents and border people she said to us…..they didn’t lock it in when we entered Laos??

After some head scratching it would seem that we had a piece of paper that had not been saved into “the system”, so it didn’t exist...another words…flash looking toilet paper.

The Customs Immigration way to fix it was to forget about the 7 day extension we could get and our piece of paper never happened, they gave Xaio Lyu 14 days and treated it like it was a fresh entry into Laos…..WTF …this is all meant to be legal stuff, confirming again that 99% of “border control” stuff is simply a money grab as proven yet again left and right hand do not talk.

Not to argue we went with the flow and got our brand new 14 day entry….welcome to Laos.

From here a slight backtrack for part then off into the abyss we go again with our new found extra time.

A quick vid on our happs