Our Visa Experience - Loas

So originally we were never planing on coming to Laos (though now that we have spent almost a week here we are really enjoying it) but we were unable to obtain our Non-Immigrant B Visas in the US and Laos was the easiest country. So we set out for Lao last Friday evening and arrived early Saturday morning. After checking into our guesthouse we made a be line for the embassy; so as to move on as quickly as possible.  But when we arrived it was closed! Our first reaction was we had been taken to the old embassy; we had been informed that a new one had just been built. So we tried to explain this to our driver who had no idea what we were getting at. We then noticed the sign "Visa applications Monday thru Friday 8am to 12pm. Yea it was Saturday...therefore they were not open! Feeling pretty foolish we made our way back to the guesthouse.

Now flash forward to Monday; we got an early start and arrived at the embassy around 9am. As soon as we got out of the tuk-tuk we were ushered to a plastic table and chairs just outside the embassy. A guy then started filling out the forms for us. As he was filling in our info he informed us we needed a copy of our Lao visas, which of course we didn't have. So then another guy grabs our passports and rushes off across the street to make the copies. There we were sitting at a dodgy table answering all these questions while in the back of our minds we hoped we would get our passports back. The guy eventually returned with the copies and our passports but it was a tense couple of minutes.

Next we had to obtain enough Baht for the visas.  So our new "friends" grabbed us and took us across the street to make a deal with some random guy who was going to exchange our Kip (Lao currency) into Baht. We didn't know the conversion rate and neither of us had enough Kip, so we made a deal with a driver to take us to a bank and back.

Upon our return we were directed to the ticket machine and began the waiting process to hand in our applications and passports. Just imagine the Secretary of State only outside and a lot more chaotic. In total we spent around 3 hours waiting for our numbers to be called.  The rest of the process was completed in the lovely air-conditioned building where we only had to wait a few minutes to pay.

Pickup was much less of a hassle. All in all it did make for quite a story!

~ Randi