Visas
We had no difficulty obtaining our Vietnamese visas in Vientiane, Laos. It was very straightforward. There were options for 1-3 day visa services and we picked them up on schedule.
We could have and should have also gotten our Chinese visas in Vientiane. We decided to wait until Hanoi since we figured it would be best to get the visa closer to our border crossing date. Big mistake. Though our guide book and web resources indicated that Hanoi would be an excellent place to get a visa for China ($30 for a 3 day service), the embassy very recently changed their rules and do not issue visas for China to tourists. We’re unclear as to why this rule has changed. After coming up with several unrealistic scenarios to figure out how we could solve the problem, we found out we could get a visa by going through a travel agency. For $51US each we were able to obtain our visas in 6 working days (so 8 days total). Since we had anticipated only needing 4 days in Hanoi, we had to change our plans completely since our time on our Vietnam visas was running out. Long story short, if you plan on traveling to China, pick up your visa elsewhere. We “woulda/shoulda/coulda” picked them up in Thailand or in Laos.
Reducing Plastic Water Bottle Waste in Thaila nd
It’s amazing how many plastic water bottles most tourists in Thailand go through. Having lived here for a few years, we have found some very easy ways to reduce your waste and save money.
- Water Vending Machines. These are EVERYWHERE in major towns and even in some smaller areas. Unless you know what you’re looking for it’s easy to miss them. 1 Baht (about 3cents) fills a liter bottle with clean, safe drinking water.
- Police Stations/Checkpoints Along Country Roads: We have Mr. Oui to thank for this tip. We met him while riding the Samoeng Loop outside of Chiang Mai and he let us know that you can fill up your bottles for free at Police Checkpoints. We’ve stopped at a few so far on our trip (only when there’s no store/other available option nearby) and we’ve been able to fill up for free each time. The local police officers have always been very friendly and helpful and have suggested possible routes too.
- Ice (Nam Kang): Given the intense heat in Thailand, we’re often craving ice cold water and we’ve realized that we can often stop at stores or restaurants/food stalls and ask them for ice. Generally, we’ll fill our bottles and the speed at which it turns into cold and then warm water is pretty quick! We always offer to pay but we’ve always been provided ice for free. (A note about ice – a lot of foreigners are weary about drinking ice water here. The cylindrical ice with the hole in the middle is safe to consume).
We’re not sure if these tips will apply in the other countries we go through but we’ll update this section.
Poste Restante
Before we left Chiang Mai, we mailed a few packages to ourselves. We were pretty happy to hear about the Poste Restante system since we didn’t want to carry around our guide books and maps for countries that we were months away from visiting. We planned to mail a package to Laos, Vietnam and China. Apparently most post offices will hold parcels for 3 months.
We learned that it would be far cheaper to mail a package to Nong Khai in Thailand than across the border to Laos so we sent it Poste Restante to Nong Khai. It arrived safe and sound (although a small fee was levied for storing it while we made our way on a bike).
We’ll update this section if we encounter any problems but based on our first experience, so far, so good. Packages are addressed as follows:
LAST NAME, First name
Poste Restante
City (e.g. Vientiane)
Country (e.g. Laos PDR)
Update April 28
We do not recommend sending packages to Vietnam Poste Restante. We sent a package to ourselves and Heather's parents sent us a package. Both packages were meant to have shown up by the time we arrived in Hanoi. At the time of writing, the package from Thailand has been returned to our return address in Thailand and the package from Canada is MIA.
Safety Vests/Mirrors
Although not the most flattering, we’ve been so happy to have bright, reflective safety vests with us. While we’re trying to stick to back roads, it’s always inevitable that we sometimes find ourselves sharing the roads with heavier traffic and smaller shoulders. We have felt a lot more comfortable on hilly and twisty roads knowing that we can be seen from a distance by traffic in either direction. We also highly recommend rear view mirrors (we couldn’t attach them to our handlebars so we have some that attach to our helmet). We haven’t seen these before in Asia so we recommend purchasing them abroad.
