No Money, No Honey

After a quick boat trip from the 4000 Islands to the mainland, our foursome gets separated. Cody and Julia are bundled onto one minibus and we're made to stand around for twenty minutes or so. Another minibus takes us and a few others to the border. Or so he said. What actually happened is we got to the main road, about three kilometres from where were waiting around in the first place, and stopped in a lay-by. The driver then gets out, says "We wait for bus" and goes and finds the nearest hammock and gets his head down. Next to the lay by is a little shed thing where they are making rice paper and rice noodles. There's racks and racks of noodles everywhere but not a jot to eat. Another twenty minutes or so the bus turns up and it's a proper Sorya one. They are one of the many private bus companies and then one we travelled with for most of our Cambodian adventures.

We pile on and then the dude on the bus wants our passports and twenty eight dollars for the visa, stamps and service charge. We know for a fact the visa should be twenty dollars and the rest is negotiable. We opt to do it ourselves which means getting off the bus on the Laos side, getting our passports stamped, walking across No Mans Land and then getting visas etc on the other side. We start at the Laos side and the guy in the uniform wants $2 each for a stamp. Lets call him Smuggy McSmuggun. It's a completely made up charge to line the pockets of those involved namely Smuggy and chums. We wait till everyone else has gone and there's just me, Jo and Eton boy who we'd bumped into on a few occasions before and was decidedly difficult to get along with. We said we were traveling for our company and we need a receipt to get our expenses back. He umms and arrs, then says OK and gives our passports back. We feel like we've beaten the system and are a little smug ourselves. Next is the long walk which is only about 70 metres or so between border posts. There's a barrier at each end but no-one is manning either one. As we walk along, Jo turns to Eton boy and asks jovially "If this is No Mans Land, what would happen if I were to kill you?". We laugh and talk about it may be like international waters or some such. We get to the Cambodia side, have a health check being carried out by two gentlemen in surgical masks that didn't cover their noses which they try to charge us a dollar for, we said we didn't have it and they waved us through. Next stop was visa office. The bloke in there looks in our passports for a little while and says 'No stamp.'. Smuggy McSmuggun hasn't stamped our passports. This being SEA, we can just walk back across the border, no questions asked. As we peer back into his little Departures window, he beams at us. "You no pay, I no stamp". Two dollars each later we're back across No Mans Land feeling less pleased with ourselves. The visa is still $23 and they ain't shifting on it but we do get let off the $2 for the entry stamp. So, all in all, we're $3 up on the people on the bus so that's like two free beers. Two beers, incidentally which we had while watching United getting held to a draw by Everton but that's at the next stop...