Visa

Today I made a trip across the boarder to renew my visa. In the morning I got pictures for the visa. 15 000 kip with beautiful edited pictures. Good thing they added lipstick as I totally forgot to put any make up on today ;). Biked to the bus station with no idea what bus to take. I bought a ticket to Nong Khai for 15 000 kip. After that I saw that there would have been buses just for going to the bridge. The bus was a Thai bus. On the bus a row ahead of me was sitting a Dutch woman who was a Buddhist nun who started to talk to me and tell about how she has been living in Thailand in the temple as a nun for seven years and has been trying to become a Bhikkhuni which is an ordained female monk. But after she had to leave back home for medical reasons and returned to Thailand she found out she could not legally be ordained in Thailand. There fore she had to disrobe organge monks' clothing into the white nun clothing. According to her it is only possible to be ordained as female monk in Sri Lanka and Taiwan. At the border we got out of the bus, walked to the departure gates and walked back to the bus. The bus crossed over the bridge and through a beautiful loop switched sides from driving on the right side to the left. Across the river we got off and went through immigration. At this point I had got a traveling friend as an Australian older gentleman was doing this for the first time as well but because I knew the language the wanted to stick with me. Once in Thailand we walked across the road and went back out of Thailand. Found a bus that rides over the bridge back to Laos. In Laos I go to apply for a visa on arrival and try to hand some euros as I assume it will be acceptable as it was at the airport. He signals for me to go exchange. I take the money around the corner and get Lao kip. Then back in line an elderly Thai woman is having trouble getting a visa and making the officials annoyed. Finally they tell her to move so I can come. Now he says Thai baht or US dollars. And I am like "um.... I just went and exchanged kip...." Then he calculated it and I was good to go and wait for the visa. We had to wait around a closed window. That would periodically open up with a couple passports. Finally all the waiting and being confused was over with and the next task was getting back to down town Vientiane. All the taxi drivers were trying to convince us to pay a bunch of money when all I wanted was a cheap bus. On the bus the new Australian friend was very talkative. At one point I started talking about the weather in Finland and the foreign guy in front of me turns around and says with a Finnish accent, " Have you heard what the weather was like this summer?" I found out that they were two Finnish JAMK students from Jyväskylä doing their practical training in Khon Kean Thailand for five months. What a small world. When I got back I biked straight to work for a few hours. What I did not really think through very well was the fact that the sun was hot during noon and I had no sunscreen. With red patches of sunburn on my arms I finally got home after work and realized I was locked out as I gave the keys to Jared and he was sleeping. It was an exciting day and I learned some interesting things.