Udon Thani, Thailand Travel Vlog -- Off the Beaten Path Series

I made a visa run to Laos a few days ago. I also visited the heartland of Isaan: Udon Thani and Khorat so I want to tell you all about it plus I have a couple of videos from that trip, one of Udon Thani and one of Laos. I learned a lot of things and it felt nice to get outside of Pattaya for a couple of days but once I got back to the city I felt like I had returned home.

My visa was expiring and I heard through the grapevine that you could get a 30 day visa at any land border. This is a positive change in our favor effective as of January 1st 2017. Before then you only got 15 days at a land border and it was not worth the time or expense to do border runs. I looked at my options and visa runs to Cambodia were expensive as were flights. I always wanted to go to Isaan so I bought a round trip ticket from U-tapao airport just 40 KM outside of Pattaya to Udon Thani which is one hour from the Laos border. From there I would take a bus to the border and cross over into Laos.

I brought a little over 4,000 baht with me on this trip and I would soon run out of this money quickly due to some unforeseen events and expenses and I was almost stuck in Udon Thani penniless. I had no ATM cards on me or any way to get cash.

I landed in Udon Thani and it looked like a nice pleasant city. It basically has everything Pattaya has except the beach and Walking Street. There is a lot of shopping, restaurants and even nightlife. When I got back from Laos I saw a couple of bar streets with about 100 bars and some nice looking ladies in them, in fact nicer than you would usually see in Pattaya. Also quite a few older and middle age farangs about town, more than I expected too. There are also a couple of good pickup discos in Udon but I was pretty tired and did not have a chance to go to them (nor did I have any money on me).

As for Laos I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately the visa costs 1,500 baht crossing into Laos. From the Friendship Bridge it is only 20 KM to the capital of Laos, Vientane. I took a tuk-tuk into the capital which I shared with a few other travelers and that cost me 100 baht.

First thing I noticed in Laos, well second thing aside from the fact that the place was quite similar to Thailand, is that there were cute 20 something year old ladies everywhere. In Laos it is technically illegal for a foreigner to sleep with a Laos national and there was no bar scene or nightlife to speak of. The people looked just like the people of Udon Thani or upper Isaan, same ethnic group and people.

I only had about 5 hours to walk around the capital before I could catch the last bus back to Udon Thani. I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of things like how cheap things were. Beer Laos at the mini-mart was only 24 baht and it is much better than Thai beer or Heineken. The people were very friendly, in fact I got invited to a party as I was just walking down the street with about 20 people and they gave me free food and beer (second time that happened today).

The city was a more dirty than you would see in Thailand. Also the food looked like rubbish which you can see some of in my videos. In fact I avoided eating anything until I got back to Udon Thani (the exception being a few nibbles from the party). The people's manners were different than Thailand, for example older women would hock loud loogies and spit them on the side walk. No Thai woman in her right mind would ever do that. In fact the word Laos is often used as a slang adjective in Thailand to describe bad manners.

The Laos language seems to share a lot with Thai as I recognized a number of similar words. For example farang is used in both languages. So is mau (which is drunk, must have had one too many Beer Laos).

I got back into Thailand and I made a critical mistake. I was down to 1,000 and I left it in my passport. When I handed my passport over to the border the money was inside and apparently taken by the border guard. I did not realize this until the next morning as I still had some pocket change that got me through the rest of the night. When I woke up in the morning I was nearly shitting my pants as I had no money, not even enough for breakfast. Must have been another mistake attributed to the Beer Laos. Too much of a good thing that Beer Laos.

Luckily I booked a hotel for 3 nights and only used one, so the receptionist was kind enough to refund me the two nights on the hotel which totaled 1,000 baht and that was more than enough to purchase a bus ride back to Pattaya (550 baht). I did not look forward to riding a 12 hour bus and I was disappointed to miss out on the nightlife but I had no other choice.

Видео Udon Thani, Thailand Travel Vlog -- Off the Beaten Path Series канала Paradise Travel