Border crossing Laos – Cambodia

On the Laos side we parked the bikes and went to the first booth. We filled out the departure card and handed it over. They stamped our passports, wanted a 2$ (fake) exit fee and pointed us to the other side to the customs.
There you need to give your green temporary import paper of your vehicle. Which we didn’t have… after arguing for about 15min they let us go.

On the Cambodian border we needed to fill out a health survey and they checked our temperature for fever. And we needed to pay the usual fake 2$ entry fee.
We then needed to go into the building on the left to the second office (labeled with customs). But nobody was in there, so we waited. After a while somebody called the guy and he came aber 10min later. We handed over our carnets and he began to fill them out. A another guy came into the office and helped us translate and fill out the visa application forms. He looked official, but in the end it turned out that he’s just a tour guide who brought some tourists over the border and had too much time left…
The customs officer who stamped our carnets wanted 20$ per bike ‘for his service’. He also said that this is not official and we don’t ‘have to’. As I didn’t have my passport back yet and wanted to get it done fast, I paid 10$…
After about 10min the passport with the Visa came and we were free to enter Cambodia!

 

mountain passes in Tibet

no, I didn’t go back to China, I’m still in Laos!
these are some photos of the mountain passes in Tibet we crossed. some bikers may find these interesting 🙂

my personal record: 5231m
I need to count them all on the GPS track, because we didn’t take pictures on all of them. but I think we did three 5000m passes and about twelve 4000m.


exiting China

basically, China has been a pain in the ass and I’m glad to be out of this country! maybe I’ll write some blog entries about China later, but for know I just want to close this part of the trip with this one.

The Yunnan province in the south is not so restricted as the other so we could finally enjoy some nice cities there. Shangri-La, Lijiang and Dali had pretty nice and old town centers to explore.

We’ve also got the car out of the truck in the last town just short of the border and it got out of China without any issues! (the car with the failed vehicle inspection).


China war mühsam und ich bin froh, aus dem Land raus zu sein! vielleicht schreibe ich später noch ein paar Artikel über China, aber momentan möchte ich dieses Kapitel mit diesem hier abschliessen.

Die Yunnan Provinz im Süden ist weniger eingeschränkt als andere, daher konnten wir ein paar Städte endlich ein wenig geniessen. Shangri-La, Lijiang und Dali haben schöne, alte Stadtzentren zum Erkunden.

Den Wagen haben wir auch wieder aus dem Truck holen und über die Grenze nach Laos bringen können!

an AfricaTwin on the loose