This week we took a quick trip to Laos to change our Cambodian visa type. The Laos border is about 4 hours from our home and it was the easiest way to leave Cambodia and reenter to obtain new visas. This was our first time to Laos and since we had to buy Laos visas we decided to spend a full day in the country.

Both the first (Monday) and third (Wednesday) days of our three day trip were taken up with travel and crossing the border. On the way to Laos we ran several errands in Ban Lung and had lunch with our team members in Stung Treng. It took us over an hour to cross the border and then we had over a 2 hour drive to Pakse, Laos. We arrived after dark. Our hotel was right along the Mekong River.

Tuesday was our fun day without any border crossing. In the morning Josh and Clara walked around the hotel and had coffee, while everyone else slept in until 7. We had a great breakfast at our hotel and headed out to see some waterfalls in the area. The first was neat to see, but we couldn’t get very close.

The second waterfall was more kid-friendly and the kids enjoyed climbing behind the waterfall with Josh and riding a raft up to the falls.  After a very late lunch, we enjoyed the hotel pool until we took baths ( the kids loved having a real bathtub!), ate supper in our room, and ended the evening with watching Toby Tyler (an old Disney movie I enjoyed as a kid).

On our way back to Cambodia, we were delayed over two hours at the border. Border crossings take time, especially with multiple kids. However on the Cambodian side of the border we ran into a snag when the officials didn’t want to issue us the new (NGO) type of visa, since our old visas don’t run out until August. The reason we were doing this early is because our other option for getting the new type of visa was to wait until we were in Thailand for the birth of our new baby. That would require us to wait for the baby’s passport number before we could start the initial paperwork and could possibly keep us in Thailand 5+ weeks after the baby is born. It took quite some time to explain that we needed to make the change now, but finally the officials agreed. Thanks be to God.

We arrived home Wednesday night after dark. We’re so thankful for the safety God gave us on our travels and for the success in getting our new visas.  We’re thankful for the extra vacation day we could have as a family enjoying doing fun things without errands or other things to take care of. Thanks be to God.