I am and Lao right now and I have a friend who is in Paksan (about 150 Km south of Vientiane). I live in Nongbualamphu and thought I'd go down for a few days and cross back over to Thailand via Bueng Kan ferry. However, I do not know the status of this service and will have to find another way back if its not making runs (maybe friendship bridge in Thakhek-Nakhon Phanom). Does anyone have any recent information on this? Thanks.

Ferry makes runs on Mon-Fri between roughly 8.30?am to 4.30pm. Slightly outside of these hours (starting around 6am or 7am or up until maybe 5.30pm or 6pm at the latest) you may be able to charter a ferry. It's also a lot easier to find a ferry if you are just a passenger as vehicle ferries run less often or need to be chartered.

There also seems to be a Saturday morning ferry around 9 or 10am; outside of these hours you may be able to convince the ferry operators to take you if you charter the whole ferry.

Paksan is directly east of Vientiane on route 13S, not south; it is however the road that goes to southern Laos.

Thank you for your helpful info,

Also Tomtom, do you know the approximate price p/p?

Also Tomtom, do you know the approximate price p/p?

If there's people and you're not taking a vehicle across, so just catching the normal passenger ferry it should be around 60 Baht per person each way. If there's only 2-3 people, it might be necessary to charter the ferry so 100+ Baht. Note that arriving between 12pm and 1.30pm things might be a bit slow on the Lao side so morning departures or anything from around 1 until 2.30 or 3 seems to be best. It takes around 15-20 mins to cross the river anyway.

Hello, happy to find this thread as I never crossed there.

Anything to do around this city / province ?

And no problem to cross for foreigners if you have the correct visa ?

Thank you.

Hello, happy to find this thread as I never crossed there.

Anything to do around this city / province ?

And no problem to cross for foreigners if you have the correct visa ?

Thank you.

No problems at all. Not much to do in Paksan but there are some nice caves in Khammouane province, which is better accessed from Nakorn Phanom. However, Paksan is only 140km directly east of Vientiane so if you want to check out sleepy Paksan and then pop over to the Lao capital, it's not too far away.

On 2/11/2015 at 1:34 PM, thefactoryoutlet said:

Hello, happy to find this thread as I never crossed there.

Anything to do around this city / province ?

And no problem to cross for foreigners if you have the correct visa ?

Thank you.

 

 

Hello, have you crossed to Laos there ? Visa on arrival available ?

 

What else to do there ?