Pleasant Ampawa

Ampawa has become a very popular weekend getaway in the last few years. Homestays and resorts have been built to welcome the high number of tourists. Ampawa is the home of the well known Ampawa floating market. The market only opens in the evening on the weekend.

Ampawa is a district in Samutsongkram province, the distance from Bangkok is about 80 km. It takes about 1 - 1.5 hours by car, bus or van. We took the van from the Victory Monument, the tickets cost us around 60 baht each. Our accommodation was close to the floating market. From the Van Station we needed to take the taxi truck there, you can ask people in the market where you can get this taxi. It costs only 8 baht per person to the floating market.

Fine days @ Koh Larn, Pattaya

Koh Larn (Larn Island) is a place to get away from Bangkok to have a chill weekend. It is about 30 minutes by boat from Pattaya. (According to Wikipedia it's 8 km)

I have been to Koh Larn several times because the beaches on Koh Larn are very beautiful. Even though it's near Pattaya (well known for partying, nightclubs, & bars), Koh Larn is very clean and peaceful. The most important thing is that it's only 1.5 hours away from Bangkok, so I can come here more often than the beautiful places in the South.

Mini Trip to Laos - how to get a Thai visa

For U.S. citizens, you can come to Thailand and stay without visa for 30 days. But if you want to stay longer you need to get a visa ahead of time. A tourist visa will be valid 90 days. After 90 days, if you want to stay more, you need to leave the country and get another visa from a Thai Embassy outside of Thailand. And now we go to Laos...

We left Bangkok around 9 pm. Our destination was Nong Khai: a border city in the North East of Thailand. We took the bus from the Air Udon company, it was quite comfortable though. The bus cost us 450 baht each (around $15).

The bus ride took around 8 hours to get to Nong Khai. We arrived at 5 am. The weather in Nong Khai at that time of the year (Jan-Feb) is always good. The temperature was around 20°c.

After we arrived at Nong Khai bus station we needed to take a tuk-tuk to the border. Tuk-tuk costs around 100 baht (around $3). From the Thai border office, there was a mini-van service to take us across the bridge to the Laos border office.

For Thais, you do not need a visa to enter to Laos, and you can stay up to 30 days. For U.S. citizens, you can get visa on arrival. It will cost you 1,500 baht (or only $35 if you pay in US dollars). You also need 1 two-inch photo for the Laos visa, and the wait is around 30 minutes if there aren't too many other people.