Da Nang to Attapeu

Since I finished what I had to do in Da Nang and did want to continue the Laos road trip, I got up early and started driving to Atapeu.

This time, I had my Laos visa already so I decided to try a different border crossing. I went from Da nang to Thanh My via road 14B to join the HCM Road and head south on it.

This was the first time I headed south or Da Nang on the HCM Road so it was a good experience and nice to see something different.

The views are as always on this road amazing and there's not much traffic so it makes for a nice relaxed drive, although the road condition here is not as good as further north.

There were quite a lot of road works going on so it made progress a bit slower, I had enough time however so wasn't in any rush.

The border crossing I selected this time was in the town of Bo Y and to get to it, you can take a new, very wider and completely unused road.

The border crossing itself was easy and no problem at all on the Vietnamese side, on the Lao side, they offer visa on arrival (so that's good to know) and they did say something about customs form for my motorbike but the guys at customs didn't really care so I crossed into Laos and continued with my drive to Attapeu.

The road on the Laos side is not that great but the views are stunning, you can see very far in the distance at times and there is nothing but jungle all around for most of the way.

The road winds along the mountains so it's not as quick to drive and some landslides have made certain sections very bumpy (mostly in a corner you can't see well).

Once you pass by the new Attapeu International airport, it's not much further to go to make it to the city. Attapeu is a quiet and pretty small town but has it's charm and if you want to experience Vietnam in Laos it's probably the best place.

There are a lot of Vietnamese here so it was no surprise I ended up in a Vietnamese coffee shop and even ordered in Vietnamese.