Roberto booked us another $6 taxi ride back to the Siem Reap airport for our evening flight to Luang Prabang, Laos. All went smoothly on exit, even though the passport control people were once again the crabbiest of any Cambodians we met. They did their job, just with an unfriendly attitude and lots of barked directions. Oh well.
Although the Siem Reap airport is relatively small, it’s modern and very nice. We wandered past lots of upscale duty free shops to find the Plaza Premium Club, a lounge covered by our Priority Pass “Select” memberships. Priority Pass “Select” is a perk of some of our premium cards that we’ve found to be almost useless in the U.S. (The “Select” version of this paid lounge membership is often excluded by American airline and airport lounges.), only moderately useful in Europe, but really great in Asia. Siem Reap was no exception.
We were quickly processed into the Plaza Premium Club, given two free drink vouchers and a free membership to the Plaza Premium Club effective outside the Priority Pass network. The lounge is elegant with attentive service and a nice buffet of Asian, Western and dessert items. There are newspapers in English as well as Asian languages, English-language television, lots of electrical outlets, private work carels, and free wi-fi.
A sudden heavy downpour had us wondering if our flight would be delayed…and glad for the lounge access. When boarding was called on-time, our worries changed to whether we’d be drenched getting on the plane as it’s a walk-on tarmac. Happily, a bus was supplied, and the rain broke before we actually boarded, taking off only slightly late on our Vietnam Airlines flight.
We arrived after dark at a much smaller airport in Luang Prabang, Laos. An escort walked us from the plane across the tarmac to where we rode an elevator to the 2nd floor immigration. Visa applications were on a table just to the left as we exited the elevator. Filling them out quickly, we beat 90% of our plane-mates to join the line for visas. Some snafu had things backed up for awhile, but once things were sorted out, the line moved very quickly. The visa is $35 for Americans, with the prices varying by country from $20 to $42. They prefer U.S. dollars. An extra $1 apiece bought a scan of our passport photos. Since we knew about this workaround, we didn’t bother bringing actual photos.
Luggage was waiting on the carrousel by the time we got through immigration. Just before we exited into the small main area of the airport, we bought a Lao SIM at a table set up by the door. We hadn’t planned to buy one for such a short stay, but at $9 for 4 days, we figured what the heck and picked one up, using , my phone to hotspot David when out of wi-fi range. Departing the arrival area (Customs forms were not collected.), we found the Taxi Service booth just a few steps away where we purchased a $7 coupon for a taxi to our hotel. All in all, a smooth and efficient entry.