Pai, being in the rural northwestern corner of Thailand amidst the mountains, isn’t super easy to get to or depart from. While the trip from Chiang Mai to Pai is only 3 hours, the road traverses through the mountains and is naturally winding and steep in places. For this reason, only minivans transport people to and from the area, rather than larger buses. Thus, leaving Pai requires the same sort of other transport. In fact, the “bus station” in Pai is home only to smaller shuttle buses.
This means that getting anywhere else after Pai can be a bit of a challenge, unless you are only going to Chiang Mai. While I was in Pai, my Thai visa was about to expire and my next stop was northern Laos. I had planned to travel from Pai to Chiang Khong (the main border town in northern Thailand that connects with Laos’s border town, Huay Xie). However, when I inquired in Pai about a transport package from there to Chiang Khong, I was shocked to learn that the price for this transit package was 1500 baht (about $40 USD)! This is quite expensive for Thailand, especially while traveling in minivans and buses, and this price does not include additional fees for tuk tuks and buses to get to and from both immigration centers between Chiang Khong and Huay Xie.
Determined to find a better price, I started to do some research on my own for other options. It wasn’t that hard to find, but I wanted to write this post for any other travelers who would like the easy, half-priced DIY option of getting from Pai to Chiang Khong for a border crossing to Laos. Read along for everything you need to know to book and plan for this journey!
Note: The cheapest journey involves an overnight stop in Chiang Mai. I did not include Chiang Rai as an overnight option, because that route would cost about the same as the original 1500 baht transport package from Pai, so I only recommend this option if you want to visit Chiang Rai and/or if you want to skip an overnight stay in Huay Xie. I explain more about these logistics at the bottom of this page.
Part 1: Pai to Chiang Mai
Doing the journey this way (rather than paying the 1500 baht for direct booking from Pai) requires an overnight stop in Chiang Mai. This might be annoying for some people, but I didn’t mind so much since it broke up the long journey a bit. By the way, adding a night of accommodation on this journey is still cheaper than the alternative option of paying 1500 baht for the full transit package.
At the Pai Bus Station, you can buy tickets to Chiang Mai for 150 baht ($4 USD). These leave every hour starting from 7 am until 5 pm and they take about 3 hours in a shuttle. This is what we did, and we spent the night in Chiang Mai before taking a bus to the border the next morning.
Accommodation in Chiang Mai ranges from $5-10 USD.
Total cost: 330-480 baht ($9-$13 USD) depending on accommodation type
Part 2: Bus to Chiang Khong and Thai Border
During this leg of the journey, you leave early in the morning from Chiang Mai and head to the northern Thai-Laos border. The Thai border town here is called Chiang Khong, and is connected with Huay Xie, Laos via the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge #4.
For this section, your best bet is to book a bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong using 12go. This website, so far in my experience, almost always offers the cheapest bus journeys in Thailand and usually comes with a comfortable coach bus (rather than a cramped minivan). That is true for this journey as well.
Buses depart from Chiang Mai everyday at 8:30 or 9:30 am and are around 380 baht for the trip to Chiang Khong. The journey takes 6-7 hours. During our journey, the bus driver made a few stops along the way for snack and bathroom breaks, as well as to pick up or drop off passengers. When we arrived in Chiang Khong, they dropped us off at the Chiang Khong Tuk Tuk Station, which is the closest station to the border.
From there, we hopped in a shared tuk tuk for 50 baht each. If you are solo going to the border, it is 60 baht. This journey takes about 10 minutes.
Once you get through Thai immigration, you can wait outside for another bus that will bring you across the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge and to Laos immigration. This bus cost us 25 baht each. There was a sign next to the ticket office indicating confusing pricing for passengers and their bags, and I’m honestly not sure if I got charged correctly but 25 baht is cheap enough so I didn’t complain. We waited about 20 minutes with a dozen or so other people until the bus departed and brought us across the border.
Total cost: 455-465 baht (~$12.50 USD)
Part 3: Laos Immigration & Huay Xie
The rest of this journey is simple enough! If you have a Laos e-visa, you can go straight to the immigration agent to show your visa, fill out your arrival card, and get your stamp. For some reason, the immigration official charged me an additional 100 baht, even though my visa already cost over $50 USD. There were no signs indicating this price, and based on other stories I’ve read about Laos immigration online, I have a feeling that this official is just pocketing that money. But you know it was like less than $3 USD so I can’t really complain too much.
If you need to get a visa on arrival, you will have to go to a separate part of the immigration terminal and then go to the border agent afterwards.
After you get through the terminal, there is a money exchange center and a place to buy slow boat tickets to Luang Prabang (though this wasn’t open when we were there in June 2024).
Once we left the immigration center with our stamped passports and Laos Kip, we got in a shared tuk tuk into the Huay Xie town center. This cost 100 baht or 65,000 kip.
Total cost (not including immigration fees/visas): 100 baht ($3 USD)
Total cost from Pai via Chiang Mai: $24-28 USD (depending on accommodation in Chiang Mai)
Part 4: Huay Xie and Beyond
From Huay Xie, you have a few options:
Option 1: Stay and Explore Huay Xie
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Huay Xie was more than just a bare bones border town! It was pretty cute and with lots of little restaurants and things to do. It’s pretty cheap there, as far as northern Laos goes, and there are good food options. If I had done things a little differently, I probably would’ve stayed an extra night there. In the future, I want to go back and do the 3-day Gibbon Experience, which sounds like an amazing adventure!
Option 2: Go North for Some Trekking in Luang Namtha, Muang Sing, and/or Nong Khiaw
If you’re interested in exploring the mountains and jungle of the north, taking a bus to one (or all!) of these remote towns is your best bet. Alternatively, you could bus to these places from Luang Prabang if you also want to take the slow boat.
Option 3: Take the 2-Day Slow Boat to Luang Prabang
We stayed one night in Huay Xie and hopped on the slow boat the next morning. (It only leaves once a day around 9 or 10 am.) The slow boat costs 400,000 kip and was an amazing experience! I highly recommend this travel option to Luang Prabang. It is so much nicer and more scenic than taking a bus, and even though it takes two days, it is one of the most interesting and unique ways you can travel in the region.
Alternative Route: Pai to Laos via Chiang Rai
Note: This option overall is more expensive than option 1, as the buses to and from Chiang Rai are more expensive than the ones out of Chiang Mai. The cost comes to about the same as the original mentioned 1500 baht transit package from Pai to Chiang Khong. However, I wanted to include this option for people who want to spend time in Chiang Rai and/or those who want to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang and want to skip an overnight stay in Huay Xie.
Part 1: Getting to Chiang Rai
The Pai Bus Station only sells tickets to and from Pai and Chiang Mai. So if you are trying to get to Chiang Rai, you will have to buy a separate bus ticket from Chiang Mai. Alternatively, you could pay to go to straight Chiang Rai from Pai. However, you will have to book this trip through a private tour agency. There is one across from the ticket office at the Pai Bus Station (on the other side of the 7-Eleven), though this was the same ticket agency that was selling tickets to Chiang Khong for 1500 baht, so it may be overpriced. I believe the cost of their tickets to Chiang Rai were somewhere around 600-650 baht. This trip takes about 9 hours.
Another option to get to Chiang Rai is to book on 12go, which is my preferred booking option in Thailand over tour agencies or other channels. These are often the cheapest tickets and most of the time you can get a nice plush bus rather than a stuffy, cramped minivan for long journeys. At the time of this writing, the shuttle/bus package from Pai to Chiang Rai was around 500 baht.
Accommodation in Chiang Rai ranges from $5-10 USD.
Total cost: 700-1000 baht ($19-27 USD) depending on transport and accommodation
Part 2: Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong
There are a few options for transport to Chiang Khong via 12go.
For 500 baht, you can take a minivan at 5 am to Chiang Khong. This takes 2 hours. You will have to pay additional fees to get to the Thai Immigration office (50 baht shared or 60 baht solo via tuk tuk), across to the Laos immigration office (25 baht for a bus), and then a shared taxi into Huay Xie (100 baht or 65,000 kip).
For 650 baht, you can pay for a transport package (minivan, bus, and tuk tuk), which leave at 5 am or 1 pm. This option includes pickup from your hotel and transport to the border as well as transport across to Laos and finally a shared taxi into the town of Huay Xie.
Total cost: 630-650 baht (~$17.50 USD)
Part 3: Going Over the Border
You can follow the same directions as described in the first itinerary via Chiang Mai under Part 3 above.
Total cost from Pai via Chiang Rai: $39.50-47.50 USD (depending on accommodation in Chiang Rai)
Options for Slow Boat without Stopover in Huay Xie
It may be possible to skip an overnight stay in Huay Xie if you book the earliest bus from Chiang Rai the morning of your boat journey. On the morning we departed on the slow boat, several people coming from the border hopped on our boat about 20 minutes after we were scheduled to leave, so it seems that if they know you will be coming onto the slow boat, they’ll wait for your group to arrive. However, I don’t know for sure if these people just were coming from the border or if they had booked a complete transport package with an included slow boat journey to Luang Prabang, so this option needs some more investigation.
Good Luck On Your Journey!
I hope this post has been helpful for your trip. Let me know how it went in the comments. 🙂
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