Hoi An Visa Runs to Lao Bao
Made Simple

Where the van picks you up

Pickup is door to door and the window is one hour, which is how the van covers the whole city without leaving anyone on the kerb at 4am. The round works through Minh An in the Old Town first, where the hotels sit on Tran Phu, Nguyen Thai Hoc and the riverside lanes. Then it crosses the Japanese Covered Bridge to An Hoi, drops down to Cam Nam across the Thu Bon, works back through Cam Chau behind the Old Town, and finishes along Tan An on the road out toward Da Nang.

An Bang and Cua Dai are the two beach pickups and both are a detour, so those windows sit later in the round. Be ready at the start of your window, not the end of it. Staying somewhere outside those areas is not a problem either. Put the address in the booking notes, because most of the time the driver still comes to you.

Riding from Da Nang instead? The same vans collect along My Khe beach, the Han River and the city centre, and a seat from there is 40 USD (1,000,000 VND) rather than 45. The drive north already passes through Da Nang on its way to the Hai Van tunnel, so a Da Nang pickup sits on the route rather than adding a detour, and it falls after the Hoi An round. A private car from Da Nang is 135 USD (3,200,000 VND) for the whole vehicle. If your group is split between the two cities, put both addresses in the booking notes and the driver collects in one city and picks up the rest on the way.

If you would rather set your own departure time than join the round, a private car runs the same route with the driver waiting through both crossings.

At the border

Lao Bao and Dansavan are two checkpoints facing each other across a short bridge over the Sepon river. You clear the Vietnamese exit window first, walk across, then work through the Laos side: the arrival counter, the visa desk if you are buying a visa on arrival, and the window that stamps you back out. On the way home the Vietnamese re-entry window is the last stop, and it is where your new e-visa is read.

The gate is open 07:00 to 22:00, and the immigration windows inside it run roughly 08:00 to 16:00. That is the reason the 4am and 6am vans are the ones regulars book: you clear the exit early, cross before the queues build, and are back on the road while the afternoon is still young. Queues stack up around noon when the officers change shifts, and a crossing that lands outside office hours can add a dollar or two in overtime.

One habit worth copying: photograph your Vietnamese exit stamp before you get back in the van. Everyone does it at the border cafe, and our visa desk needs that photo to file your next e-visa the same day. The window order, and what to answer at each one, is in the what to say at the immigration windows guide.