Hoi An Laos Visa Run: The Lao Bao Loop

What a Laos visa run from Hoi An actually is

A visa run from Hoi An is a day trip to Laos, and the whole point is the border. You drive about 300 kilometers to Lao Bao, the international crossing in Quang Tri province, walk out of Vietnam, walk into Laos, and walk straight back in with a fresh stamp. You do not stay in Laos. You barely stop moving. The Laos entry exists so that the Vietnam exit has somewhere to point to, and the re-entry is what resets your 90-day stay.

Why Laos and not Cambodia? Because it is the closest land border to Hoi An. Moc Bai, the Cambodian crossing people in Saigon use, is on the wrong side of the country. Lao Bao sits due west, about four to five hours by road, and it is a proper two-building checkpoint with visa on arrival on the Lao side. That combination, close and fully equipped, is why the entire Central Vietnam visa run scene runs through this crossing.

Who does this run? Travelers on a 90-day e-visa who want to stretch their time in Vietnam, expats between jobs, digital nomads who treat the border like an appointment. The Lao side is not a sightseeing stop. It is a paperwork stop where your passport leaves the country, gets stamped somewhere else, and comes back.

This guide covers the Laos leg specifically: what happens at the Lao Bao crossing in order, who needs a visa on arrival and who walks through free, the eVisa trap people keep falling into, and what the re-entry actually requires. The route, the drive, and the full cost breakdown live in their own guides, linked at the bottom.

The Lao Bao crossing, window by window

Lao Bao is a full international checkpoint, not a barrier with a shack. The Vietnamese and Lao buildings sit maybe a hundred meters apart with a stretch of no man's land between them. First-timers always underestimate the number of windows, and the order matters, so here it is in sequence.

Window one: Vietnam exit. Hand your passport to the officer at the Vietnamese outbound window. You get an exit stamp, and you should check it before you walk away. A smudged or missing exit stamp is a problem you want to catch on the spot, because it follows you through the next two windows.

Window two: Laos entry. Cross the short no man's land to the Lao building. The route splits by nationality here. If your passport needs a visa for Laos, you go to the visa on arrival counter first, pay in clean US dollars, and get your Laos entry stamp. If you are exempt, you walk straight to passport control and get stamped in for free. Details on both paths in the next section.

Window three: the turn. This is where a visa run differs from an actual visit. You do not go anywhere. You turn around at the Lao building, walk back across the no man's land, and present your passport at the Vietnamese inbound window. The Lao stamp proves you left, and the Vietnamese re-entry stamp is what gives you a fresh stay.

The whole loop takes most people 20 to 40 minutes when it flows. It stretches toward an hour when the re-entry queue stacks up, which is why the departure time matters and why regulars take the early vans. More on timing in the last section.

Laos visa on arrival: eVisa, VOA, or exempt

Three ways to enter Laos, and only two of them exist at Lao Bao. Worth knowing before you queue.

The eVisa trap. Laos runs an eVisa system, but the eVisas it issues are not valid at any Vietnam land border. Full stop. A Laos eVisa bought online will not get you through the window at Lao Bao, no matter what the booking site said. Lao Bao, called Dansavan on the Lao side, is also the only Vietnam-Laos crossing that issues visa on arrival at all. So at this border your options are VOA or exemption, and that is it.

Visa on arrival. The standard fee is around 40 USD, with most nationalities landing in the 30 to 45 USD band depending on the passport. Cash only, in clean US dollars. Torn notes, folded notes, notes with pen marks, all of it gets refused, so bring crisp bills from a bank and count them before you leave Hoi An. The money changers near the border exist, but they take a margin and the queue behind you will not appreciate a rate negotiation.

Exempt nationalities. Citizens of ASEAN countries, Russia, South Korea, Mongolia, and Timor-Leste get 30 days visa-free. Japan, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Myanmar get 14 days. If you are on either list, you skip the visa counter entirely and go straight to Lao passport control. That makes the run faster and cheaper for you, and it is worth checking the list before you book transport, because the exempt traveler and the paying traveler do the border differently.

The LDIF form is now mandatory. Since January 1, 2026, the Laos Digital Immigration Form covers all international checkpoints, land borders included. You submit it online at immigration.gov.la within three days before you arrive, get a QR code valid for three days, and the officer scans it at the window. There is no paper card to fall back on anymore. Visa runners file one submission for the entry and one for the exit, so do both before the drive; the form takes about ten minutes and it is the most common reason people get held up at a Lao border.

Coming back: the Vietnam re-entry

The re-entry is the actual purpose of the trip, and it works differently depending on whether you already have a valid e-visa or you filed a new one for this run.

If you are running with a valid e-visa already in the system, the Vietnamese inbound officer scans your passport, sees the visa record, and stamps you in. That is the smooth case, and it takes minutes. The more common case on a renewal run is a newly filed e-visa, and here the sync matters: the system usually picks up a freshly approved e-visa within 30 to 60 minutes. That is why the re-entry window is the one where things either flow or stack up, and why organized runs time the border arrival around it.

One habit worth stealing from the regulars: check the stamp before you leave the window. The re-entry stamp carries the date your new 90 days start, and a wrong date is far easier to fix while you are still standing at the counter than by email from Hoi An later. Same for the exit stamp on the way out. Ten seconds at the window beats a week of messages.

The Vietnamese side charges no fee for the exit or re-entry stamps themselves. The costs of the run sit in transport, the Laos visa if you need one, and the e-visa if you are renewing. Those are the numbers in the next section.

What the Laos leg costs in 2026

The costs of a Laos run split into three layers, and you only pay the ones that apply to you.

Exempt nationalities drop the visa line entirely, which saves 30 to 45 USD on every run. Full packages bundle the pieces: Standard at 200 USD is a shared van seat plus a single-entry e-visa, Comfort at 285 USD is a private car plus single entry, and Traveler at 310 USD is a private car plus multiple entry. The complete line-item table is on the 2026 cost guide.

Timing your Laos run

The official gate hours at Dansavan, the Lao side of Lao Bao, run 7am to 10pm, but the standard immigration windows sit inside that, roughly 8am to 4pm, and there is a well-known slowdown around midday when the officers switch shifts. Plan the border arrival for the morning and the whole day behaves.

That is why organized departures from Hoi An leave at 4am and 6am. You clear the Vietnamese exit early, hit the Lao side before the lunch lull, finish the re-entry while the sync is fresh, and roll home in the late afternoon. A departure after lunch puts the border work in the slow window and your return near midnight.

Outside standard hours the border still processes travelers, usually with a small overtime fee of 1 to 2 USD per person, but you should not plan a run around it. Vietnamese public holidays and Tet change the schedule, so if your stamp expires in a holiday week, book early and confirm the crossing is running normal hours. And never schedule the run for the exact expiry day. The e-visa sync, the re-entry queue, and a flat tire on QL9 do not care about your deadline. One buffer day turns a border delay into an inconvenience instead of an overstay, and the overstay fine schedule is not friendly: 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND for the first 15 days, 5 to 10 million VND from day 16, and up to 40 million VND for the worst cases, with deportation risk kicking in at 16 days.

FAQ: Laos visa run questions