1. The short answer
Carry 150,000 to 200,000 VND in small notes for the crossings, and treat every request above that as something to be explained before it gets paid.
That is the whole budget. On a normal same-day run from Hoi An the money that changes hands at Lao Bao outside your transport fare is under 10 USD, and most of it is not officially a fee at all. Some of it is. The two are worth separating, because the same amount of cash, handed over in ignorance, turns a cheap crossing into an expensive habit.
The rule that keeps it simple: pay what comes with a receipt or a stamp, question what does not, and do not argue. Arguing is the expensive option at a working border. You are standing in a queue with a van waiting on the other side, and ten minutes of standing your ground costs more than 50,000 VND, which is about two dollars.
Worth saying plainly before the details: this page is not a script for refusing payments at a government checkpoint. It is a breakdown of what the Lao Bao crossing actually costs in 2026, which charges show up on a fee schedule somewhere, which ones exist only at the window, and how much walking-around money to put in your pocket before you leave Hoi An.
2. The charges that are real
Five things at Lao Bao are actual charges, in the sense that you can point to a rule, a receipt, or a published figure.
The border-zone transit fee. On the Laos side, window 1, first booth on the right. It is 20,000 VND and you get a receipt. This is the fee that makes a same-day turn-around possible without buying a Laos visa, because you are inside the border zone rather than entering the country. Keep the receipt, because window 3 asks for it.
The Laos visa on arrival. This only applies if your day turns into something longer: an overnight in Dansavan or Savannakhet, or any plan that takes you past the border zone. It is 30 to 45 USD depending on nationality, 40 USD for most passports including UK, Canadian and EU ones, paid in cash. Passport holders from the visa-exempt list pay nothing, which is why Koreans, Japanese, Russians and most ASEAN passports walk through the Laos half with just the transit receipt.
The weekend and after-hours surcharge. Laos charges roughly 1 to 2 USD on top of the visa fee if you arrive on a weekend, on a public holiday, or outside standard office hours. The Dansavan gate is open 07:00 to 22:00 daily and the immigration windows inside it run about 08:00 to 16:00, so a run that reaches the border at 17:00 can meet this one legitimately.
The no-photo fee. If you need a visa and did not bring a photo, the border booth charges 1 to 2 USD to take one, or 2 to 5 USD to scan the picture out of your passport.
The overstay fine. If you are past your permitted stay, Vietnam charges it under Decree 282/2025, starting at 500,000 VND for the first days and climbing from there. That one is unavoidable and it is not a run fee, it is a penalty.
3. The charge that is in no fee schedule
Then there is the other money, the kind nobody writes down.
At the Vietnamese exit window, and again at the re-entry window on the way back, travellers are regularly asked for 50,000 VND. Sometimes it is framed as a stamping fee, sometimes as a processing fee, sometimes it is just a hand held out with the passport. On the Laos side, the equivalent ask has been 20,000 to 50,000 VND per crossing, and reports from mid-2026 put the Lao windows at 50,000 rather than 20,000. Add it up across the four checkpoints on a same-day loop and people report totals between 140,000 and 200,000 VND, which is roughly 6 to 8 USD.
None of that appears in any Vietnamese or Lao fee circular. There is no receipt, no line on a wall, no amount you can look up and quote back. That is the difference that matters. The transit fee has a receipt, the visa has a receipt, this one has neither.
What happens if you decline it varies by day and by officer. Some travellers hand over the passport, say no thank you, and get stamped without another word. Others report the stamp landing in the middle of a page rather than at the edge, which costs you a page in a passport you will need for years. Others report a sudden system problem and a wait of 30 to 90 minutes for the passport to come back.
We will not tell you to fight it, and that is not cynicism. It is arithmetic. The amount is two dollars. The cost of a delay is a van of eight people waiting on the far side of the gate, an e-visa filing that our desk is holding until you send the exit stamp, and in the worst case a missed evening flight out of Da Nang. On the days when a run is tight, the cheapest thing in the building is the 50,000 VND.
The advice from people who cross often is the same, and it is two words: no thank you, said pleasantly, without a lecture. Reddit threads on the Lao Bao run land on that over and over. Saying no in a calm voice is what works when it works. Saying no with a speech about official fees does not.
What you should not do is build this into a standoff. If an officer asks for something you think is wrong, you can ask for a receipt. He will not have one, and the question itself usually ends the matter. That is as far as it is worth taking it.
The practical version most runs use: the driver or guide carries the small notes and handles the sequence at each window, so you are not the one negotiating with a queue building behind you. That is most of what the 45 USD shared seat buys you beyond the ride west.
4. Photos: where a two dollar charge becomes a five dollar one
Passport photos are the most common small charge at Lao Bao, and the easiest to avoid.
Start with whether you need one at all. On a same-day border-zone loop, where you cross to the Laos side, get stamped and turn around, you do not need a photo. You are not applying for a Laos visa. The photo question only appears if your trip turns into a real entry into Laos, or if an officer decides the paperwork needs one anyway, which is rare but happens.
If it does come up, there is a booth near the crossing that takes photos for 1 to 2 USD, and a scan service that pulls the picture out of your passport for 2 to 5 USD. Those are the honest prices. What you occasionally get instead is a demand of 5 USD for a photo, dressed up as a service fee, which is the same photo at two and a half times the price. Handing over a photo you already have ends that conversation before it starts.
So the cheap move is the boring one. Bring two 4x6 cm photos from Hoi An. Any photo shop in town prints them while you wait, and the price is a fraction of what the gate charges. They live in the passport cover and cost you nothing on the day.
One more thing while we are on paperwork: the Laos Digital Immigration Form, mandatory since January 1, 2026, asks for a photo upload too. It is free and it is done online before you travel. If your driver files the LDIF for you, the photo goes in then. If you are filing it yourself, do it the day before, not in the border car park on a phone with one bar of signal.
5. Middlemen, porters, and four kilometres of walking
The Lao Bao crossing is not one building. It is two checkpoints a few hundred metres apart with the walking in between, and by the time you have gone through it both ways you have covered around four kilometres on foot in the heat.
That distance is where the gate's informal economy lives, and it is worth knowing what is a service and what is a shakedown.
Motorbike taxis wait at the gate and will run you between the buildings. The going rate is 100,000 to 300,000 VND per person, which is a real service at a real price if you have luggage or kids, and a waste of money if you are carrying a day bag and wearing sensible shoes. Nobody needs a motorbike for a same-day run.
Fixers are different. These are the men who approach you in the car park offering to handle the crossing for a flat fee, sometimes cash only, sometimes asking for your passport so they can queue on your behalf. Do not hand your passport to a stranger at a border, no matter how helpful he seems. That is the one rule on this page with no exceptions. A driver you booked and paid, who walks beside you to each window and speaks to the officer while you stand there, is normal and useful. Your passport staying in your own hand is what makes the difference.
The last one is the queue-skip charge. Fill in your Laos arrival card at the tables inside the building instead of arriving at window 3 with a blank form. Travellers who turn up with paperwork to do are the ones who get told to step aside, and then offered a priority service to move back to the front. There is nothing to pay if there is nothing to fix.
One habit worth keeping: keep the passport in your hand or in a zipped pocket, and hold the cash separately in small notes. An officer counts what you put on the counter. A wallet with two hundreds in it is an invitation to a longer conversation.
6. Cash mechanics at the gate
Nothing at Lao Bao takes a card. Not the transit fee, not the visa on arrival, not the photo booth, not the motorbike boys, and not the coffee at the border cafe. It is a cash crossing from the first window to the last.
The notes you want are Vietnamese dong in small denominations for the crossings, and clean US dollars if you are genuinely entering Laos. Two 20 dollar bills and a 10 will cover a Laos visa on arrival for most passports, plus the surcharge. Keep them flat and unmarked.
The dollar notes matter more than people expect. Lao visa counters reject bills with a tear, a fold across the portrait, or a pen mark, and a torn note is not a small inconvenience when the alternative is a round trip back to town. If you are carrying dollars for the Laos half, they need to look like they came from a bank this month. Anything scuffed goes back in the bag.
Change is the other trap. Hand over a 100 dollar bill and you will get change in Lao kip at a rate nobody chose but the person giving it, or you will be told there is no change and the difference has quietly become a fee. Exact amounts fix both problems. If you do end up with kip, spend it on the Laos side or keep it as a souvenir. It is not worth changing back.
And do not plan around an ATM at the crossing. Assume there is none, and take out what you need in Hoi An or Da Nang the day before. The money changers at Lao Bao exist and they will take your dong or your dollars, but the rates at a border gate are what they are. You are not there to trade currency, you are there to get a stamp.
7. What a booked run does with all of this
None of the above is difficult, but it is all in a language you may not speak, at windows where the order matters, with a van waiting.
That is what the guided run covers. On a shared seat, 45 USD from Hoi An or 40 USD from Da Nang, the driver handles the small cash at each window and tells you when the LDIF has to be filed, which is twice on a run, once for entry and once for exit. On the private car, a flat 140 USD from Hoi An or 135 USD from Da Nang for up to five people, you set the departure time and the car waits through both crossings, which is the version to book if your stamp expires on a day the border is busy.
If the run includes a new e-visa, the packages bundle it. Standard at 140 USD is a shared van seat plus a single-entry 90-day e-visa, Comfort at 285 USD adds the private car, and Traveler at 310 USD carries a multiple-entry visa so future crossings in the next 90 days are transport only. Filed separately, the e-visa handling is 95 USD single entry or 120 USD multiple, on top of the 25 or 50 USD government fee.
Do it yourself and the arithmetic is the same minus the guide. The vans in Hoi An sell seats, the portal is evisa.gov.vn, and the cash you need for the border is the cash described on this page. People do it every week and are fine. Just carry small notes, bring two photos, and know which charges come with a receipt.
8. Where to go next
If you want the whole day laid out before the money side, the step-by-step Hoi An visa run guide walks it from pickup to drop-off. The 2026 cost breakdown has every line item, transport and visa included. And if you are weighing small cash against service charges, the cheapest ways to run from Hoi An does the budget comparison.
For the paperwork these fees attach to, the Laos visa page covers the visa on arrival, the exemption lists and the LDIF rule, and the e-visa guide explains the application that has to be approved before you cross, including the port field that decides whether the run works at all.
Starting from Da Nang instead? Da Nang visa runs use the same Lao Bao crossing with a shorter pickup and slightly lower prices. Coming down from Hue, Hue visa runs has the border hours and holiday schedule in detail. And if you are tired of paying per crossing and want to stop running altogether, a Vietnam temporary residence card is the route that ends the cycle.
9. Questions we get at the desk
Are there extra fees at the Lao Bao border crossing?
There are, and they are small. Legitimate ones: the 20,000 VND border-zone transit fee on the Laos side, a 1 to 2 USD overtime charge if you cross outside the 08:00 to 16:00 immigration window or on a weekend, and a 1 to 2 USD charge at the border photo booth if you turn up without a photo. On top of those, travellers are regularly asked for 50,000 VND at the Vietnamese windows, which appears in no official schedule.
How much cash should I carry for a Hoi An visa run?
Carry 150,000 to 200,000 VND in small notes for the crossings on a same-day loop, and keep it separate from your main wallet. If your day turns into an actual entry into Laos, add 40 USD in clean, unmarked notes, which covers the visa on arrival for most passports plus the weekend or after-hours surcharge. Nothing at the border takes a card.
What is the 50,000 VND stamping fee at Lao Bao?
It is the small cash officers ask for at the Vietnamese exit and re-entry windows. There is no circular that sets it, no receipt, and no published amount, which is how you can tell it apart from the transit fee next door. Reports from 2026 put the total across all four checkpoints at 140,000 to 200,000 VND, or about six to eight dollars. You are not legally required to pay it.
Do I need a Laos visa for a same-day Hoi An visa run?
No. A same-day turn-around stays inside the border zone, which is why the Laos half costs 20,000 VND and a receipt instead of a 40 USD visa fee. A Laos visa on arrival of 30 to 45 USD only applies if you leave the border zone, for example an overnight in Dansavan or Savannakhet. Exempt nationalities pay nothing either way.
Can I pay by card or find an ATM at Lao Bao?
Neither. Every payment at the crossing is cash: the transit fee, the visa on arrival, the photo booth, the motorbike taxis and the border cafe. Do not plan around an ATM either. Take out what you need in Hoi An or Da Nang the day before you travel, so the only thing you have to think about at the counter is handing over the right note.
What are the fees if I arrive without passport photos?
The booth at the crossing charges 1 to 2 USD to take a photo, and 2 to 5 USD to scan the picture out of your passport. Both are avoidable. Two 4x6 cm photos from a shop in Hoi An cost a fraction of the booth fee and they take up no space in a passport cover. On a same-day border-zone loop you do not need a photo at all.
Does a weekend crossing cost more?
Slightly. Laos adds about 1 to 2 USD to the visa fee on weekends, public holidays, and outside standard office hours. The gate itself is open 07:00 to 22:00 daily and does not close for Tet, so a weekend run works fine. If you already hold a valid e-visa and are only doing the border-zone loop, there is no visa fee for the weekend to increase.
Should I pay a fixer at the border to handle the crossing?
No. Motorbike taxis between the two checkpoints are a real service at 100,000 to 300,000 VND per person if you are carrying luggage, but the men in the car park offering a flat fee to handle your crossing are not. The rule is simple and has no exceptions: do not hand your passport to anyone you have not booked and paid. A driver walking you to each window is normal. Your passport staying in your hand is the whole point.