Unless you get your visa in advance, you only get a 14-day visa when entering Thailand; and the 500 TBH/day fine is a bit too much when you are planning to overstay your time by a few weeks. To solve most traveller's visa issues, there are visa-runs, operated by different companies, usually using mini-vans to the Thai-Burma/Laos/Cambodian borders; it costs 700 THB (from Chiang Mai), takes about 11 hours - and you get to go to another country for as long as 2 hours, to get your stamp in the passport on the way back. Hell I was not looking forward to this ride.
Leaving at 7am, being picked up an hour later, sitting on the bus for 4 hours, we arrived to the northest part of Thailand, to the Mai Sai border of Myanmar shortly after midday.
We had until 2pm to get back to the bus. Crossing the border is easy, you pay 500 THB and exchange your passport (literally) for an "Entry card", that is supposedly containing some data from your passport, unless the lady at the immigration office is completely ignorant and doesnt give a flying fart on the info she puts into her computer..... I tell you its not a nice feeling to be without identity and have a "false" one on top of all; the 2 hours without my passport only brought those sour memories back from the exact same weekend last year, when all my stuff was stolen from Karl's car and the mess that followed during that eve..... grrrr.
Funny it was when right on the "other side" I bumped into Ariel, the girl who I bought my Thai mobile from a week or so ago. Small world it is!
Walking a few minutes away from the hyenas trying to get you to go for a ride with them, I saw one guy from the minibus having some food - I joined him hoping to see/eat/find something interesting - and I surely did. The ginger chicken I ordered (and paid 100 THB for) was carrot and pork soaking in oil, but the tea-leaf salad my lunch companion was having didnt look or taste any better either. One thing I found amazing: the commune-lighters, hanging from the ceiling on chains above every table.. check out the pics below!
At the border crossing back to Thailand, after having had to photocopy half of my passport and provide the usual 2 passport photos, I was be-sistered with a Latvian girl (same country same country the immigration officers assured us), but the rest of it was rather eventless. The drive back was long, but the landscape was something I will never forget: winding hill-roads, padi fields, jungle, amazing little villages, sunset - aaaaaaa I am going back there, once I have the bike licence done..... Ya, I made some plans for the future. I will start to send my CV out soon and look for a part-time project - unless something great and grand and exciting with loads of money and options to move around lands in my lap - and do massage/yoga in the rest of the time. As for the next few weeks, it is Phuket until the 17/18th of March, then 2 weeks somewhere before meeting Dave one last time before he heads over to Australia and I head back home in mid April.
Oh and one more thing: I am more and more convinced with every day, that I am, and I am the most fortunate person in the world, spending months of summer laughing and laughing, and have the chance and possibility to train, eat well, sunbathe, swim in the ocean, AND do all this with the best company one could wish for herself.. :)
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