Burma Visa Run

We spent nine hours on the road recently, to and from Burma to get our 90-day Visa stamp to remain in Thailand. Plus two-hours shopping! It was a beautiful drive north, through rice fields and greet mountains against a gorgeous blue sky with white billowy clouds! Only on the trip home did we hit a rainstorm for about 30 minutes.

Finally at the border, we had rice and chicken in Mae Sai, a border town, before taking a 15-minute songtow (two-bench covered, open small truck-taxi) ride to Burmese Immigration.

After a 500 baht fee each ($15) and forfeiting our Passports into their keeping during our duration there, we crossed a bridge over a river and entered Burma. Immediately there is a large tourist market/bizarre, with mostly imported goods from China, but also local items like fabrics and fruits.

We had about two hours to look around, before getting in line to fill-out immigration forms to
re-enter Thailand, retrieve our Passports, hire a songtow, treck back to the bus station and not get left at the northern border.

It was an interesting an very long day, but we also had time to visit more with Freddie, Don and Sandra, who went with us from Grace International School also.  http://www.gisthailand.org/

We always find that people are the same the world over, in that a smile, a nod, a kind word in their language is 99% of the time warmly received. 

And we'd hoped to buy gigantic Chinese avocados, but we found they weren't in season. Ohhh the sadness. Have to get home-grown :)