Day 30: Border Chronicles III

Cold

If it was cold coming out of Chiang Mai at 9:30 in the morning, leaving Chiang Rai at 7:30 was absolutely freezing. To my 3 top layers before, I added my ski bottom base layer under my pants, my buff as a neck scarf and my new gloves.

Even with all these, within half an hour my index finger had gone numb. It was time to stop for coffee.

Our caffeine luck continuing, we happened upon another great little coffee place. Cappuccinos are a luxury for me here. At around ฿60 for one, that’s almost two dollars out of a fifty dollar per day budget. Or the price of a full meal at a local street restaurant. Nevertheless, coffee never tasted so good. Like the indigenous peoples, we used all parts of the cappuccinos mother earth gave us: the foam was a tasty treat, the coffee warmed our insides and the mug warmed out hands. Our frozen condition must’ve been visible to the Thai staff because they took pity on us and some free hot tea appeared on our table. We were very grateful.

Warmed by the coffee and with the sun now having had some time to heat the landscape, the worst of the cold was over by the time we got on the road again. Then it was a straight shot to the border.

Mae Sai

Mae Sai is a border town. The main highway, highway 1, goes right through the center of town and ends abruptly in a huge border arch at the river. And so does the town, built up right up against the 10 meter wide Mae Sai river. The effect is fascinating, like there was a single town sliced in two, the Thai side still vital, but the Burmese side poorer and withered.

To no big fanfare we just park the scooters on the side of the road outside a restaurant and walk on over to Myanmar.

The border officials on both sides are among the friendliest and happiest I’ve seen. Tip: bring American money. The cost to get into Myanmar is $10. Or you can pay ฿500, which is considerably more.

Despite what I’d read on the Internet, the Burmese officials didn’t take our passports and exchange them for national identity cards. There were no clearly explained limit to our wandering. Just a single-day visa for us to check the place out with. No big deal.

Talicheck

Talicheck, Myanmar is the Burmese side of the border crossing. It is very obviously poorer. The buildings are simpler and feature corrugated steel roofing. Perhaps it’s less westernized too. The people wear more traditional garb (men in Longyi skirts) and the women (mainly) wear Thanakha face paint, both to protect against the sun and for it’s look.

After the touts offering trips to Wats and hill tribe villages, you enter a sprawling market which hugs the river. Each market I’ve visited has had mostly the same stuff, with a few idiosyncrasies. The idiosyncrasies in Burma were airsoft guns (?) and roasted chestnut. We ate a bag of one of these items. Otherwise, the same Beats Audio knockoffs and elephant pants were on sale here. Cheap, too. One thing not in evidence in Thailand were the roving cigarette and viagra merchants. Like an eightball of vasodilation. One to tighten the blood vessels, the other to open (some of) them up. One guy added dildoes to his stock as he walked about the market. Diversification. Or perhaps lack of faith in his pharmaceutical inventory.

Next food. We’d promised ourselves a meal in Myanmar. It took a while to find a likely restaurant, and when we sat down we were presented with a menu of Thai food. We had to ask specifically for the Burmese food. There was no menu for the Burmese food so they happily brought us to a glass case and we pointed to what we wanted. Noodle salad, veggies and soup.

The noodles were curried and very tasty. The rest of the meal was not so good: soggy vegetables smothered in oil. Very small amounts of chicken and a thin broth of soup. No especially bad, but neither was it fantastically inexpensive: ฿120 for two. I’m sure if I knew Talicheck as I now know Chiang Mai, I could find better places for less, but for the same price I can obtain an excellent meal in Chiang Mai.

Still, I’ve eaten Burmese food in Burma and that’s amazing.

While eating, at least two Burmese with surprisingly good English stopped by to chat. Their smiles were tinged red and shattered, evidently a result of eating betel leaf (paan in India, Kun-ya in Burma). The effect was a little horrifying, but they were nevertheless really friendly. They were tour guides and headed back to their posts, but they never mentioned it and never tried to sell us while we were eating. They just seemed genuinely happy to talk to the only two westerners in the place.

Our meal done, we ambled back across the border. Without a fuss, I was given a 30 day visa waiver and was back in Thailand. Ready for the 252 Km (157 mile) ride back.

Black House

After the White Temple, the Black House is Chiang Rai’s most well-known tourist destination. It’s supposed to be 9 or 10 Km north of the city on Highway 1. Despite keeping our eyes peeled for signs all the way down Highway 1, and with Google maps, we simply couldn’t find it. More research is required. Starting here.

Fate’s way of telling me to come back, I suppose.

Back Home

The ride back was amazing. Most of it was in the sunshine and neither too warm nor too cold. We had tea at another one of these cute little coffee shops, along with more roasted chestnuts from Burma and mandarin oranges. The views as the sun set and the waxing gibbous moon rose were stunning. Many of those classic views of mountains and paddy fields bathed in golden light. As the daylight faded the cold returned, and it became harder to drive and stopping to take pictures faded from the plan. So those beautiful images will remain in my memory and not my photo collection. Just like the impossible-to-photograph image in my mind of a line of new year’s lanterns drawn from the ground to the moon…

The trip back was awesome and tiring in equal measures. Don’t be fooled by google maps. The 3 hour estimate is for a car able to do 100 Km/h easily. On a scooter, I didn’t like going past 90 and Kristen was still learning to be comfortable about 70 Km/h. Add to that the slowdowns at the towns, the increasing numbers of stops required to prevent soreness as the time ticks away and it was 7:30pm, or around 6 hours later before we arrived in Chiang Mai, grateful for the reliability of our little scooters and yet more grateful still to be done with them.

Now to relax after a wonderful and exhausting and amazing couple of days.

Acknowledgement

This article provided useful information and inspiration for this trip. With it, I was able to successfully reproduce most of the problems they encountered.