Burma Border Run 1 - Chiang Rai, Mae Sai Busses

We're back in Chiang Mai. I just downloaded 135 new photos. Let's see if I can give you a glimpse of this trip in a series of short posts with the best of the pics (or at least the one's that tell the story best.) Let's start with getting there and back. A look at Thai buses.

There's a thriving private sector bus system across Thailand. The bus stations are major transportation hubs like airports in the US. We didn't make reservations - I know you can go to the bus station and buy tickets in advance, but don't think you can do it on the phone. Ew got our tickets to Kamphaengphet in advance because she knew someone working for the bus company. And most times the buses are trying to pick up last minute arrivals as the bus heads out of the station. And then along the way.

We thought we'd get the 11:30am bus to Mae Sai. Hah! The bus station was packed. We got tickets for the 2:15 air conditioned bus. So we had almost three hours to wait. I'll talk about that next post.

Here's our bus to Mae Sai. Although we were on the Green Bus Company, the bus was white. There is a reason to bring long sleeves - the air conditioning on the buses. I pretended I was in Alaska. Although this was an air conditioned bus, it wasn't a VIP bus. That means it makes lots of stops. It took us about four and a half hours to Chiang Rai and another hour to Mae Sai, getting us there just as it was turning dark.

This was yesterday's bus from Mae Sai (the northernmost town in Thailand, on the Burmese border). It turns out there are buses about every 15 to 35 minutes from Mae Sai to Chiang Rai. So if we hadn't wanted to wait, we might have gotten an earlier bus to Chiang Rai, and then caught a local bus the rest of the way. As you can see, the air conditioning in this bus consists of keeping the windows open. But it was also a very friendly ride. The bus driver and the woman collecting the money could have been husband and wife and there was a good deal of joking among the passengers.

There were a couple of checkpoints. I think this is because we were coming from a border area, but not totally because we had one today on the way to Chiang Mai. The police in this case, are fairly aggressive in their patting down people and going through luggage. They didn't even ask for our passports, but everyone else had to show id's. Concerns are with smuggling goods and illegal aliens. They aren't very friendly and I suspect at least some of them are getting off on their power over people. But also note the inside of this mom & pop bus company. And compare it to the VIP bus we had today from Chiang Rai back to Chiang Mai.



The bus ride gives some folks a chance to catch up on a little sleep. J snoozed too.



And here's the inside of our VIP bus coming back to Chiang Mai today. It was a little like being on an airplane - what with fold down from the ceiling flat screens and a door between the passengers and the driver. They showed Beowolf in Thai. Seemed to me the screen was mostly black and orange. And then there was the killing of the flying dragon scene. Meanwhile, we're driving through the mountains of North Thailand, and my Salman Rushdi book (The Ground Beneath Her Feet) has me in Bombay. (See, without a computer, there's time to read real books.) This bus got us to Chiang Mai in three hours from Chiang Rai. Saving about 90 minutes in travel time.