Chiang Mai, Thailand, Part II

I returned to Chiang Mai from Mae Hong Son with a "stop-over" in Pai for a few hours. The plan was to stay the night in Pai and catch a bus in the morning but I arrived in Pai early enough to get a bus that same day.

This stint in Chiang Mai was less fun but it would have been impossible to match the atmosphere of songkran so I was not surprised. The sole purpose of returning to Chiang Mai was to do a "visa run" to the Myanmar boarder. A visa run is leaving Country X into Country Y and then returning directly to Country X with a new visa from Country X. This is required when your Country X visa is at or near expiration. My Thai visa expired on 7 May so on that date or prior I needed to do a visa run in order to remain in Thailand past that date. Complicated stuff, I know.

Costs of visa runs vary widely depending on where you are, which boarder you are going into, how far the boarder is, how you are getting there, how you are crossing the boarder, the cost of the visa to the Country Y, and a few other things. Given that I was in northern Thailand the easily accessible boarders are Myanmar, Laos, and China. China requires a visa in advance, and it is expensive, so it was out. A Laos visa for an American is expensive and because I originally entered Thailand from Laos I have already made the trip, just in reverse. So, Myanmar is it. The boarder is pretty close, the cost of the visa is reasonable (US$10), and I was able to combine the visa run with a day trip of the Golden Triangle area so that I was not wasting an entire day merely doing a visa run but was also able to do a little sightseeing as well. That said, the Golden Triangle part of the trip was secondary to me priority of getting the new visa. In addition, the visa run alone costs 600THB (just over US$18) and the tour cost 750THB (about US$22) so I though an extra $4 was worth making a trip out of it.

The trip itself was OK. Nothing too exciting or interesting with the exception of the White Temple. Stunning from the outside, the White Temple really separates itself from other temples by the interior painting. The back of the room is where evil is and the front is where peace (Buddha) is. Makes enough sense except when you look at the paintings at the back/evil end. Here is a incomplete list of images painted at the back/evil end: Superman, Batman, Neo from The Matrix, the Twin Towers after the first hit with the second plane on its way, Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars, and a gasoline pump. There are plenty more but those are the ones I can recall. It was weird.

The tour was fine and I got my visa no problem and that was all I really cared about so all worked out well.