The Race to the Border and Back

I have never had to depend on public transportation so much in my life; I now know that I have been taking having a car for granted. On Wednesday morning I was driven to the local bus station in Mae Tang where I caught a White Song Toa for an hour ride to the Chiang mai bus station where I would catch a bus for the four hour drive to the border town of Mae sai that connects Thailand and Burma. I took this trip with Lawson as we both needed to have our visas renewed for another month. The trip to Chiang mai, which usually takes only an hour, took us about an hour and fifteen minutes. After we entered the Chiang mai city limits we only had exactly fifteen minutes to get to the bus station before we would miss our bus to the border. We thought that if we caught a Red Song Toa inside Chiang mai’s city limits that it would be faster, but since the Red Song Toa took the long way around to the bus station, we arrived five minutes too late to catch the bus. At this point I was disappointed, thinking if we had just done it differently, we still would have made it to the bus in time; nevertheless, Lawson and I decided that we would take the next bus at 9:30 AM, an hour and a half later than the first bus that left at 8:00 AM. Since I had some time to burn and I was in no mood to sit, I went for an ice coffee at a nearby store to cool down and sat around the bus station writing a few postcards that I needed to get in the mail that day. No sooner had I finished writing the last postcard and dropping them into the mailbox and the hour and half was up and we boarded the 9:30 AM bus. I don’t want to sound too snobbish, but the first bus was the VIP bus (the highest level of service), and since we missed it and were not reimbursed by the company, Lawson and I settled for the regular class for the 9:30 AM bus. I didn’t know what to expect in the regular class, but it turned out it was a lot better than riding a school bus for an hour. We were served a drink and a snack box; I didn’t care too much for the crackers. Though the weather outside was at least 90°F the bus was a cool 75°F. The time on the bus went rather slowly and when I finished reading what I had brought to read, I still had two hours left of driving. It is important to understand that the race to the border began the second we missed our first bus, but it did not hit me until I was on the second bus for four hours that I realized the time I would have at the border was starting to get cut shorter and shorter from the time of my return ticket bus ride back to Chiang mai (the one I bought previously for the first bus ride). I had hoped to spend some time at the border just to venture around, but that thought was quickly eliminated from my mind and I was really just hoping to make the return bus. By the time I arrived at our final destination, Mae sai’s bus station; I only had fifty-five minutes to make it to the border and back. Jumping off the bus in full sprint, Lawson and I were running, not to a Song Toa, based on prior experiences, but instead running to the back of a motorcycle taxi. The motorcycle taxi ride was about ten minutes, including two red lights that we stopped for even though there was not another car in sight. I was dropped off right at the border and I asked the driver to wait for me to return. As I made it to the front of the line, I was prepared for anything to happen that would slow me down. The way the border crossing works to renew your visa is that you need to be stamped out of Thailand, and cross the bridge which spans the river that separates Thailand from Burma. Then, upon arriving on Burma’s side of the border, you need to be stamped to enter the country and then pay $5 to be stamped out of Burma, and the funny thing is the stamping process is all done in this little room on the edge of the bridge. I accomplished what I needed to in Burma, which also included taking a quick picture of myself at the Burmese border, and then I took a quick look around from all directions on the bridge. I did all this with thirty minutes still to spare, though the next thirty minutes would test my patience and endurance. If receiving three stamps was not enough already, I needed to get another stamp to reenter Thailand, which would include my thirty-day visa. I filled out the visa application card and then waited in a line with fifteen people who were also getting their visas renewed. The clock was ticking and when I finally made it to the front, it had taken fifteen minutes due to the slow computers (a sign was posted telling everyone in line). By the time I made it out of the Thai border office I had thirteen minutes to catch the bus. The motorcycle ride back was a little different because both Lawson and I rode on the same bike, I was sitting off the back with my butt hanging halfway off while I held on for dear life with the little handles underneath me. The ride took about ten minutes as expected, and though it seemed impossible at first, I was able to make the bus with three minutes to spare, and it really was only three minutes because we left exactly on time at 3:15 PM.