The Road Trip of Xgrind and AngKuGuay: Day 5

Today is the day, where we will cross the Northern Thailand border and into Myanmar and back again, one sole purpose is to extend our visa period so that we can complete our adventure without worrying about outliving our stay in Thailand.

Both of us woke up early today for 2 reasons: 1st, to enjoy the free breaskfast at the Hotel since we had paid a premium price for the room (again) and secondly, to hunt for another cheaper hotel as we had planned to stay in Chiang Rai for one more night.

The expensive Hotel we didn't have a choice to make a fuss about the room charge

So once we had our fill in the hotel, we rode out in casual wear WITHOUT helmets and roam around the city. That is one thing we will never get to do in Singapore without putting our bike license on the silver platter. As the weather is pretty cooling, riding in that fashion is damn cold on the hands and face! I was literally shivering as the cold wind blew into my body. After riding for a while, we managed to find a relatively cheap hotel (350 bahts) but have no air con. Considering the climate here to be around 23 deg C, we don't feel that is the issue at all. However, AngKuGuay now feels that the room is still overpriced considering the room condition. Typically, it like a hotel room in the 70-80s.

The 70-80s looking Hotel we are staying tonight

Once we drop off the unnecessary luggage into the hotel room, we proceed to ride off to Mae Sai, where we will cross the North Thailand border in order to extend our visa. The ride was slightly better than yesterday if not the best and along the way, we ran into a Thai touring group who happened to be on their way to Mae Sai outskirts. Bunch of friendly riders, we waved at each other and it may be some kind of bikers' thing, we automatically "joined" into their group, with me and AKG following the lead rider all the way. The way the lead rider signalled the group is impressive and it's something worth learning from when comes to future touring with groups. They were very impressed when we told them that we are from Singapore and gave us thumbs up. Until the outskirts of Mae Sai, we followed them and from there we went our separate ways. Damn, I was thinking about taking a couple of photos with them. Nevertheless, they bid us farewell and we moved on to the border.

Another 10 minutes ride brought us to a highly congested traffic, that we know that the border customs is near. We slowly rode our way to the front of the Customs post and parked at a convenient spot. Our bikes attracted quite a lot of attention as the people there don't see big bikes often and secondly these 2 bikes which belong to 2 crazy fuckers carry foreign license plates that adds to the rarity in that town. Once we had packed up our stuff, we prepare ourselves to cross the Thai border. We got into the wrong queue and wasted an hour for that which we could have immediately process our exit procedure in another queue, which is very short. Oh well, we learn from experience don't we?

My Fazer parked just outside the North Thailand Border Post

Once we had processed our passport, we walked over to the Myanmar border to get into the country. Yes, you read that right, WE WALKED. We figured that it is too much of a hassle to re-declare the vehicle again when we re-enter Thailand as we only want to extend our stay in Thailand. For foreigners, we will have to pay 500 bahts adminstrative charge to the Maynmar immigration office and our passports will be held by the authorities until we leave the country. What we have is the Entry Permit card given by the Immigration and we must hold on to it as we need to return them when we leave Myanmar.

Approaching the Myanmar Customs

So, finally we are in the City of Golden Triangle! The border town outlook was very different from what I anticipated to be. The town is buzzling with life and the whole place is crowded with Thais and Burmese. As we walked thru the market, I was surprised to see Hollywood DVDs and even Porn movies on sale in the open. I had always thought that the Myanmer government had very strict media control but what I see tells a different story.

The Myanmar Market

As we couldn't find any place to eat in the Myanmar town, we decide to head back to Mae Sae to take our late lunch. Once we crossed the border, I was relieved that our bikes are still safely parked. That goes to show that Mae Sae is pretty much a safe town. Of course, we must also get our conquest Tees so that we can wear them with pride back home LOL.

Once we had our fill, we get ourselves ready and moved off from the buzzling town and head back to Chiang Rai. Along the way, I had mentioned about the Friendship Bridge 2 which AKG also took noticed and we decided to take a short deviation and rode into the road to the bridge. Boy, we are glad that we took that route. The scenery is simply breathtaking and this is something you will never see in Singapore. One word to describe the view: Beautiful.

On the road to the Friendship Bridge 2

When we reached the Friendship Bridge, we found that the bridge is kinda closed so we head back towards our last destination for the day: Chiang Rai. The traffic is bad, as usual to the point I felt sleepy riding in that kind of traffic condition. Nevertheless, we have to press on as the sky is getting dark and finally we reached our hotel after another 50+km.

Now we will have to plan our route for tomorrow, based on the current budget we have and will post up the latest updates tomorrow once we find another internet access (damn we have to pay for most of the internet access in North Thailand, sucks).