The night bus from Inle Lake to the Mae Scot border with Thailand turned out to be quite comfortable. One stop for dinner, a stop for breakfast, beautiful changing scenery and 19 hours later we arrived at the border station.
We stepped out into a pretty standard border town, complete with trucks filled with a plethora of goods heading in both directions, money changers, and plenty of people coming and going. The temperature was much hotter, in the mid thirties, which was a bit of a shock after the lower northern temperature and heavily air-conditioned bus.
We got a motor-taxi to the border, and the crossing turned out to be easy and uneventful. Two forms to fill out, passports stamped, and we were officially in Thailand. Then the standard scramble of arriving in a new country – trying to change money and not get ripped off, find transportation and not get ripped off, and try to learn how much basics like water should cost and not get ripped off. We needed to go North to Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai as quickly as possible, and though we were informed that all the busses had left for the day we met a Thai lady named Bo in a restaurant who offered us a ride for just a few bucks.
So we found ourselves having an extremely comfortable ride north to Chiang Mai chatting to Bo, who works for a motorcycle tour company. She was happy to talk about life in Thailand, local gossip, where to eat, and any other info we needed. About six hours later that evening we arrived in Chiang Mai and decided to stay for two nights.
Chang Mai was a nice city firmly lodged on the tourist trail so it was packed with tourists and the accompanying services. We didn’t do to much, caught up on sleep, and then walked around the town taking in the city and more temples. We did love the food though – pad thai, curries, crepes, fresh juices, and various meats with lots of delicious options to try.
We spent an hour talking with a monk at a temple where they have the “chat with a monk” area setup to allow people to ask monks questions and allow monks to practice their english. Our monk had started as a novice at age 12 and now at 25 has been a monk for 9 years. We talked about his daily routine, diet, beliefs and differences in the various Buddhist sects. He was a very modern monk and it was a fascinating to view into a lifestyle so different from ours.
The following morning we got what we thought would be a luxurious bus to the Laos border, though it turned out that we accidentally booked “second class” seats – the front half of the bus had big chairs and we were on fairly small and hard standard chairs…oh well. The border was easy again, we had to apply for a visa on arrival for Laos (Canadians pay the most for some reason) but we were soon in the quiet downtown of the Laos border town of Huay Xia.
We met a German guy called Max on the bus and once we arrived we all had a meal and then went exploring. The town was nothing special, there was an old French Fort (Fort Carnot) that had seen far better days. It was obviously at one point a tourist site but now it is dilapidated, overgrown, and locked up – but luckily the fence is in the same state and its ability to keep people out had long since vanished. The faded and spiked information posters still hanging in the empty visitors centre showed a very different Fort in pictures dated from the 1960s.
Other than that there was another temple, and not much else. We were only there though to get the slow boat the following day though, so we got our tickets and called it a night to get a good rest before the 2 day boat journey.
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