My first break had been the trip to Africa, then, just at the right time, I had gone to Laos. These two trips had saved me from doing dedicated visa runs. My brother though, had stayed in the country since returning from Africa and, even though he had a one year visa, he wasn't allowed to stay more than 90 days at a time. That was running out now and we wanted to go to the nearest immigration office for extension.
The office was supposed to be in Tak, about 80 kilometers from Sukhothai and we wanted to use the occasion for a little two day trip to Tak and Kamphaeng Phet, where we wanted to buy a large tree trunk to transform into a coffee table. We'd planned to just sleep somewhere, take it easy and give ourselves a little break from working in the house.
After breakfast and packing some things, we were on our way to Tak just before 10 am. The ride was smooth and only a little more than an hour later we passed the tourist police office in Tak. But, despite asking and looking at various maps, we couldn't find the immigration office. It turned out, my brother had misinterpreted his information. Tak was the name of a city, but also of its surrounding province. The province did have an immigration office, but that was located close to the Burmese border in Mae Sot, some 90 kilometers further west.
The road to Mae Sot reminded me a little of Laos, only that the bitumen was smooth, the road much wider and more busy. It wound itself through the mountains as an accumulation of sharp turns and I enjoyed pushing the Jimmy to the limits to make a good mileage. As we drove into Mae Sot less than two hours later, two farangs crossed our way and told us of the approximate location of the office. In turn, we gave them a ride into town, then continued towards the Thai-Burmese friendship bridge.
Had my brother thought he could simply inform the office of his continued stay, the immigration officer at the bridge post told him otherwise. He wouldn't get around crossing the border, but he could reduce his trip to a simple walk over the bridge and back, there was no necessity to actually enter Burma. I waited in a little bar beside the bridge sipping a cold orange shake until he returned with a couple of new stamps in his passport. Officially he had entered and left Burma in an instant and then reentered Thailand.
The immigration business was successfully finished and we strolled along the border market and woodcraft shops around the bridge. Prices were unexpectedly high, especially in the market, where even a bottle of Coke was 3 Baht over the usual price. With empty hands we returned to the car and drove back towards town. It was early afternoon and we'd decided to spend the night. After all, there was some tourists in town, usually on the way to Umphang or to see Burma, and a couple of nice bars would be a good hangout for the evening.
We'd soon found a nice guest house and had a shower and some rest before going for a meal. It turned out to be difficult to find a restaurant to please us. Most of the ones close to the guest house where either seafood or farang food restaurants and food that was otherwise so easy to come by was now impossible to get. We were tired of walking around soon and jumped into the truck to find what we were looking for further down town. Then we checked out the little town centre and its bars before entering the one for the first drink of the night. There were no Thais in the bar whatsoever. It was either Burmese, who spoke good English, or Caucasian tourists. We got into talking to the nice bar tender, an American who was fundraising for poor Burmese communities, but the conversation stalled at some point and we decided to move on. Two bars later we could feel the effects of the past days. We had been working a lot and were tired now. We needed some rest, so we went to our nice room to get it.
We took our time the next morning and sat for breakfast not before 11 am. The food was excellent and I spoiled myself with an iced chocolate containing real ice cream instead of just ice cubes. For one moment, I praised the tourists for the food they brought with them whereever they go. Then we hit the road.
We had to go back the mountainous road to Tak before turning south towards Kamphaeng Phet, so even though it was only about 140 kilometers, we needed about 3 hours and arrived at the craft shops early afternoon. Some were already closing, but fortunately the shops my brother was aiming at were all open. It wasn't easy to find a suitable piece for the coffee table. The choice was very limited, my brother's vision of his future table very clear, and to put those together made it hard to find anything. We ended up with a small side table, a simple cut from a log, and a large tree trunk. It took five people to heave it on the truck and we guessed it to be around a quarter ton.
On the way back to Sukhothai, my brother was constantly on the phone with his wife and daughter. He was coordinating them, organizing them, playing the operator for them, until he was sick and tired of it and refused his service, not picking up the phone any longer. We had a short stop in a small town about 20 kilometers out of Sukhothai where we found an excellent little restaurant. Just before dark, we pulled into our driveway and my brother used the remaining light to clean the tree trunk with his pressure washer. We felt like not much more than a movie and hit our beds early.
No comments:
Post a Comment