In the morning, I
went outside to the ATM I had spotted last night and withdrew one
last 100 kip note to cover our tuk-tuk ride to the border. Then, at
7.30am, we hopped into the tuk-tuk and headed off. Just as we arrived
at the border the heavens opened up and rain began falling in sheets.
We sailed through Lao border control – big sigh of relief – but
as we were walking through to the other side, Zoe suddenly stopped
and just sat down on the floor. While Kate and Sarah seem to have
mostly shaken off their flu already, Zoe is still clearly struggling,
and we helped her over to some seats, where she lay down on my lap.
Kate then bought some tickets for a shuttle bus to take us over the
Mekong to the Thai border post, where we filled in the necessary
forms and then walked up to the booth, feeling no small amount of
trepidation after our last border-crossing experience getting into
Laos. As our Myanmar visas are in our British passports, we were
trying to enter on them, and our hearts sank when the official began
riffling through my passport, obviously looking for the Laos exit
stamp. I explained that our stamps were in our Australian passports
and he just nodded – he didn't even bother to check them.
When we got out the
other side, I visited the one and only ATM to get some Thai Baht, but
it wasn't working. I managed to get a lift to a little
market/shopping centre nearby, but the one and only ATM there refused
to hand over any cash, so I walked back to the border and changed
some of our US dollars. I then remembered that we had been carrying
around what I thought was a 50 baht note, which had been left over
from our trip to Cambodia 13 years ago. However, it was plastic,
while the notes I had just been given were all paper, so I pulled it
out and checked with the money changer. He confirmed that it was
indeed a 50 baht note, but it was the only plastic note I saw in
Thailand, so I'm not quite sure what was going on there.
Finally cashed up,
we bought some tickets for a minivan to Chang Mai. We were impressed
and relieved that they were only about 240 baht (about $8) each and
even more so when we discovered that we had the van to ourselves –
our own private chauffeur-driven transfer. After we had been driving
for a few hours we stopped for some snacks and were so amazed at the
low prices we stocked up on chips, ice blocks and soft drinks. A bit
later, we stopped for lunch at a little 'tourist resort'. Overhead
were some incredibly impressive black clouds. We ordered some food,
which was also extremely cheap – about US$1.60 each for a dish of
pad Thai and a chicken and basil stir fry – but not very good (the
former was extremely dry and the latter tasted to me like dirt).
Sadly, the beer was a lot more expensive than we've been used to.
When we hit the road
those black clouds dropped their loads all at once and we drove
through some very heavy rain, but by the time we got to Chang Mai it
was sunny again. After we had grabbed our bags from the van and piled
them on the pavement I walked around trying every ATM I could find
but they all just spat my card back out at me. I finally tried Kate's
card and it worked fine – it later transpired that HSBC had blocked
mine because I had tried to use it in two countries in one day. We
flagged down a tuk-tuk – in this case, a quite fancy utility
vehicle with a covered area with bench seats in the back – and
drove to our hostel. As accommodation in Chang Mai is on the
expensive side, we had opted for two double rooms with fans, but they
turned out to be airless concrete boxes that caught the afternoon
sun, so they were absolutely baking. We didn't hang around, making
the short(ish) walk into Chiang Mai's 'old town'. We walked past the
central market and numerous hostels and massage parlours and into a
slightly more 'local' part of town. Here we came across a big, basic
restaurant and got some really good stir-fried rice noodles and a
couple of beers. We then explored a little further, looping back
around to the main road, where we found another pretty basic
restaurant with seating in the road and two women cooking the meals
in a trolley beside the pavement. We had a really good green curry
and some nice stir-fried Chinese cabbage and rice, and then ambled
back to the hostel.
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