is as far north as you can go in Thailand. It is up in the mountain area in the Golden Triangle.The nice part about that is it is about 10-20 degrees cooler here than in the Bangkok area. As an example, it is about 75 degrees F right now at 4:00 PM. In
Bangkok it is 91 degrees and today is a pretty cool day. We are expecting it to go down to 60 degrees here tonight.
Our trip from Pattaya yesterday was a good trip. Everything went smooth. The car driver picked us up right on time from our hotel. It sprinkled a little on the way so there were many motor bike accidents on the road.
It had not rained for some time so the little rain we had floated all the oil that was in the pavement and made the roadway super slippery.
When we arrived at the airport we just checked in with Air Asia. Our bags weighted just under what we had paid for on this trip. We paid 800 THB ($24 USD) for two bags weighing up to 20 kilograms each. Daeng's bag weighed 18 Kg and mine was 17 Kg.
Our trip through security went smooth and the plane, a 727, was right on time. From the plane we called Sai, the driver that was to pick us up in Chiang Rai, to tell him we were on time.
An hour and fifteen minutes later and we landed at the Chiang Rai Airport, got our bags and Sai was waiting for us. About 45 minutes later we arrived at the Yeesun Hotel which will be our home base for the next two months.
If you would like to see where we are in relationship to the Myanmar (Burma) border we are "h9" in the map on this link: CLICK HERE
They even had the room we like, #201, ready for us. This is a nice little family run hotel of about 20 rooms. It is only a few years old and in very good condition. They charge us 8000 THB ($240 USD) a month. They have everything you could want; refrigerator, air conditioing, hot water, western style bathroom and some English TV. They even have free wireless Internet.
We checked in and Daeng packed up the gifts we brought for the family and she went to see them. I was tired so I showered and had dinner by the hotel. I ordered , in my broken Thai, fried pork and a small amount of rice. When my order came to the table it was fried rice and vegetables. It's a good thing I like all kinds of food or I had better study my Thai speaking more.
I called Daeng and told her I was going to bed and she should stay with the family and have fun.
We got up early this morning and took our laundry to Tun's, Daeng's brother, laundry. Then we went to the morning market and eat "baht-ta-go" and had coffee. Baht-ta-go" is a sweet, fried doe or what I call a the Thai donut.
We then went to the Mae Sai Immigrations Office. No line, no numbers to take and everyone asking if they can help. The Immigrations Officer told us the letter from the bank had to be no older than seven days but he checked everything else and made a list of the pages in my passport that he needed copies of.
We jumped on the motorbike and went to Bangkok Bank up the street. They wrote a letter for immigration and made the copies of my passport and we were on our way back to immigrations. The bank did charge us 100 THB ($3 USD). We think that is still a deal.
When we arrived back we walked up to the same Immigrations Officer who had me sign everything and filled our the "multiple entry" form so I could do that at the same time. I paid the 5700 THB ($171 USD) and thanked him.
He smiled and gave me back my passport all stamped and we were on our way before 11:00 AM. What a wonderful difference from the trip to immigrations in Jomtien Beach last week.
The only thing I was wrong about was I thought it was 1900 THB for Visa and 1900 THB for the "multiple entry" but the "multiple entry" was 3800 THB.
Paradise is still a deal!
We stopped at the post office and got our mail. There was a 2010 calender from Susann, our Amish friend in Pennsylvania. Their printing company does the printing. The calender also had a newsletter type story of their family events that happened in 2009.
There was also a Christmas card and a Thanksgiving card from Bob and his wife Gloria post marked Santa Ana, California.
It is always nice to receive mail. It makes us feel loved!
Then on to a hair cut and shave by the local barber for 60 THB ($1.80 USD) including the tip. Speaking of tipping; not much tipping is done here in Thailand except in the tourist areas. You only "tip" if someone does something special, above and beyond their normal job.
Onward to the large department store "Tesco Lotus" to but milk, bread, peanut butter, jelly, ham and mustard for sandwiches. Most Thai people don't eat those items so we have to go to a big market to find them.
Daeng will have her brother, Tun, pick up the four containers we stored at Daeng's Mother's home when we left in November. The storage containers have the toaster, cup, plates, coffee pot, etc. in them along with more clothes.
We plan on taking it easy for a few days without any plans to do anything special.
If you would like to see a video of the area we live in just "CLICK HERE". We live about 300 meters from where this video was shot.
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