Mae Sai 04/12/2010 Tachileik, Myanmar & Cat Telecom

We slept pretty well with the air conditioning. We got up early and had some fruit and coffee. That is pretty typical. We left the house around 6:45 AM and had some breakfast; pan fried chicken, vegetables, steamed and fried rice.

We needed money to pay for the installation of the air conditioning yesterday but had to go to three ATM machines before we could find one that would give us the 25,000 THB we needed. This is a big holiday season and everyone is using the ATM’s.

We stopped and paid for the AC around 8:15 on the way home. I took a morning nap and Daeng went into Tachileik, Myanmar (Burma) to give her Aunt some things to take to her home for the Songkran holiday that officially starts tomorrow.

There are really three reasons I stayed home beside the TV/Internet guys coming. The first one is I slow Daeng down in the border crossing thing. She can, after obtaining a day crossing pass, just walk back and forth across the bridge. It is pretty busy, as you can see in the picture.

I have to go through immigrations leaving a departure card, have my passport stamped on the Thai side and then leave my passport at Myanmar immigrations on the Burma side. On the way back, I have to give Myanmar immigrations the little card they exchanged for my passport and pick up the passport before coming back into Thailand. On the Thailand side, I have to fill out an arrival card and have my passport stamped again.

The second reason is I have to pay 500 Thai Baht or $15.00 US Dollar on the Burma side to cross over the bridge into Tachileik. Daeng pays 30 THB a day to Thailand immigrations and 10 THB to Myanmar immigrations. She can cross over as many times as she wants during the day if she gets her hand stamped.

The third reason is the “water thing” that is happening in this part of the world this week. It is the celebration of “water” because “water” is a life thing. You need water not only to live but also to grow food, like rice.

During this celebration water is sprinkled on people to help cleanse them and wish them good life BUT this has gotten out of proportion and people will throw buckets of water on you while you are traveling g on a motorbike. Think about it, five gallons of water thrown on you while you are traveling 40 miles an hour on a motorcycle. THAT IS TERRORISM!!! Enough said!

The men, or should I say gang of boys (about seven), from Cat Telecom came a little after 1:45 PM. That’s not bad for being told 1:00 PM. They told us that they could not run the wire because there was too much traffic, due to the holiday, but would do the inside work today and return next Monday.

The inside work meant drilling one hole in the wall and mounting the ground rod outside. It was fun to watch seven men doing the work, one to hold the extension cord plug in the wall outlet, one to open the window to run the extension cord. Then one to plug in the drill, one to hold the drill and one to push on the drill, another to make sure it was straight and the supervisor, of course. I think that was seven.

Remember Cat Telecom is a government owned company. I’m not judging, I’m just saying.

I asked about the television and they acted like they had no idea about what I was talking about.

Daeng got back and we hung out doing a few things on the house. I spray painted one of the florescent light fixtures to see if the acrylic lacquer we purchased yesterday would work okay. The fixture looked great after three light coat of paint. The light even seemed brighter after cleaning the tube and reinstalling it.

One was enough as it is HOT. It feels like it is over 100 degrees, maybe hotter upstairs. It is about 4:00 PM and time to call it a day, it’s a holiday.

Daeng called the man from Cat Telecom and he said nothing could be done until next week and he was off this week, too. Oh well, TIT, which stands for “This is Thailand”.

I should not have prayed for help to give me patients and tolerance. Like the saying goes: “Be careful what you pray for as you might get it!”

After dark we took a ride over to Tesco/lotus and talked about an “Air Card”. That is a little devise that plugs into the USB port of the laptop so you can use the cellular system to have Internet any were in Thailand that you have cellular telephone service. The cost of the device ranged from 2000 THB to 4300 THB ($62 to $135 USD) plus air time charges. No one could tell me, in English, what the air time charges are?

We were told that an English speaking person would be there at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning. We went home frustrated. TIT!