Mae Sai - Life is Good

On out trip back from Doi Chang, Elephant Mountain, we spent the night in Chiang Rai.  We had a nice dinner at the Night Bazaar and Daeng's favorite desert.  She likes this jelly textured sweets with ice cream in a coconut shell.  The picture is of the soup we ate.  Daeng made the soup right at the table.

In the morning, we also had a chance to have coffee at Jan's Coffee, Joke and Pa Thong Ko Shop.  Joke is like an oatmeal made rice. They add stuff like egg and pork to it, also.  We really like Jan as she is a sincere, earthy person that works hard and is a real sweetheart. 

I did talk on the telephone with Charlie, her boyfriend from Canada.  I told him we just stopped to see Jan and have coffee and would see him in the spring.

After coffee, we check out of the hotel and made the hour trip back home to Mae Sai.  Our new mattress is still the best sleep for me.  It is an independent pocket spring mattress.  The Thais say it is soft but by US standards I think it would be classified as medium firm.

Mae Sai is doing very well.  This area has two rice crops a year and lots of folks coming through to visit Tachileik, Myanmar (Burma).  Everyday, buses make the eleven hour trip from Bangkok with hundreds of folks crossing the border to shop.  They also shop on the Thai side.  I think prices are better on the Thai side except you can not buy the fake stuff, like purses, on this side of the border.  You can read more about shopping in Tachileik by clicking on  Tachileik, Myanmar (Burma) Yea, Shopping!

Speaking of crossing bridges, how do you like this bamboo bridge?  I walked across it but it was scary for this old fat boy.

We went back to work making our cave a better nest (worked more on home).

We had removed the canopy in front of the part in the middle shop house, straighted the down spot piping from the roof and now were painting the front and pipe. You can read about Daeng and I removing the canopy by CLICKING HERE.

Yep, that is be four stories in the air painting. 

Daeng helped as she did not want me to go up the bamboo ladder without her help.  She also did some of the work on the overhang.

We think the place looks pretty good but will have the outside painted with one more coat of paint and the trim highlighted. 

For now, it is put everything away, pack and close up our master suite as we are going to return car and fly south tomorrow.

Here is a picture of the front of our home.  Daeng's brother has his laundry there and will take care of things while we are gone.

It is for sale for 7,800,000 THB.  If you would like to see the complete listing with lots of pictures just CLICK HERE.  When the link comes up just scroll down to see the pictures.

Tachileik, Myanmar (Burma) Yea, Shopping!

We got up about 5:00 AM.  We dressed and I filled out my departure card for leaving Thailand as well as a new entry card for our return later today.  They are a lot easier to do sitting at a table then when standing in line at the immigrations window.

We have two goals today.  The first is to see Pastor Lota's Church in Burma.  The second is to find a jade chess set for a special friend in California.

We left our place around 6:30 AM and had our usual breakfast at the morning market.  We then headed to the Thai Immigrations office so Daeng could get her paper to visit the border city of Tachileik.  It took only a few minutes as we were the only ones there at 7:40 AM.  The cost to her was 30 Thai Baht (about 90 cents US)

We met Saimoon at the border bridge.  Saimoon is a Burmese guide that we have know for many years.  He speaks English and several other languages very well. 

The border crossing was very easy and the Burma side did not even give us a hard time about using a ten US dollar bill instead of 500 Thai Baht.  The difference is about 200 Thai Baht.  I think the reason is when they asked for the 500 Thai Baht, Daeng gave them the 10 US dollar bill and said she would use the 200 Thai Baht that was saved to buy a new purse.  Daeng had also ironed the bill with a little spray starch so it was a pretty good looking bill.

We got our Burma permits and left my passport at the border office for pick up when we return later in the day.  I did mention that the passort did not belong to me but belonged to the United States.

We called Pastor Lota on his cellular telephone.  He said to wait for him, he would pick the three of us up and take us to his church.  We waited in the Valentine Tea Shop.  We had Burmese Milk Tea.

Pastor Lota arrived about 15 minutes later in a pickup truck with about four door jams for his new church school.  There was four other fellows with him.  He said hop in as the trip was only about 20 minutes long.

I must say, it was the bumpiest ride I have every been on and I have traveled a lot of dirt roads.  I was worried about the six folks in the back, sitting on the wooden door frames.  If I had know it was this bad a ride we would not have gone. 

When we arrived at the Akha Christian Settlement we were greeted by everyone.  Almost everyone spoke English, to some degree, also.  There was a kid's bible class going on.  It was wonderful to hear the kids singing bible songs.

We sat and had tea and talked about all kinds of things.  Saimoon was a big hit with everyone as he explained how God had saved his life.

We talked with Pastor Lota and the other church Pastor's wife.  We donated a little money, 3,000 Thai Baht, to help buy cement for the new church school building.  We took one more picture and hopped back in the pickup truck for the bumpy ride back. 

The nice part is Daeng and Saimoon would not have to sit on the wood door frames on the way back, they can just sit on the pickup bed.  I sat in the cab with the driver; give me a break, I'm old. (Yep, I used the old card on this ride.)

Now for shopping, we visited hundreds of purse shops.  Daeng said no more pictures after about the fortieth purse shop.

You can buy a knock-off of just about any purse made in the world.

The folks in every shop will tell you it is real.  Then they wonder why we don't trust them.

Purses, purses and more purses.

Then, clothes, clothes, clothes and more clothes.

Saimoon had gone on ahead of us to visit some jade shops to see if he could find a chess set.  He called on the phone and met us. 

He took us up around the corner to visit a shop that had lots of jade.  We did see a nice set but it did not have any feeling, as I say.  The pieces were just normal and had no special look.

There was a beautiful wall picture done of the Dead Sea.  It was all done in polished jade stones.

We visited several other shops but with no luck for something that was really special.  It was now about 2:00 PM, after the pick-up truck ride and walking several miles through out the Tachileik Market we decided to call it a day.

Saimoon said he had some other things to do and would go on ahead of us and would see us again in the next day or two. 

Daeng wanted to look for a friend that she had not seen in over twenty-five years so we said: "good-bye" to Saimoon and we went looking for Daeng's friend.

On the way through the many side-walk shops Daeng saw a bronze shop and told me to take a look.

In the back of this shop was a chess set, made of bronze, that looked very old and had a wooden case that was also the chess board.

It was not jade but differently had a classy look to it.

The more I looked at it and touched the figures, the more I liked it.  It was a special set for that special person.

We made the deal for the set and the shop owner put it all in the wooden case and wrapped it in paper to go.

We know felt it was a worth whiled day.  It is a special chess set for that special person.

We picked up my passport and made the walk over the Mae Sai River bridge to Mae Sai.  Immigrations stamped my passport and we were back in Thailand, again.

We hopped on our motorbike that we had left in front of the bank and made it home for hot showers and dinner.  It was another great day in the "Land of Smiles" and "Burma".

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!