Border Crossing for Visa

Palaces casino in Burma. $20 million building, surrounded by poverty, gross.
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I had to do my visa run today.  That was a long day.  I went to sleep @ like 4am & got up @ 620am.  Didn't get home until 1030 or so.  I was able to sleep a couple hours in the van though.  It was a pretty fun day.  I met a couple from Anchorage, a couple from Israel, a mean old lady from France, guy from Scotland on vacation w/ his buddy from Taipai.  It was a pretty crowded trip.  But we made a lot of stops so I got to stretch my legs fairly often.  Oh there was also a Norwegian guy w/ his Thai 'girlfriend' - gross.

The Golden Triangle
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First stop we made was to some Wat in the middle of nowhere that is super old.  It was burned down by the Burmese back in the day & they left it how it was when the fire was stopped, so that was kind of cool.  But I was really too tired to care too much, I've seen a lot of Wats already. 

For some reason I can't remember the next stop, but I do remember finally stopping at the Mekong River and that was sweet.  You can see where it meets from China & Burma, the Chinese part is really dirty & there is a line where the colors change.  Can see into Burma and Laos from here, but it is really all just jungle, it makes me think of what Vietnam must have been like, and everytime I hear Mekong River I think of Vietnam.  In this river they have catfish that are 300lbs & one was caught that was 600lbs!  The US Army back in Vietnam also caught a fish in this river that was over 7 METERS long!  I don't know what kind of fish it was though. 

Mekong River, going right leads to China, left into Burma. On the right shore is Laos, straight ahead is Burma.
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The one thing that you can clearly see in Burma is the huge Golden Palaces Casino, a 20 million DOLLAR resort/casino surrounded by complete poverty.  I won't lie, I wanted to go there.  There was a boat tour that went right by it but wouldn't stop at the casino.  It then would go over to Laos so you could stand on Laos soil, but it was 300 baht for the tour & 20 baht to stand inside Laos so I was too cheap to do that.

The cool thing about this stop was the Hill Tribe girls that hang around the area & say 5 baht for picture.  I should have got my picture taken with them but I didn't.  They hanged around the Anchorage couple & myself for most of the time, and it was really cool to just observe them and watch them play.  It seems some things in human nature are the same worldwide.  The Hill Tribe girls were a lot of fun though & I let them listen to my mp3 player, which they thought was amazing.  They kept trying to listen to the actual player instead of the ear buds & couldn't figure out why there was no music.  I could hang out with them all day, very fun.

The border, too bad I didn't actually get to walk around and check out Burma.
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Next stop was a all you can eat buffet, which was just okay.  I had myanmar rice which was super good, and freshly made noodles which were also good, but the rest of the stuff wasn't too good.  After that it was on to the border. 

I didn't actually get to go explore in Burma, just got the passport stamped, stood in a few lines, paid some money & walked back.  Lots of Thais go across to shop, because things are super cheap in Burma (even though things are cheap in Thailand).   It is relaly sad though, the poverty is really bad in the border town in Burma and there are little kids, maybe around 6, walking around and begging.  Our tour guide said not to give them money because you will get swarmed, but I felt really sad so I snuck a little money to this one kid that was following me around.  I'm a sucker.

Burma on the left, Thailand on the right. Both extremely poor, but imagine Burmese to be much poorer. :(
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I was told that we were going to a Hill Tribe village and that the kids there are really poor, so the Alaskans & I bought some candy to hand out.  I bought some Japanese candy that had a lot of pieces in it.  When we got to the place as soon as we got out we were swarmed by kids selling little bracelets & things like that.  I brought out my candy and handed a couple pieces out & then I was just swarmed.  The kids pretty much ravaged the bag & it was gone in about 3 seconds. I didn't even see the big bag the candy was in, it was just all gone, I couldn't believe it.

I was out of candy so I went w/ the tour guide, she showed us the inside of a house w/ a couple, and we learned a little about their culture and the traditional way of hunting and spinning cloth.  The houses are interesting, they are made of bamboo & straw for the most part & have no windows so that the spirits don't escape.  They are from Burma, but came to Thailand as refugees, except the Thai government doesn't consider some of the Hill Tribes as Thais.  This means they cannot get a work permit, so they remain in extreme poverty.

The old French lady was freaking out about bird flue while we were there so we had to leave early, I was pretty shocked at how rude she was to the people.  Then we had like a 3 hr drive back to Chiang Mai.

I got dropped off in the city - right in front of Starbucks, which is a big shock to go into.  It is just like in the West, they actually have good napkins/paper towels & all fancy looking like back home.  They were having a Flower Festival this weekend, so they had the 'Walking Street' which was a huge night market.  I walked around for a few hours, drank two bubble teas for .25 cents each, ate a couple waffles & found mango sticky rice, which is like a desert w/ milk on top of it or something.  I'm not sure but the rice is soo good w/ the mango & stuff, but the mango is pretty bitter w/out the rice.  I also met a farang girl who had crashed on a motorcycle & spent a couple days in the hospital & had lots of bandages on, so I definately felt lucky about mine!