Sarah and I have been to Myanmar!
It’s been three months so it was finally time to do a visa run.
We have a tripple entry visa. Each entry is good for 3 months (after extending it for another month in Smaui). All we had to do was leave the country and come back. Stamping the visa with the 2nd entry.
Alot of people have to do this so it’s pretty easy to find a tour opperator offering the service. We ended up doing it along with a half-dozen other people from Koh Phangan.
It took us 24 hours door-to-door but that includes dinner twice.
We started off on the night boat. Which is pretty funny. It’s an old really slow boat with no seats but thin matresses spread out under the 4 foot ceiling. It left at 10 and arrived at the ithmus at 4:00am (a journey which usually takes 3 hours).
From there we all bundled into a van and drove across the Ithmus of Kra to Ranong Thailand. Which is seperated from Myanmar by a very large river. We had to check out of Thailand in Ranong and then were driven to the port and bundled onto a longtail. The port at Ranong was GREAT. So many boats and people going hither and thither. As soon as I saw the place my shutter finger just went nuts.
The chartered longtail took us to Thai immigration (standing in the river on stilts) to confirm the checkout (every boat has a young boy who runs passports and ropes around). And then across the very large river to Myanmar. There we checked into and out of Myanmar in the same motion (with 10$ american to smooth the way). And got on the same boat back. Then into the same van back to the east-coast, and onto a ferry that takes 3 hours istead of 6 to make the crossing home.
One beatutiful sunset later we were eating dinner in one of our favourtite restauraunts (congratulaions Won and Steve on the marriage!) and then home to bed.
So we popped over to Myanmar just for the day.
Some of the pictures are up on the flickr account. I think alot of them turned out quite well (although out of order, damned free account!).
