What a couple of days! Crossing in to Thailand from Myanmar was pretty simple. We got a shared taxi to Myawaddy, walked to the border crossing, filled out our entry form, crossed a bridge and we were in Mae Sot, Thailand. We expected a small, sleepy, border town, but that is not what we found. The border crossing is on the outskirts of the city with a bit more of an industrial feel that we were not crazy about.

Our first stop after we got settled was a clinic to clean up Brandon’s foot. We ended up going to a hospital because that was all we could find that was open. About 30 minutes and $10 later, we were cleaned up and out the door with antibiotics in hand. The hospital was very busy and we did not like that we may have been treated ahead of others who were there first. But we did not know for sure who was waiting on what, so Brandon just went where he was told. All-in-all a very efficient process.

Once that was done, we went to get our bus tickets to Chiang Mai. We didn’t buy these in advance because everything we read about the process made it seem super simple. Turned out that there are 2 buses a day from Mae Sot to Chiang Mai, and it was sold out for three days! This may or may not have made Devon a little bit cranky. She wanted to be there by New Year’s Eve and that was cutting it VERY close. After a lot of searching for options on what to do instead, we opted to take a round-about-route. We planned to take a 4-hour bus to a city called Phitsanulok, and then a train to Chiang Mai. (Going through Tak was more direct, but less of a guarantee of a ticket.) It was not ideal but it was the best option we had.

When someone isn’t being efficient, Devon’s dad often says something like, “Don’t take me through Dallas to get me to Houston.” Well…that is what we did. When we arrived in Phitsanulok, we found a bus that was leaving earlier than the train and would get there faster. Great!! Except we backtracked about 3 hours toward Mae Sot – to Tak – before actually heading up to Chiang Mai. But in the end, we made it to Chiang Mai the day we originally planned, just a few hours later. All was well.

Until Devon realized that we had left some art we bought in Yangon on the bus, and the bus had already left the station for the night. *sigh* Luckily with the help of our hotel we managed to track it down. But then we spent our entire first day in Chiang Mai retrieving it. (That was a whole new struggle. Every time we tried to say we forgot something on last night’s bus from Phitsanulok, someone would try to sell us a new ticket back there. But eventually we did find it.)

The high point from that effort though was that we had one of our best Thai meals of the trip at a random restaurant on our walk to the station. A woman had 4 cast iron pots on a table out front full of the dishes of the day. It looked like she and her mom made them that morning, and the green curry was out of this world! (Three weeks later and we have not had anything like it.)

That night we went to services and dinner at Chabad and there were a ton of people there including one of Devon’s old camp friends! (Wherever you go…) There were so many people interested in Chabad that they actually held 2 dinners for 100-150+ people! (One of them even gave us some great recommendations for the next week! But more on that later.) It was not how we expected our first couple of days in Thailand to be, but we made it!