"Border Run" Trip to Mae Sai from Chiang Mai

[Baloo22]

I took a "border run" trip from Chiang Mai to Mae Sai, the northern-most city in Thailand last week. I wanted to get a new one-year entry stamp for my Non-Immigrant O-A visa before the "Enter Before" date passed. This was my trip. Hope some of it is useful to others that need to make a "border-run" trip to Mae Sai.

 

The "border run" to Mae Sai can be made in one day if you want. Some of the tour shops in Chiang Mai have "Visa Run" vans that can take you up and get it done in a day. I did such a run from Pattaya to Cambodia before. Basically it was get in the van, rocket down the roads at Mach 3, do the border crossing into Cambodia, wait 20 minutes, and then re-enter Thailand. Then rocket down the roads back to Pattaya, almost running over several children on the way, in the effort to get the falangs back to Pattaya quickly.

 

This time I decided to make my own way to Mae Sai and do it in a more liesurely trip. After all, I'm retired and have plenty of time. I also wanted to look about town and visit the Wat Phrathat Doi Wao temple. I took one of the "Green Bus" buses that leave from Chiang Mai Bus Station #2, known as "Arcade Station". I went over the week before and purchased my tickets. They have several diffent classes of seats. At the time, I was clueless on the classes and just told the ticket agent that I definitely wanted "aircon". I ended up in 1st Class seat. Then best and larger seats are the "VIP" seats. For me it was still a good seat. I'm not that big and don't have a huge butt. But if you are a large falang with a big butt, you should probably specify "VIP" seats.

 

The bus departed on time and went non-stop to Chiang Rai. The aircon was definitely good! The bus attendant gave out a small bottle of water and two small packs of cookies for a snack. The bus did have a hong-nam in the back. In Chiang Rai it stopped first at the Chiang Rai Bus Terminal #2 which is south of the city (5 minutes) and stopped again at the Chiang Rai station in the middle of the city. Then it continued on to Mae Sai. Once north of Chiang Rai, the bus stopped a couple of times for people in some of the small towns along the way. Arrived at the Mae Sai bus station just south of the city. Takes about 4 and half hours. Song-theows were waiting and they do know the word "border"! Used my best Thai to ask him "Kun bpai rong-raem Navy Home dai mai, khap"? (Can you go to Navy Home hotel?) Yes was the answer. Dropped me off right across the street from the hotel.

 

Checked in to the Navy Home hotel. Neat place! Apparently, the owner is a retired Admiral from the Royal Thai Navy and the hotel has a navy theme to it. All sorts of photos, ship models, uniforms, display with 20mm thru 40mm shells, etc. It's on both Agoda and Trip Advisor. It's about 800m from the border. It's a basic hotel with good bed, clean, good aircon, TV with two English language news channels and a movie channel in English. Staff is nice and the lady that checked me in spoke passable English but the rest of the staff very little.

 

Took a walk down the main drag on the left (west) side of the street. Close to the border you get a bunch of market stalls and just before the border turn left and you get another market complex. Also that is the way to Wat Phrathat Doi Wao. The Wat is at the top of a hill with a long staircase going up. If you have bad knees or just don’t want to walk up the stairs, you can hire one of the motorbike drivers at the bottom to take you up the road for 10 baht. Spent about two hours wandering around the wat complex and taking lots of pics. Some very nice statues and displays there. They also have a neat statue of a giant scorpion facing Burma. Worth a visit. Went back to the hotel, ate a dinner of Pad Ga Pow Gai and slept the night away.

 

Ate breakfast at the hotel at 7:00am. Set menu with two choices for asian breakfast and one choice for falang. Then walked to the border. Walk down the left hand side of the street and you enter the border station and exit Thailand. Then cross the street to the right-hand side and you enter Burma. You give the Burmese immigration your passport and 500 baht. Then you sit in front of a computer with a cam, they scan/copy your passport and take your picture. Then hand you a brown card good for Tachileik and the local vicinity.

 

Just a few meters after you exit Burmese immigration there is a set of stairs that go down to the local market. I spent an hour in the market. It's quite a market. You can buy counterfit/fake DVDs/CDs, fake handbags, fake cigarettes (Burmese cigarettes in Marlboro packs), fake booze (the bottle may say "Johnnie Walker Black" but the whiskey isn't), fake electronics, etc, etc. I just got a few DVD movies for 30 baht (one dollar) each. I will NOT try taking them through US Customs! I suppose I could have gotten my very own "iFone"!

 

Going back into Thailand, you walk on the right-hand side of the road to the Burmese exit station. Hand in your brown card and get your passport back. Then cross the road to the left-hand side and go through Thai immigration. They handed me a entry and departure card and there is a table to fill them out. Then into immigration, and hand in passport and entry/departure cards. No problems. I'm good for another year stay in Thailand. There was a Thai "Customs" table staffed by two people but they didn't ask to see anything of mine. Perhaps if I was entering with 5 boxes and two large suitcases they might have been interested but they seemed to be about to fall asleep.

 

The trip back to Chiang Mai was just about like the trip to Mae Sai but in reverse. North of Chiang Rai, they stopped at several small towns to pick-up people but after Chiang Rai it was non-stop back to Chiang Mai "Arcade" station. It took a little longer with the small town stops. That's it!

 

Mae Sai Border Station

 

Navy Home hotel in Mae Sai

 

Wat Phrathat Doi Wao

[SLEUTH]

My type of border run, great info Thanks,.

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Shame they wont let you out of the Tachilek area. I would love to travel overland from India to Thailand (or vice-versa), but it just isn't allowed or safe.

[semi-retired member]

"Once north of Chiang Rai, the bus stopped a couple of times for people in some of the small towns along the way. "

 

One of these is Mae Chan, the next (a few km further North) is Bosang, from both of which you can catch the song-thaews (green and blue, respectively) up to Mae Salong, which the Thais like to call Santikhiri.  I prefer the green route from Mae Chan, last departure up-the-hill is usually about 1.30-2.00 in the afternoon, as the blue route seem mainly to be rip-off merchants wanting you to blow B600 to hire a whole song-thaew !

 

This is one of the original Kuo-Min-Tang villages, Yunnan-Chinese soldiers who lost the war against the communists and got pushed South into Burma & then Thailand border-area, cool (at 4000 feet up) in the hot-season and quite different in character from normal Thailand, also has plenty of genuine hill-tribe people.

 

Mae Salong's tourist-market is busy with minibus tour-groups, who stop to buy local green-tea & dried-mushrooms, then perhaps eat one of the local Yunnan-style dishes before heading back down to the plain & their hotels in Chiang Rai. At night it reverts to peace & quiet.

 

No p4p, that I've seen, so bring-your-own, but a good place for a rest-week, cheap and cheerful !

 

Very-basic rooms, at the Shin Sane Guesthouse, from 50B/night, better bungalows with en-suite & satelite-TV cost 300B (single-occupancy) or 400B (double), some up-market resorts can cost B1k+ per-night.