The Return to Thailand-The Chiangs

The bus to the Thai border at Huay Xai was luxury compared to our Laos bus experience so far. We boarded a minibus in town, thus avoiding the 10-km tuk-tuk ride back out to the new bus station. And the road was surface-treated almost the whole way, about four-and-a-half hours. I say almost; the only places it wasn’t smooth were where the road had been taken out by rockslides. In these places, we had to pick our way through the reconstruction efforts, sometimes alarmingly close to the edge where cliffs dropped away into river valleys. Interestingly, I barely even noticed these things, or rather, noticed, but felt no alarm.
We arrived in Huay Xai, grabbed some sandwiches and snacks, spending the last of our Lao kip, and boarding a Mekong river boat for the only time, took the 10-minute ride across to Chiang Khong.

In Chiang Khong, we intended to catch a bus directly to Chiang Mai, the northern capital of Thailand, about 6 hours away. However, as our guidebook said (but I had hoped was wrong) there were no direct buses; we would have to take the 3 hour bus to Chiang Rai, and change buses there.
We made it to the bus station just as the bus was pulling out; our intrepid tuk-tuk driver obviously knew the schedule, and actually pulled in front of the bus to let us off and get on our bus. It was a pretty basic bus; we sat near the rear door, which stayed open the whole 3-hour trip.

The “air conditioning” consisted of small fans bolted to the ceiling, which switched on only when the bus was stopped.
When we got to Chiang Rai, we learned that the only other bus that day going to Chiang Mai was already sold out. At this point, we were 5; Yoshi and I, the two Americans from our Laos trek and another guy we’d met on the bus from the border. And none of wanted to spend the night in Chiang Rai, only to get up in the morning to get on another bus. So we set out to find a minibus to charter the rest of the way. Luckily, the other guy was an English teacher who had been in Bangkok for about 7 years, and who spoke near-fluent Thai. We found one guy who agreed to take us for around 600 baht each, which seemed a little high, since we could have taken a minibus straight from the border to Chiang Mai for only 750 baht each. But we weren’t in much of a position to bargain, since it was that or nothing, as the guy surely knew. So we headed off to his “minibus” only to find that there was some miscommunication…he meant “tuk-tuk”…which, if you remember, is a pick-up truck with benches along the sides of the back, and a roof. To be sure, it was a pretty nice tuk-tuk, as tuk-tuks go, but there was no way any of us were going to spend 3 hours in it.
From there ensued another round of arguing, bargaining, and haggling, which ended with us walking away in search of a real minibus. Once he saw we really wouldn’t take his ride, he then told us he had a friend with a minibus who could take us instead. So he told us to wait there, and he’d go and get the minibus. Then something changed, and he told us to get into his tuk-tuk and we’d all go together to the minibus. I thought this sounded OK; however, as the Bangkok teacher later told us, it seemed more like we were about to drive around town until our driver spotted a minibus that he could convince to take us to Chiang Mai for something less than the 3000 baht he’d already agreed on with us. And that’s pretty much what happened. After about 5 minutes, he stopped behind a minibus at a traffic light and got out and did some quick dealing with the driver. Then they both pulled over and we transferred everything to our new ride, and we were on our way.
At this point, I should tell you something about minibuses in Southeast Asia; they are some of the nicest-outfitted vehicles I have ever been in. Fully air-conditioned, TV with DVD player, surround-sound speakers and luxury reclining seats. The only bad thing is that they usually have Thai pop music videos playing at an annoying volume. This guy had a couple of large binders of CDs to choose from, all of which were Thai. We were resigned to tolerating this the 3 hours to Chiang Mai, until he popped in his one English CD. It turned out to be what we dubbed, “Thailand’s Quintessential American Classics” and we sang along the whole way. Much-loved songs such as “Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Sweet Caroline”, “Hotel California” and many others. And when it finished and started again, no one complained.
At a pit stop, we asked the guy just what sort of deal had gone down back in Chiang Rai, as we were all curious. It turned out of the 3000 baht we had paid the tuk-tuk guy, our minibus driver got 2700 of it. Pretty good money for a 6-hour road trip in Thailand.
On arrival in Chiang Mai at around 8 pm, we said our goodbyes to the others in our group, found the cheapest guesthouse in the book, had some dinner, a few drinks, wandered through the market to find some sport sandals, and went to bed. Unfortunately, as we were flying to Phuket early the next afternoon, we didn’t have a chance to really see anything in Chiang Mai. Next time, I guess.