January 23rd: Visa Run – Chiang Mai to Mae Sai/Tachiliek
Day 102
Our 30-day VOA is going to run out and we have to make a visa run to the Myanmar border town Tachiliek to get another 30 days (which used to be 15 days if enter over land). For official information on visa issues, click here. A list of nationalities and length of visa granted can be found here.
We took the Green Bus which isn’t green literally nor metaphorically. The bus terminal is by no means easy to find if you are on foot:
Many blogs recommend buying tickets ahead of time, however we didn’t want to make 2 trips into Chiang Mai for this visa run. So we were up at 4am to catch the first local songthaew into Chiang Mai, hoping we would be able to get early bus tickets for the same day. We were at the bus station before 8am, and luckily we managed to get the 9:30am tickets.
If you want to travel from Crazy Horse Buttress to Chiang Mai and you are motor bike impaired, the best option is to take a songthaew, which is a pickup truck with 2 rows of benches in the back. From Jira Homestay, go 2 km north to the local market, you can’t miss the yellow buses parked across the street. The fare is 50 Baht per person, one way, and they leave every 20 minutes, starting at 5:20 am. The trip takes about 1.5 hours.
Coming back, the trucks depart from where they dropped you off, but make sure you’re there before 5:40, or you’ll have a relatively expensive ride back. The truck will stop along the way picking up or dropping off passengers, but don’t worry about missing your stop as the last stop is the market where you started.
The visa run put us back in Chiang Mai at 8pm, and unfortunately we missed the last songtaew back to Mae On. However, there are plenty of transportation choices at the bus terminal. We took a tuk tuk for 300 baht and only 30 minutes later we were back at Jira safe and sound, with our new 30-day visa.
