Never go to Myanmar

No I'm not racist...

well maybe a little..

but this little adventure to the border..

has put me off from ever visiting Myanmar....

As part of our north Thailand tour,

we stopped at Mae Sai,

nothing much here except a few rows of shops 

and the immigration border

 not sure why they call it the city of the golden triangle..

as we just came from there...

 anyway, at the time

It sounded like a good idea to add another chop to my passport..

little did I know it would cost me so much...

When have you ever heard of paying for entrance to a country

and it costs USD10!...
I'm sure if you're a westerner, this is no big deal to you

but to me this is ridiculous...

and worse than that they someone find the equivalent fee to be 500 baht

if you have no USD....

right how gracious and grossly overvalued conversion..

right.. like any conversation fee would cost nearly 200 baht..

worse of all is of course

the officials cannot speak english...

and have no idea where this fee comes from..

and they have the guts to tell us that 

is just the way it's always been done...

and their officers are mostly there less than a year...

how trained could they be then...?

anyway after 3 hours of being tossed back and forth between immigrations

(the Thai's wouldn't let us back in without a Myanmar chop)

and they Myanmar officials wouldn't just chop our passports 

without paying the fee...

and after claiming to not to be able to find the document

(later stating they cannot show it to us)

and even later still saying cannot make a copy...

but we can photograph it..

It still doesn't seem kosher... 

anyone knows how to read Myanmar?...

(or is it called Myanmease...?)

so after all that fuss,

we paid the so called entry fee for this cheap piece of paper

while they hold our passports...

that would only be returned when we pass back this entry permit a we leave

(meaning that if you seriously wanted to cross in to the country

you could only leave through the same immigration
and you would be travelling without any official documents...

fishy no...?)

I must say that crossing over it did not look that different than thai

but being bitter puts on quite shit coloured glasses...

even this billboard made me scoff...

(that is called casual wear?!?)

 and after a quick tour

and the hassle from the cabbies for a tour

and even offers of women...

we returned to Thailand..

and I just had to take the photo of the Northen most point in Thailand

 that had its own marker and everything

 only to have to point out that beyond the sign

there's still this part of Thailand...

So which is the northern most point then...?

So I feel cheated... 

not only of USD10

but that I didn't see anything that was real...

*sigh*