It’s best to push the pen to experiences while they still tingle on the skin, but I’ve had some interruptions over the last two weeks, so here I sit trying to reignite the droll minutiae of Visa Run II.
We like to create picnics when the refrigerator holds only a shriveled baked potato and a glass of sour milk, but it’s not always easy and this particular visa run was hardly transformed into a picnic. The first visa run was a new experience for A, so showing her the tangled ropes took some of the sting out of it. Virgin encounters, even bad ones, give up surprises, at least. We gritted our teeth for the second run and, because we were bold enough to bully and slough ourselves into better seats in the van, it wasn’t as physically taxing as the first run.
One arrives at Mike’s Bikes to catch the van at 5:30 in the morning. Mike, an affable Australian chap, runs the “Big Boat” visa run daily and it’s profitable. He’s been doing it for years. The whole deal – a long ride to Ranong Immigration, with a stop for breakfast – a boat ride across the bay to a Burmese island and back – whatever payola the Burmese extract for processing the visas – and the ride back to Chalong, dinner included, costs 1,500 baht (roughly, 37 dollars). The van holds eleven passengers, so this little enterprise cops slightly over 400 dollars a day for Mike and his wife. I’m guessing that their costs run around 50%, but it runs every day of every week in the year and there are rarely fewer than ten passengers, so I estimate that this little enterprise nets 70 to 80K a year. That’s big bucks in this country.
But Mike’s main interest is tinkering with motorcycles and cars. He rehabilitates, rents and sells used vehicles. A sign in front of his place reads “Cars wanted – dead or alive” and he means it, because he’s a great mechanic – well… at least good enough to get a post-mortem vehicle from his dooryard to yours. ‘Caveat emptor’ is the rule in these parts and there are no legal avenues available to help you if you’ve been taken for a short ride between dooryards.
[Click on any picture to see a larger image.]
A very seedy motorcycle with a manikin in a bikini dangles from guy wires at the entrance to Mike’s Bikes. One hardly notices it during the day, but it’s weird to confront it before the sun comes up and, in a way, it telegraphs the bizarre nature of the day you are facing.
A friendly Thai fellow, Pot, who drives the van for the daily visa run has been with Mike for years and knows every inch of the highway to Ranong. I simply can’t imagine doing that drive day in and day out, but that’s what he does. Like most Thai vehicles, the van is protected by a religious icon – in this case, script from the Koran. Pot is Muslim. Mike’s Thai wife is Buddhist and I suspect that Mike reads his prayers from an automobile parts manual.
Not far into the mainland, the bus pulls up to a restaurant for breakfast. The wrong choice of food here can be lethal and make the day even more miserable than you know it’s going to be. You really have to know what you’re doing when you walk the line of trays along the buffet of greasy looking concoctions. Most of them are Fahrenheit 440 and, unlike tourist-user-friendly Phuket, no one speaks enough English to help you out. One spoonful of the wrong dish can make you pray for death. Tex/Mex and Mexican heats are merely Purgatory next to the Hell of many traditional southern Thai dishes.
Surviving breakfast (not all of us), we get back in the van and head onward to our mission in Ranong. Ranong is a seaport city and I get the sense that people who hangout within 100 meters of the docks in every seaport city in the world speak the same language and understand and share a secret code that will never be broken by the rest of us. They watch us landlubbers (‘flatlanders’ they called us in Maine) with wizened amusement that can make you cringe and feel lesser-than and vulnerable in an indefinable way. Scores of seafaring men seated on cement benches next to cement tables watch knowingly as our visa run van snakes its way through the dockside alleys leading to Ranong Immigration. It’s difficult to guess whether their eyes reflect jealousy, pity, or simply boredom.
There is an impressive shrine next to a sacred tree opposite Ranong Immigration. These shrines were only intense curiosities when I first saw them many years ago, but I now have great respect for them and I’m beginning to understand their powers. Focus within seems to be facilitated by totems without and they are powerful tools. Faith in external forces are springboards for individual capabilities and, voodoo, mumbo-jumbo, or not, they activate right action, hope and the willingness to deal with whatever is on one’s plate. But another thought crosses my mind… I talked to favorite trees when I was a kid. They were my friends in the Connecticut forests I roamed after school every day. I didn't festoon them with flowers and ribbons, but they were my totems. They helped me in many ways and, as I’m writing this, I’m asking myself when it was that I last talked to a tree.
But I digress… We filed out of Ranong Immigration with Thai exit stamps in our passports (officially out of Thailand and in a limbo of country-less existence). We immediately handed them over to Pot, our driver. He would, in turn, hand them over to a scrambling smuggler with a sack slung over his shoulder when we get to the pier for the “Big Boat Visa Run.” This questionable fellow will be in charge of our destinies for the next few hours. It’s unnerving. It gets more unnerving when, once on the boat, he approaches you and pulls out porn flicks and Viagra pills and tries to sell them to you. This is the guy with my passport in his sack!
Big Boat
Our boat.
At least it's not this boat.
Our skipper.Wrong: We are herded into the same small, “big boat” that ferried us the last time. Only this time it is monsoon season and the seas are rough, sending salt spray into the cabin. Many of our fellow visa run companions are obviously seasick, but we all seem to hold our own – miserably. The gilded statues and shrines lining the bay are familiar now, but they give us heathens little comfort and they are somehow dispossessed of their majesty.
Some of us are regretting our breakfast choices.
We arrive in Burma for our ten-minute stay and smiling falcons, the hapless Burmese kids trying to squeeze what little they can from visa run visitors, flock around us. They understand that we are not tourists – tourists never visit this dreary Burmese island. They want to sell us cigarettes, drugs and porn flicks. A young guy with a disarming smile tugs at my shirt sleeve, waving a small paper bag, saying, “Man from boat told me give you this!” I look questioningly into the bag. Pills marked “Viagra” are inside. My white, still-libido-endowed whiskers are insulted. I wave him off. We never encounter this sort of desperate onslaught in Thailand. It’s disconcerting. You want to take all the kids home – give them a better life – somehow show them you care about their plight, but what can you do? Sit them down and tell them that their government is rotten? Tell them to rebel? Get your throat slit for your efforts? “Jane… it’s a jungle out there!”
The Burmese shore. The sign on the building in the background reads, 'Honey Bear Hotel.' You can rent a room for one hour - know what I mean?
Their smiles bring tears to my eyes.
Like Thailand, Burma sports many remnants of Portugese architecture.
Burmese Immigration Office.
Bridge to a hopeless pier.
Boy selling peanuts.I want to take him home and gently wipe the prayer paint off his face. More on the plight of Burmese citizens can be found here in a BBC News article.
This guy has drugs, porn flicks and our passports in his sack, but he can't be all bad, 'cause he's obviously a Yankee fan.
Thai border patrol outpost.
So we get back on the boat and roll our way back across the bay with our entry/exit Burma stamps in our passports, cruise by the floating Thai border patrol station (something we didn’t see on the last visa run) and float back into the pier at Ranong past many docked squid boats.
Squid fishing is a rather odd thing here. The squid boats are flanked with mounted, high intensity floodlights. We see their glowing halos way offshore in Phuket every night, but this is the first time I’ve seen one up close. Evidently, the lights attract the squid to the surface and then they are caught in nets. Squid is a favorite food here.
We march back into Ranong Immigration and receive our reentry stamps. Mission accomplished. Then back into the van for the long ride back to Phuket. There is a dinner stop along the way (included in the fee) and the offerings are markedly better than breakfast, although one is expected to share the feast with resident cats and dogs.
The mood in the van for the rest of the journey is noticeably better, but knees, elbows, necks and ankles complain miserably.
Enough is enough and two is two too many. We have vowed to go to either Singapore or Cambodia by air on our next visa run in October. Of course, we are only doing that to avoid putting another redundant post on this blog. So wave goodbye to Mike’s Bikes Biker Bitch. We won't see her on Visa Run III.
[ Link to our first visa run is HERE ]
