Spontanaeity Is Bliss

I've officially accomplished one of my life's goals, and managed it most admirably, I'd say: I took a spontaneous trip and booked it as I went!

Welcome to Mae Sot!

I packed my small backpack this morning before we left for school with the bare essentials, and after school I had our driver drop me off at the Airport Plaza, where I picked up a taxi to the bus station. At the bus station, I bought my ticket for Mae Sot, and miraculously only had to wait 15 minutes for a bus with air-conditioning. What luck!

The 6 hour trip was relatively uneventful, save for the random times we had to pull over at police checkpoints along the way and had to show our ID, and for me, valid visa. It was quite interesting that of the 3 checkpoints, I was only asked for ID at two and the officer checked my visa at only one. They seemed much more interested in the young Thai teens around me, which was the opposite of what I had expected. Perhaps it was because I'm wearing my Travel to Teach shirt today. Who knows?

The ride was really okay until the last hour or so, when we were flying through a range of mountains at top speed, and my stomach began doing backflips. I was just thankful that the dreadful Thai movie they had played at the very beginning was over. I couldn't understand what they were saying, of course, but it seemed to involve a plot where the man's girlfriend was in a vegetative coma and he cared for her at his house, but then a court eventually decided to pull the plug. Much like Terri Schiavo, I thought. Anyway, the annoying part was that this movie had the most unfortunate set of sound effects ever: they repeatedly played this tinny birthday song ringtone over and over and over and over. Apparently it was some important sound to her so the guy replayed it again and again to try to wake her up.

It was cool to see the Thai countryside on the way here. I haven't gotten to see much of that before now. I'm excited for tomorrow so that I can see Mae Sot properly (it got dark almost as soon as I got here). I'm staying at Ban Thai guest house, which is a row of about six houses converted into a hotel, and they're really nice rooms with porches and a cool reception house to hang out in. The people here are nice, too. And they have two tiny kittens that Maggie would stalk for hours, I'm sure.

Right now I'm heading off to find some food--all I could find to buy at the bus station was a bag of cookies and that's just not doing it for me.