Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

Escape to Myanmar?

An escape.  Or rather, an attempted escape.

On a trip completely paid for by my employer, I was shuttled off to the north of Thailand for a long weekend.  The highlight of the trip for me was to be in range of the Golden Triangle and the Burma border crossing at Mae Sai.  Everywhere else we would go, I had already been to.

Arriving at the border, we were supposed to be able to leave our passports and pass into the border town.  No foreigners are allowed to proceed onward from that town, but we would still get around an hour to explore.

Leaving our passports with the Thai authorities, we were on a bridge over a stream in a literal no man’s land.  Getting to the Burma crossing, we were asked to provide our passports.  The same passports we had just left behind.  On top of that, they wanted an additional 500 baht or US$15.

This resulted in quite the standoff between our Thai boss and the Burmese border guard.  By the time we actually found out what we needed to do, there wasn’t enough time to even bother.  Instead, most of us went into the duty free store and had a look around.  Zhou, a Chinese coworker, and I both got a can of Chinese beer and had them outside overlooking the stream before heading back across the bridge into Thailand.