Met Sally for a drink in the evening, I'm pretty sure that's literally all that happened today. Rainy Bangkok is rubbish.
Day 113 (Tuesday 5th) - Rainy Bangkok
Marie had to go off and get her passport from the embassy, and due to the nightmare that is Thai Immigration it was decided she should come with me down to Ranong, where we could hop over the border to Myanmar/Burma (it seems like people just pick one and run with it, Burmese people included). It pissed down all day, meaning Bangkok was even steamier than usual, so all I managed to achieve was posting a load of stuff I don't need (6kg in all, my bag feels light as a feather) to Australia. I met Marie at the Southern bus terminal, which is confusingly located in NE Bangkok, where we embarked upon an 8 hour bus journey to Ranong. This journey was involuntarily accompanied by a feature length Thai Soap Opera on the TV, which we just about managed to block out with a combination of an earplug in one ear and Ricky Gervais in the other.
Day 114 (Wednesday 6th) - Kung Hei Fat Choi to you all!
After a few failed attempts at sleep on the bus, we were dozing when we arrived in Ranong, meaning that we failed to get off at the bus station - we were sitting at the front and consequently failed to notice everyone getting off. This meant we found ourselves haggling with motorbike taxi drivers at 6 in the morning, to take us back to the bus station. Once there, we grabbed a room for 3 hours sleep, which was occasionally disrupted by firecrackers going off outside, to celebrate Chinese New Year. This was more than a little unwelcome at dawn.
The guesthouse we were in organises Visa runs to Burma, which made things much more convenient for our exhausted selves - the service included a car to the immigration office where we were stamped out of Thailand, then we got a car back through town to the pier despite being officially over the border already, where we hopped into a boat driven by a couple of 12-14 year-old kids. These kids almost immediately started offering us cheap Burmese goods, such as Rum, Gin, fags and Viagra. Due to a misunderstanding on quantities, we ended up with a bottle of Myanmar Rum and Myanmar Gin (both manufactured by the Myanmar Peace Group, apparently) for about ฃ2.50 each, which is pretty good. The kids let me drive the boat for a bit too; it was a longtail boat, and I must admit it was pretty difficult - the engine was really heavy, and near impossible to swing around enough to steer, these kids must be so strong. On arrival in Burma, having passed various immigration points which were just shacks on stilts in the river, we were hustled along the road to a shop where I bought a Myanmar Beer, which I had been advised to try - it was by far the best beer I have tasted so far, even beating Beer Lao.
On our return to the boat we were joined by a Burmese kid called Ali, who went a bit quiet when we asked why he was heading to Thailand, and he kind of hid as we passed the immigration points. He was smoking and had Tattoos, yet when I offered him some beer he claimed he was "too young", and told us he was 12, which was a bit of a surprise. We got back to town just in time for the boat to Koh Chang, everyone in town seems to know about our trip, I guess 17 Farang all at once is quite a lot for the island to handle. The journey was uneventful, but our arrival was awesome. Everything has to be shipped in here, there is no electricity apart from the generators, and huge blocks of ice are needed to keep the drinks and food cold, all brought in on the passenger boats. Also, the beach here is half white sand, half black, and is covered in bubble crabs!
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