Myanmar for a day

Our run to The Union Of Myanmar was almost seamless. Nathan thought he had a pretty good gig going when I somehow distracted the immigration officer long enough for him to stamp Nathan into the country without paying his entry fee. I extracted a promise from him to treat me to a nice dinner for having saved him fifteen dollars. We walked down crowded alleys where among other things vendors were selling cheap cigarettes and Viagra. You could immediately tell that the standard of living in Burma is much lower than Thailand. Lots of children begging. We struck up a conversation with a man who escaped Burma on a smuggling boat in 93 to NYC. He and the 300 other escapees were busted about 15 minutes after reaching port. He sheepishly admitted that his first 6 months in the US were in jail, where he incidentally became very good at chess. After our pineapple milkshakes were finished we took ourselves back to the border. It turned out that our little 'distract the immigration officer' bit had a downside. When we got to the Thai officer he took one look at Nathan's passport and said "no good." he grabbed mine and said it was fine. Apparently in addition to forgetting to collect Nathan's entry fee, the immigration officer also stamped his passport twice, indicating that Nathan had entered Myanmar twice in a single day without legally departing. We got it sorted out and I got a green curry dinner date. We met some Brits who know someone looking for English teachers in Chiang Rai so tomorrow we're going to rent some bikes and stick close to the City so that we can go to a British quiz night at a local bar to schmooze.