Border Run

Well, tomorrow is our first border run! That means we've been here 3 months already. I can't believe it! Every 90 days during our first year we have to leave the country. Once Damien gets his permanent work visa we won't have to do this any more. But for now, they make us leave. Not sure why. The closest place to go is up to Mae Sai, Thailand and cross over to Myanmar. So this is what we will do. There is a small "market" on the other side of the border but I'm not sure if we will go. We've been told the people can be pretty "pushy". Lots of children and people offering inappropriate things. Lots of tourists taking advantage of people in desperate situations. It's incredibly sad, and in some ways you want to buy something just to help the people out a little, but in other ways it would probably be pretty hard to navigate a market like that with the three kids.

It's about a 4.5 hour drive so it's too much to do it all in one day. The border probably takes about an hour so 4.5 hours up, 1 hour at the border and 4.5 hours back is just too much at once. So we're staying at a hotel in Chiang Rai on the way there. We'll get up on Saturday morning, cross the border and then drive back to Chiang Mai. Hopefully everything will go well at the border. We have to have a certain amount of money and the bills need to be PERFECT. If you think about it you can pray that everything goes smoothly.

Next border run is in March. We're planning to go to Hong Kong! Damien has always wanted to go and since we have to leave the country anyway we might as well go somewhere different. Hong Kong is close so plane tickets are cheap. We thought about going this time, but since it's Christmas time it's much more expensive. We're excited!