The trip back from Mae Sot was boring.  There were no more open seats for Green Bus so I was told to wait and I could take another bus and pay on the bus.  I wasn’t happy about this as I didn’t want to ride a janky bus in the mountains.  I debated trying to get a taxi to the station where the minivans pick up.  Then a minivan pulls up and they tell me to get in.  It took me, for free, to the minivan station.  Ha!  You’d think I’d learn by now that it will just magically happen.  The minivan to Tak cost 78 baht ($2.20).  Thai people’s systems for remembering things, getting around, and keeping everything organized are crude and basic, but they work.  If we tried to operate this way in America, the whole country would fall apart.

To make up for how easy that was, the Tak bus station was not easy.  No one would sell me a ticket.  They kept pointing to the next ticket sales window and saying stuff.  One lady told me to sit down and 1:00.  So I waited in the bus station for 2 hours, completely lost to what was going on.  Then at 5 til 1:00 I got up and went back to the lady that told me to sit down.  We went back to the pointing to other windows game.  I tried to look as clueless and helpless as possible.  Finally she pointed to a bus.  I went to it and the other window lady looked at me like she was annoyed I wanted to get on the bus.  Then she said 30 baht and let me on the bus.  I could have sat there all day and never gotten help.

Noi picked me up from the bus and took me to lunch and then home.  After that I got a massage and it was the guy which is good.  It was so painful.  My calves and hamstrings are a little better, but you might as well take my shoulders off an throw them away because they aren’t working right anymore.  He showed me stretches to do.  It wasn’t new information, they were stretches I already knew, but it was a huge “…..duh….. I should be doing stretches every day”.  So, a new resolve to do stretches every day.

Here’s a couple of cool photos of the market when it’s empty.  It looks abandoned and you would assume no one uses it anymore, but come Tuesday and Friday evenings, this is full of people, food and other things to buy.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore