We were up early to walk the 3km to the bus terminal, stopping en route for breakfast.
The bus to Mae Sot left at 08.30 with a number of stops en route. The final part of the journey was steep roads at a slow speed! The scenery changed to hills and tall limestone pinnacles.
We quickly transferred to a Thai shared taxi with the other European travellers from our bus. The taxi took a short time to reach the Thai / Myanmar friendship bridge. We grabbed our bags from the roof and made our way across the bridge. We were stamped out of Thailand at one window and into Myanmar by 2 laid back immigration officers.
We were then greeted by a man asking us where we were going. We said we needed a bus to Yangon leaving that night. He took us to a travel agent, who booked us a bus leaving in an hour. Darryl went to use the ATM but found 4 didn't accept any cards. Finally one did and we were able to pay for the bus.
Next we were taken to the big bus in a car and waited, finding out that Myanmar is half an hour behind Thailand, so we had longer than we thought! Then we were off to Yangon! The road was bad and the bus slow in the beginning because of potholes. There was 'relaxing' local music from the speaker above our heads. We think we had one of the only working speakers as it was quite loud.
We had various stops through the night. One was at a restaurant where we met a little baby and her mother. Her mum showed us that her baby had 6 fingers, as she couldn't explain in English. We shared a table with them and we all ate hard crispy noodles which were like crisps.
Back on the bus the music was replaced by a local movie with a distinct lack of Oscar winning performances. Overall the bus journey was comfortable and we slept well, especially when the road improved to a brand new 2 lane highway!
