Chapter 54

The Visa Run

A half a lifetime ago when I was in my mid to late thirties I owned a Triumph
Tiger110 motorbike, complete with dustbin fairing which almost completely
shrouded the front wheel.
I liked it. I liked it so much that one summer I drove it from my home, near
Dunstable to the Isle of Skye, a distance of 750 miles in one day.

Now, of course, this was mid-summer and the daylight hours were long.
As I recall it I started at dawn around half past five and arrived in Glen Brittle
on the Isle of Skye as it was getting dark around eleven pm.

Most of the journey, certainly up to the Scottish border was done on
motorways where I suspect I cruised at eighty to ninety miles an hour.
The rest was rather slower but still probably averaging more than fifty
miles per hour.

The journey was a delight. There were two slight problems. One was that this
vertical twin 650 cc engine vibrated to such an extent that every hundred
miles I had to stop and prise my numbed fingers from the handlebar grips
and spend ten minutes massaging them back to life. The other was that at
approximately these same intervals my seat gave up its unequal struggle with
the motorbike’s seat and rather like my fingers had to be coaxed back to life.
Another minor problem was the wind buffet.There was a screen on the fairing
but enough wind escaped over or round it to be pretty uncomfortable.

But hey ho I was young and it was all a challenge and serious fun.

It was such fun that a year later I repeated the exercise on a brand new
Yamaha XS750. A shaft drive 3 cylinder four-stroke 750 cc touring bike.
The pleasures were similar with the advantage of a silky smooth engine and no
numbed hands and the downside of having no fairing, hence a lot of wind
buffet. The full face helmet certainly helped here.
Again it was all serious fun - In fact on this occasion I travelled with my ten
year old son on the pillion seat.

I have very happy memories of these trips and, in fact, they were the main
reason for my choosing to go on the visa run to Ranong from Phuket on my
110cc Honda Icon motor scooter.

For those of you who are unaware of what a visa run is I’ll try to explain in brief.

The Thai visa in my passport lasts for twelve months. However for reasons
which are shrouded in mystery, at least as far as I’m concerned, it is
necessary to exit Thailand at ninety day intervals to have it revalidated.

The nearest place to do this from Phuket is to go to Ranong, a distance , by
road, of just over three hundred km (each way).
Get the boat across to Burma/Myanmar to have a Burmese stamp in your
passport and then get your visa revalidated as you return to Ranong.

The usual way to do this is to go to one of the visa run specialist companies
and hurtle up to Ranong in a minibus, leap on a boat to Burma and back
and then hurtle back down to Phuket in the minibus.

The total elapsed time for this escapade is about twelve hours, and it costs
about ฿1500.

I don’t like being sandwiched into a high speed minibus so I wondered if it could
be done using my scooter.I surfed the net and the consensus seemed to be that
it was all a bit complicated to arrange by oneself and that one was likely to be
run off the road by mad drivers, ripped-off by boatmen and forced to buy
$10 dollar bills at extortionate rates, a $10 bill being required on the Myanmar
side to facilitate the passport stamping.

It did all sound just a little bit intimidating. However I suggested to my friend
khun Bee that she and I used her car, or one of the ones that she rents out, to
have a jolly up to Myanmar. She agreed, but subsequently changed her mind,
which I must confess irritated me. She very helpfully said that she could
organise me a trip in one of the minbuses. I told her she must be joking,
since the two objects of my suggestion were 1)To be with her and 2) to avoid
the dreaded claustophobic minibuses.

This rather petulant outburst, subsequently, I think, proved to be the turning
point in our relationship which has headed down hill rather rapidly, probably in a
terminal fashion.

But that is another story.

Bloody mindedness then took over.

Last Friday at ten to seven in the morning I headed for Ranong on my 110cc Honda Icon.
Now the Icon was designed as a boy racer machine for the youth of Thailand.
Its major advantage is that it is quite low geared so that I can usually get
away from traffic lights fast enough to avoid the standard melee.
I guess its top speed is sacrificed for this but I knew that it would cruise
comfortably at eighty (kilometers per hour that is).
I have owned this particular machine for three years and it was already a
couple of years old when I bought it.
However, although it is looking a bit tatty it has been totally reliable.

" You can’t do that trip on a little bike like that", said the pundits," it will
overheat and blow up the engine. You should use a bigger water-cooled bike."

An hour later I had crossed the Sarasin bridge and was well clear of Phuket
Island. My navigation consisted of looking for signposts with a 4 on them
(I had done my homework) and hoping to see a sign saying “Ranong this
way”. Remarkably it worked very well with only one minor exception when I
realised I was heading towards Krabbi A quick U-turn solved that.

The first intimation that this trip might not be quite as easy as I hoped was
when in a déjà vu moment I realised that my seat was getting a little uncomfortable.
The second was when I spotted in my mirror a large bus travelling at some
ridiculous speed up the outside lane. It reached me at the apex of a long right-
hand corner It cut across the inside lane and then across my bows in the
motorbike/hard-shoulder lane I braked hard and its rear end missed me by
a few feet.
By the time I stopped for fuel about a hundred km. out I could hardly get off
the saddle as my posterior felt bruised and battered. However a swig of water,
a couple of biscuits and five minutes of vigorous exercise soon had me up and
running.
It was soon after that that I saw the first Ranong signs on the mile, or should I
say kilometer, posts.
This was great as it gave me the fun of doing mental arithmetic, as each km.
ticked by, converting kms. to miles.
Well one has to keep the brain active. Use it or lose it and all that.

After five hours Ranong appeared in sight and almost immediately I spotted a
small blue sign indicating a left turn to “Immigration”. Four km. up the road
after another signed left turn, lo and behold, there on the right was a large
building marked “Immigration”. It was closed. I assumed for lunch since it was about midday.
I waited patiently for twenty minutes, which gave me time to recover from the
journey only to be told, when they opened, that I was at the wrong place.
“Go to the Pier – you can’t miss it” they said. I went to the pier and I couldn’t find it.
Eventually after some attempts at speaking Thai I discovered that I was standing right by it.
It wasn’t labelled “Immigration” but, if I remember correctly “One Stop”.

From then on it was easy. The Thai customs stamped my passport for leaving
the country a boat plier asked me for ฿200 for the trip, a half an hour later
the Myanmar customs relieved me of my $10 (which I had bought from a
friend in Phuket) and in what seemed like no time at all I was back having my
visa being extended for another three months in Ranong.

Three hours after arriving in Ranong I was heading back towards Phuket.
I was a little concerned as I didn’t want to have to do too much driving in the
dark and it was already three o’clock. So I decided to up my cruising speed
from eighty kph. to ninety. The engine did not complain.
With about a hundred km. to go it got dark. This was a problem.
I had no goggles – I had lost them a couple of weeks ago and I was driving
with dark glasses to keep things out of my eyes.
The problem was this: If I kept my dark glasses on I had to go slow because I
couldn’t see where I was going. If I took them off I had to go slow because I
was getting too much, insect laden, wind in my eyes. The result was that my
speed for some time went down to forty kph., a speed which any self-respecting
cyclist could better.
Fortunately from about eighty km out there was good street lighting.
This meant I could wear my dark glasses though it was a bit iffy during the odd
streetlightless patches of road.

Well there you have it. It could be done, despite the worst fears of the local farang population.
So the question is “would I do it again”. Given similar circumstances the answer is, of course “yes”.
I thoroughly enjoyed the trip despite some physical discomfort, and the sense
of achievement will remain.

Mind you the other question which I still haven’t got an answer for is
“What would I have done if I had broken down?”


Footnote: I have conveniently not pointed out that whilst in Glen Brittle on the
Isle of Skye all those years ago with the Triumph I hooked a cattle grid with
the loose centre stand.
The bike stopped having travelled about six inches, I measured the bend in the
cattle grid.
The front wheel carried on for a further six inches (banana-ing the front forks!).
I carried on for a further ten yards, neatly destroying the fairing screen whilst
in flight and my son flew over me to achieve another five yards or so, both of
us arriving on a patch of grass which had clearly been recently vacated by over-full cows.

The bike travelled back home in the back of our family Mazda estate, in pieces,
surrounded by sleeping children.