i have to tell you the truth.

After this trip, we will be heading from a little border town up to Bangkok and then on to Chiang Mai for some meetings and counseling appointments before we head back to Mae Sot. We have debated our options for getting around to all these places. We generally use the bus, which isn’t too slow, relatively safe, and significantly cheaper. There are flights between many of these places, but they are usually two to four times as expensive as the bus.

On many occasions, we have also considered which is safer. We see quite a few bus accidents along the side of the road, and it does feel very fast and out of control at times. But, if we were to wreck, there is a decent chance of us coming out alive.

There are fewer airplane accidents, but it can often feel equally as fast and out of control. The landings are particularly scary and rough, each and every time. And with a plane, an accident would likely mean immediate death.

So then the bus is better, right? Cheaper, and more of a chance of coming out alive. But do I want to be taken to a local hospital somewhere along the road in Thailand? I’m not sure.

For this trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, we also had the opportunity for a train. While the trains aren’t very dependable on their time scales, we aren’t really on a tight timescale per say. We thought it might be a fun opportunity to try it out.

Unfortunately, when you Google the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, the time tables don’t come up first. Instead, we found article after article about the recent derailings on this particular path from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. From January to September, there were ten or twelve derailed trains on the path from Bangkok to Chiang Mai!

That seems a high statistic to overcome. And even if our train overcomes it, I don’t think I’d sleep through the night as intended.

We were back to square one, deciding between the bus and plane. And the bus wins most every time. We’re pretty cheap people.

So that brings us to last night, when we were getting Yim’s help to look up the bus times from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. She pulled up the time schedules, which showed our options of a VIP bus, first class, second class, and then another category we didn’t understand. She told us not to take that one, because it wasn’t government run. The VIP, first class, and second class buses are all under the government company.

“You can look at the statistics, like the train. The government bus has a good record and few accidents. But look after you go.”

{That good, hmm? So good that I should look after we go?}

“…And the government bus will give you 300 if you have an accident.”

“They pay you back 300 baht if you have accident?”
(Note that this is about $10, and about half of the price of the original ticket. It seemed like an odd apology to me.)

“No, 300,000 baht. But if you are already dead, to your family. But they have very good standards. The drivers have to take tests very often, and they change the driver every six hours. And they are not drunk.
…Well, they are drunk on holiday, but not while they are working!”

At this point I’m sure we were giving Yim our traditional response to conversations like this: laughter and a little bit of shock, to which she exasperated, “What?! I just have to tell you the truth!”