Visa Run - Mae Hong Son

Yesterday I took the day off from training and made the 240km round trip to Mae Hong Son on the border with Myanmar (Burma) to go to the Thai immigration office to apply for a 1 month Visa extension.
Essentially if i get this extension on each of my 3 entries i get an extra 3 months in the country. So 6 months becomes 9.

It was a beautiful ride through the mountains. So many steep climbs and decents and some truly amazing scenery. Problem with having the inevitable wait at the immigration office meant you can't really stop to enjoy the views. You need to crack on because before you know if you have turn around and head back and you don't want to run out of day light. Largely because the temperature drops so much.
It's a weird balancing act between setting off late enough that the dark side of each mountain has had some sun to dry off the road but not so late you are riding back in the dark. Wet slippy roads on these off road knobbly tyres is so sketchy.
I almost got it spot on but was glad to have a hoodie, gloves and tracksuit bottoms for the last hour. I set of at 10:30am and got back around 18:30. Like I say its just pure twisting mountain roads the entire way. I was making a good pace and it still took all day.

Before heading to the Immigration office make sure you have passport photos of yourself to hand over and photocopies of each important page of your passport relating to your stay in Thailand. I didn't know about this and finding places to get this done in Mae Hong Son wasn't particularly difficult but it was a little stressful and meant I had to queue twice which was a big waste of time.

My Visa extension was approved and with the fee of 1900 baht paid they stamped my passport and sent me on my way. Next visa excursion will be 18th January where i actually need to leave and re-enter the country. Need to do a little research but i believe that is a ride to Chiang Rai and then across into Laos.

Although these Visa runs are annoying they do force you to adventure and by bike you end up seeing some weird and wonderful places. The photos can't do it justice. There is this on valley the Mae Hong Son road (1095) that is straight out of Avatar.  Giant flat faced mountains sprouting out of nowhere with a layer of vertically growing trees. Like giants teeth.

All in all, a successful trip.