Thailand doesn't strike me as a country where things get going very very early. Supermarkets and malls open very late, compared with many western countries. That said, they do close fairly late too (especially malls). However, in Bangkok many locals have to wake up early to beat the traffic to get to work on time. Wet markets and 7-11 aside, you won't find anything much open before around 7-9am though, but Mae Sai being so quiet even at 8.30am is proof that the city functions largely on border trade and it's thus very quiet when the border is closed. I'd imagine things are back to their usual level of activity now that the border has re-opened.
Cool - thanks for the additional information. We had just come from a village in Chiang Rai (Mae Salong) that got going early, close to sunrise - so, that’s why my perspective was skewed. However, that’s a place where agriculture (primarily tea growing) is one of the biggest parts of their local economy. So, they have to be more concerned with daylight hours, thus wake earlier.
The level of mask wearing doesn't determine whether a border is open or shut. Most Thais still wear their masks even as of May 2023, but the political situation in Myanmar is why the border wasn't open when you went (though it is now, having opened up around February 20, 2023).
Thank you for all of this. When I asked people in Mae Sai about the border closing, they told me that it had remained closed continuously since the beginning of the pandemic, leading me to believe the continued closure was still due to the virus situation.
@@maxwell.carver Aha, I see. No, that's not the case, because at the time, the only country that hadn't reopened its borders was Myanmar. If you had attempted to cross from Chiang Rai to one of the two international border crossings that province shares with Laos at the time you went (late October, 2022), it would have been straightforward as those border crossings reopened back in June 2022. The first land borders to open, though with some restrictions, were those with Malaysia on April 1, 2022, but Cambodia soon followed and then Laos reopened most of its borders on May 9, 2022 and the remainder of the international crossings on June 1, 2022. So it was only Myanmar that remained closed, until they finally started to reopen some crossings, beginning with Ranong-Kawthoung in the south, initially for Thais and Burmese only back in November 2022 and then everyone, around January 2023. Mae Sot-Myawaddy followed on Jan 12, 2023 (but has closed again to 3rd country foreign nationals due to fighting as of April 7, 2023) and since February 20, 2023 at Mae Sai-Tachilek. In short: the Burmese political situation is what has caused all this and it's basically a case of deja vous as Burmese land borders have a history of opening and closing going back decades now.
@@therock8224 Appreciate all of the above! Always want to make sure everything’s accurate and factual, so I appreciate you adding the above to the comment thread - thank you!
@@maxwell.carver You're very welcome! Yes, the last few months have been a very confusing time in many ways (though not as confusing and strange as during Covid times) and while things have largely returned to normal, some questions may arise with respect to countries like Myanmar, which seemingly haven't. That's because of the February 2021 coup there, hence why things are still weird there.
@@therock8224 May I ask - are you Thai? A foreigner in Thailand? If neither, curious as to where your expertise on the region derives - clearly very knowledgeable.
