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Published: September 14th 2012
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This was an incredible day, busy, but definitely one for the memory of a lifetime books. We drove up to Mae Sai, a town on the border with Myannmar (still called Burma here). Our guide helped us fast track across the border for a few hours of sightseeing. It was raining more today than any other day, but none of us going to Myannmar cared. ( I'll still never get the people that choose to stay in Mae Sai shopping).
We rode motorized rickshaws around town, mud, ruts and all, but it was great fun. We stopped to talk to local family and visit a school, although we couldn't go in, but did learn about the education which is not compulsory and children from the hill tribes are brought down for school at the government's expense.
But the highlight was when we visited a local shaman and the guide asked him to look at Ernest's legs. He rolled down his socks, felt his knee and upper leg and said E had bad blood. He wanted to bleed E as they still do but our guide stopped him. Instead he said some prayer,got some sort of black herbal powder, put
it in his cheek to mix with saliva, then blew on E' knees and put the black whatever on his knee. E did say his foot felt a lot better in a few minutes but the next day we were back to normal. Well it worked for one day anyway.
We visited a temple with many women whose face was marked with limestone. This is common among some tribes in Myannmar saying it helps with humidity. So a couple of us got marked as well.
After crossing back to Thailand, we headed off to the Mekong River, the section called the Golden Triangle where the borders of Thailand, Myannmar and Laos all meet at the river. We took a boat over to Laos, even though it was just a village set up for tourists with no border control.
Our guide took us over to a whiskey table and bought a bottle of the local moonshine, made with rice, for us to taste. Being Southern Appalchian redneck hillbilly, and having had moonshine before, I figure I could take it. It was actually not to bad after you got over the burn, but not as strong as the GA
moonshine. He next had try a snake whiskey. In tis bottle were a snake, a scorpion, and who knows what else, fermenting in moonshine. It was nasty! So I had to have another shot of moonshine to get rid of the taste. Then some guy on the tour asked me to have a shot with him, some thing about not wanting to drink alone 😊 so I had to help him out.
After seeing a bear cub rescued after his mother died, we returned to the boat on the other side of the village. Our guide steered me to a counter to get a tourist passport stamp. He also slyly got the guybehind the counter to give me a sample of snake whiskey, this time with a King Cobra! It was actually much better than the sort of sweet. The guy behind the counter thought this was hilarious us so he offered me a shot of the next jar, tiger penis! I wasn't too excited about drinking this after the tiger temple, but there was now peer pressure. It was nasty thankfully so I wouldn't be talked into another.
After such a full day, we called it after
dinner.
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