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Published: August 7th 2008
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The Welcome Mat
Obligatory border crossing snap Our first night in Thailand was unremarkable, except we noticed a lot more smiles and a much nicer attitude towards foreigners in the north than we did in Bangkok.
The following morning, a few buses later, we found ourselves in Mae Sai facing the border with Myanmar and decided it was worth popping over to Tachileik for a look around.
Interesting Day Trip
'Pop' over is all you are actually allowed to do. The military government, ever so graciously permits tourists a one day pass from this border, as long as you hand over a crisp $10 bill each of course. (If you don't have dollars they charge you 500 Bhat which is more like $15 so try to take dollars). The government is so worried you might overstay your welcome, or stray past the limits of your one day pass that immigration actually hangs on to your passport while you are in their country. It is a slightly strange feeling to leave your most valuable document in the hands of a regime that is not known for its honesty or incorruptability... but leave them we did and we walked over the bridge to Myanmar. Cars had
Custard Noodles
What can we say...they were rgeat! to swap to the opposite side of the road and we stepped back in time by half an hour. (The Burmese go by the time in the capital which is far enough away to be in a different time zone to Mae Sai which operates on Bangkok time)
The Bhat is King
Being a border town it wasn't that different to Thailand really. Everyone spoke Burmese and/or Thai and in fact everything was priced in Bhat, not Kyat. So much so, that we actually struggled to even get a look at Kyat except in the tourist souvenir packages for sale at market stalls.
The people did look a little different though. The men particularly seemed a little bit more Indian than Asian and they all had really bad teeth, stained red from bettle nut chewing. There also seemed to be more poverty than in Thailand.
Everyone was very friendly and everyone was after your tourist Bhat! We were offered huge packets of cigarettes which look like famous brands, but turn out to be cheap fakes once you've handed over the cash. David was also offered Viagra pills and all number of other strange concoctions, plus
The Red Threat
Is our guide Muang Muang small, or is David just HUGE? plenty of porn which we found ourselves turning down every few minutes!
We decided to try and eat something typically Burmese, but all the restaurants and food stalls we could see seemed to be serving Thai food. In the end we settled for what we are calling 'Custard Noodles" as we hadn't seen these on sale in Thailand. This consisted of a fistfull of noodles covered with a huge dollop of hot yellow gloop, which looked just like custard, but thankfully wasn't as sweet. We piled peanuts and spring onions on top and tucked in. Pretty tasty actually.
Peter the Dictator
We decided to take a bit of a trip around town so hopped in a tuk-tuk with the only English speaking tout we could find and headed for the township of Dhammayon which is a temple and retreat. Muang Muang our guide was very informed about Burma and its past, but very frightened. He told us if we wanted to talk about the government we had to use a regular proper noun instead, so we settled on 'Peter'. He told us 'Peter' has spies everywhere, even in the monasteries now. He said a lot of
Shwedagon Paya
A copy of its original namesake in Rangoon people join the military as the only way to stay alive because they can not afford to feed themselves. In a country of around 47 million, 7 million are in the military. He also explained that once you join there is no way out until you retire at 70 and when you do retire the pension is so meagre that many old men have to look for work.
Golden Wishes
Next up was the Shwedagon Paya. A huge golden stupa on a hill with great views back over the border. You have to take your shoes off just to enter the compound. The idea is that you walk to the little shrine area representing the day of the week when you were born and make an offering. There is also a bell you can strike to make a wish, but it only comes true if you strike it an odd number of times.
From there we went through a local village where they were all drying peanuts and opening up the shells ready to sell. We passed on the chance to go to a Long-Neck Village because it sounded totally commercialised and after our experience with
Passports To Pleasure
Anybody who says we did all this just to drink a new beer is exagerating (slightly) the Mursi in Ethiopia we've vowed to never support anything like that again. (The Long-Neck are a tribe whose women start wearing huge metal rings around their necks from an early age, adding a new band every 6 months or so. The result is women with exceedingly long looking necks. The neck doesn't actually stretch - what really happens is the collar bone gets compressed and if you took all the bands off at once the woman's windpipe would collapse and she would die. The tradition is dying out, except in areas where paying tourists are keeping it alive.)
Next up was the Dragon Monastery which was not really much different from any other monastery, except the shape of Buddha's face was markedly different to the Thai Buddhas.
Shopping and Drinking don't mix
Our quick trip finished, we thought it only right we had a Myanmar Beer while we were there, which somehow turned into a beer, some ice cream and a tasty fried snack. Oh well!
We did do a little shopping too: a few trinkets for the Christmas tree, a joke pack of cards with the faces of the wanted men in Iraq
and Afghanistan and, due to a total lack of any clean washing, new underwear for Tracey!
Then, the clock ticking fast towards the border closing, we made it back to immigration to collect our passports.
At the border we wanted to send two postcards with Burmese stamps we had bought, but instead of directing us to a postbox the border guards took them from us and told us they will make sure they make it into the post. We won't hold our breath.
We had heard of over zealous bag searches and long delays to get back to Thailand but we had absolutely no problem and strolled back through to Mae Sai in time to hunt out some sticky rice for supper.
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