Blogs from Mae Hong Son, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 10

Didn't really do much today, simply traveled by minibus for 7 hours to get to the Thailand/Laos border town of Chang Khong. On route we stopped in Chang Rai, where we went to a restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms". The restaurant aims to raise money for a charity that promotes safe sex, and it's aim is to make "Condoms as easy to obtain as cabbages". There was also an associated museum that gave information on the villages in the "Golden Triangle" - the heroin production capital of this part of the world. In Chang Khong I burnt some photos to CD and then went out in the evening for drinks and a meal. ... read more

From Chiang Mai I had two options for a next destination. I could go directly to Pai, of which I had heard lots of good stuff and was planning to spend a while in, or I could add an additional loop in the countryside to the schedule. I still didn't know which way I was heading when I arrived on the bus station. In the end something my colleague and friend Rachel had said about the best things being off the beaten track made me to choose the latter option (even if this wasn't exactly a non-beaten track, it was at least a much more seldom used one.) I also wanted to do some trekking and Mae Sariang, which was my first target, sounded ideal for that, as the big groups from Chiang Mai wouldn't find ... read more

I'd been advised by several people to check out Mae Hong Son, as its mountainous countryside had turned it into a less crowded trekking option than Chiang Mai. Though I'd already decided that Nan would be my trekking site, I figured Mae Hong Son would be worth a visit regardless. It's certainly a tortuous place to access - the 300km trip via Mae Seriang was accomplished in 8 hours, with the return journey via Pai in a positively zippy 5. This snail-like pace was due to the serpentine road, rising and falling in steep curves as it wound its way up into the mountains. At the designated lunch stopping spot on the way there, I was patting myself on the back at having ordered a chicken dish entirely in Thai, only to find it was actually ... read more

This must be brief ... as we've mentioned before, TMITs have little tolerance for waiting. Yesterday we, oh so bravely, rented a mini-motorbike and took to the hills. Our itinerary included a fish cave, waterfalls and the nearby karen village. And so off we went into the misty morning (with our new friend Yaig yelling from behind his bar "Chok Dee Goose"), a little unsteadily, a little nippy, cameras in hand. The fish cave (now I wish I had taken a picture) was, quite literally, a whole in a rock looking down into a wee stream in which fish swam -- under the rock.. but the grounds were pretty nonetheless. The waterfall was a waterfall, but pretty and Thai. The village ... well, to begin with we're following these signs with little hand-drawn cartoons of longneck ... read more

After getting my feet wet in Bangkok, it was time to head up North. I went to Chiang Mai for a couple of days where I took a day tour that left me riding an elephant, visiting hill tribes, walking through the jungle and bamboo rafting through a suspect looking river. It was a beautiful day and a great introduction to the north of Thailand. I headed from there to Mae Hong Son (North west Thailand), where I was to be teaching English at a Burmese refugee school for one month. The school is actually, just outside the village of Nai Soi, approximately 30km from Mae Hong Son, and 7km from the dangerous Burma border. First sights of the school, left lasting impressions: bamboo/mudbrick huts, open air classrooms, bowl and basin "shower", mosquito nets, bamboo bed, ... read more