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Published: February 12th 2007
Rickety Bridge
At Mae Sot. It was made of branches lashed together with rope...Which of these things does not belong?
Mae Sot is a strange place. It seems like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, forgotten town, with a couple of dozen streets woven together haphazardly just a few km east of the Burma border. There are a couple of Buddhist temples, a main street lined with mundane shops, and a busy market heaped with vegetables, fruit, fly-buzzed meat, and fishy fish. One item for sale that I hadn't seen before were buckets heaped with a fetid grey paste - after some research, I learned that it's fermented fish paste, a staple of the diet of the Karen people (pronounced kuh-REN). Natives of Northeast Burma, tens of thousands of Karen are in refugee camps this area of Thailand, having fled political persecution and a gruesome, bloody rebellion against the SPDC (formerly SLORC), the government of Myanmar.
This is the first sign that Mae Sot is not just an anonymous sleepy town. Likewise, I thought the building I walked past on the way to my hotel seemed strange... when I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a high school. A closer look rendered a sobering revision - those people
Mae Moei
This river forms the border between Myanmar and Thailand. It's tiny, and people go across on tubes in full view of border guards. milling about in what looked like a fenced-in courtyard were men, women and children,clearly not students. And the fence was actually the bars to a large group jail cell. It was an internment center. Every week on Wednesday, the people detained here were transported back over the border to Myanmar. I'm sure they were excited to go home, and Burma would certainly be delighted to have her people back, and was probably preparing a warm welcome even now (irony). Walking around at night, I felt unusually safe. This was probably due to the presence of police officers on watch at every street corner.
Finally, in my hotel, I met two volunteers, one a young American woman, the other, an expat American man, who were doing volunteer work helping the Karen. However, unlike most volunteers, who are delighted to talk about their work, these two, though quite interesting and friendly, were oddly vague and tight-lipped about their work. You shouldn't talk too loudly about your work here, they explained. There are agents around, both from the Burmese government, and from private entities, and you never know what they might disapprove of.
The woman gave me a book to read,
Monks
These monks were the first thing I saw in Myawadi. I think they were collecting donations. Probably Buddhist, but dressed strangely for Buddhist monks. Restless Souls by Phil Thornton, which shed a little more light on all the melodrama. Mae Sot is a nexus for much of the illegal trade coming from the thoroughly corrupt government of Myanmar. Depending on the crop in Afghanistan, Myanmar is either the #1 or #2 producer of opium and heroin in the world. Though they pretend to cooperate with international drug crackdowns, the government is said to be an active supporter, as well as the principal beneficiary of this drug production. I read that in Burma, a kilogram of opium sells for about $200, indicating a phenomenal abundance. Gems, another item of which Burma is a major world producer, also are traded briskly in Mae Sot. Though I understand the Burmese government claims all of the profit from the mines, gems are still stolen and smuggled, many finding an outlet here. The town is also an important stop for freedom fighters in Burma, from the Karen, Shaan, and other minority tribes that are mistreated even more than the Burman majority. NGOs come here to talk relief and bureaucracy, and I don't doubt rebel leaders come here to raise funds (and trade contraband).
Well, with all this illicit
Shwe Muay Wan
A beautiful gilded bell-shaped stupa in Myawadi, one of the few beautiful things in town. activity, you can imagine why the place is so shady. Perhaps because of that, it was intriguing and oddly appealing. However, thankfully, this was not my world, and I had business to attend to (the legal kind), so I rented a bike and rode to the "Friendship Bridge" to Burma. I got my passport stamped and walked across the bridge on the small, muddy Moei river, and entered the Burmese town of Myawadi.
I don't know how else to say it. This place was miserable. The only paved road was the main highway, and I suspect that even that broke up within a few miles, not that I would be able to find out, as I was not permitted to venture beyond this town. Men, with the traditional
longyi (a checkered woven cloth) wrapped around their waists, lined the main road, idle, seeking to sell anything they could, or offer rides around town in cycle-carts. There was one old Buddhist temple in the town that was quite beautiful, though looking a bit shabby, doubtless from lack of funds. I wanted to try some genuine Burmese food before I left, so I went to a small restaurant on a side
street. No English was spoken, so I pointed to a couple of dishes languishing in bowls on the counter, and ate them with rice. One was a slightly sandy mushroom dish, oily, but not bad. The other was some sort of spicy meat curry, I suspect horse or truck tire. I ate as much as I could to be polite then excused myself. The bill was strangely high for such a poor country, about $2, but I paid it without complaint, as I couldn't be sure if I was just being paranoid, and besides, there wasn't even a common language that I could use to discuss it with them!
After a couple of hours, I had had enough of Burma. I know that lots of travelers have loved it, but they didn't come to Myawadi. Also, I am a believer in the assertion that tourist money spent there largely goes to support the corrupt and failed government in power today. I even regretted going there for my visa renewal.
On the next day in Mae Sot, I rented a motorbike and drove with my volunteer friend to visit a cave and some hot springs at Mae Kasa, about
Similar temple
This is Wat Mani, strikingly similar to the temple on the Burma side. 20 km to the north. As you can surely imagine, the appeal of hot springs is substantially reduced in a place where the feeling of being cold is a rare and delectable pleasure to be savored. The cave was probably quite impressive and extensive, though I would have been better able to tell if we had remembered to bring flashlights. There were lights in the cave that they would have turned for the outrageous fee of 300 baht each ($8.50), but we declined.
So, having avoided getting shot by gangsters at the border for the three whole days, I thought it was time to stop pushing my luck and move onto a safer place: the much-visited northern capital of Thailand,
Chiang Mai.
I don't have a whole lot to write about here. Chiang Mai is a tourist comfort station, an affable place that encourages you not to stay in your comfort zone. You want pizza? You got it. Spaghetti Carbonara? No problem. Hamburgers? Chicken pot pie? Tibetan momos? Sandwiches? Sausage? Burritos? Falafel? Samosas? It's all here. And there are plenty of good cafes serving coffee grown right here in northern Thailand. It is strong, and, yes, it is
Big Buddha
In Mae Sot good. The town is clean and pretty, but it's just overrun by tourists. After I had exchanged all my reading books and stuffed myself with pizza, burgers, sticky rice with mango and this great curried soup called Khao Soi , there wasn't much to do. They have a fantastic night market, where I nearly allowed myself to buy a beautiful carved elephant head, but I could not bear that the shipping was 2.5 times the price of the item itself, so I had to pass in the end. There are a few beautiful temples which I enjoyed, but for any more excitement, you need to go outside the city.
My one big excursion was to the extraordinary Royal Flora Expo, a massive exposition on the scale of Epcot Center showcasing the endless variety of flora found in Southeast Asia. They had a really interesting display explaining how natural rubber is made, an insect house showing the incredible, huge, tiny, camouflaged and otherwise amazing creatures that fly and crawl about the forests of Thailand, including mouse-sized beetles, foot-long stick insects, and some amazing moths and butterflies. My mother's favorite display would certainly have been the orchid exhibit - I'll post
as many photos as I can, mom 😊 . They even built a gorgeous five story temple exclusively for this exposition. In the sanctuary at the top was not the Buddha I expected, but walls painted with images of the king as naturalist, with a piece in the center where the altar would be, whose meaning I can only guess at.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this whole expo is that the entire sprawling complex was built entirely for a three month event! I think it ended in January, so even now, it is presumably being dismantled. It seems a shame... I hope they reuse some of the structures there. They are well worth it.
Four days in Chiang Mai (quite a few hours devoted to the blog, in fact!) and I was on the the next town, Pai (pronounced "pie" with the "p" sounding a bit like a "b" if you want to be orthodox). Pai is a small town, and it is inhabited almost exclusively by backpackers. Most of the accommodations are still bungalows along the Pai river, though there are a couple of fancy resorts, with guarded gates, that have opened up recently, rather
Golden Buddha
In Chiang Mai's Wat Pra Singh. unwelcome.
Pai is a place to hang out. On the main drag, vendors grill meat and sticky rice cakes on sticks (really good), and there are two Volkswagen microbuses converted into cafes. They make great, thick coffee, served Thai style, with condensed milk, and they grill up burgers on a barbecue they set up in the back. The town has about thirty guesthouses, twenty rustic, bamboo restaurants serving local and international cuisine, five cyber cafes, two movie viewing halls, a few club-bars, a 7-11, a bus station, and a moped rental place. That's about it - it's optimized for chilling out. I stayed here five days and four nights, uncharacteristically long for somebody with schpilkes in the tuchas (that's yiddish for needles in the butt), but it was mainly because I was hoping to be in someplace festive on Christmas. Pai proved a suitable place, though it would be hard to find a place any more ideal to enjoy Christmas than my home town of New York.
For a couple of days, I rented a motorbike and rode around the countryside with a gang of people I met in Pai. We visited waterfalls, elephant camps, hilltop temples, and
Serpent Bannister
In front of Chiang Mai\'s Wat Pra Singh. a mucky hot spring where people come, buy raw eggs and cook them in the near-boiling water. I had a little motorbike mishap on a steep sandy hill that left me with a nasty road rash on my arm just below my elbow, but nothing serious. I appreciated my carefully-assembled first aid kit when I got back, though. It was tough to bend my arm for a few days, so staying in one spot kinda made sense. You'll be glad to know that it has healed quite nicely, and I think there may even be no scar.
The day after Christmas I moved on. I had found that I was going the same way as a couple of Americans just out of the Peace Corps in Vanuatu, so we left together, taking an intentionally roundabout route to get to our real destination: Chiang Kong, the gateway to Laos.
First, we had to take a bus down the windy highway towards Chiang Mai. We got off at a highway junction an hour before Chiang Mai at a little town called Mae Malai. There, we hopped the next north-bound bus for Tha Ton, on the shore of the Mae
Baobab Trees
At the Royal Flora Expo. Amazing. Kok river (no joke!). Tha Ton is a tiny speck of a town, but it's pleasantly quiet after the tourist mania of Chiang Mai and Pai. The three of us were practically the only westerners in town, though, to be honest, a few more turned up on the boat dock the next morning. The man running the hotel we stayed in was delightful and friendly, and he made our stay far more pleasant. It's amazing how much difference a friendly hotel can make. We stayed up late watching Troy, the only movie he had in English, on his movie set up. The movie was not one that I'll be forcing my kids to watch, but a taste of home like that can be surprisingly refreshing.
The next morning, we piled into longboats - me and my two friends, a couple from San Diego, and a sixty-ish couple from Holland touring Southeast Asia by mountain bike! Made me feel a bit lazy. The ride along the river to Chiang Rai was a pleasure. The breeze was cool, the water was chilly, and company was pleasant. Nobody seemed the least bit upset when the engine of our boat (a toyota four
Orchid 1
Not even going to try to identify these. Mom? cylinder mounted on gimbals, with a propeller welded directly to the drive shaft) hit an underwater obstacle and snapped the drives haft clean off. No problem - we drifted to the side of the shallow river, our driver stripped down to his skivvies and stepped into the ankle-deep water to fix it. He pulled out his cell phone - yes, it worked even in the wilds of rural Thailand - and called for a replacement. He mucked around with the engine for about an hour while the passengers chatted and enjoyed the feel of the refreshing cold river water on our feet. Then, a boat arrived with the replacement drive shaft, and we were running again in ten minutes, pulling into Chiang Rai at about 5:00.
Chiang Rai's another city without much to talk about. There were some good cafes that made a respectable chocolate chip cookie. That was the day that an earthquake in Taiwan took out most of the communication bandwidth between SEA and the world, so I was a little concerned about the unavailability of gmail and CNN. But it was not them. Thankfully, no cataclysm. And no tsunami.
The next morning, after again trying
unsuccessfully to check my email, and a leisurely breakfast, I got a bus to the border town, Chiang Kong. The bus was the very definition of local, and it took way longer than expected. I got to the border just 15 minutes before it closed, so I rushed to the crossing rather than checking out the town. It was there that I caught my first glimpse of the languid Mekong river that would be my conveyance and travel companion for the next few fortnights of my trip. It was wide, flat, lazy and muddy. Its banks were lined with water marks extending at least ten feet above the current level, an indicator of a truly spectacular level change. I paid the ferryman 20 baht ($.50) and bade farewell to Thailand. My next entry will be from a new country: Laos, formerly called Lan Xang, the land of one million elephants.
As usual, I wish you all the best,
Daniel
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eddie
non-member comment
Expo Temple
Hi Daniel, Interesting blog. Just wanted to let you know that the temple at the Royl Flora Expo is actually a recreation of the old northern style royal palace rather than an actual temple. It would have been the place where the King met diplomats and advisors. That's the reason why you didn't see a Buddha statue there. It was built to showcase local artists and craftspeoples skills.