Lys

I am writing to report that this will be my last post to white_lys on livejounal. I have switched over to a WordPress blog which is more user friendly and versatile. I have, however, painstakingly gone and copied and pasted all of the post from this blog as well as my one from Japan into my new WordPress journal so all of these posts can be found there (though they will all be dated as October 7th, 2011). This blog, as well as my one from Japan, will remain on the web and links to them are available on my new blog.

The URL for my new blog is: http://mylifeinourworld.wordpress.com/

If you are a follower of my blog, please not see the above blog rather than this one.

New Blog Pt. 2 will be posted in the WordPress blog.

I had a big gathering at my going away party in Chiang Mai.  It included some of my first friends there, including Ooy (basically the first Thai person I met in Thailand back in February 2009) who just happened to be taking a vacation in Chiang Mai during my last week there.  Kate, my first Couch Surfer, who never really left Chiang Mai after I Hosted her in August 2009, was there with one of her friends whom I had met before when she came to visit Kate over a year prior. There were also some new faces.  We ate at Dayli, my favorite restaurant, and then went in for a quick visit to Tawandang, my favorite country bar. We didn't stay long as most people don't enjoy Thai country as much as I do.  In the end, we all just stood outside of a 7/11 near Tawandang and drank cheap beers from there on the street.  Really, that's the best thing we could have done as Tawandang is too loud to talk in. 

Some of my friends went home and I said my final goodbyes to them.  Then I
drove down to Bangkok Cafe, my favorite little dive bar that I discovered in my
first 6 months in Chiang Mai.  My guest house was near by, so if I drank
too much to drive it would have been ok because I was going to walk home
anyway.  I sold my motorcycle to my friend Joe before I went to Laos,
but he had an extra so he let me borrow it while I was in town.  That was
very nice of him as it had been my bike for over a year and the first motor
vehicle I had ever owned. 

About half way between Tawandang and Bangkok Cafe, it hit me.  This was my
last drive on my motorcycle, the 110cc Suzuki Smash with a Winnie the Pooh
decal on the seat, as well as my last drive through Chiang Mai. 
Everything I was passing I would see for the last time.  Sure, I'll go
back, but Chiang Mai changes quickly.  And I'll go back for a visit, it
won't be my home.  I passed the Shell gas station where I always filled up
and argued with the staff to change my oil whenever I needed an oil change and
they'd always say "we don't do that here" and I'd say "yes you
do, I've had it done here before several times" until they finally just do
it for me, I passed the road that led to where my apartment used to be, I
passed Gad Suan Kaew, the ugly brick shopping center where I did most of my
high-end shopping and where I'd go to see movies on weekends, I passed the
North West corner of the Old City walls where Kate and I used to sit on clear nights
and drink boxed wine and eat cheese and real bread we'd bough from the
foreigner super market, I passed along the moat of the Old City that was the epicenter
of the Songkran water festival, I passed the North Gate Jazz Co-op, one of the
coolest places for expats to hang out on Tuesday nights, I passed the LA Bike
Shop where I bought my bicycle that was my only transportation for my first 6
months, I passed Moon Mueang Rd. Soi 7 where I lived for the first 6 months,
and then there was Bangkok Cafe.  Kate and Joe were already there.  I
guess I drove pretty slowly.  Kate said she expected me to drive slowly
and understood why I was crying when I got there.

We drank some Leo Beers and rocked out to the hip western and Thai pop-rock
hits the cover band cranked out.  We were out pretty late.  I made it
a point to not get drunk because I had to catch a flight the next
morning.  At around 3:30am I
said goodbye to Kate and Joe and walked back towards my guest house. 

I got a short sleep.  Thank goodness my flight was from Chiang Mai and not
Bangkok or I would have missed my
flight.  I though I had an international flight to Kuala
Lumpur at 10:00am
the next morning.  I left my guest house at about 7:50.  The airport wasn't too far away, Chiang Mai is
not big.  My plan was arrive at 8:30,
giving me 1 and 1/2 hours before my flight.  I pulled out my reservation
and saw that my flight was actually at 9:10,
not 10:00.  That gave me just 40
minutes before an international flight!  Again, thank goodness I was
flying out of Chiang Mai.  When I got to the airport, there was no one in
line at the check in.  There was no one in line at the immigration. 
No one was in line at security.  I was the only non-airport staff I
saw.  Even with just 40 minutes before takeoff, I went from arriving at
the airport to sitting in a seat by the gate in less than 10 minutes. 
Everyone else had come early.  I even had to sit and wait for another 10
minutes before boarding.

It was a two hour flight to Kuala Lumpur,
the capital of Malaysia. 
I flew there because that's the hub for Air Asia, the local budget
airline.  My flight from Chiang Mai to KL was just $45.  When I
arrived I made my way to my Couch Surfing Host Mason's apartment.  I only
stayed one night.  My flight from KL to Taipei
was the next morning (that was the one at 10:00am).

Mason and I chatted in the day about his planned trip to Japan
and then in the evening we went to a Couch Surfing event.  It was dinner,
then shisha, then a bar.  I had a nice chat with an Iranian guy and a local
Malaysian girl.  I had one very expensive beer in Malaysia. 
It's weird; beer is expensive because Malaysia
is a Muslim country.  But alcohol isn't illegal.  Well, it is if
you're Muslim.  All Malaysians have their religion on their ID cards and
if they are Muslims they have to follow Islamic law on top of the laws for
everyone.  So if a cop catches two Malaysians drinking and one is a Muslim
and the other isn't, the Muslim is punished, but not the other person. 
The local Islamic law does not apply to non Malaysians so the Iranian guy, who
is a Muslim, could legally drink because he's not Malaysian.  But beer is
still expensive.  My Host, Mason, who's ethnic Chinese and not a Muslim,
explained that, basically, alcohol is expensive and porn is blocked on the
internet.  I joked that if beer is expensive, porn should be unblocked for
people who pay a higher rate for their internet service.  "If it's
bad, it's not illegal, it's just expensive."

I got up really early the next morning, before the sun, to catch my plane to Taipei. 
Even though the flight was 50 minutes later than my flight out of Chiang Mai, Kuala
Lumpur is a much bigger city and has a much busier
airport.  I thought I was fine for time.  But then I got hit with the
first of many Taiwan
related setbacks.  The check in counter wouldn't let me board the plane
without an onward ticket, that is, a flight out of Taiwan. 
I told the check in lady that I was going to Taiwan
to work.  She asked for my work permit.  I told her it was nearly
impossible to get a work permit outside of Taiwan and that I would get one once
I got there.  She said she wouldn't check me in unless I showed either a
work permit, a Taiwanese ID, or an onward ticket.  Check in time ended in
20 minutes.  With all of my stuff I had to rush to the Air Asia counter,
ask about their cheapest ticket, any time, to anywhere, out of Taipei
within the next 30 days.  I was told it was back to KL.  I only had
Thai Baht in my wallet.  I then had to rush to a money changer, change my
Baht to Malay Ringgit, rush back to the Air Asia ticket counter, and spend 1/3
of my savings on an airline ticket that I wasn't even going to use. 
Because I bought it in cash, I couldn't cancel.  My debit card had just
expired and my new one hadn't been activated yet.  It was money down the
drain.  But I just made it in time to not miss my flight.

I got to Taipei on August 7th.  I've been Couch Surfing every day so I haven't needed to spend money on a place to stay.  Food is cheap here, but not Thailand
cheap.  Entertainment is not cheap here.  I spent the first few days
looking for a job.  I got many interviews and settled on working for the
Shane English School Taipei.  It's a private English school that is
British owned and run.  My training starts tomorrow.

I admit, my first few weeks in Taiwan
were not as exciting as my first few weeks in Thailand. 
When I arrived in Thailand
in February 2009, I was just beginning my life after college.  I was only
leaving behind my life as a student.  I had money saved up.  Everything
was bright.  But this time, I miss Thailand
terribly.  I don't regret coming here, but I am very aware that I have
left something good behind.  I also have very little money now.  I
have enough to get by, but not enough to go enjoy myself.  I spend most of
my days reading books in parks and walking around by myself.  I don't have
any friends here.  My command of Chinese has gone way down and even at its
prime was not as good as my command of Thai is now.  Thailand
started big, full of adventure and travel; but Taiwan
has started slow and will have to slowly build up as I start to save
money.  My pay at the beginning will be the lowest and it should rise over
the year.  My Chinese is sure to get better too.  Everyone I know who
has lived in Taipei has loved it; I
just don't know what there is yet.  But I really look forward to being
back to work, setting goals, learning new things, discovering this new
city, and making new friends.

 Travel Map maps.google.co.th/maps/ms

I'm back in Chiang Mai.....for the last time......

I just felt I should post from here before I go.  It's already strange because I don't really live here anymore.  I'm in a guest house.  But having just 4 days has begun to dawn on me that it's really not enough time to wrap up over two and a half years of being here.  I'm making stops at all of my favorite restaurants.  I'm going out and enjoying my favorite CM nightlife for the last time.  I'm saying goodbye to everyone.  I am ready to go, but I really am going to miss this place.  I know that if I were given a chance to stay 6 more months, I'd want out after two weeks, but now that I have two days, I really just wish I had more time.  That's just how it is I guess.

So concluding my trip, I kept some maps of where I went.

 Travel Map maps.google.co.th/maps/ms

Sorry that I had to post this in pieces.  It's a really long post and I had some HTML problems in Mae Ka so I only got half of it posted.  I'll get it all up as soon as I can.

It's been a long time since I posted; sorry for that. I've been quite busy and/or away from internet.

I can't believe I last posted in Mae Hong Son city. I've come quite a ways since then. And the weather has gotten better and then worse again. In Mae Hong Son city, I mostly just looked at cool Burmese style temples. The weather at that point was still bad.

Here are some of the nicer temples, built in Burmese style, in Mae Hong Son city.


The main temple in town








Main stupas on top of the city mountain


The city from on top of the mountain


Tacky Buddha statues inside a temple

From Mae Hong Son I drove up and over to the small town of Pai. I have been to Pai before, several times. It's a tourist darling, but to me, it's a sob story. Pai used to be a really nice little Thai mountain town and that started to draw some tourists. Guest houses started popping up and restaurants started having English menus and western food. At some point, a tipping point was was reached and tourism took off. Everyone who lived in Pai who wasn't involved in the tourist industry had to either change their career to be tourist oriented or be forced out of town by rising real estate prices. Loads of tourism-savvy Thais, not from Pai, moved in with the capital and took over. Now Pai is pretty much Disney World. I stopped in Pai for two reasons. 1) it was on the way and is an easy place to stop. 2) a group of my friends from Chiang Mai were up in Pai for the weekend. Because it is the wet season and it had been raining, Pai was not that full of tourists, which was nice. The weather was also good that weekend. We got sun. My friends and I just sat around, chatted, and drank beer. I was only there 1 night and then went on my way.

On the way out of Pai I passed Pai Canyon. It's no Grand Canyon, but I took some pictures anyway.


Pai Canyon

The weather was pretty good then. The sun was out. From Mae Hong Son Province I drove over and made a quick pass through northern Chiang Mai Province, though I never came too close to Chiang Mai city. My destination was the north of Chiang Rai province. On the night of Day 8 (July 23) it started pouring. I was just 4km outside of the town of Chai Prakan when it started coming down. I pulled over into a songtao stop to wait it out. It was almost dinner time. I was planning to camp that night. I wanted to wait for the rain to let up a little, drive the 4km into town, eat, let it rain some more, and then keep driving until I could find a place to camp. But the pouring rain never let up. It dumped and dumped. Under the songtao stop was a little ditch that was collecting runoff. The water level kept coming up and up. Maybe after an hour of waiting I saw that the water level was almost up to the the wooden walkway that went from the road to the songtao stop. I packed my bags up quickly and even in the perhaps 1 minute it took to do that, the water had come up over the walkway. From there it was just a minute or two before the water got up onto the road. The water kept coming up and up; driving my motorbike left a wake in the road. Whenever trucks blew past me, they splashed water everywhere. I wasn't going to get 4km. Even if I did, the town was going to flood.

Just by chance I saw a random roadside guest house. I had no choice. It was expensive, 300 Baht (3/4 of my daily budget), and the room wasn't great, but it would keep me dry and above water that night. It rained the entire night and when I got up the next morning it was still raining. Everything was flooded.

I had to wait for the rain to stop and for the water to subside before I could get going. It was almost noon before that happened. I just sat in my 300 Baht guest house room and watched Law & Order on the TV in there until I could go.

The weather from then on was really on and off. I literally had to take off and put on my raincoat every couple of minutes. But when I got up into Chiang Rai Province, the rain had mostly stopped.

My first stop in Chiang Rai was in the far north border town of Mae Sai. I Couch Surfed there with a girl named Vicky from Taiwan. She is a Chinese teacher in a village near Mae Sai. Some history is needed here:

The Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) was fought between the People's Liberation Army of the communists under Mao Zedong (who won the war) and the Guo Min Dang (Kuomintang) republican nationalists who had taken over in China after the fall of the Qing dynasty. During the war, the Guo Min Dang came under the control of the top general, Jiang Zhongzheng (Chiang Kai-shek) who lead several encirclement campaigns against the PLA, all of which failed. At the end of the final campaign, the nationalist Guo Min Dang (KMT) mostly fled to Taiwan where they remain today (the official name of the political entity in Taiwan is still the Republic of China). But some KMT forces were left on the far side with the PLA between them and the KMT who fled to Taiwan. Those KMT fled to Burma. The political instability in Burma then forced those KMT Chinese across the border into Thailand where they now have several villages. Unlike the large Hakka speaking Chinese diaspora found all over Thailand, these KMT villages speak standard Mandarin and still identify as purely Chinese and not Chinese-Thai.

Because they share a history with Taiwan, the government in Taiwan sends teachers over to northern Thailand to teach in Taiwan funded Chinese schools there because the parents of the new generation born in Thailand still want their children to get a Chinese education. Vicky is one of these teachers sent over from Taiwan. In the village where she lives, everyone speaks Mandarin and not Thai.

I spent one afternoon and evening with Vicky. She took me to a famous monkey temple in the village.


Monkeys at the temple In the evening we drove up into Mae Sai city and had some drinks at a bar on the river with Myanmar (Burma) on the other side. Unlike the Mekong that divides Thai and Lao towns, the Sai river between northern Thailand and Burma is really small. I could have thrown my empty beer bottle into Burma if I had wanted to. Vicky let me Couch Surf with her. I stayed in her room and she stayed in a friend's room. They both are Taiwanese teachers at the school which gives them rooms to live in. The next day I drove back up to Mae Sai city and crossed the border into Burma. I had to do this because when I came back from Laos I got a tourist stamp for just 15 days in Thailand. That day, the 25th, was my 15th day and so I had to leave the country that day or I would overstay my visa stamp. The city across the Sai river from Mae Sai is called Tachileik and it is in the Shan state of Myanmar (Burma). The Shan are ethnically very similar to the Thais and Laos. The word "Shan" comes from Chinese and that's what the Burmese call them too. But the Shan call themselves "Tai". They speak a language very similar to Thai and Lao, so I could communicate with the Shan people that I met there. But the city, being a border town, is very mixed and had many non-Shan Burmese citizens with whom I could not communicate unless they spoke English. I can not read Shan writing because it's written with the Burmese alphabet. I could read Lao because Lao is just a simplified version of the Thai alphabet.
The border point at the middle of the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge (the 1st bridge was in Mae Sot. I put a picture of it in my last post). The flag on the left is Thai, on the right is Burmese. The buildings on the left are in Thailand, the billboards are in Burma. The Sai river is small.


The gate into Myanmar.  Last October, the country changed its name from the "Union of Myanmar" to the "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" and also changed its flag to the one seen here.  Before it was a military dictatorship.  Now it's a military dictatorship with show elections for a rubber-stamp congress.

I have been to Tachileik a few times before for the same reason.  The part of the city near the bridge is a dump market of cheap Chinese stuff.  Dozens of non-Shan Burmese followed me, shoving cigarettes, lighters, sunglasses, and copy DVDs in my face, telling me how cheap they are.  But I got away from them and made my way into the real part of town.


I enjoyed a bottle of Myanmar Beer.  As the bottle assures you, it was "premium quality".  That brown booklet to the right is my Entry Permit.  Because I didn't have a Burmese visa, I was given this travel booklet in exchange for my passport which was left at the immigration office.  This booklet lets me travel to a few towns and cities in the Shan state, but won't let me venture deeper into Burma.  Yangoon and Mandalay are off limits.  It makes sure that I leave Burma from the same place I came in as I need my passport to get back into Thailand.  THis booklet lets me stay in Shan Stat for 14 days.  I was there about 3 hours.


A large Burmese temple in Tachileik


A Catholic Church.  Jesis and Mary are, of course, white people here and not Asian or Middle Eastern as they actually were.


The main stupa on a hill in the middle of town


Tachileik, Burma from the hill


Thai and Burmese flags that the half-way point on the bridge


The Sai river.  You can see how close Thailand (right) and Burma (left) are along this border.  

I started back across the bridge, turned in my entry permit, picked up my passport, stamped out of Burma, and stamped back into Thailand getting another 15 days.  This will be my last Thai visa for a while.

I got back on my motorcycle (left parked at a 7/11 in Mae Sai) and drove back to Vicky's school to pick up my bags.  I drove south for about an hour to the capital city of Chiang Rai.  I have been to Chiang Rai before several times as well so I didn't do much there.  The only reason I went this time was to meet up with one of my students.  She was a senior at Doisaket Witthiyakhom School where I had been working and is now a freshman in college in Chiang Rai.  She is of the Hmong ethnic group (as most of my students at DWS were from the hill tribes) and specialized in Chinese.  As such, she could speak Hmong, Thai, Chinese, and English as the least of the four but still well enough to study aviation in English in university.  I met her that evening, we had a nice noodle soup, and then I went to my guest house in the city.  The next morning I went north-east.

My next stop was the famed Golden Triangle which has become a little tourist town in and of itself.  The Golden Triangle, named for its history as an opium smuggling point, is where the Sai river meets the Mekong.  The Mekong north of there had been dividing Burma and Laos, but when it meets and ends the Sai river, which divides Thailand and Burma, the Mekong begins to divide Laos and Thailand.  So the three countries make a triangle at this point.  Technically, I had been to all thee countries within the month.


All three countries make a big display at the Golden Triangle.  This is the Thai display.


Thai Buddhism never misses and opportunity to get your money.  This statue is set up at this "lucky" location and around it are a bunch of donation boxes, fortune telling machines, and even a track that you put money on and it rolls down and around until finally into a fat Buddha's belly and he laughs.


An actual triangle.  The land on the right with the gold dome is Laos.  On the left is Burma.


This monolith does a pretty good job of dividing Burma (left) and Laos (right)


Both Laos and Burma can be seen under this sign


The Golden Triangle.  You can see land in all three countries here.


Again with outlines

After I had my fill of taking pictures of three countries at once, I hopped back on my motorcycle and headed along the Thai-Lao border to the small town of Chiang Saen.  Chiang Saen is the home town of King Mengrai who founded Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and the Lanna Kingdom.  Chiang Saen could be considered the birthplace of both Lanna and all Thai kingdoms as it's the first major Tai settlement in what is today Thailand.


Wat Chedi Luang, named for the huge stupa behind it


The huge, original, Lanna style stupa


Ruins of a temple complex


Inside a Lanna style temple.  I love the wooden carved leaves above the Buddha's head.

Just outside of Chiang Saen I came across Wat Pha Ngao.  It was an amazing Lanna style temple.



Wat Pha Ngao




I really like the gold leaf paintings on the wooden outside





From Chiang Saen I drove another 50km or so to the border town of Chiang Khong.  Chiang Khong was not as impressive as Chiang Saen.  It's kind of a tourist hole.  Tourists flock here to cross the Mekong into Laos to take the slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang.  Chiang Khong is on the "Banana Pancake Trail", the name given to the rout that most backpackers take in SE Asia.

I spent one night in Chiang Khong and did enjoy talking to some foreign travelers.  The weather was still good at this point.  From Chiang Khong I headed south along the Mekong.  I avoided the main roads to get a more beautiful view.  I finally got my amazing mountains that I had missed in Tak and Mae Hong Son due to the rain.  From Chiang Rai province I drove south into Phayao province and then into Nan province.


A sample of the view from the road.  The river is the Mekong and the far side of it is Laos.

On my intended rout, I went up this huge mountain to see this viewpoint.


That's Laos on the other side of the river (the Mekong)











I camped out one night and the next day, Thursday, I made it to the town of Pua in Nan province.  On the way, I came along a chuck of road that had begun to slide down the mountain.  This might have been the scariest moment on my trip as I was sure I was going to go down the mountain with this piece of road.  Lucky for me, I wasn't quite heavy enough.  Still too heavy for comfort.



The land under the road began to slide down the mountain due to all of the rain, me with it!

Pua is where my friend Brian, whom I met in Khon Kaen in Isan a few months back, now works.  He met me and Hosted me on Couch Surfing again.  We took it easy Thursday night and he worked on Friday.  On Friday night he took me out to Pua's #1nightlife spot, a Thai country bar.  It would have been great fun had it not been full of Brian's students.  They are in high school and are not old enough to be out drinking legally.  As such, Brian was not comfortable being at a bar drinking while they were there.  He was afraid of losing his job if someone accused him of going out drinking with his underage students.

The next day, Saturday, we drove to the provincial capital, Nan city.  Nan is much bigger than Pua.  That night we went out to Nan's #1 nightlife spot and it was much better.  But it rained and so it wasn't as good as it usually is I was told.  Brian stayed with a Thai friend and I stayed with Brian's friend Will who is an English teacher in Nan.  The next day we all got up and had a western breakfast at a little place in Nan with some of the other American English teachers there.  I was surprised to see such a group of Americans living in Nan, but I guess every capital city has its group of English teachers.  I was most surprised that they were all young.  Many places hire old western men who can't get work back home.

From Nan I began to drive back to Chiang Mai.  I camped out one night and stopped off the next day in the small town of Mae Ka which is the college town where Phayao University is.  From Mae Ka, I took a road through a little bit of Lampang province (where I had dinner) which dumped off on highway 118 in Chiang Rai province.  From there I went south and camped in an abandoned shelter that I knew about near Doi Saket in Chiang Mai province.  I stayed dry due to the shelter, it rained all night.

I got up this morning and drove the 15km or so to Doi Saket, in the rain the whole way.  I showed up, wet, at my former school to say hi to everyone.  I'm using their computer to type this as my netbook frustrates me beyond words.  I had this all typed out yesterday in Mae Ka, but my computer messed up and I lost everything!  I was able to post half of it again, but wasted 2 hours doing so.  So, finally, I've got it all up.  I'm about 20km away from the end of my 3-month-long adventure.  Will have lunch with the teachers at school first.

Travel Map maps.google.co.th/maps/ms

So Tak Province was pretty much a bust.  That really bums me out, too.  Tak is supposed to be one of the most beautiful provinces in Thailand with lots of natural wonders to see.  Caves, waterfalls, hot springs are the norm.  But a little after I checked into my hotel in Mae Sot it started raining and rained hard until I was well out of Tak Province.  That means I had to drive several hundred KM in the pouring rain which I really hate.  I don't mind cloudy.  Even a light drizzle is ok.  But I really hate driving when it's just pouring down.  Rain makes me have to drive slower which means I have to spend more time driving in the rain and less time seeing and doing things.  Not that I could see anything, it's just fog where amazing mountain views should be.  The two days after Mae Sot were not fun at all.

In light rain I drove to see the Burmese border.  It has been closed to tourists ever since fighting between the Burmese military and the Karen (a large ethnic minority in Burma) rebel military, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), resulted in some shells falling into Thailand, destroying some buildings and killing some people.  The border is still open for commercial traffic.

Mae Sot was a lot bigger and nicer than I had expected.  It's a proper Thai city.  My guidebook says that the city gets its money from international trade with Burma, with the biggest bucks coming from illegal activity.  The #1 illegal import from Burma into Thailand is teakwood which is illegal to harvest in Thailand as the teak tree is protected.  It's not uncommon for a smuggler to pay the Thai border police $1000 to look the other way as they bring in one truck of teak logs; the wood is that valuable.


Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge.  Not quite as impressive as the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, but that has more to do with the size of the Mekong compared to this little river.  That's Burma in the picture with the rainbow colored building and the ping billboard.

After visiting the border and the market there and being harassed by dozens of Burmese (people from Burma, probably not ethnic Burmese, but there are hundreds of ethnic groups in Burma) to by "cheap cigarette", I got back on my bike and started the 400km drive north to Mae Hong Son (where I am now).

As I mentioned before, the drive should have been gorgeous, but the weather was so bad that I couldn't see anything.  Right out of Mae Sot, at least, the road was wide, flat, and in good condition.  My speed was only limited by the rain.

The one really interesting thing I saw on the drive north I saw just 30-40 minutes out of Mae Sot.  It looked like any other village at first.  But it was a big village.  Villages are usually 10-40 houses.  A big one may have up to 100 houses, but that's a really big village.  This village just kept going up the mountain.  As I kept driving, the village just went on and on.  Then I saw the barbed wire fence between the road and the huge village.  There were hundreds and hundreds of houses, it seemed to never end.  That's when I realized what it was.  I was driving next to Mae La Refugee Camp.  Mae La has been in Thailand for decades and is the largest refugee camp in the country.  It's residents are Karen.  The story of the Karen is a long and sad one.  The Burmese military goes into Karen areas, rapes the women, kills the people, burns the houses, and forces them to do hard labor.  Thousands of them have fled to Thailand for protection.  They can live in refugee camps, but the situation in Burma has not improved.  If they go back they will be killed.  The women will be raped and then killed.  It's not known exactly how many refugees live in Mae La.  Many have been there so long that they have started families.  There is an entire generation of Karen children who were born in the refugee camp and can't leave.  Estimates are that there are anywhere between 45,000-80,000 refugees living in the camp.


Mae La Refugee Camp



These pictures don't do justice to how big the camp is.  I could only take a picture of so much of the camp at once and a lot of it was well hidden behind trees that block the camp off from the roadside.  If you open my Google Map and find the Camp, north of Mae Sot, and you switch to Satellite View, you can see just how big it is.  It's literally thousands of these little village houses stretching several km along this mountain.

I couldn't get many pictures before some Thai military, armed with M-16s, showed up and expressed anger towards my camera.  The waved me along with the barrels of their guns.  I just drove down the road until I was well out of their sight and I took some more pictures.  They mostly look like the ones above.  It was raining, after all.  Visitors are not allowed in the camp itself, so I just drove on once I got some pictures I was happy with.

Here are some news articles about this refugee camp.
From CNN: edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/27/thai.karen/
From BBC: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6397243.stm

It was just driving in the fog and rain after that.  I stopped in a few small towns for gas, but there wasn't anything to see.  When it got dark, the rain was really coming down.  I was not looking forward setting up my tent in the pouring rain.  I knew everything would get wet.  By luck (I thought it was luck at the time) I came along a remote songtaew (minibus) stop that was quite large.  It's a covered building with benches around the side.  It was large enough for me to park my bike in and set my tent up next to my bike.  The roof of the bus stop would keep my stuff dry.  It was very remote.  I couldn't imagine that anyone if very many people would be using it the next morning.  I set up my tent and figured I'd be in for one of my better nights of sleep as the floor of the bus stop was completely flat and I didn't have to worry about the rain coming in the tent.  Of course, I was wrong.  There are more down sides to the rainy season than just rain.

I woke up at about 3am feeling sharp pain on my face, head, and upper body.  I felt theses spots and found little insects biting me.  I went for my flashlight and saw that they were little red ants.  I looked at my pillow.  There were about a dozen ants on it.  Then I looked around the tent.  There were thousands.  They were all over everything.  I didn't have any food or anything that would attract ants.  Just the fact that my tent was a dry place in the pouring rain was enough to invite a huge colony of ants in.  I spent several hours dealing with the ants.  They were coming in through the tiny hole that is left when the door flap is zipped shut, the only one little way into my tent.  I opened the door and saw thousands more all inside the bus stop.  I had some DEET that I used to make the door of the tent unattractive and I spent several hours trying to kill and remove the little ants.  I didn't get back to sleep.

At about 5:30am, to my surprise, some people showed up.  A bunch of people showed up.  They were Karen.  They all gathered around my tent and talked and talked for a long time.  I had just about dealt with the ants and was very tired.  I figured they had come to catch an early morning songtao and would be gone soon.  I tried to sleep.  About 2 hours later I woke up again.  The bus stop was full of Karen looking at my tent and talking about it and me for sure (I don't speak Karen).  Then they got their medicine man to stand by my tent and he stated chanting and waving some sticks and things at it.  I figured this mean that my unusual presence in their bus stop was taken as some kind of spiritual bad luck and they wanted me to leave, so I packed up and left. 

Some friends and I always joke that Burma is Thailand's Mexico.  A lot of the very low paying, unpleasant jobs in Thailand are taken by illegal Burmese refugees.  Some flee Burma for good reasons, others just want better opportunity.  When I found out what this bus stop was, it fed the analogy more.  In the morning, the Karen gather there and then Thais come by and hire them to do day jobs.  This was the Burmese version of the Mexicans who hang out in front of the Home Depot waiting to be hired for day labor.  That's why it was such a big bus stop and why there were so many of them out there so early in the morning.

The rain hadn't stopped.  It was pouring when I got back on my bike and started north again.  I still had another 250km to Mae Hong Son.

I spent the whole day driving in the rain.  I couldn't see anything.  A 15km stretch of the highway was under major construction and was reduced to a dirt road.  In the rain that meant a mud road.  I didn't have mud tires.  It took me almost 3 hours to get through.  Everything got muddy.  I was not happy.

After that, the road was bad.  Not as bad as the bad roads in Laos, but worse than the good roads in Laos.  Lots of pot holes.  I had to drive at about 25km/h.  The road eventually got better when I entered Mae Hong Son province.  It was raining more lightly by then so I could go faster.

I stopped in a few small towns for gas and food.  When it got dark I was in the mountains.  There wasn't really anywhere to camp as it was just mountain on both sides of the road; up on one side, down on the other.  I finally found a place.  There was a little side area that seemed to be used for dumping garbage.  The area was much larger than the garbage pile so I could put up my tent away from the garbage.  It rained the whole night, but it didn't pour.  I stayed dry.

The one bad part of that night was that I was woken up at about 4am by some large animal that had come to eat the garbage.  Generally, I don't worry about the wildlife in Thailand.  There aren't any bears or mountain lions like there are back in the US.  The only large predator in Thailand is the tiger, but there are so few tigers left and they don't come near the roads and they don't eat garbage.  Whatever animal was there, it was big; too big to be a dog.  It breathed very heavily and stepped heavily (another sign that it wasn't a tiger; tigers move silently).  I didn't want to look and draw attention to myself.  My tent, a good 100m from the garbage, wasn't attractive like the garbage was.  Again, I had nothing to eat.  If my tent smelt like anything, it was wet socks.  It very well could have been something harmless like a buffalo or one of the several wild bovine that live in Thailand.  They are only dangerous if you really make them mad.  The other thing it could have been was a wild pig.  Those can be dangerous as they are short tempered and have huge tusks.  Whatever it was, I left it to eat garbage and figured that I wasn't not going to be attractive to eat.  I went back to sleep.  Whatever it was didn't bother me and was gone by morning.

In the morning it was only raining a little.  I was only about 50km from Mae Hong Son so it was about an hour drive.  I'll talk more about Mae Hong Son when I leave the province.  I am still planning to visit one more town here.