Arrival in Mae Sot

After another short stop in Bangkok, we arrived in Mae Sot just over two weeks ago now. We flew up to the town of Sukothai, which has one of the best airports I've ever been to. As you climb out of the plane, a little "bus" which looks like it would be better placed giving tours of a film studio in LA, comes to ferry you to the terminal building which is built in the style of a Thai beach hut.

Phil patiently waits at the baggage collection point, for the luggage to be lifted off the cart and heaved not onto a carroselle but more of a table and bish bash bosh, we are in. 

From the “baggage claim” table we can see through the whole terminal and spot our driver ready to drive us the two hours or so from Sukothai to Mae Sot. So as the light slowly fades we watch the paddy fields and banana palms fly past the window of the nice air conditioned pick-up. Thinking of the efforts some people must go to catching multiple buses from Bangkok to reach this place, we relaxed and doze all the way to Mae Sot:)

We were only briefly disturbed at one of the many checkpoints along the road. These have been put in place to limit the number of migrant workers leaving the Mae Sot area, where they are tolerated for their contributions to the local textiles industry (a synic might attribute this to the minimum wage not appling to people without papers). However a quick flash of a torch in our faces revealing that we are farangs (foreigners from further afield) meant that we continued on our way unhindered.



The bustling street scene in Mae Sot



The next morning we set out to explore the town of Mae Sot, one of the main exit points from Thailand into Burma. The town has a bustling multicultural feel with Thai's, Burmese, Karen and Westerners all mingling on the streets going about their business. We strolled around the market absorbing the pleasant smells of lemon grass and coconut milk emanating from the street venders, dodging buckets of writhing eels in the market and occasionally choking on a plume of blue haze buzzing from an aged motorbike. One thing that stood out immediately were the war paint like splurges of pastel yellow on the cheeks of the women in the market. Apparently a form of local sun cream/moisturiser.

So after a quick survey of the town we stopped for lunch at Canadian Dave's. Catering for the local expat community, this place is a treasure trove for someone who has a craving for western food, both as a restaurant and a deli counter, with delicacies such as cheddar cheese and cumberland sausages stowed in the refrigerated cabinets that line the back of the shop.

Under the friendship bridge and about as close to Burma as
one can get in Mae Sot at the moment.

There isn't a huge amount of immediate interest in Mae Sot to talk about, there are a couple of markets, a couple of temples (which are more functional than for show – although very pretty none the less), the all important Rim Moei border market where goods from Burma are imported and sold to Thai's and tourists and of course the “Friendship Bridge” which connects Mae Sot with it's Burmese cousin Myawaddy. Ironically the friendship bridge is proving a little bit of an obstacle to the normally cordial relations between Mae Sot and Myawaddy...it's closed. That might be something to do with a flood embankment built by the Thai's on the Moei river, or might be to do with the security situation in the predominantly Karen area just over the river (nobody seems to be clear why its closed, but it is generally hoped that it will re-open after the elections in November). Whatever it is, it means that cross river trade is not doing so well but there still seems to be plenty of stuff in the markets.

At the end of the day for us, after so long on the road we are just happy to be in one place and are looking forward to getting to know our new home!

Wat Chom-Pol

Back at the hotel that night Phil ate an inhumanely hot lemongrass soup which, as he was delicately slurping said fiery water from the rice spoon, managed to create a kind of aerosol effect in his mouth, spraying the back of his throat with what felt like napalm. Phil struggled to hold his composure, desperately trying not to let slip his inability to eat the local cuisine, but three things gave him away. Firstly the scarlet colour in his cheeks, secondly the tears of pain streaming from his eyes and finally the muffled giggles coming from his wife watching him try to come to terms with the injury he'd just caused himself! Recovered from that misadventure and now armed with the concrete knowledge that anything prefixed with the word “spicy” on the menu, is beyond Phil's eating abilities, we retired, ready for something even more daunting. Our first “Monday morning” for about 4 months...