Long ride to Myanmar (almost)

After a night full of tiger dreams, we packed up our gear yesterday morning, used the internet for a while, then took a bus back to Bangkok. We wanted to head into northern Thailand, and unfortunately, the best was was via Bangkok. We were dropped off near Khao San road, and went into about 5 different travel offices before finding one able to book a bus where we wanted to go. It has been surprising to us that, as well-travelled as Thailand is, it sure is hard to get off of the typical tourist route! We were happy we persued our cause though, and got some overnight bus tickets to Mae Sot, leaving that night. We left our bags, got some street Pad Thai, and ran into William, a Scotsman whom we had met in Kanchanaburi. We had a few drinks with him (he was flying back to the UK that night) before catchin a minivan to the bus station. The cost to get to the northern bus station was included in what we paid for our tickets to Mae Sot...unfortunately, we did not know they they would drop us off at the station around 7:00 pm and our bus did not leave until 9:40 pm! We claimed a piece of floor in the station, had Dunkin' Doughnuts for dessert, and took turns wandering about while we waited. Our bus was late arriving, and we finally took off around 10:00 p.m. The ride to Mae Sot was not too bad, but those overnight buses always suck.

We arrived in Mae Sot this morning around 5:45 am. There was a tuk tuk driver there, but he wanted a ridiculous amount to take us not very far to a hotel. So we walked, got a bit lost, then walked some more. The first place we checked out was pretty gross, so we went for place number 2, a guesthouse in an old 2-storey teak house. Our room was just that: a room with a mat on the floor under a huge mossie net and nothing else. We did not mind, and went straight to sleep in the cool morning.

It was nearly noon when we woke up (birds chirping, breeze blowing in through the windows). We had a much-needed shower, organised a 4-day trek, and had some lunch. We then caught a local sawngthaew (pick-up truck with two benches in the back for seats) to the Thai-Myanmar border about 6 km away. We spent the afternoon wandering around the border markets, selling mostly Burmese teak wood crafts and gorgeous gems and stones of any kind. A lot of illegal trading between the two countries goes on at the Mae Sot border, mainly teak logs brought into Thailand from Myanmar (Burma). But Mae Sot is an interesting town full of Burmese, Indo-Burmese, Chinese, Thai and Laotian ethnicities and minorities. Border skirmishes between Myanmar's government and the Karen and Kayah insurgencies are not uncommon here in Mae Sot. Evidence to this can be seen in the refugee camps outside town.

We caught a sawngthaew back into town, and are now headed to dinner before getting ready to leave tomorrow on a 4-day trek through the jungles south of here.