I recently returned from a trip to a small town in Tak province in Northern Thailand. The name of the town is Mae Sot and it sits just 10 kilometers or so from the Myanmar (Burmese) border. Like all border settlements, Mae Sot has a unique feel to it because of its inhabitants and the lives they lead. The major minority group is of course, the Burmese. You can also find a splattering of Chinese and Malays. My travel companion was none other than Ms. Sarah Sieloff – Fulbright-Truman-World Traveler Extraordinaire. She headed up before me because I had a previous engagement that kept me in BKK longer than she had time to burn.
I finished my writing class at AUA on Friday and ran some errands before I headed home to pack for my overnight bus trip to meet Sarah in Mae Sot. I’m one of those people who has a hard time packing for short stays because I always over pack – usually I find that I don’t need most of the things I end up taking with me, yet I never seem to pack the one thing I do end up needing. Sigh. I had talked with Sarah earlier that day to find out when the buses were leaving and looked up information online as well (even though information through the internet is still a fairly new phenomenon in Thailand) so that I wouldn’t have to sit at the station for too long; that and the fact that buses in Thailand rarely leave on time anyway was all the more reason for me to use my time in more productive ways – like watching TV at home.
I had only been at the Northern Bus Terminal (Mor Chit Station) once before with Mai to go to Lopburi, so I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. There is no central ticketing counter at Thai bus stations as there are numerous operators at various prices going to the same place. Thank goodness that I had stumbled upon the information counter and am comfortable enough with my Thai these days to ask questions without my words coming out backwards. However, as I approached the info booth, it looked as if there was nobody there, which concerned me a little bit. When I got up to the counter, I found that there was indeed a little old Thai lady sitting inside it. She was just so short that her head was below the counter! I asked her where I could catch the VIP buses up to Mae Sot and she told me that I could go to booths 25-29. I thanked her and made my way to where she had indicated and talked to the booth operator. She told me that the ticket would be 650 baht, which I thought was a little expensive since Sarah had just gone the night before for about 450 and I had read that the average was closer to 380 or so. I asked her about this and she told me that I’ll probably be ok with the 1st class bus, which would only be 320 baht or so. Indeed, once I got on the bus an hour later, I found that it would work just fine as I had been on similar buses many times before.
We left the bus station about 20 minutes after the stated departure time (what did I say earlier about departure times for Thai buses?) and all the while, the door was kept open for passengers who were sauntering on into the buses as if they knew we were waiting for them. The problem with this is that the mosquitoes can get in and I happen to be considered a delicacy for them as I’m always getting bitten anytime I’m around mosquitoes for as little as five minutes – during which time I will invariably end up with at least 5 bites. When we finally got going, the drivers put in a terrible American B-movie I’ve never seen or heard of. Even worse, it was dubbed in Thai and the characters were made to have a tone of voice that I’ve come to associate with the big dumb farang stock character in Thai film. Naturally, I closed my eyes and tried to ignore it as best I could and get some sleep. At around 2 hours into the trip and sometime after midnight, we rolled into something I would call a Thai rest-stop, where you can use the restroom and buy snacks and even full-on meals. For some reason, I was itching for a coke. I searched in vain for about 5 minutes before I realized that the entire complex was plastered with Pepsi advertising. Even at this rather remote establishment along a Thai highway, I could see the rules of engagement for the capitalistic world at play. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about – Coke and Pepsi are major competitors, duh. One of the usual ways that they seek to maintain and grow their market share is by including a clause in their agreements that their business partners will only carry their products and not those of their competitors. That means that I can only get the Pepsi line of beverages – which includes anything from energy drinks to bottled water – and nothing made by Coke. Alas, my thirst for cola of some sort got the better of me and I settled for a Pepsi. My time in Thailand has, for some reason, made me more sensitive to the higher level of sugar present in Pepsi and I found it hard to go back to sleep right away after I finished drinking it. What was worse, the movie was over at this point, so I had nothing to do but stare out into the darkness because the lights above me didn’t work, so I couldn’t read the book that I had brought with me. Eventually, the sugar wore off and I was able to get some sleep. I slipped in and out of sleep, which is what tends to happen when you’re trying to sleep in a bus, train, or airplane while sitting up.
We made it to our first border police checkpoint a little after 6 in the morning. I called Sarah to let her know that I was nearby and she told me to give a call after I rolled into town; only the bus driver told me that he wasn’t going any further than the bus terminal. As usual, I was mobbed by motorcycle taxi drivers who wanted to take me into town. I said ok because I knew nothing about the town and I wasn’t about to go wandering with my heavy backpack. I instructed my female driver (unusual) to take me to Baan Thai Guesthouse, which was where Sarah and I had discussed as a possible place to stay. When I got there and had paid my exorbitant fee of 40 baht for the lift, I found that Sarah was in fact, staying at a different place. I told her I’d come find her but ended up walking the wrong way. I stopped to ask for directions and was surprised to find that the first words out of the guy’s mouth was “hello, how are you?” I guess with my backpack, I was looking less Thai than usual. As I turned around to leave, my driver drove by and asked me what I was doing on this side of town as she had dropped me off quite a distance away. She indicated that I should hop back on and that she would take me to the right place. How nice of her, I thought. But then my senses hit me and I realized that I was in Thailand still. I wondered if she would charge me another 40 baht to get me to Sarah.
We arrived at the correct hotel shortly and as I was turning to leave, she put out her hand and I asked her how much. 40 baht. You would think that after almost a year here that I would know better. I say 40 baht is exorbitant because I’ve never paid more than 20 baht or so to get around in BKK and here I was paying 80 baht because I was in a strange and foreign town. Anyway, Sarah and I made our way into the hotel room where I requested a short nap before we got on with our day. After all, it wasn’t quite 7am yet.
We got up a couple of hours later and got ready for the day. Sarah needed to go to the border to renew her tourist visa, so that was the first thing that we did. We crossed over the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge after a brief and obligatory dance with Thai Immigration. I felt as though I was crossing into a parallel universe. It reminded me of my trip to Tijuana with Mexico Mission Trek a few years ago where we crossed the US border from the beautiful area surrounding San Diego into Tijuana in Mexico. The buildings and roads looked similar, but everything was in various states of disrepair and the people looked a lot more weathered too. Crossing from Mae Sot into Myawaddy was a fairly painless process save the anxiety over having to leave our passports at the Burmese Immigration booth. I was impressed with their command of English, however. We were given a scratch piece of paper with a stamp on it that we were supposed to hold onto and exchange for our passports later. I stored it away securely in my camera bag, knowing that if I were to lose this slip of paper, it would most likely involve a painful process to retrieve our precious American passports.
Thailand:
Myanmar:
Getting our forms filled out to get into Myanmar...the guy in the bottom photo seemed like a random guy, but apparently he worked at the immigration booth.
As soon as we cleared immigration, we were met on the other side by touters, drivers, beggar children, and tour guides. Some of them spoke Thai surprisingly well, but aside from these few people, nobody else spoke any language that was intelligible to either Sarah or I. Regardless, we made our way down the main avenue of the town and did a once-over of a small market down a narrow avenue. We saw a few things of interest, but didn’t want to lug stuff around, so we decided that we would come back later.
We found a temple to explore for a little bit before we turned around and grabbed lunch at one of the places we had passed by earlier. It was strange to have to communicate by pointing and gestures again. I was just getting comfortable with speaking Thai to order food and buy things and here I was being told that a certain dish was made from lamb by our server through a good-humored bleat. Eventually, we were able to put together a lunch with several Burmese dishes that didn’t have eyes, heads, or feet. Trying to get them to heat up our food slightly involved a whole new round of charades.
This is our vocally talented and at times overly helpful server:
After lunch, we went back to the market and bargained hard for a few pieces of Burmese clothing. I bought a few “longyis” (the Burmese version of a male sarong) and Sarah purchased some cloth to make a skirt and a few other items. We gathered our things and went to collect our passports before heading back into Thailand.
People and life in Myawaddy:
We stopped briefly for a coke before heading into the border market on the Thai side, which featured lots of jewelry made of gems, jewels and pearls brought in from Burma – and sold at killer prices.
On our way back into town, we got into a sawngthaw (basically a pick up truck with rails and cover) with about 10 Burmese; 8 of whom were men and 2 of whom were women – of which one was very, very pregnant. We hadn’t gone very far before we slowed and pulled over. It was a border policeman. I don’t know what he was saying as he wasn’t speaking very much Thai, but his tone sounded accusatory. Sarah and I think that the word he kept repeating was the Burmese word for “illegal?” The end result of his stern finger pointing was that all the men were made to get off (save me, of course – thankfully, I had my passport to show him) because none of them had papers. They were handcuffed and made to sit down as a group on the side of the road. Meanwhile, I noticed that there was one young man who kept looking to the pregnant lady as if asking for help. I surmised that she was probably his mother, who was trying to tell the officer that they were on their way to work; all in vain for there was nothing she could do to soften the look on the stern officer’s face. I wonder how the situation would have been different if Sarah and I, as foreign observers, hadn’t been there. Would they have just paid the officer and that would have been the end of the whole thing? Although I didn’t witness any type of border scuffles when I was at the Mexican border, it reminded me of various scenes in movies that I’ve seen which depict the lives of illegal immigrants seeking work in better-off neighboring countries. At any rate, it seemed to be a routine part of life and we just continued along our way, pretty much as if nothing had happened. However, the pregnant lady did look a little bit disconcerted that her son or whoever was last seen cuffed along the side of the road – and it wasn’t like he had a cell phone to call and tell her that he was ok.
We were dropped off somewhere near the bustling town market and made our way back to the hotel to drop off our newly acquired prizes and got our things together to go to the herbal sauna at the local wat. 20 baht admission; you can’t beat that. It was nice, except for the fact that I was with a whole bunch of middle-aged provincial Thai men who looked at me as if they thought I must be lost. That and it was a very rustic facility, where the men didn’t really have a changing room or lockers or anything. Also, I couldn’t really locate a restroom. I’m not especially shy about stripping down in public, but it’s different when you’re doing it on temple grounds with monks walking around. One of the men approached me to offer to take me to get my hair cut at his brother’s shop. Apparently, he didn’t think my hair looks the way it does on purpose.
I wimped out and spent only like 15 minutes or so in the sauna before deciding I was done and went for some of their strong brew herbal tea – boy was it STRONG. You have to remember that as a Chinese person, I happen to enjoy weakly brewed tea, so I had to pour some of my water into it. While I was waiting for Sarah, I got like 10 mosquito bites and became very paranoid that I was going to get malaria because the area is known for still having mosquitoes that carry the parasite. Afterwards, we went for Thai massages. I know, it sounds like I’m living the life here in Thailand, no? It’s because I am! And I will miss it dearly once I go back home, too.
The next day, we just finished up some additional shopping at the border market and spent some time at the internet café and coffee shop doing a little bit of work that both of us needed to do. That night, we had a gigantic Cantonese feast and tried to give our uneaten food to some kids, but naturally, they didn’t really want to take anything from strangers. We returned to the hotel, where I packed my stuff and hopped on a night bus back to BKK. Sarah was heading out to Sukhothai the next day, so we parted ways again.
In my experience, the trip back home is usually faster than the trip getting somewhere and this trip was no exception. The one interesting thing that I have to share about my trip back home is that unlike the trip into Mae Sot, where we stopped at one border police station, we were stopped and inspected twice on the way out. The first time was pretty uneventful, but the second time requires a little bit of elaboration. Two border police get on the bus and conduct an inspection of everybody’s papers – well, anybody Asian as my English neighbors were pretty much ignored. One guy started from the back and moved to the front and the other one started from the front and moved back. I was towards the middle-front, so the front guy got to me first. I handed him my passport, he gave me and then my passport a curious look before handing it back to me. The guy coming from the back reached me and indicated that he needed to see my papers. The guy who had already seen it told him that he had already check me out – “he’s Japanese.” It was all I could do to keep from cracking up and giving him crap for oh so many reasons. I mean, it might have meant a cold night in the forest with them in their little station if they so chose to punish me for my insolence.
The two ladies behind me weren’t so lucky as they quickly became the targets of intense grilling. I was listening to their Thai, which sounded reasonably good as they were answering the routine questions of where are you from, where are you going, what are you going to do in BKK. Something they said or didn’t say did them in and they were made to collect their things and get off the bus. It was like the scene back in Mae Sot and the sawngthaw all over again. I felt awful for them and wondered what would happen to them. Also, I wonder why there wasn’t an effort to catch them as they are buying their tickets. I mean, it really isn’t the responsibility of the bus operators to make sure that the passengers are complying with the law, I know, but I felt bad that they had spent what was probably hard-earned money to buy the bus ticket – which isn’t really that cheap, relatively speaking.
The rest of my trip home was fairly quiet and I slept pretty well, considering the conditions. I got into a taxi and headed home as the Skytrain hadn’t started running yet for the day as it wasn’t quite 6am when I rolled into Mor Chit Station. I suppose I could have waited and caught a bus to the BTS station, but I was quite ready to get back to bed as soon as possible.
