Days 74 – 75: Mae Sot

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2052296&l=858b4&id=1101094

Kendyl and I ventured down to the border town of Mae Sot separately, as I had to wait around to pick up my passport from the Chinese consulate. My bus ride was uneventful, and I had some good time to catch up on my reading—it’s amazing how little of it I’d done since Kendyl arrived. I walked the 2km from the Mae Sot bus station into town, and on the way I met a German who was in Thailand studying massage. It turned out that he was a professional masseuse who now lived in the Italian Alps, and his high season was winter, when skiers invaded his town. He managed to make enough money massaging injured skiers during the winter months that he could spend much of the rest of the year traveling. Not bad.

We both ended up staying at the Green House Guest House, at which Kendyl and I had already agreed to meet. I got my first look at thanaka, the yellow makeup that Burmese women and children rub on their faces, at my guest house—it seems that though Mae Sot is in Thailand, its population is mostly Burmese and Karen (a minority ethnic group in the east of Burma). As Kendyl soon found out, her Thai would be nearly useless here. Unfortunately, neither of us knew Burmese or Karen. We’d have to make do with English.

We had a quiet evening at one of the few restaurants in town, and the following morning we awoke early, Kendyl ready to conduct interviews of NGO workers and me ready to motorbike down to the largest waterfall in Thailand, which was a hard four hour ride away. I set off around 9, and at first I was making quite good time, but around 11 it started raining. I waited under a patch of trees for a bit to see if it would stop, but half an hour later it had only strengthened, and I knew that the gig was up—by now, I hadn’t time to make it to the waterfall and back to Mae Sot by nightfall. And even I wasn’t foolish enough to try to navigate those mountain roads in the dark.

So I spent the remainder of the day visiting smaller waterfalls in the area, as well as a Buddhist monastery or two. The highlight of the day was riding my motorbike west, toward Burma, as far as I could go, and dead-ending into a curious-looking monastery. It was still under construction and housed a strange mix of Thai and Burmese monks. I approached the main house, was greeted by many an inquisitive stare, and asked the ladies if they had something to eat. They told me to sit down on the floor, and within five minutes ladies were bringing me plates of food, many of which I couldn’t identify and some of which I’m not even sure were edible. When I had eaten all I could stomach, I stood up and attempted to pay the lady, but she refused. I insisted, and she ran out of the building and returned a few seconds later with a small stick (that must have been some sort of offering stick), onto which she taped my money. She then crawled into what must have been the monk’s quarters, and came back out with change for me. I refused the change and said, “Donation,” and her jaw dropped open with shock. I had just donated all of $5 to the monastery. Apparently that was a lot.

I rode back to Mae Sot still thinking about the peacefulness of that monastery and the simple, serene lives of the men and women who lived and worked there. Situated near a closed section of the Thai/Burmese border, miles from any town, and completely cut off from modern civilization, these people were living their lives in complete seclusion, but in seeming peace and happiness. I rode my motorbike back into the modernizing, globalizing world, thinking that we might not have it all figured out after all.

By the time I got back to Mae Sot, Kendyl had finished her interviews, which included a particularly interesting one with a child soldier who used to fight in the Burmese army. We ate dinner at a local restaurant and then finished off the night at a very local bar—meaning that we got strange looks from the clientele and the staff the entire time we were there. It was ok, though, because we left soon enough—it seems I’m still a lightweight.