Leaving Mae Sot

I'll be getting on the night bus in a few hours to head to Bangkok. I'm not exactly sure how things are going to work from there, but I'll have all day to make it to Trat (5 hour trip?) and then hopefully another hour further to the island of Ko Chang. I'll have a few rustic days in a hut on the beach before again taking a late bus to Bangkok and be at the airport by 6am on Sunday (local time...I guess Saturday night).

I could be entering a bit of a technological black hole, but Thailand has so far been consistently surprising in the frequency of internet cafes and lodging with wireless internet.

Andy

My exciting visit to Burma...

This afternoon I decided to cross so I my visa would be renewed (to get me through the last week of my stay) and to have a look around. Immediately after leaving the Thai guardhouse I was approached by a guy who spoke very good English and said that his grandfather was an interpreter for the Brittish, and that he was a school teacher volunteering to help visitors. I think I've heard that story from other people's experiences in Myawaddy. He followed me on across the bridge and led me to the Myanmar customs house where the real fun began.

You have to pay 500B to enter the country, and the immediately stamp your passport in and out. The guy said that he would keep my passport until I came back through. While that was quite thoughtful of him, I wasn't very comfortable with the notion. I put up a small fight, but ended up leaving it with him. The highlight was when I said that I might decide to stay the night in Myawaddy, at which point he looked kind of nervous and shook his head. They try to give the impression of being a friendly, inviting place, but it's hard to pull it off.

I thought about it later, and what they had done was ensure that I couldn't go anywhere, and that I would have to check out with them. I'm not much of a threat, but if I had a video camera stashed in my bag and was able to enter with my passport, there is no telling where I might go or what I might film. I guess that's what they are trying to limit. My "guide" caught up with me quickly and apologized for the trouble with the passport. He explained that I could take pictures of anything, specifically the market and 6 temples, but not of any police stations, military stations, or government buildings. In retrospect I wish I had asked him why they had all these rules.

He explained that he would be glad to take me to all the above sights, and I said I would be quite happy to go to the market and the closest temple. I asked how far away they were, and he said about 2km straight ahead. With this in mind, I told him that I could probably make it there myself, and after a bit of thinking he said goodbye.

I've heard that going to Rangoon is kind of like going back to the 1930's. I could get a sense of that in Myawaddy. The roads are wide but very dusty and most people are on bicycles. There are some modern vehicles, but also some weird trucks that are basically an exposed engine bolted to two rails. If there was sheetmetal, it was very square and heavy looking. There was a bench for the driver and passenger, and then a large bed. The engines sounded like they only had one cylinder, and the fuel tank sat on top of the engine with a hole in the middle where the top of the carb showed through. It really looked like a one cylinder diesel motor driving a generator, that maybe powered motors in the back wheels? It was really bizarre, and very common.

On the whole, I didn't take many pictures and just walked down to the market, through it, and back out. The market wasn't much to see, mostly just dirty with lots of fish and fresh-cut durian. I could see the end of town which was rather abrupt. I had heard that the local people do interesting things if you start walking out of town that way, but I had been sufficiently disturbed by the trip thus far to not want to push things -- especially with my passport held hostage.

I think that satisfied my curiosity for the country. It really did feel like a a police state -- not overtly, but the fact that I couldn't enter with my passport (ie as a free person) and had limits placed on what I could photograph was enough for me.

I exited and did some shopping at the border market. I bought a strand of pearls for about two dollars. I think they are real in the sense that they came out of some sort of shellfish, but it's likely just from some kind of clam that grows in the Moei along the border. In my pearl authentification research I was surprised that some Mississippi River mussels produce some very sought after pearls.

I think my schedule is going to allow two days on an island in the Gulf of Thailand near Cambodia. I'll be leaving for there Tuesday night.

Umpiem, Umphang, and Tee La Su

[as usual, I've been completely unable to choose where the pictures go]
You have to love Thai names... This was a busy weekend. My friend Caroline and I began Friday by heading up to Umpiem, home to around 20,000 Burmese Refugees. Her friend teaches at a school there that is for the most advanced students. The system here seems to go for ten years, and then you can do a post-ten program. Those graduates can apply to this, a post-post-ten program. The staff is half past graduates and half westerners. English is the only language to be spoken on the compound. The students are very eager to learn, and the teachers to the best they can with limited resources to give them things to study and think about. One of the coolest things I saw was that over their summer break, those who could not leave (most of them I think) worked on planting vegetables on all the unused land in the compound. In the camps, people live on monthly rations of rice, fish paste, garlic, salt, and peppers. This garden, in addition to giving them something to do (which is desperately needed in the camps), will give them some nutrition they are lacking.

Anyway, we were there to teach a first aid class. It was a lot of fun. We did basic would care, splinting, and addressed some common health problems in the camp. It really was a great application of all my wilderness medicine training. They have very little there, but in a way it makes it easier to teach because you know you only have a certain number of things to use. We taught for about two hours and really had a great time. If I would have thought about it, I would have tried to do classes like this periodically the entire time I've been here.

The camp is... it's a lot of things. In a way it's a really beautiful combination of brown huts dotting the green hillsides. It's also like a giant slip-and-slide -- lots of muddy trails up and down the mountains. Mostly it's a place where way too many people are stuck in a very small space with absolutely nothing to do. It's just not healthy, and not a solution to much of anything. Access is limited -- we had to have prior approval, and I don't think anyone from inside can leave. It's sad to see so many people who are so talented and engaged in learning with a) so few materials to study and b) very little chance of getting outside where they can really apply themselves.

I was amazed to find that the SPDC had shelled the camp several (maybe ten?) years ago and everyone left. The camp was mostly destroyed. Later people moved back. I can't believe that the Thai government would allow an attack like that on their soil.

From there we, Caroline, myself, and our teacher friend, hitched a ride up to Umphang, a very small town at the end of a very windy road. The road was barely on the hillsides at some point, and apparently a few years ago a bridge washed out and the people (less than 10k?) were left with no connection to the outside world for two months. We thought we would experience the nightlife and ended up sitting outside the mini-mart drinking really bad wine coolers and eating cookies. An AMI truck passed by and stopped, being driven by two acquaintances of mine. Since the town is half-way between two big refugee camps, a handful of NGO's use it as their base. I mentioned that when people complained about being in Umphang, I hadn't really believed it could be that bad. One of them replied with a French accent, "no, it is no myth that there is nothing to do in Umphang." She went on to describe how the owner of the store whose stoop we were perched was a very nice man, and that his brother owned a somewhat nicer store down the street. It's definitely a small town.

The next morning we left early to begin our two day trip. We rafted from just outside the town for about four hours, about half in the rain, before stopping for lunch and heading out on foot. While on the rafts, we passed several small falls, lots of cliffs, and even saw a monkey swinging around above us. We then walked about 6 miles of steep road that is currently closed because of the rainy season. In more temperate weather, this trip can be made in a vehicle, but I've heard there isn't as much water coming over the falls. It was very much a catered trip, but I think that's the only way it can be done.

We arrived in the evening and set up camp (rather had it set up for us, then had dinner cooked for us etc). We walked up the river a bit towards the falls and stopped to swim in the cold water. When people design jungle-themed pools at resorts, I think this river is what they had in mind. That night the mosquitos were horrendous, but we all had a good layer of deet built up by then.

The next day we headed for the falls, and it was amazing. It's the largest waterfall in SE Asia, and the sixth tallest in the world (I think). We were able to swim in a pool below one of the lowest tiers, and even sit in the fall, and go back behind it. It was definitely cold, but great.

We then walked back out, and rafted further down the other river to the next town. There were the three of us in the raft with two guides paddling. We picked up a second raft with only one person steering it. I waited for a bit and watched her struggle to make a corner before volunteering to help. I'm not sure if ended up helping or not -- it seems like she did everything backwards from the way I would have, and sitting in the back I had to figure out how to follow her lead. In any two person boat, communication is important, and we had very little means to do that. In the beginning I felt like we were fighting each other, but by the end were working pretty well. I think I wish I would have just stayed in my boat, but oh well.

Then came the 4 hour ride in the covered back of a truck through some twisty mountain roads. We started at around 6:30. We had premedicated with dramamine (about 20 cents for 12 pills!). For a while it was beautiful, climbing out of the valley at sunset, but also very cold and a bit rainy. I passed out at some point in the bed and remembered very little until being woken up in Mae Sot. I think I remember swerving around some cows, and I remembered when we made it out of the mountains and the speed quadrupled and the air felt 30 degrees warmer. That was about it.

I got home exhausted but having had a great time. I'm starting to wrap up at work. It looks like the data entry won't be done before I leave, but we are making plans to get that done. I'm going to try to write every type of report and summary I can think of, just leaving the data tables and conclusions blank. I feel pretty good about the work I've done.

I think I will leave Mae Sot in about a week and spend some time in South East Thailand, partly on the Cambodian border and partly in the Thai Gulf. I'm not really sure what I'll do there, but it will be a nice break. Maybe just sleep, read, and walk around some.

Another trip to the "field"

It's interesting to talk about travelling into the field, because that's is basically anywhere but Mae Sot. I left town Monday afternoon on a 2 hour, thirty mile trip by public transit. It's basically a Toyota Tacoma (Hi-Lux to the rest of the world) with a tall camper-shell and bench seats. There were just a couple people in it, so the driver drove around Mae Sot for quite a while trying to find more passengers. Once he finally gave up, it was a pretty quick trip. We went through several checkpoints, and when we arrived in the farming area (ie lots of illegal burmese people) the checks were every few kilomteres. I think my presence sped things up a bit. The Thai are very hospitable people and I think would rather just pass the truck through than put a western guest through the process of pulling everyone off, checking their papers, and the possible arrests etc that would follow.

I arrived and went to a school where we were giving the survey. I then went into a small town actually on the Moei River. Standing on this bank, Thailand. On the other, Burma. In the rainy season, the river is a bit of an obstacle, but people cross regularly on boats. During the dry season it sounds like you can walk across without much trouble. In that town, many people work farms and other jobs in Burma. They might travel across and work for a week or two, then come back for a while. The Thai police are mostly concerned with keeping the people from getting beyond the town and entering Thai Thailand.



We went to a Thai school that takes people living in the town who have proper papers. The space-to-student ratio was vast compared to the migrant (illegal) schools. It looked like the kids hang out there most of the evenings also playing soccer, volleyball, and badminton. There was an interesting looking area to one side -- I jokingly asked if it was a BMX track of some sort. Turns out, the Thai government had brough in the 4-foot concrete culverts and covered them with dirt (leaving one end open, with a dirt pile a couple feet in front) so that the students would have a place to go in case of artillery attack.

Initially I was supposed to stay at the house of a co-worker in that town, but the community leader (they still have an unofficial village-style governance) said he didn't think it would be a good idea due to recent clashes between the KNU and another Karen group allied with the Burmese SPDC. These don't cross the river, but are pretty close by. Over the last couple weeks they have been able to hear mortars, and the residents of a nearby Karen village have all moved to this small town.

With this going on, it was apparently safer for me to stay at a boarding school for illegal students...about a quarter mile further from the river. I think about half of the 300 students live in nearby settlements, while half live at the school. Some have families in Burma that they might be able to visit once a year, others are orphans (often related to the war). The staff is just a handful of teachers, and I think only one or two teachers stay at the school at night. The kids go to bed at sunset and are up at 4:30, doing various chores or studying.

I was taken off-site to the staff house, where I was introduced to Karen Whiskey, a sort of rice moonshine. It is illegal, but the Thai police have an accepting attitude towards it --one guy said he even drank some with the police once and they thought highly of the stuff. It is something they have used in ceremonies of all sorts (weddings, funerals etc) forever and aren't willing to give it up. It's not hard to find, but it is a back-room sort of deal. Not bad stuff, kind of harsh but not as strong as normal liquor you would get in the US.

We got back late and I slept in the dorm. It's strange -- the buildings were all nice and in good repair, but definitely of the local architecture. The dorm was had a leaf roof and down the middle there was a bamboo walkway, a few feet off the ground. It was maybe 8 larger pieces of bamboo running parallel down the middle. A bit tricky to balance on. On each side was a platform another foot up with "joists" of smaller bamboo and split bamboo on top of that. It's a solid but still flexible surface. Everyone slept under mosquito nets on mats (not with any sort of padding) on that surface. The weather was great, comfortably cool and misty.

The ground outside was slippery and sloppy, but that's the way things are this time of year. The water is from a manual-pump well. The kids are in charge of most things, including taking turns cooking breakfast and all the other things that allow the school to function. From what I saw, it worked smoothly.

I returned in the back of a pickup truck that has some sort of permission to carry whomever through the checkpoints unstopped. It was a tiring trip, but I felt like I was getting to know people and the community in ways I hadn't before.

At dinner tonight we discussed that over the last few weeks the boarding schools have been swamped and the clinic has been much busier than usual. It sounds like the fighting they were worried about where I was may be the root of all this. It's hard for me to say though because things in the border area are kept quiet.

Spending some time in the field...

Not quite what I would have meant in Venezuela where I actually spent time hanging out with the farmer's, but today I went out with some guys to "observe" the survey administration. It ended up being very tiring, but a lot of fun. A quick update on things: I have almost 300 surveys done and expect around 70 more, which is far more than I expected. When I found out that a particularly hard to access area had done 170, I responded with "Hoke Lar!," and was rather proud of how far I've come in Burmese. No one was arrested in the process, which is a bonus. I've almost finished the database, which involved a little bit of programming -- the first I've done since graduating college. Who would have thought that it would have come in handy here?

And a quick anecdote: I mentioned the guy from CSI Miami paying a visit. My friend read an article about it, and the actor said that he met a really fun guy from Kachin who worked in the lab at the clinic. My friend said that of the 6 Kachin at the clinic, he's the only one to work in the lab. I think he appreciates his new international notoriety, but can't remember meeting the guy. Finally we found a picture and he said "oh yes -- I ate lunch with him three days!" Later the same guy said in somewhat broken English, "I have heard that Angelina Jolie is coming in December. Everything will be okay."

I didn't really know what we were going to do today, except that it would involve seeing how two organizations were administering the survey. Part of my trouble in setting this up is that I didn't really understand the conditions in the field. I picked up a guy from the clinic on a motorbike this morning. We went out and collected another person helping, and then went to a sort of safe-house where they had been conducting the survey. In the factories, organizations aren't allowed in. They wait around until the workers have a break and then they surreptitiously go back to this house where they can teach classes or gather information. I don't think the workers are illegal, but their papers basically say they can't travel more than a few kilometers from the factory. They live in factory owned dorms that cost 700B/month. Their salary is typically 1500B/month. That leaves them 800B for food and everything else, which is about $25 US.

We just kind of walked around the area for a while. One of the factories had the gate open and people were going in for a some sort of special sale. I was with two guys from Burma. Before I knew it, they were my local guides and I was on vacation and wanted to do some shopping. Easily we were in the factory and walked to the warehouse. As we entered, one of them grinned and said "You should probably buy something." The funny part is that I only have 70Bhat ($2) to my name. We all quietly pooled our money and found enough for a t-shirt. My boss is back in the country now so I'll have access to my survey funding, ending my financial troubles. All-in-all it was an entertaining situation, and I got a t-shirt out of it.

We later went out into a farming district. Getting there was a good test of my motor-bike skills. The dirt roads were wet, rutted, and contained large puddles of soupy mud. I didn't go down, but did slide around (at low speeds of course) a lot. The bike looks like it has been taken off-road, which might cause some trouble for me when I return it tomorrow. The people on the farm are a lot like country folks in TN -- once we were invited in we couldn't leave until we'd been given coffee, cigarettes, and food, and even then it was a fight to leave again. Very friendly.

We then visited some houses run by the clinic for children who are abandoned by their parents. It's unfortunately common for a mother or couple to leave children at the clinic after giving birth. Maybe the mother was HIV+, or the child was born with a defect, or maybe the family just knew they couldn't support another child. At these houses, the kids get an education, medications (including retro-virals) and are taken care of. It's still a bad situation and it's really taxing on the clinic resources to take care of all of them (maybe 45 total?). As I've mentioned before, since these kids have no nationality, they can never be adopted.

In general, I really enjoyed the day. Spending a day out in the communities helped put things in perspective. I also had good companions. Both the guys are about my age and a lot of fun, especially outside of the office. I got a sense of community that I've had in other trips like this but haven't really had here. It was tiring to be around, meeting people, trying to be polite etc, but a good day.

Working working...

I thought I should take advantage of this moment when my keyboard is functioning fully. It seems that all I need is for someone to get inside the laptop and re-seat a cable attachment...I just have to find time to do it. The chaos of last weekend has subsided, and things are going as well as would be expected. It's frustrating now to see the survey in progress and understand all the things I should have done differently. Having never done anything like this, I couldn't have known going in, but if I had it to do over again things would be much better. I still think that we will get some meaningful data out of it, even if a few questions don't work out.

I think I've confused many of my friends here -- I've gone from working very lazily, a mix of not knowing what I should be doing and waiting for information from other people to working a lot. I think one of the biggest problems was in now knowing how much direction to give. A goal of this is for the community organizations to have a sense of ownership, so I really just left a lot to them. I think that if I were to do it again I could offer more focused guidance in some areas and leave them more free in others. Anyway, I'm now working a lot. My mornings are often running errands for the people giving the survey, then I spend the rest of the day and a few hours in the evening trying to get the database set up for data entry. The lack of certain keys has slowed this down. It's been stressful, but I think I'm on top of things. Now that things are almost all within my control, I know that when I get finished, I'm finished. That makes it easier to work the long hours. And the time is flying by.

There have been lots of interesting events. My Burmese studies are coming along fairly well, and I'm learning a few words in Thai. It's amazing that it just takes a little bit of knowledge to improve communication greatly. Thai immigration is apparently cracking down a little bit which is making my surveying of the outlying areas difficult. I've said over and over that I don't want anyone to take risks to do the survey, but I found out today that one of my guys spend a few hours hiding in a pile of corn stalks the other day to avoid the authorities. I guess I need to be more clear. Tomorrow I am going to a migrant school to observe the survey administration, and Saturday I think I am going to one of the factories. Monday and Tuesday I think I will be in a farming area about an hour from here where we are focusing.

I still don't understand the logistics involved with undocumented people. It's definitely true that you have to pay bribes to move around, but it's a little more complicated. It seems more than certain people pay the bribe so that their car is allowed to pass unchecked by the police. They then have a very nice business transporting undocumented people from one established area to another. To get the car for an hour trip is about $30 US, which is very expensive for here.

I went on a longer bike ride the other day on my single-speed cruiser. It is a road that follows the river that separates Thailand and Burma. On this side is mostly farms, and across are mountains. There are checkpoints every so often, and a military camp, but no one seems very concerned about people traveling. There is also a ferry across the river that is officially illegal but seems to operate with tacit approval. I ride by where people come up from the river, but haven't been down to the ferry.

The other night we were sitting in a fine establishment run by a Canadian fellow. He often has the BBC on, and I saw the intro to a segment called "Nurses on the Frontline." I couldn't hear, but when I saw the people they were talking to, I pointed everyone's attention there. While we couldn't see, we could quickly tell by the attire that they were in the Karen state in Burma, right across the river from where I am. They followed a group of...I don't even know what to call them. They aren't really rebels. There was a united Karen resistance in the past, but it seems to have splintered.

Anyway, these guys hang around in the jungle using some guerrilla tactics when necessary, but mostly just wait for the SPDC (basically the burmese army operating within Burma against the countries own people) to burn a village and then help sort out the aftermath. I've heard it described first hand at the clinic, that the people find out that the SPDC are coming and they flee to a nearby cave they have dug out and then I guess disguise the entrance (which probably isn't difficult in the jungle). Outside, the SPDC destroy everything, maybe shoot some people, and then seem to like leaving a few landmines around just for good measure. The people come out, then this group takes care of the injured and helps them get to a more secure area, it seemed typically into a more stable, Karen controlled area.

With my job being office-based, it's easy to ignore the fact that the people I'm seeing post amputation at the clinic are all victims of land mines, and all the (occasionally dying) malnourished kids are a direct result of these activities. It's funny the things that really impact me, but as they were hiking through the jungle, one of the soldiers had a pair of sandals that were the same make and color as a communal pair in the bathroom of my office (more on weird foot/shoe customs later). It's really just right over there.

The strange thing is that I saw this after days of frustrating meetings. On one hand, I think "working with these people is impossible" and on the other I think "they've been through so much, I shouldn't get frustrated." Where the balance is, I don't know. They have been through a lot, but they aren't in a position to be pitied. Even though they are relatively safe here in Thailand, they still have to work hard.

I was at an award ceremony today and they honored (among others) a woman from Australia who has done a lot with local groups. I wish I could paraphrase what she said. It was the best statement I've heard of what is needed in areas like this. Basically that the people don't need charity, then need education and resources so they can address their difficult situation. I've always thought about refugees in an abstract sense, but here I am among many of them. Their lives need to continue, and the standard treatment of refugees doesn't allow that. It's simply a way to get them out of the way and marginally taken care of. They are an international problem, and putting them in camps is a way of fixing it, but the people are still there. Little focus seems to be on helping them. Burma is their home, and they want to go back, but they are stuck here.

That's easy enough to say, but it's hard to know what to do. On one hand is broad international work to find some sort of resolution in Burma. On the other is just teaching them the life skills they will need in their new situation, whether that is living illegally in Thailand or being relocated to another country.

So who knows.

I've been abandoned....

This is probably the most important several days of my work here. Today through Monday I am training interviewers to go out and administer the survey I've developed. Hopefully by Tuesday, the bulk of my work will be finished. At least the bulk of the frustrating part will. It will be nice to have little to do besides data entry and analysis. I can do it on my schedule and in my own language.

It has worked out, though, that things are more difficult than they could be. The person who has been my link to everyone else this summer disappeared to the Refugee camps, probably applying for relocation to the US. That means that I've been left to find other people to make phone calls and organize things. Also, my supervisor has had to run to Vietnam to renew her Visa. There is a limit to the number of times you can cross back and forth into Burma. Eventually you are required to go to another country for a longer amount of time. This misfortune has combined to make a rather tiring and frustrating weekend, but I think things are moving along. My translator for tomorrow is much more capable than today's which should help tremendously.

Compounding the frustration is the fact that most of my friends here are in Umphang this weekend, so I have no one to complain to. Luckily for them, this is the first nice day we have had in weeks. It's only rained an hour or two.

So, things are going relatively well, or at least they are moving forward. Today has been torturous, and I think the next few will be the same. There are only a few of them though, and I think each one will become easier. As I have said, by Friday the survey should be nearly finished and definitely operating without much input from me. The thought of everyone operating independently next week has me motivated to train them as well as I can.

I think I will try to do the data entry and analysis as promptly as possible and then have a vacation. I'm not sure where I will go. Maybe down to Umphang for a few days, up to Chang Mai for a day or two and then take a train to Bangkok. I really have no interest in staying in the city, but I think there are some interesting places in the vicinity.

Surprising effects of emigration

It seems that the US has recently upped its acceptance of Burmese refugees from a few thousand to 90,000. The result is that everyone has bolted for the camps to apply and interview. I can't blame them, but I've been abandoned in the final stretch of my survey. We are set to train the interviewers this weekend and conduct the interviews next week. If it doesn't happen for some reason, the interviews probably won't happen while I'm here. Who knows....

I think we have to wait and see who has gone and how long they stay. What is important to me is doing the best I can with this, and if it gets sidetracked by something completely out of my control, I won't be too upset. It is however frustrating trying to get everything together for this weekend when I half-way expect that it won't happen. But the more I get done now, the less I'll have to do later, no matter what happens in the end.

The relocation situation, as I've said before, is interesting. It really does strip the top tier of the refugee culture, especially now that the quota has been raised so much. I wish I knew what the people really thought about it. I think they view the US as a sort of utopia, but I think life will be very difficult for them when they arrive. It's only the land of opportunity for people with good English and a GED. If the situation in Burma were suddenly better I think many would be happy to just go home. I doubt they have much hope left for that though, and life as a legal person in the US is probably much better than life as an illegal in Thailand. Who knows.

I think it would be great it people in the US who have spent time here could somehow register on the internet, and refugees being relocated to the US could search for a sympathetic person near their new home. I'm not quite sure how that would work, short of US governmental involvement. Setting up the database would be easy enough (though securing it would be more challenging). Letting the immigrants know about it would be almost impossible.

A gastronomic guide to my day...

Knowing what my readers are truly interested in, I thought I might write a brief guide to my daily diet.

I'm not quite sure what a Thai breakfast is. There is a Thai omlet that is delicious, but I don't know what Thai or Burmese people eat daily. I've been on a failed quest to find some kind of pastry that would rival Miss Cordelia's scones and am recently in favor of the coffee and bagel breakfast at Krua Canadia, a fine establishment run by guy from, you guessed it, Canada. It's about $2 US, which is a bit expensive but bagels in Mae Sot are a bit exotic. Most people here drink an instant coffee mix that has sugar and creamer mixed it. It's more sugar and cream than coffee and not that great. The 3-in-1 tea mixes are much better. Many places serve cappuccinos that are very sugary.

Lunch is almost always at one of two "restaurants" outside the clinic with a variety of clinic and BMA staff for company. They are great places, but it's under a shed roof on a dirt floor. Lately I've been eating noodles consistently, mainly Pad 'See-You' with chicken or pork. Beef is rare here. Other options are a similar dish with a more gravy-like sauce (rad-na?) or "Spicy Noodle," which may be my current favorite. All of these are about $.70. If I'm not hungry or feeling poorly I might opt for the great 25 cent bowl of soup. For less than 5 cents you can get fried chicken on a stick that comes with a delicious sweet and sour sauce.

When it was warmer I often found time to pick up some ice cream for may 70 cents.

Dinner varies. I first wanted to try lots of local food. There are many "upscale" restaurants that feature some western food and might cost as much as $2. I often look at the western food first, and if none of that seems appealing I move to the Thai and Burmese cuisine. The food at these places isn't that spicy. I don't think I've had anything here that was too spicy to eat, but I've often left meals with my lips on fire and my stomach feeling a weird combination of numb and queasy. Tonight I realized that I've just had a few curries. I really don't see many people eat curry here. It's more noodle dishes of the chewy variety or stir fried things. Glass noodles are great -- they are really fine, almost clear noodles. I think I like these more than Italian style noodles. Burmese food is very fried and greasy. I'll often throw in a 24 oz beer for maybe $1.50. It kind of makes drinking 12 oz beers seem like a waste of time.

One of my favorite places is the Tea Room (we think) in the muslim district. Lunch is the big meal with a variety of curries and other things served kind of cafeteria style over rice. The beef curry is like pot roast. It comes with another bowl of maybe a yellow vegetable curry. For desert (I think) is a warm bowl of sweet rice milk with strange tapioca-esque balls floating around in it. They also have some kind of creamy tea that I haven't tried.

I've also been trying various snacks from the grocery store. It's always a surprise, but usually good. The most surprising were individual packets of saltine crackers with something like Nutella sandwiched in the middle. Sounds strange, but they were good.

This weekend's (mis)adventure...

I guess I should always pause when I think, "what could go wrong" and a dozen things come to mind. This time around I thought, "yeah, but I think everything will go okay." On the positive, everyone returned safely, and we all had a good time.

The plan was this: Rent motor bikes (6) and ten of us ride out to Taksin Maharat National Park. Those not comfortable with operating the bikes would just ride on the back of someone's. Thus arranged, we headed out on our 30 mile ride. It is the rainy season, but we left early and had good weather. I actually got a decent sunburn. Just a few miles out of town I heard a cycling "psssss" sound from my rear wheel and slowed to find the back of the bike fishtailing a bit with an empty tire flapping around. Conveniently, we were within 100 yards of a mechanic, or at least the home of someone who could change the tube (who knew these bikes had tubes?).

From there things were fairly uneventful. The bikes were going well and making it up the hills pretty well, even with the double loads. Mine developed a popping sound when downshifting to go up-hill, which was concerning but avoidable with very careful shifting. About 8 miles from our destination another bike "found a soft tyre" as they would say in cycling parlance. This was a bit further from help. My passenger and I rode back about 1/4 mile to the last town to try to do something. We stopped at a small shop and tried to explain our situation. Meanwhile a helpful person loaded the bike into a truck, drove them in and dropped them of at a mechanic. Caroline and then got to spend a pleasant time with the shopkeeper and a Thai phrasebook. We all got back on the road and entered some wind and rain just few kilometers from our destination. We made it through and found ourselves in a very nice cabin that our friends had arrived at almost an hour earlier.

The park was great. It's about a thousand meters higher in elevation than Mae Sot. Our cabin was really on the precipice and had a nice deck looking out over the valley. The weather was impressive. It was as if we were in a storm the entire time. Strong winds blowing across the house, not really rain but a constant mist following quickly on the wind. As we arrived just after lunch, five of us decided to explore a bit.

The park's claim to fame is a very large Krabarak tree, the largest in the country. When we arrived the guard at the entrance gave us a map and said simply, "big tree." We walked down a road in the high winds but still with a fairly clear sky and some mist blowing through. We descended about a quarter mile of awkward, steep steps to find, yes, a very large tree. It is advertised to be 16m in circumference and I found no reason to doubt it. We then headed right to a waterfall that was quite pretty. I'll put some pictures in here, but seem to have little control of where they go. The waterfall was pretty tall, even though the picture I have makes it look like a close-up of small drop in a creek.

At the waterfall we noticed some creatures that seemed to be rather fond of us. Leeches. They kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip. I was in disbelief until I found one on my knee (and I hadn't really been in the water much), quite firmly attached. We quickly got out of the creek-bed and further up the valley, removed the handful that were attached and thought we were done with them. They ranged in size from tiny to almost two inches. They move like an inch-worm and are amazingly fast and sticky. Once pulled off, it was hard to dislodge them from your finger before they would dig in again there. Thankfully, it was physically painless, although we all suffered some degree of anguish over this.

We walked back to the big tree and then intended to continue through the valley and climb out below the visitor's center and our lodging, about 1.5 miles. To our dismay, we kept finding more and more leeches. It seemed they were all over the ground and would latch onto our shoes as we walked, then climb up. A quick internet search has proven to me that there are terrestrial leeches that lay dormant in the rainforest and then come out during the wet season. Some would hurt a little when they bit in, but that was a blessing -- at least we knew where they were. Others were more clandestine. Everyone handled it well. I'd always thought that the blood-sucking creature I would most dislike would be leaches, and I was correct. Mosquitos at least don't stay long. Ticks, while unpleasant, can be pulled off and tossed or squished. Leeches were very difficult to remove due to their speed and stickiness, and I never had any luck killing them. Salt is the rub, so to speak, but we were lacking.

When we exited the woods we did a quick check and removed all we could find, as we had been doing throughout the trip. I had maybe two dozen total. We did another decon outside the house and found just a couple more. Caroline gets the award. She had one (the largest we saw, about two inches) bite through her sock, which caused part of the blood to be wicked away. Most of her sock was soaked as was a fair part of her pant-leg. We all had some bleeders (thanks to the wondrous anticoagulants produced by leeches) but that bite dripped for well over an hour. To my surprise and delight, we found none had made it very far above the knees.

With that affair over, we spent a fun evening in the cabin amidst the gale. The next morning, not surprisingly brought us more mist and wet, mossy roads. We decided it would be safest for the passengers to find alternative transportation home, which was easy enough since we were traveling a very popular route with lots of buses and vans. That left the rest of us to creep home in the rain. Thankfully, once we lost some altitude the roads improved dramatically. Despite the periodic showers (which were enjoyable on the bike), the traffic kept the roads dry.

I thought we were in the clear, having had a nice ride back when I went to down-shift while climbing a hill. There was a crunch, a pop, and a spinning noise as my clutch seemingly shattered. My only gear was Neutral, and that wasn't very useful. However, given everything else and that I was a mere 10 miles from home, I wasn't too worried. Two people stayed back with me until I could flag someone down. People here are very friendly and everyone on that road is going to Mae Sot. It wasn't long before two guys in an empty pick-up stopped and we loaded the bike up. The Thai phrasebook wasn't very useful and the tattoos on one guy's forearm indicated that Burmese might have been better, but I'm hesitant to start speaking burmese away from the areas they are herded into.

The ride back was fun. My job was to keep the bike from tipping over in the back of the truck. In a way being back there was some of the exhilaration of being on a motorbike without having to worry about pot-holes and cross-winds. A short while later I was back in Mae Sot, stowing the bike at a friends house. From there I'll push it another block to the place I rented it. I just hope they don't try to stick me with the bill.

In the end, I'm exhausted and maybe everyone was a bit traumatized, but to my surprise we all had a good time. In the dry season and with better bikes, I think it would be a very pleasant trip. Even though many things went wrong, no one was hurt and we all made it back. Leeches, it turns out, don't spread any sort of disease. I'm glad that we tried. I feel like we are doing the best to see Thailand in the rainy season. I think that for the rest of my stay though I'm going to stick with vans and buses.