Northern Thailand: Mae Sot and Umphang

Tee Lor Su waterfalls near Umphang.

A little swimming and relaxing in one of the waterfall pools.

A morning raft trip on the Umphang River.

Beautiful scenery on the raft trip out of Umphang.

We took a bus out of Chiang Mai and headed to Mae Sot, a border town with Burma (Myanmar) and the end of the bus line, spending a night there before a grueling songthaew ride to Umphang the next day. Mae Sot was laid back without the hordes of tourists, so it was nice. When we got to Mae Sot bus terminal, we were trying to figure out how to go the 2 kilometers into town to our guesthouse. Mamie's bag wasn't suited to be worn for long, so we wanted a ride. But it was going to be something ridiculous like 80 baht (2.5 USD) into town, so we thought, what the heck, we'll just start walking (I know you're thinking, what? 2 dollars? But it could be two-three meals!). It is a ripoff and I hate being ripped off. (although sometimes there's no getting around it...) About a hundred meters out of the station, a white girl (american?) we had greeted at the station comes running after us saying we could ride with her and the kids! Turns out she's some kind of teacher working in Mae Sot and Chiang Mai, and there's a "school bus"/songtheaw filled with students who greeted us enthusiastically with "swadee caa!" when we jumped into the back of the songtheaw. One of those times when I thought, how cool is this right now!

We walked around Mae Sot in the evening and ran into the evening market, filled with huge frogs and swimming buckets of eels alongside butchered meat, fruit, and the smells. Down a side street on the way back, we saw a stage with a whole band and singing and music, but no audience save for a few kids nearby. It was the strangest thing - a complete stage on the side of the road, band, music, no audience, with cars driving by. It was another one of those times when I thought, how cool is this right now!

The songthaew ride to Umphang took six hours to cover 160 km, mostly because the driver made umpteenth stops running errands, picking up things like roses, a basket full of wide noodles, bags of cucumbers and tomatoes, etc etc, which were going to be delivered along the way like his passengers. Oh, and fueling up his songthaew. I was thinking, couldn't you have done all this before you picked up all these people who have to wait for you to do this? It's about lack of respect. Mamie and I were among the first in the songthaew. He picked up more and more people along the way, until at the zenith, there were about 24 people in and on the vehicle. About 16 in the back of the converted pickup, three standing and hanging on to the back of the truck, two up front, and three or four sitting on the roof with the luggage. Apparently there are over 1200 curves between Mae Sot and Umphang. We felt them all, tightly gripping on with nothing else holding our bodies in place. It was exhausting. We were stopped by the police several times for ID checks. Finally we arrived in Umphang where we spent a couple of delightful nights at Tukasu Cottages. We originally planned to do some overnight trekking in Umphang (a little village of 3 thousand), but it wasn't going to work out timewise, with Mamie needing to be back in Bangkok for her flight by Saturday, so we ended up doing a fantastic day trip, floating down the Umphang River with its limestone cliffs in the morning, and swimming/lounging by TeeLorSu waterfall in the afternoon. Really fantastic day, and great to be in the wild.

Umphang is a very small town and hardly anybody speaks english, included the woman who greeted us at the guesthouse (which is supposed to be the best in town). Most foreigners come because of the trekking. Finding food was a bit of a challenge in the town, although we ended up having a delightful fried rice, which was one of the few english words the cook knew.

We met a German couple on their honeymoon at the guesthouse. They had just gotten married in southern Thailand. We ended up hooking on to their daytrip and so enjoyed the river and waterfall together. Really nice folks. We felt bad for them because they had booked this one week trip for their honeymoon, with a driver and itinerary, for a humongous amount of money (like maybe a thai family could survive on it for a couple of years), and it wasn't turning out the way they wanted. Their driver is lazy and doesn't really want to take them anywhere or do things with them, so they've been driving town to town, getting in around noon or early afternoon, with nothing to do for the remainder of the day. Decent hotels (the best you could find in this region) but didn't meet their expectations for posh places befitting their honeymoon.
We ended up riding with them back to Mae Sot instead of having another long songthaew adventure. Nice minivan with AC and leather seats - bliss!

From Mae Sot, we wanted to take the bus to Bangkok, but the next one wasn't due for like 5 hrs, so we took a "minibus" to Tak, the regional hub, and caught a Bangkok bus there. Got into the city around midnight after 9 hrs, exhausted, then haggled with a taxi driver to take us to "Phra Athit Rd", a backpacker district near the river where we've stayed before, walked around looking for a room and found one on the fourth or fifth try. It was a windowless room, a box really, with two twin beds and shared bathrooms. Good enough for one night. "windowless" means hard to break into, so that's one plus. 290 baht, or nine dollars split between the two of us. All I need is clean, the rest is just nice to have. weeelll, I take that back, clean with no mosquitos.

Mamie left at 3 this morning and now I'm waiting for my sleeper train to Nong Khai, a twelve hr journey up north to the Thailand/Laos border. Laos is my next destination. I've heard really good things about northern Laos from other travellers and I am excited to check out this sleepy country. I read a travel book called Lollipop Fury recently, about an expat cycling in southeast Asia. Really good book. He shares a saying (from I don't know where) describing the economic situation of SE Asia, or the interrelationships between the four country, as thus:

"Vietnam grows the rice, Cambodia watches it grow, Laos listens to it grow, and Thailand sells it."