Northwest Thailand

Over the past four days I have done two four hour van journeys followed by a four hour local bus and yesterday a six hour Sawngthaew (on the back of a Ute) trip. We have travelled south along the western Thai boarder with Burma (Myanmar). The scenery has been amazing, it is an elevated area with high mountains, hot days and very cool nights. Heading into the area the bus was searched by a machine gun clad officer verifying the Thai’s documentation (thank god he didn’t check my body board bag!) In-case they were attempting to join the conflict at the Thai-Burmese boarder. Yesterday we were checked again into and out of the Mali refugee camp just before coming into Mae Sot. Today we hired some 125cc motorbikes and adventured around the city, after about an hour Matt was sick of his bike misfiring and stalling so he took it back and demanded a replacement, the guys at the shop just laughed at him when they discovered he had been riding it around with full choke on all morning. Tomorrow we are back to Bangkok on an 8 hour bus ride to meet my brother, then heading south to the beach for some R&R.
My favourite place of this little trip has been Mae Hong Son. It provided dirt cheap, lake front accommodation. Shortly after dropping our bags we were off to one of the many local watering holes, after our first beer we made friends with the local police officer who then escorted us to a near by club. Three large Chang’s down and one of my travelling companions was making himself known (intimately) with some of the local wildlife, while I was doing my best job convincing a pommy bird that trying to haul into me in front of her boyfriend and father is not conducive with a happy family holiday.

PS. I wrote this two days ago, since then we have met skidder and been on the hammer pretty hard. One good funny to report back, on the trip from Mae Sot down we (Me and Matt) went through at least 5 armed check points heading back for Bangers. At one of the check points an armed officer found it necessary to give matt and inside thigh rub on the way past then a cheeky little hug on his way out while matt sat there in disbelief. Shortly after this some glue sniffing old prick got on the bus and proceeded to abuse matt in Thai for the following 20 minutes until the bus driver pulled over at the police station and kicked him off!