The plan was to leave at 5:30 am, arrive in Mae Sot by noon, then travel another 2 hours to do a river border crossing into Burma. Dave had several meetings with FBR rangers, teams and other political leaders.
However, we didn't leave until almost 7am which put us into Mae Sot later than planned. Our family rode in the van because there was a little more leg room for Kevin, but his back was hurting quite a bit once we arrived. (it was a 5 hour drive to Mae Sot). Because of Kevin's back and the nature of the rest of the day (a lot of sitting around and waiting for meetings to be done which would likely take longer than planned), our family opted to stay at the hotel in Mae Sot.
It was HOT, but we were hungry and set off to find something to eat. Unfortunately, Mae Sot does not have a large tourist population or western presence like Chiang Mai, and we had a difficult time finding anything we could understand. We did find a place (more like someone's front porch) that had all you can eat ice cream, so that became lunch.
One thing we learned....the store 7 eleven has a big presence in Thailand and the FBR people like to stop at them. So after eating ice cream, we went to 7 eleven to get some water and snacks for the rest of the day. The 7 eleven stores are part of a rest stop "oasis" of sorts. There was always gas, a coffee shop, 7 eleven and potties. Here is a typical squatty potty...you flush by dumping water (the bucket and water is provided) down the toilet.
This woman was selling boiled peanuts outside one of the 7 elevens we stopped at (we stopped at several!)
Most of the drive was flat terrain, but as we neared the Burma border, we saw large rocks like these.
The view from our hotel room (which was nice compared to how this neighborhood looks). There was a wicked loud rooster that woke us up in the morning.
Also, there is nothing aesthetically appealing about their power lines. This is what they looked like every place we were...just a mess of wires.
One of the things we noticed most about Thailand were the buddhist temples and shrines. I think it's something like 94% of Thai people are buddhist. And there is also a lot of animist practice and royalty worship. We saw many monks walking around the airports, the streets and especially inside the buddhist temples.
The following pictures are all taken inside the buddhist temple we walked around (briefly) in Mae Sot. As we were driving through different parts of Thailand, we also saw HUGE buddha statues on top of hills, mountains and just on the side of the road. I didn't manage to get any good pics of them.
I also took the following pics while walking around Mae Sot.
And here are the snacks we bought at 7 eleven....lobster and basil flavored chips - both were very spicy!
Our decision to stay in Mae Sot and not go on with the others ended up to be a good thing. They never did stop for lunch or dinner. And instead of returning around 8pm like planned, they got into the hotel at 11:30pm. Our girls would not have handled that well - nor would Kevin's back.
So even though we were a bit bored and stuck in a city where we could not communicate, we at least had an air conditioned room where we could rest and read.
Boy, it doesn't look very appealing there. We're so spoiled by all the conveniences we have here. I'd have a hard time with the toilets for sure! Very interesting to see the different lifestyles but how funny they have 7 Elevens there! The temples are certainly beautiful as well as the vegetation. Fascinating!
ReplyDelete