Hat Leela on Ko Pha Ngan

A groomed beach, nice palm trees, a swing, and a volleyball net. The waves break on the outer edge of the reef, but it still beats Mae Sot anyday of the week and twice on Sunday.

Poolside at Ko Pha Ngan

You could spend less than $5 a night and get eaten up by bed bugs, or you could pay $6 a night and share a room and a pool at Coco Hut Village on Hat Leela on Ko Pha Ngan.

Thanon Khao San in the afternoon

What a place! A crossroads on the backpacker circuit. People are coming and going to and fro all points of the compass. You can get anything here, but don't expect it to be authentic, and that includes the women!

This pretty much says it all

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Early Saturday morning, bleary-eyed from the overnight bus trip, I stumbled across this magical VW bus. Late enough so that there were people who hadn't gone to bed, still nursing their big bottles of Singha or Chang beer at the local watering hole, and too early for the breakfast places to start serving, it was a rare quiet time on Thanon Khao San.

A week down in the islands

Apologies to all, as I have not blogged my misadventures in Mae Sot aside from some ridiculous photos. It has been difficult for me to articulate the experience whilst I am there in the middle of it. It has been an interesting ride, and I have learned quite a bit about myself (both who I am and what I am not).
I will, however, tell you that I am at Ko Phangan for the week with my housemates; a holiday to get away from the toils of volunteering. It takes a couple days to make the trek down here on overnight buses. The ride out of Mae Sot consisted of freezing under the a/c vent and being startled awake by border guards checking for illegal Burmese and searching my bag. This was followed by a day in the heat of Bangkok, visiting a massive market, and buying a rainbow collection of fisherman pants. One more overnight and a ferry ride brought me to Ko Phangan under windy and rainy conditions. This is the infamous party island in Thailand; infamous for the full moon parties (during a full moon) where a few thousand gather on a strip of sand for thumping music and "buckets" -- sand pails filled with ice, sang som (Thai rum), Red Bull, and coca-cola. We were here for a "black moon party" which means there was no moon. How was it? Indeed, rain and power outages made it not happen for me. That didn't stop the fun, though. Lots of dancing and moderate intoxication (there's an interesting and new concept!) and no embarrassing moments or amnesia. (Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll leave that for the blog on the Mae Sot experience.)
The weather has been fickle, like the human heart. Windy, rainy, sunny, and hot. The ying and yang of weather. There is synchronicity here. I am still alive, but I need to get out of Dodge. I need to travel. How did I get stuck in one place for so long? I suppose this happened to Odysseus too. I will be headed back to that place (Mae Sot) tomorrow. Only two more weeks, I reckon, until I blow this taco stand.

Poverty tourist

Across the river, that's Burma. I'm in Thailand. This river? It's a sewer, a bathing spot, a source of fish and clean water, and a protected arctic refuge. Or none of the above.

Afternoon traffic across the Moei River

The secure border between Burma and Thailand. Russell says when you go to the border, you can see "what the border is and what the border isn't". It IS a river that one can cross by foot, and it ISN'T a gardening tool left out in the rain. (He is British and doesn't make much sense but is hilarious nonetheless.)

Looking at the sun

Shaun took this photo of me on my bike half an hour south of Mae Sot. You crest a hill and enter a huge valley with a ring of mountains in the distance. These mountains in the photo are in Burma.

Open road in Thailand

There are some good roads for cruising out here that take you to Thai army checkpoints. These roads skirt along the Moei River, the border between Thailand and Burma. With the late afternoon sun, the cooler temperatures, conditions are perfect for a nice ride.

Night food bazaar in Mae Sot

Actually really good food here, not like the junk you get at the Saturday night market. Here, you DON'T want bugs in your food. Lots of different stands serving noodles, soups, and stir-fried dishes. A meal here will set you back about 50 cents.

Day market in Mae Sot

An assortment of culinary pleasures await at the Mae Sot day market. Eels, toads, frogs, bugs, grubs, meats with flies buzzing around, dried up fish, curries, vegetables, and oh so yummy fish paste. I'm getting fat from all the food I've been eating!

Cattle crossing in Mae Pa

No speeding on the roads around here! Herds of cattle have the right of way.

Playing jacks with stones

The same kids playing with stones. I think these are both girls. I heard that they cut their hair short so that it will grow in thick and beautiful. It's either that or to make it easier to pick out the lice.

No, not married...

Here I am showing off Alexa in her traditional Burmese outfit with the longyi wrap, blouse, and thannaka on her cheeks. Longyi's are a thick embroidered fabric sewn into a tube, that you step into and then wrap or tuck to keep it snug. She looks better than me, but I stayed cooler in my fisherman clothes. Men wear longyi's too, but they tie them in front instead of a side tuck. These wraps don't have pockets, so they wedge their wallets in the back.

Silhouetted kids in the doorway

I went to a wedding reception with some friends. Sorry, I can't post any pictures of the Burmese people that were there; it could endanger their lives. These were some cute kids whose lives I couldn't care less about. At one point, a Thai police officer pulled up in his pickup truck to ask for passports. A quick negotiation of the amount of a bribe and a bottle of whisky sent him back on his way.

A visit to the Saturday night market

Melanie, Alexa, and Jenny at the night market eating pad thai (stir-fried glass noodles), drinking coconut milk out of a bamboo container. This market had some good snacks and cheap clothes.

Good snacks at the night market

Alexa loves these fried salty bugs! They are about four inches long and come with lots of chili and onions. They pop in your mouth and spill out with a creamy taste sensation! Or so I was told, I didn't try any -- she had eaten them all!

Friends in front of my guesthouse at Ban Thai

Russell, Caroline, and Hanna are teaching English. Fortunately, they come from England. I live in the building behind them on the second floor.

Sun setting behind staff at Ban Thai Guesthouse

I've been staying at this guesthouse in Mae Sot. This photo was taken before a rainshower at sunset. The wind stopped, the sky turned an eerie orange, and the air became thick. Thirty minutes later, a nice cool shower! Perfect in this heat!

All the OPD medics at Bai Fern restaurant (photo removed)

Lots of food. Even more booze. Four hours of eating and fun. Sure beats staying at the MTC compound everyday and eating fish curry and rice for each meal.

Out for a cruise on the bike

Yes, I learned how to ride a motorcycle. The bike is a Honda Wave with a 100 cc powerhouse. It purrs when you shift from second into third with its clutchless transmission. The wind hits your face at a blistering 40 km/h. Is that tuk-tuk pulling out?! Thank God for my plastic and styrofoam helmet!

The Outpatient Department takes a mental health break (photo removed)

These medics and nurses at MTC work six days a week and literally eat, sleep, and shower at the clinic (sort of an ad hoc refugee camp). They are Burmese living illegally in Thailand, but the town turns a blind eye to them. They get paid less than 1000 BHT ($25) a month. Why do I know this? I asked them if medics at the big refugee camps get paid, and I was told they get paid a lot more than the MTC medics did: a whopping 1000 BHT/month. It's a crap life. (A lot of the other Burmese people work in sweat shops sewing clothes 14 hours a day with a day off every two weeks. Some of them do this so they can send money to their relatives back in Burma; others, to escape the oppression back home. They live in, what we would consider, squalor. They have left their friends, family, and home to come to this place. It makes me wonder how much life must suck back in Burma.)
My medics were in need of stress relief. We went to a local restaurant so they could try Western food and get drunk. They ate pizza, hamburgers, fish filets, and steaks, before realizing they really just preferred Thai and Burmese food. Oh, and they drank lots of booze. It was great watching them poke at food with curiosity, eating the toppings off of pizza but leaving the crust, and cutting a pork tenderloin with a spoon and knife. I was told by one of them that I should have given them an in-service on eating Western food. In the end, a medic ended up puking in the toilet from the booze. I felt like a proud parent. Am I sick or what?

Y2K, the only thumpin' place on saturday night.

Loud live music sung in Thai or English or something else I can't understand. The singers change with the songs, ranging from hip hop to metal and rock to pop. It's the only hoppin' place I've seen in this one horse town. There are even transvestites here!

The usual suspects feteing the night at Koon's bar

Nights usually begin or end at Koon's bar. Lots of expats and some locals go to this fine establishment. The booze is cheap and the place stays open later than the 1 am curfew followed by all the other watering holes in town.

El trio mas machos hombres singing something poorly.

Days are filled with volunteerism, and the nights are filled with hedonism. Here we are singing at Lucky Music Place, where they have a stage, a mirrorball, an empty dance floor, and almost no patrons...a perfect setting for humiliating yourself in front of your friends. Intoxication required.

Another visit to a Thai emergency room...

This time for a dog bite. There are stray and not-so-stray dogs roaming around Mae Sot, especially at night. Jenny got chased while riding her bike (a booze-run to 7-11) by two vicious hounds, one of whom nicked her leg.
We went to the ER for the rabies vaccine. Tetanus toxoid (I don't know why), amoxicillin, Tylenol, and the rabies series costs 2132 BHT (about $55); compare that to the $1000 it would cost for the vaccine in the States.
It was a Friday night at the ER at 11 pm and the were two other patients there. We didn't have to wait. It took longer to register than to receive the care. The hospital was really clean, but still about the same as the one in Krabi.

Hot plate and pot cooking

A random meal in Mae Sot. We were cruising by on my motorbike looking for a place to eat. There were a lot of Thai people eating in an open restaurant and decided to stop to check it out.
We got three plates of meat (chicken and pork and what?), some hot dog, fish paste stuff, green noodles, vermiccilli noodles, some vegetables to dunk in the hot water, fake crab meat, and a couple bowls of chili dipping sauce. We declined the sliced liver and squid. It was 69 BHT a person, less than $2.

Red sky at dusk in Mae Pa

We are nearing the rainy season here in Mae Sot, and with it comes
great wind and clouds in the afternoon and spectacular skies in the
evening.

My new playmates in Mae Sot

From left to right they are: Jenny (medical student from the UK), Shaun (Australian university student teaching English), Russell (a professional English teacher from the UK), and Alexa (starting law school in the fall and teaching English from the States). I am about twenty years older than the oldest of them.

School for Burmese kids in Mae Pa

Mae Pa is a community not far from Mae Sot. It's basically a village rather than a city. A lot of Burmese, with and without work permits, live there. It is much better than living as a registered refugee in one of the refugee camps in the area. The Burmese without work permits are technically here illegally. Once in a while there is a crack down, as there was last week, when secret police were skulking around the volunteer offices, following volunteers around to see where they would go.

Burmese kids at a school look at pictures

There is one school for unregistered Burmese kids in this area. They have about 120 students during the school year. The white stuff on their face is "thanaka", made from grinding a piece of wood from a particular tree into water and making a paste. Sunscreen, makeup, or tradition...it's all of the above. Only women wear it.

Village kids playing soccer on a dirt field in Mae Pa

Sun setting on road with children on bikes in Mae Pa

A mosque in Mae Sot at sunset

There is a great roti stand across the street from this place. There are Buddhist temples in town as well as a few churches.

Me at the waterfalls

Really, just a close up of me and my whiskers.

Me and Ah-Mang (photo removed)

This is an example of one of the six clinic rooms in the Outpatient Department (OPD). Ah-Mang is from Burma and has a prosthetic right leg from a bullet from the Burmese Army. He is one of the amazing medics at the Mae Tao Clinic (MTC). After 18 months of training and about 14 years of practice as a "medic", he is the closest they have to a physician. He reads the Merck Manual in his spare time. Oh, yeah, that's me in my Thai clothes. The fisherman pants are great and baggy and the top is nice and light. And yes, I've got a few whiskers on my chin.

The Waiting Room

Monday mornings are crazy. The waiting room in the outpatient department is like a crazy bus terminal with dogs sleeping under the benches, Buddhist monks in their robes, crying babies, and everyone drinks water out of one cup. Awesome.

The Moei River separating Burma and Thailand

As you can see, it's a secure border. There is no way to walk across the Moei River here or anywhere else.

The Bridge to Burma

The official name is "The Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge" or something like that. I've been running to the border and back again at night for exercise. It takes about an hour. No, I haven't been going alone, but it's quite safe and quiet.

Mae Tao Clinic parking lot and registration area

That silver beast is my bike! And that crowded area in the distance is the registration area. Mae Tao Clinic is a free clinic surviving on donations. It turns out that it is a sort of safe haven for unregistered Burmese. The patients come from across the border or live in the surrounding area working in sweat shops (14-hour days, 2 days off a month) so they can send money back to Burma. I've seen a lot of bizarre cases, including what I think was scleroderma. There are a lot of new diagnoses of liver failure, cancer, nephrotic syndrome, malaria, TB, parasites, and stress that I see in clinic. The wildest case was scleroderma. This is pretty amazing considering my only tests are a urine dip stick, a glucometer, a malaria prep, and hemoglobin.

My bedroom for two months

This is my crash pad for a couple months. I am surrounded by mango trees and birds in the morning. It is a good place to be.

Highway 1 -- The Asian Pacific Highway

This is supposed to go all the way to Istanbul, if you were allowed to cross through Myanmar by land.

Mae Tao Clinic

This place is great. Wierd, but great. I've settled down in a nice guesthouse and met a wierd mix of folks. Virtually everyone I have met is here solely to volunteer with one of the many non-governmental organizations (NGO's) in the area. I have met only one person who has actually been backpack travelling through SE Asia. Most of the folks at the guesthouse are either volunteering to teach English to Burmese or volunteering at the Mae Tao Clinic (a few medical students and EMTs, but strictly observing, apparently). It is a strange collection of people from all the world, a bunch of do-gooders, actually. Freaks.
So I'm not really up to speed on the situation here, but the government in Burma is a military junta that placed the leaders of the popularly elected political party under house arrest back in the 1990's, and they have skirmishes with the rebel army in the Karen state in Burma (across the border from Mae Sot), which sometimes causes refugees to flee into Thailand. At the same time, like many border towns, the local economy thrives on the illegal border crossings. I have heard that maybe a third of the local population consists of illegal aliens, many of whom work in sweat shops in the local economy. These Burmese have no rights, so there are NGO groups here helping out with their plight (I can rhyme!).
The Mae Tao Clinic, where I have been the past couple of days, sees Burmese people who are either living in the area, or have travelled from smaller villages in Burma. The clinic looks like a refugee camp and makes the Krabi Hospital look like a modern sparkling facility in comparison. They have "medics" who do almost all of the caregiving in pediatrics, primary care, ob/gyn, and surgical departments. There are only two or three Western docs there right now...After tomorrow, there will be only two (me and someone else). The clinic sees a couple hundred patients a day. It is awesome. I have only been there a couple days (I'm working in the outpatient department!), and I've already seen a few cases of malaria. Back home, someone with fever, mild headache, back/neckache, and general discomfort would probably have a viral syndrome; here, it's probably gonna be malaria. My first patient was a doozy -- a 13 year old kid jaundiced with ascites! I was thinking, "Dude, are all your patients this messed up?" There are also lots of amputees from landmines in Burma. (Reminder to self: don't go trekking in Burma.)It is a whacked world, but it is fun being here.
This weekend a group of us went off to visit a gibbon sanctuary, where there were rescued gibbons in cages. Some of them were blind, crippled by polio, and amputees...man, it was like Mae Tao clinic all over again! We also visited a waterfall which was nice and cool. I will try to upload some photos soon.
I would tell you that I've rented a 100 cc scooter for the month ($86!), but I don't want to scare my parents. (Hey, Mike D! Remember me getting crushed by your bike? You should see me now!)
Tomorrow I have to help give a lecture on heart problems, which will be interesting since they have no diagnostic tests other than a blood pressure cuff and a stethescope. This is an awesome time.

I finally broke the Sirens' hold...

After three weeks in Krabi, I finally took a long bus ride to the northwestern Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot. It took 24 hours of travel, but I am done. The second bus trip from Bangkok to Mae Sot was on a "2nd class bus", which wasn't bad except my air-conditioning vent wasn't working; so I was sweating like a pig for the eight hours up here. In contrast to the "VIP bus" to Bangkok which was filled with "farangs", I was the only foreigner on the bus to Mae Sot. Immigration officials checked my passport at the city limits. The border between Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and Thailand is sort of a sieve for blackmarket traders. I'm here to volunteer in the Mae Tao Clinic for a couple months. I've paid for a month's accommodation. It's a clean place with a shared bathroom. It's just over $100.
It has been hot in Thailand for the past few weeks. It's probably around 100 F during the daytime.

Besides diving, last week in Krabi, I went to see a Muai Thai boxing match. It was great. They had nine matches with the boxers varying in age from 7 years to 22. The little kids were tough as nails taking and throwing punches without a wimper. I don't know how they do it. Jean Claude van Damme would have had his ass beaten.

The photos can't really show the amount of fish I was surrounded by. I took shot some video with my camera, but I don't know how to post short videos on my site.

A large school of barracuda lurking at the surface chased up a lot of bait fish. It went on for about ten minutes in an ever increasing ring.

At sharkpoint (used to be lots of shark there before they were killed off), I chased this turtle for a minute. It's wierd to be using all the scuba gear to be chasing an animal that is holding its breath effortlessly.

A lobster (clawless, as they usually are found outside of the northeastern United States). Or a langostine...I'm not sure what the difference is.

There are lots of lionfish along with sea urchin.

At anenome reef, there were loads of anenome. This is the clownfish made famous by "Finding Nemo". There were hordes of these critters everywhere ducking in and out of the anenome.

I did a dive at the king cruiser wreck. This was a ferry boat that sank when it struck Anenome Reef. No one died, but the wreck makes for great diving. I went down to 26 meters on this dive. Visibility wasn't great, but there were loads of fish. Here are some fish streaming over a barnacle-encrusted railing on the ship.

A flounder camouflaged in the sandy floor.

I thought these things were dead (or plastic toys), but I was told they sleep like they're dead.

We did a sand dive at Mosquito Island to find some small nearly invisible shrimp and seahorses. This one is pregnant.

A giant moray eel poking its head out.

I went diving a couple times this past week. I got to visit a couple sites around Ko Phi Phi on the first day. It was fantastic diving. I was surrounded by fish. This is a six-foot leopard shark I saw sleeping in the sand at Ko Bida Nai. Eventually, it woke up and swam away.