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.