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.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
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!
Monday, May 23, 2005
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.
Monday, May 16, 2005
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.
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.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
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