A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Mae Sariang, Thailand

Apart from being robbed of virtually everything of value, I very much enjoyed Mae Sariang. I had two excellent companions for the first two days, the Canadian father/son duo, and was staying in a rather off-beat guesthouse with a real character of a proprietor. If I had to describe Aekkasan, I think maybe Chinese/Thai Hippie Used Car Salesman would come closest to conveying his appearance and personality.

His guesthouse, the See View, reflected his weird exuberance. Instead of the more traditional icons used to describe tourist destinations -- knife and fork, bed, picnic table -- the signs for the See View sported a bungalow, a fork-and-spoon (they don't really use knives in Thailand), a beer bottle and wine glass, and a long haired, elaborately mustached cowboy. Yes, a cowboy, and not a Thai one either.

The restaurant at the guesthouse was in Aekkasan-filtered old west style, with such decorative touches as animal heads and snakeskins on the walls, wagon wheels, and large posters of famous movie cowboys and indians, including Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not really a cowboy, but he did have a nice whip and a leather hat. During the high season the owner plays "Thai country" music on his guitar and harmonica, and we were treated to a concert featuring a combination of Thai and foreign songs of the Bob Dylan/Eric Clapton/Neil Young variety. Imagine, if you will, three foreigners sitting on stools made of tree stumps drinking beer with ice and listening to a ponytailed Thai-Chinese man with a slight lisp: "De antha ma frenn, ees blowin een da ween, de antha ess blowin een da ween".

Despite the questionable musical talent, Aekkasan convinced us to take is one-day 4X4/Boat Border River Tour. The border between Thailand and Myanmar/Burma is mountainous and lush, with the brown and very deep Salawin River between them. Crossing is difficult without a boat -- dangerous currents and whirlpools are constant. On the Thai side there are scattered small fishing villages, a day's walk from each other. On the Myanmar side the only signs of life are the military outposts, each set up directly opposite a Thai village. We were warned not to take pictures of these huts and watchtowers, which meant I had to valiantly supress my contrary desire to take some, regardless of how dull they might be. I was successful -- it was good practice for my trip to the rest of Myanmar in a couple of weeks.

Though I still have qualms about the hill-tribe trekking concept (see my No Akha entry of early May) the Mae Sariange experience did make me rethink somewhat. The villagers wer friendly, relatively prosperous, and I didn't feel like they were on parade for us. This may have been because these were more worldly villagers with more access to the outside world, as well as the fact that we weren't spending the night there. I was able to approach it more like a scenery trek than a tribe trek, as the setting was lovely and I didn't feel like we were intruding much, even thugh we did have a delightful village to the school during lunchtime. I took pictures and teased the children, J.R. (a Canadian school principal) chatted up the head teacher, and JR's 14 year old son stood uncomfortably nearby in a futile attempt to convey the idea that he was not with us and thus our embarassing antics should not reflect upon him.

After a boat ride back to civilization, we took a meandering tour of the agricultural Mae Sariang valley, watching the farmers and laborers at work with the rice, corn and fruit trees, then headed back to the See View for a well-earned Beer Chang.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 8:35 PM