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 Sot to Mae Sariang, Thailand

With all this civilized aircon bus and night train travel in Thailand I had managed to forget the dubious joys of the sawngthaew, or covered pickup truck, as a mode of long distance transportation. The six hour mountainous journey from Mae Sot to Mae Sariang along the border with Burma brought those nightmares roaring back to life.

There were only a few of us in the vehicle at the outset -- me, a father/son Canadian duo, and a Thai man, so we really felt like we were due for a luxurious ride, as sawngthaews go. Since my experience has been of thse things packed to the roof with humans, animals and cargo, I was basking in the leg room and absence of livestock.

That kind of comfort level couldn't be sustained, of course -- I could never be that lucky. An hour into our trip we hit a series of military checkpoints and a massive refugee camp with thousands of leaf-covered stilt huts housing Karen and Shan families and fighters fleeing Burma. Apparently their movements within Thailand aren't completely circumscribed -- 17 piled into the pickup with us, including one soon-to-be-sick toddler, a man with malformed stumps for legs, and a woman who looked like she could give birth at any second. Thankfully they were also carrying a couple of chickens. I wouldn't want a journey to pass without chickens.

Despite the discomfort (not so bad for me but the father/son were wedged in fetal position against the cab among bags and a large spare tire) in retrospect this could be considered the most entertaining and safe part of the ride. As long as the truck was crammed full of people, our smiley nutcase of a driver kept the speed down for fear that small children would go flying out the back. I was free to catch glimpses of the amazing views to Burma while hopelessly coveting the gorgeous bone structure of the Karen refugees.

Normally these pickups stop only to drop off and pick up passengers, but this one was on a different kind of schedule. While we naturally made these usual stops,we ended up spending more time on other matters. Our driver was a favorite with all along the route, so every ID checkpoint was a bit of a social occasion and we stopped several times for him to bargain for freshly caught fish or other dinner-related items. Once the refutees had reached their destinations, he felt free to pick up the speed to make up for the time losts in the periodic stops for beer, shots of whiskey, simple social interaction, or to pick up massive amounts of cargo, upon which we rested our extended legs.

Now after all this time travelling in Asia on various types of transportation I like to cultivate an air of insouciance and imperviousness to the petty fears of a neophyte tourist. My two companions had adopted a similar demeanor, and for a while we were all busily attempting to convey how tedious and old hat this particular journey was to us seasoned travellers. I broke first -- careening down this snakelike mountain road with a giggling semi-drunken driver at grand prix speeds in the back of a pickup truck while sitting atop bales of bamboo was damned dangerous. We were clearly risking our lives, and I wasn't too sophisticated to say so. Turns out we were all in agreement on that point. After two hair-raising, white-knuckled hours of this, we all staggered dazedly out, kneeled to the ground and lifted our arms to the heavens in thanks for our deliverance. Well, maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but I did arrive in one (albeit shaky) piece and I lived to write about it.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 2:07 AM