D.K. Hotel Tak

It was inevitable, we were going to take one of those behemoths through the night at one stage or another, don't get me wrong, I don't mind them but given half a chance I'd rather take a sleeper train or break the journey up a little bit but this one just had to be done. More on that later.....<br><br>Getting up today had a little bit of sadness attached as it was to be our last day in Chiang ...

... I might be calling Mae Sariang home, four hours south of where I lived last time in Mae Hong Son. There I will most probably end up living for at least the first three months working on programme management and funding for the Karen Woman&#8217;s Organisation, which is funded by the TBBC. If all goes well it could turn into a paid position. But in the mean time I first need to go to the small town and meet the director and make sure we want to work together. If so, the ...

... its relaxing vibe and chilled our excursions and that is exactly what we needed. When we got to the bus station we discovered that the next bus headed to Pai was leaving at 8pm and it was 11:30 am. Carrying all of our worldly belongings in the heat for 8 hours was less than an exciting prospect so Collin looked at the map and found Tak, a city located in the middle of Bangkok and Pai. The bus to Tak left at 4 o'clock and we were more than willing to slum it out in the bus terminal ...

... the dark side of the tourism industry in Chiang Mai, Pat (my partner in crime for this venture) wanted to create a project that symbolised the opposite of this. So far, I think we're on the right track. My apologies beforehand, for in this blog there are no fancy trying to impress writing styles, just me and my thoughts as they enter my head, the experiences and stories I pass during my journey through sustainable travel!

... have taken on the motto: what you don't see won't hurt you! Actually - we have been very luck so far - absolutely no stomach problems!! The next day, we drove out west of Tak to a small town called Mae Sop. This was a very Thai town with incredibly tiny narrow roads full of people and dogs and bikes and carts and cows and..... you get the picture. There really wasn't much for us here to do, so we continued a bit ...

... be happy and amusing herself the whole time (: Thinking about lots people, past and present...praying...got call from Fr. John, priest at Cathedral in Bangkok...making sure I was ok. Very nice. Also one girl on bus who was friendly, telling me which cities we were stopping at. Spoke French few words English. Now back to new room, bigger, two beds, hopefully nice sleep to explore Old Sukothai tomorrow...

... by two people that evening - the first was an Indian man in a sarong, who said that the police had stolen his jeans and that he needed money. The second was in the lobby of our hotel by a local gentleman who spent six months of the year travelling abroad "doing business", and was far too interested in how much currency we had brought with us to Thailand. Ah well, at least we had made up the miles in the past few days.

... girl, but like me, she's still waiting to see a beach. To renew our visas, we spend a morning in Burma, across the river in Myawaddy. Foreigners are allowed to "look around" for the day, with the Burmese officials holding your passports. Although Mae Sot isn't prosperous by western standards, the difference in poverty just across the river is amazing. The roads are rarely paved, the houses are shoddier, the bicycle taxi drivers more desperate. We walk around ...

... and has threatened this before. But it's all talk. A few weeks later, Thaksin is voted out of office after a series of protests against him. But it shows how precarious the refugees' situation is. Leaving the camp one day, an old man stops me to chat. He's got an infected gunshot wound in his leg and is trying to get to Dr. Cynthia's clinic in Mae Sot. Dr. Cynthia is a Karen woman who's set up an illegal clinic that treats 50,000 Burmese refugees and ...

... system in place in the camps, KWO is really the only group standing up against domestic violence. Let Let Win takes me to one of the safehouses, where a girl named Sunny cheerfully tells the story about how she left an abusive home in the refugee camp, only to be taken in by a priest who raped her. She was shunned by family and friends when KWO took her in. Her effervescence turns to tears as she talks of Australia and how she's going to go there, go to school, and work for ...