The Viang Tak 2

... starting to get lot's and lot's of random stuff to bring home.<br><br>We were back at the guesthouse at about 1730 and at about 1815 the mini bus rolled up to take us to the bus stop. Everyone inside the mini van looked just as sullen as us about making the journey overnight in what was sure to be a bust struggling to stay on the road driven by a 12 year old wearing a back to front.<br ...

... doing", &#8216;could you have ever picked a more solo mission&#8217;, &#8216;finding it hard to breath in the heat, feel panicked ahhh&#8217; to &#8216;go girl friend, rock it.&#8217; I have never fully travelled on my own before, whenever I intended to it didn&#8217;t quite work out that way. But my first days in BKK looking at couples ticking off their to do Asia list, and proudly wearing their new tattoos and dreadlocks&#8230;I soon realized that it was truly just me ...

... thought that 7eleven could only be found on a random street corner in New Jersey you were dead wrong. 7eleven has become our American embassy, providing us with the closest similarities to sustenance (i.e. junk food). They do, however, carry a variety of weird, bizarre and somewhat disgusting/inedible things, but I'll save that for a tad bit later. So, the "Super Friends," as we like to call ourselves, had reunited and it was fantastic. Yeah, we all have nicknames. Collin is known as ...

... and ensuring everybody gets a fair cut. 'We' are about trying to prepare the local communities for tourism and how to utilize it to their advantage and spread the benefits equally. 'We' are about helping local communities lift themselves out of poverty by making a livelihood, its cliché but its true of what we're doing out here "teach a fisherman how to fish for a day and he feeds himself for life". Having ...

... until we got to the Thai-Myanmar border. We wandered through the border markets and chatted to some black market Burmese traders standing on the other side of the wall trying to sell us cigarettes. (They didn't succeed!). We were tempted to cross the border for the sake of it, but it was too hot, and we couldn't be bothered with the paperwork and $10 payment. We headed back to Tak and had a quiet night in the ...

... Thai cuisine, with a special emphasis on the northern Lanna style. "Lum tair tair" is the word for 'delicious' in the northern Thai dialect. Mar 5: Chiang Mai is a moated city with the impressive backdrop of the Doi Suthep mountain peak. Near the summit is a famous temple - Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. We will visit the temple and Tribal Museum, which gives you a very good introduction to the cultures and customs of the hill tribe people of northern Thailand.

... we use their service which we didn't). This was probably the first time we were offered a motorbike taxi while we were walking on our way. I'm not sure, but I think I would have a hard time keeping my balance, much less stay on the bike with my enormous bags. When we found the road leading to our "Green Guest house" after we passed the immigration detention centre, the holding cell where we could see Burmese and other illegal immigrants (at first it didn't look too ...

... there was more to her than meets the eye (and it lived in her pants). So I didn't know whether to put my hands on her shoulders, on her waist, or to hold on to the back of the bike. The cackles coming from peanut gallery made me even more aware of the possible strangeness of the situation. So as the motorcycle started forward, I still hadn't decided how to anchor myself to the seat. Well, Thai bikes are short, so I just put my feet down and stood up as the bike ...

... local disputes and drunken arguments, but it turns out that it was only in place for a few days because Muay Thai boxing was part of the festival. A very lovely woman saw us wandering aimlessly with our giant packs sticking up above the crowd. We looked like two lost donkeys in a sea of revelers. She asked us where we were staying and was kind enough to give us a ride. The woman at the guesthouse informed us that there was only one room ...

... the middle. They got off without so much as a word and sat down in chairs at the roadblock stop. It seemed pretty routine to all those involved so i shrugged it off. We arrived in Mae Sot, got a Tuk Tuk to the hostel listed in the lonely planet (The one that sounded better of the only two listed) On the way we got to see the little town at 4am and noticed there were quite a few places to sleep, but the one we picked turned out to be fine.