Phairin Tak

... it didn't feel fun at all to be packing up our bags and handing them over to be stored for the day, but alas! his is the nature of travel and Chiang Mai is one place we will most definitely be making it back to. <br><br>We spent most of the day lounging around and drinking coffee, I still can't get over how good the coffee is up her and wished that I had of picked up a bag, although we are ...

... get asked for passports, ID cards and get a drilling, me: well they pretended I wasn&#8217;t there, I didn&#8217;t mind. <br><br>Stumbling off the bus at sparrows **** into the still dark dawn and trying to negotiate a good price for my tuk tuk into town wasn&#8217;t the easiest task. Actually tuk tuk is too big a word, scooter with trailer strapped to the back is more appropriate. Anyways managed to share the ride with a Burmese man, and as we bounced through 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 ...

... following community based sustainable development projects - A local youth tour guide training program - Income generation for hilltribe families via homestays and handicrafts - Recruiting foreign volunteers for hilltribe schools Our sustainable tourism venture (which we have yet to find a name for) offers homestays and guided trips around Mae Hong Son. 'We' are about many things. 'We' are about paying a fair price to ...

... 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 ...

... mostly agriculture-sugarcane, and some crops I didn't recongnize. little villages. Controlled fires burning, can smell in the air. Car dealerships, even Ford-seemed odd vs. all the Nissan, Toyota. Gas stations, including familiar golden Shell with red and white. Motorbikes with families of four riding, no helmets. Teens on motorbikes. Watching sun move down the sky through mostly gray blue clouds ...

At 7.30am Sawasdee House is unprepared for serving breakfast, so soon after closing the bar. I'm put off eating anyway by pungent smells coming from the drains, where a man is scooping out slops. My taxi arrives early to take me to the Northern Bus Terminal. We're briefly held up by security escorting the king's granddaughter to university in her green VW beetle. (The well-loved king, Vajiravudh, has been on the throne for 60 years, making him the world's ...

... just had a beer with some French aid workers. Surely then I must be French, what French aid agency might I be working for? I can never prove it, but I'm starting to think they are Burmese spies. I take the long way home after each encounter. Meanwhile across the border, the Karen are in bad shape. Since the Burmese government just moved their administrative and military capital inland to a town called Pyinmana (away from Rangoon and closer to the ethnic ...

... alarm clock on her watch, so it may take a while for me to clean up the audio. The instruments include the 6 or 8 string Thana harps, the Toyo, or homemade fiddle, and Son, a fretless mandolin-like instrument. Some of the tunes are prophetic, a 50 year old song predicting the Karen being scattered all over the world, an 80 year old song about the Salween river running red with blood (it is currently slated to be dammed by a joint Thai/Burmese deal, the SPDC ...

... from the mid 13th to late 14th century. Thais believe the Sukkhotai period to be the 'golden age' in Thai history as it exemplifies classical Thai art and architecture. The old city of Sukkhotai has been made into a UNESCO heritage site, and remains only as a national heritage park about 14 km outside of New Sukkhotai. The new city itself is fairly unremarkable, and frankly a little dull and dirty. However, the thing that we loved the most about being here is that ...