Back to Thailand; Mae Sot, Chiang Mai and Pai

We crossed the ‘friendship bridge’ into Thailand, feeling exhausted from travelling for two days straight and also I still felt feverish so kept popping the paracetamol. Apparently there was a bus straight from Mae Sot, the border town on the Thailand side, to Chiang Mai where we planned to go. Unfortunately we had no idea where the bus went from and what time it left- there was a few reports online of it leaving at 12 or 2pm, and it was 12.30 by the time we crossed the border so we had no idea if we had any chance. But my fever was getting worse and seeing as we didn’t know where we had to go, we accepted the fact we would have to spend a night in Mae Sot. We took a shared rickshaw from the border to the town, and were dropped off in a fairly desolate road in the middle of the town. Meanwhile, I had retrieved the Thai Baht which we had left over from before we entered Myanmar, of which we should have had about 120 pounds worth. However, I could only find about 20 of this, and although I was fairly sure where I had left it I wanted to check the rest of my bag in the other places I might have put it. We walked for about 15 minutes trying to find a guesthouse but there did not seem to be an abundance of them. Finally we found one, but were told it was full. To save us both trundling around with our heavy bags for too much longer, Jonno left me with the bags while he went in search for one that had room.

About another 20 minutes later and he returned, 2 more places were full but he found one more that said they had a room for us. We walked 5 minutes further and put our bags down, relieved. But when we got to the reception desk, it was shut and there was nobody there, we called down the corridors but nobody answered. Ten minutes later and still nobody had showed up which was strange because Jonno had told them he would be coming straight back to check in. So Jonno went off again in search of another guest house in case we needed to go elsewhere. In this time a member of staff from the hotel showed up so I checked in, and was given the option of the air conditioner or non AC room. When I asked to see the non AC and was shown a room with an air conditioner unit on the wall, the man told me that if I wanted to pay for the AC room he would give me the remote. I figured we could try without and demand the remote if we needed it. After a thorough search of my bag and still no sign of the missing Baht, our only guess is that it had been stolen while we were in Myanmar, as there were a few times it had been in one of my bags that I had left at the reception at hotels between check out and one of the buses. Anyway, there was not much we could do about it so had to accept this was money we had lost.

Jonno returned and as we were both very tired, we spent a few hours resting before venturing out for dinner. Jonno had been craving a Pad Thai for the past week so this was what we went in search for. However, no Pad Thai in sight and there wasn’t many options at all for restaurants. We found one that had noodle soup, and even though we were very bored with noodle soup we didn’t have the energy to hunt further.

After a much needed sleep and a few night time trips to the shared toilet which included jumping over cockroaches along the corridor, I was still feeling awful the next day and decided the best plan was to recover before moving on to Chiang Mai. So the whole day was spent in fitful sleep, and Jonno making trips around the town to bring me back fruit. We researched it and apparently there was a few places to visit if we hired a moped so we thought we could stay another day and see what is around before leaving.

Multi-purpose shrine and cat house

The following day, a little better but not feeling up to any day trips, we took a walk to try and find the bus station to book our bus ticket for the next day, and were sent on a wild goose chase to various bus parks and random roads. I felt pretty rubbish so Jonno carried on the search, to find the bus booking place about a minute away from where we had been turned around by a lady boy in a shop. I went to sit outside the guest house to get some fresh air, and ended up meeting a guy we spoke to in Mawlamyine in Myanmar, and a few other people on the way in and out of Myanmar. A few of the people trying to enter the country had asked me if we had any problem crossing, and I wasn’t too sure why until another set of people said that the road we had taken out of Myanmar had been closed because there was fighting. Apparently the government and the rebels had been in dispute over ownership of the road, and people had been killed in the fighting. Luckily we had managed to avoid any of the conflict, but it explained why a lot of the guesthouses were full as there were lots of people waiting until it was safe to cross the border.

The next day we took the bus to Chiang Mai, a fairly uneventful journey, and arrived there at about 4pm. We checked a map and noticed that the town had a square network of small roads in the centre so headed towards that. We found a nice guesthouse and treated ourselves to an air conditioned room. However we didn’t have much time to rest as we had been told there was a Sunday market happening (it was a Sunday) and we didn’t think we would be there another week so we had to take the opportunity. We ventured out into the ‘Sunday walking street’ and were met with market stalls on both sides of the street, selling clothes, food and souvenirs. After battling through crowds and making a few purchases, we found the Pad Thai that we were so craving and went back to the guesthouse for an early night.

Sunday market

The next day we spent exploring Chiang Mai- and the conclusion is that it is another town to cater for the needs of tourists- there was a McDonalds, a Starbucks, lots of western bars and travel agencies offering ‘authentic’ and ‘off the beaten track’ tours to ‘become an elephant mahout(trainer)’ or visit the ‘long neck’ tribe which I had heard some not great reviews about. Jonno did need to top up on his supply of contact lenses so we went to one of the Thai optician chain stores. He also wanted to check his prescription was the same so he asked them for an eye test too. He disappeared into the eye test room only to emerge a few minutes later with the huge metal glasses frame that they can slot various lenses into on his face, and they asked him to look at the road and see if his vision felt the same when looking out onto the road, a very accurate measure. He wasn’t quite sure, so instead we managed to bring up an eye chart on one of our phones, I held it and he stood a few metres behind to see if he could read it. There we were, in an opticians, having to do a makeshift eye test. Anyway, after doing a marvellous job at being opticians, we decided that we didn’t think his prescription had changed and ordered three months worth of contacts after some haggling, and were told that they should be ready in a few days.

The streets of Chiang Mai

By this point my fever had calmed down but I was still feeling weak and my skin felt prickly and itched like crazy, which was keeping me awake at night, so the following day we decided it was time for a visit to the doctors. But first, Jonno was also not feeling very well with his head problems and wanted to try a chiropractor to see if it was his neck that was causing it. We found an address of one, and followed the signs to a small road next to a hotel. We went into the door the sign was over, and entered some kind of workshop/jumble sale, with random dusty bits lying around everywhere. We asked tentatively for ‘chiropractor’ and one of the men behind the counter stood up and lead us upstairs. Apparently he was in fact the chiropractor, and the room he took us to was like an attic room with one bench in the middle. After he had cracked Jonno as much as he could crack but no mention of any major problem or further treatment, we were on our way and went to find the doctors. The first surgery we found had people queuing out of the door it was so crowded and we were told they could not see any more people, but there was another doctors down the road. So off we went to find this other place, and when we arrived there was a mere ten people waiting. We took a seat and waited for a while, until I was called up and gestured into a small room to sit on my own and wait for the doctor. He arrived a few minutes afterwards, did a few tests and told me I had dengue fever (for the second time possibly, I never got the first suspected case confirmed by a doctor) and the prickly feeling was due to having low platelets. He then stuck a large needle in me and gave me yet another concoction of drugs, charging me 40 pounds for this wonderful experience.

Since the Thai massage we had in Bangkok I had been considering the idea of doing a Thai massage course,, as it was something new and interesting I could learn and it is a bit like someone else doing yoga for you so it has many of those benefits too. I had heard that Chiang Mai was the best place for massage schools so went in hunt of some of the schools to look at the options. We searched around a little and after going through a few quiet alleyways we came across a place called ‘Wandee Massage School’. When we tentatively opened the door, a small cheerful Thai woman appeared and introduced herself as Wandee the teacher. As this was currently the low season for tourists she currently had no students, so if I wanted to learn I would get the bonus of one to one tuition. She recommended five days should be enough for me to learn the basics of Thai massage. Jonno was happy to have a few lazy days so I signed up to start 2 days later.

I think this dog has had too much protein shake

Jonno was still feeling pretty rubbish and we wanted to eliminate any serious causes, so we found a private doctors and asked them to do some general tests to check on his health. They poked him a bit and took some blood and aid they would check for various things and let us know if they discovered anything, at 100 pounds the initial tests were definitely not cheap but at least it might give us an idea of what may be causing his problems. As we had hired a scooter and had the rest of the day to kill, we took a drive up to a popular temple on the top of a large hill. Nothing spectacular about it, but it had some nice views on the way. We also found a sign to another waterfall, which again was a fairly standard waterfall for the area but it gave us a chance to have a walk around.

View of Chiang Mai

Another shiny pagoda

Someone has parent issues

On the way back to the guesthouse, we stopped at a night market and had a wander around there. We were getting hungry by this point and we spotted that in the middle of the market there were quite a few outside restaurants with sizzling domes in the middle of the tables, where people were cooking their own food. Intrigued, we investigated closer and it seemed easy enough- there was a buffet of raw meat and vegetables, you chose your food and once you have cooked it on the frying dome, its ready to eat. We could do that. So we were given a table, the waitress lit our dome and off we went to get our food to cook. We returned with a selection of items, placing them on the cooking area and waited for the magic to happen. However, we soon realised it wasn’t as easy as it looked. The meat which wen at the top had to be balanced carefully or it would slip down. And without oil or anything to stop it sticking it was creating a burnt layer over the dome. The dome also wasn’t very quick, and we got bored of waiting so were pretty sure food poisoning was imminent. And the bottom of the dome had a moat of water around it which we think was to boil vegetables (that’s what we did anyway) but this needed constant monitoring for topping up so it didn’t dry out and was also agonisingly slow. And then there was the eggs we had picked up from the buffet. How were we expected to cook the eggs? While I went for cracking the egg over the top of the dome which resulted in a burnt mess over the dome and most of it running down into the water, Jonno tried to hard boil his in about 2cm of water which after about ten minutes was only slightly better than raw. Anyway, the whole process was a struggle and we were definitely getting laughed at by the staff and other diners but it was an experience anyway.

The threat of food poisoning makes the meal more enjoyable. Notice the egg cooking technique.

The following day was the start of my massage course. Sure enough, I was the only student and was presented with a workbook and a pencil. Wandee instructed me to lie on the mattresssed area, and started to massage me. Great, this was very relaxing and not much work at all! However, it was my turn next. I had to try and do the same sequence on Wandee with some bad sketches and some of my scribbled notes to help me. When I would put my hands in the wrong place she would grab my hands and put them in the correct place, and when I got it right she would make an ‘uuugh’ noise in approval. Her catchphrase was ‘strong and smooth’, and after a few hours of trying to maintain ‘strong and smooth’ my thumbs were aching and I was mentally drained from concentrating so much. But it was great to learn something new and at the end of the day I went back to meet Jonno and show him the techniques I had learnt. The next day continued in the same fashion, I learnt more of the sequence and then practiced it again and again. At the end of the second day Wandee said she thought it might be good for me to have a day off to take it in, and we would resume again the day after.

The next day was Sunday again, so after a relaxing morning we took another trip to the Sunday night market. We had been noticing that many of the hotels and buses in the area had signs up demanding that ‘no durian’ fruit is to be brought into the premises. This confused and intrigued us; why would a fruit be banned in certain areas? In amongst the other market stalls was a place that sold durian so we let our curiosity get the better of us and bought a small amount. It was wrapped in plastic, and when we unwrapped it we realised why it was not allowed in many places. The smell was foul, like rotting raw onion, and the taste was pretty similar- it had a mushy texture and tasted of creamy raw onion. I have no idea why anyone would choose to eat it, and after suffering a couple of mouthfuls each we threw it away. However, the aftertaste would not go away so we had the added torture of being able to taste it for hours afterwards. Definitely won’t be eating durian again in a hurry!

I returned the next day for my last three days of the massage course, and was joined by one other girl from Japan which meant we could practice the massage techniques on each other while Wandee adjusted and corrected us, and to show us where to put the pressure would every so often interject with a marker pen to draw lines on us (most of the time I forgot I was covered in pen and leave the school with red lines all over me). What I didn’t realise before is that the whole Thai massage sequence takes a long time. Most of the time it is shortened as most people don’t get more than an hour of massage, but from beginning to end it takes somewhere between 3 to 4 hours. It is hard work to go on for this long and wasn’t easy on my poor thumbs! On the last day as I was going through the whole sequence, a girl came into the school asking if she could have a massage for one hour. Wandee started as if she was going to ask the girl to come back later, and then changed her mind and turned to me and asked if I was able to do it. Even though I wasn’t feeling at all confident, I took up the challenge and went with some of the bits I knew better, and even though the feedback from the teacher was I should have ended it slightly differently, I did really well overall and the customer said it was great too. She handed over some money to Wandee at the end, who passed the money over to me. My first paying customer! It was only 2 pounds but that was enough to buy myself a celebratory drink that evening!

Look how tall I am! Last day of the massage course

We left Chiang Mai the next day, and got a minibus to Pai, a more rural town about 3 hours out of Chiang Mai. We had heard a lot of people raving about this place and wanted to see why. We arrived at the bus stop in the middle of the small high street, and soon found a cosy little bungalow for a decent price. We soon discovered that Pai is a smaller, more chilled out Chiang Mai but basically offers the same things. An abundance of restaurants, a few bars, a small night market and lots of travel agencies to book activities like trekking and elephant riding, the majority of it being for tourists. But we figured we would give it a couple of days as we needed to work out our plan from there.

Scenery in Pai

An advert for a restaurant and cooking school

With Jonno still not feeling too good, we took the opportunity of a few days in a chilled out place to relax and recooperate. We found an outdoor public swimming pool which was nice for a few hours, and the balcony on our bungalow was the perfect size for my yoga practice. When Jonno felt better we even went on a few runs together. We rented a scooter for one day as one activity that was recommended for Pai was to explore the surrounding areas, so off we set. After taking a few wrong turns and circling the town about three times, we came across a big Buddha statue, a fairly disappointing waterfall, a bleak china town area and a viewpoint with free green tea (which was not really free- there was an entrance fee) where one tourist was harassing a cat and tried to keep him from walking away by holding the scruff of his neck so she could get a nice picture. We also tried to get to another waterfall which was down a dirt track and when we parked up and saw the sign for the waterfall pointing directly into the river, we realised this maybe was a waterfall which was not accessible in the rainy season so had to give up on that idea. 

Definitely waterfall with caution

Another waterfall

Cat being held captive against its will for a photo

After a few restorative days and feeling a bit more energised, we decided we were ready to leave Thailand and continue our journey onto Laos. There were packages advertised by the travel agencies with combined bus and boat travel to Luang Prabang, one of the main cities in Laos, so we figured we might as well book that and take a few days on a slow boat down the Mekong river.

A nice way to spend a few hours

Our friend who we promptly un-friended when we saw he was into cannibalism..the dirty bastard

We left Pai the following day, took a minibus back to Chiang Mai where we changed minibus to take us to Chiang Khong where we stayed overnight. The bus had made a dinner stop at a fancy hotel/restaurant so we figured the accommodation which was included in the price ticket might be a treat, but when we arrived at the guest house at 1am we were greeted with a grubby room with extremely solid beds. We didn’t have much time to enjoy the filth though, as we had to get a few hours sleep before our 7am wake up and 8am departure. From there we were taken to the Thai-Laos border, waited around for a while for us and the rest of the group to sort out our visas and we had arrived in Laos!

MYANMAR - Dawei and Mawlamyine

We approached the Thai border, having done some research on the crossing and knowing there would be a 6km ‘no mans land’ to pass through before the Myanmar border guard. Diana made things easier for everybody by losing her departure card from her passport, so we had a good 10 minute discussion as the man seemed to not understand she just didn’t have it. After filling in a new one, and my passport sailing through with all the necessary paperwork completed, we were technically in ‘nowhere’.

Goodbye Thailand!

As soon as we got through someone asked if we wanted a lift to the other side. Not fancying a 6km walk with all our bags, we said yes, and after a while he looked at us with a very apologetic face saying his car was too full, so we started our walk, thumb extended hoping for the best. After around 3km of walking a lovely tarmacked road, being ignored by everyone apart from people driving in the wrong direction, we were lucky enough that someone in a pickup stopped. Naturally cautious that we may be illegally trying to enter the country, he wanted to look over our passports, visas, everything. After being sufficiently pleased we were allowed in the country, we dumped our bags in the back and hopped in the cab.

After a 2km drive up a dirt track we would have completely missed had we not been picked up, as the tarmac road was still going off somewhere into the distance, we arrived at a passport check. The man checked the passports thoroughly, asking where we were going. Replying with ‘Dawei’ seemed to be the correct answer, and we hopped back into the pickup towards the border town of Htee Khee.

The pickup driver dropped us off in the middle of a dusty car park surrounded by various shacks. He pointed over to one shack in particular and told us to go get our passport stamped here. We thanked him again, and hopped out to grab our bags. Only he seemed to have forgotten we’d had bags and started driving off. Cue the scene of us running along behind a pickup truck trying to fling our bags out of the back, trying to signal to him we needed him to stop. Luckily we succeeded in retrieving all of our belongings.

We headed over to the allocated ‘passport shack’ and were greeted by a room full of men, young and old, sitting, smoking and watching TV. Football to be exact, two British teams, although I won’t pretend I bothered remembering which. After a few moments, a couple of people begrudgingly got up and went behind the desk where they asked for our passports. After some photocopying, checking, writing, stamping and once again asking if we were going to Dawei, we were done here and had the next task of finding a taxi to take us the 5 hour journey to the town we were definitely expected to go to. Meanwhile, everyone else resumed their post of watching the football.

We headed down a small incline to what looked a bit like a town, and asked at the first shack populated with people we could find if they could arrange for a taxi to Dawei. They repeated Dawei to me (they seem to love talking about this place) and once we were all confirmed we were on the same wavelength, they gestured for us to sit down. We placed our bags behind us and took in the surroundings. In this split second, our bags had been whisked away and placed in a vehicle, we had no idea which but we carried on waiting, assuming we’d be repatriated with them soon enough. About 10 minutes later, they asked if we had had our passports stamped already, which we confirmed we’d done. At this point, we were pointed in the direction of the vehicle containing our bags and took a seat.

Our driver eventually turned up, except he seemed to have some number of errands to perform first, it took around 30 minutes, 10 different stops around the town and one random other man in the passenger seat before we set off in the correct direction. The road, well, didn’t really exist. A dirt track took the place of the road at first, where our driver managed to slam a wheel into a rock at around 50kph. Fractionally more terrified than we had been before this occurrence, we travelled for another 45 minutes or so before stopping at a café, where although both hungry and thirsty we couldn’t buy anything as we had none of the local currency.

Our driver set his mind to replacing the wheel he’d buckled, which started off how it would carry on, with him trying to tighten the wheel bolts to get them off rather than loosen them. Someone came over and stopped him and showed him the correct way to turn them. Next he placed the jack in a precarious place under the wheel, and sure enough, once the wheel was removed, the jack slipped and the front of the car plummeted. Fortunately no limbs were in the way, but this now caused a new issue in getting the car back up. We soon got an idea of how helpful the community is here though, as they soon came through from the back with massive lengths of wood and bric-a-brac to lever it back up. I guess they were planning to build a shed or something?

Whoops.

Meanwhile, an old man was walking around in his traditional Longyi, or to us in the west, skirt. He’d had enough of all this, converted his top into a bra by twisting it up so that his rotund belly was on display, made himself a betel nut (a concoction regularly chewed by locals here, consisting of a leaf wrapped around a nut, tobacco and various other things. Similar to paan in India, responsible for many red stains all over the floor where people spit out their progress) and sat about playing with a jack rather than helping. I briefly popped over to help out with the car, but there were already plenty of them and they all spoke the same language. Plus, bits of wood were snapping left right and centre, I was happy out of it.

Eventually they manage to get the wheel back on the car and we were off. It took another good hour or two before we were back on a nice smooth road surface though, and after passing through about 3 passport checkpoints and our driver paying tolls to several people on the way, we were finally in Dawei.

View from the road on the way to Dawei

We asked the driver to take us to a cheap hotel. Unfortunately we didn’t know what to really expect here – we’d been warned that the cost of accommodation would be a lot more than we were expecting, but we didn’t really know what that meant. We arrived at the first hotel, which, for what we’d been used to, didn’t look very cheap. Diana went in to find out the price, and immediately came back out asking the driver to take us somewhere else, as they’d asked for $80 a night. The driver took us to another place, when Diana realizes he may have actually said $18 and wasn’t sure. We pop into the next place, they’re asking for $25 which is better, but not ideal. We asked our driver if he could take us back to the first place so we could check the price again, but he didn’t really understand English, so took us to another random hotel. Eventually we found one for $20 and couldn’t be bothered to look around anymore, so we holed up here just before it started to get dark.

The hotel itself looked a lot more impressive than the room. A grandiose entrance, doormen, fancy marble everywhere. Once we got to the room however, it was a basic, just-about-clean-enough-to-live-for-a-couple-of-nights affair. We ditched our things and headed off for the first order of business, getting local currency.

Enquiring at the desk where the nearest ATM was, we head around the corner and get our first experience of a town in Myanmar. Honestly, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Although on the drive here we’d been through a few villages, this seemed quite modern. A department store, flashy neon signs everywhere, pavements… I felt it would have been a little less advanced. However, this was a town close to a border, so we’d see. We got to the ATM and went through the usual wonderment of whether we’d have our card blocked, whether it would work, and whether we’d be trying to cope without any cash for a while. The screen letting us know the maximum amount we could withdraw was slightly more over the top than we were used to, as we were able to withdraw a maximum of 300k. I’ve never withdrawn 300k of a currency from a cash machine before. Luckily, we were allowed our money, and it was provided in 5k notes, clean and crisp. Each note valued at approx. £3 each, we now had a small brick of notes to worry about, as well as a ridiculous amount of dollars. And the dollars weren’t even allowed to be folded or they were totally useless to us.

Money money money!

Next stop, food. On the way we passed by a mobile phone shop and figured, as we may need to call some hotels in advance, we’d get a SIM card. This is when we first realised how much of a language barrier we may be experiencing here, as trying to ask for a SIM card almost entirely required miming of putting something into my phone and making a phone call. A SIM was produced, exactly what we needed, and she held up 3 fingers to show it cost 3000. Working this out to be under £2, we figured we’d go for it, and got handed two green pieces of paper apparently worth 1000 each. This money was already baffling us. Transaction completed, we walk around to try and find somewhere to eat.

We found a street place which had a cart with various pots of food. After looking over the options for a while and realising a vegetarian option wasn’t happening, we pointed at a couple of things and rice and waited to see what we got. And what we got was an incredibly oily, spicy chicken something with rice. Not entirely inedible, but not the finest cuisine we’ve had on our entire journey so far.

The following day we got up early for a luxury we hadn’t had with any hotels so far, inclusive breakfast. I’d pretty much forgotten about this though, so I was confused why Diana was in such a hurry to leave the room when we had no real plan until she reminded me. We got there later than everyone else had been so we had the room to ourselves, and were brought a plate of two bananas, a water jug, and after a while, some sort of onion soup. Not exactly a breakfast of kings, but we had it anyway, and got our first introduction to the wonders of coffee in Myanmar. The jug of hot water was accompanied by a number of sachets, which were labelled as ‘3 in 1’. This was a combination of coffee, sugar and creamer, in various different ratios – a ‘just add water’ affair. Well, once we’d got over the initial shock of how sweet these are, the addiction set in. Different brands used different ratios of the three, but one thing was for certain, they weren’t healthy, but definitely a bit of a boost.

Breakfast?

After this, we had a look around some of the markets and got an idea of what the locals were like. One thing was for certain, people definitely weren’t used to seeing Westerners in the markets. After getting plenty of practice at the Burmese for Hello (“Min Ga La Bar”, took us a fair few attempts to remember it properly, along with Thank You – “Chee zoo tin bar day”) we concluded there wasn’t a great deal of things to do in this town, but at this stage I also needed my next rabies shot, so we thought we’d check out where the nearest hospital was. We had little trouble finding it, however it wasn’t the greatest condition ever, and the easiest way we could tell it was a hospital was to look up on the balcony of the run down building, seeing people on stretchers with IV’s attached to the supporting columns. I’ve not been to many outdoor hospitals before, but we figured the shot could wait until Yangon.

Walking around from here, we’d heard there was a pagoda nearby. This would be our first of many experiences of pagodas, so filled with childish optimism we headed off to see it. It seemed to be closed, and as soon as we arrived it began to rain quite heavily, so we took shelter under the covered area we were in. After a while, a man opened the door from the inside and invited us in rather than sitting outside and we got our own private viewing, they turned on all the lights and we sat in front of a huge statue of Buddha for a while until the rain died down. After this, we headed for a nearby tea shop, as we’d heard these were very common around Myanmar, and ordered one of their finest 3 in 1s. Along with this came a separate jug of Chinese green tea, which we found was free and unlimited, and seemed to be common to every teahouse and restaurant we went to.

Our own private viewing

Diana and her private Buddah moment

Local teahouse

On our way back we found another pagoda, this one a much larger area than the last. In fact, it even offered free Wi-Fi, bizarrely enough. I presume for all the monks on their smartphones. We spent a while looking around, when a tuktuk full of school children arrived. All looking at us, smiling and laughing and somewhat confused, a few of them approached us, poking Diana’s white skin and trying to pull out my arm hair, as if a couple of aliens had just beamed down in front of them and they couldn’t quite work them out. Confident we were humans in the end, they let us go, and we continued on to our next task of booking a bus ticket to the next destination, Mawlamyine.

You're going to see a lot of these...

It wouldn’t be too difficult to find a bus there – there was an entire area devoted to booking bus tickets through various different companies. After working out it would take around 10 hours to travel, we decided we’d get an early bus, 5am to be exact. We then had the option of air-con or non for about £2 difference, so decided we’d take the air conditioning option and asked at our hotel if they could arrange us a rickshaw to the bus station for the following morning.

After a disgustingly early wake up of around 3am, we shuffled our stuff out to the front where the guy on the reception called up a rickshaw driver. Sitting outside and watching rickshaws driving up and down with nobody in, we figured we probably should have just hailed one down, but we hung on for a while until eventually they turned up. Lobbing everything into the back, we were taken to a very dark bus depot, and before we were allowed entry a police officer requested our passports. We got the feeling we would be getting this a lot. Asking where we were going, how long we’d been here, what our purpose in Myanmar was and what colour underwear we had on that day, he was sufficiently satisfied and asked someone who I assume was a budding police officer to show us to our bus. Through a small labyrinth of buses we were taken, and we eventually ended up in a dingy little shed with a few seats. We handed our ticket over, everything checked out and, apart from the inevitable power cut, we were on our way to Mawlamyine.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the smoothest ride ever, so catching up on a few Z’s wasn’t happening very easily. I managed to get some for a little while, and Diana who was awake a lot longer informed me I’d missed the coach turning into a local bus, filling up with school children taking them some of the way to school in the morning. Eventually, many windy roads and unfinished roads later, we arrived. We also realized that we had booked the AC bus, but it seemed it was just the same bus, only the left hand side didn’t have vents above them. This seemed preferable, as the bus was freezing cold, and as we were wearing clothes to deal with 30 degree heat outside, a bit of a shock to us. But eventually, we arrived without too much of a problem.

As per usual, we got off and were amassed by tuktuk drivers, all hoping for a fare. As soon as they spotted us, and the colour of our skin I’d assume, suddenly we were prime targets and everyone else pretty much ignored. I’d assume we were a fair game for 10x the usual price. We told them a guest house we’d found the name of before we arrived, Breeze, and we were on our way.

Similarly to before, Diana hopped off and poked her head in to ask the price. Only $14 a night, bargain (for Myanmar, anyway). This being the first time we had received change for our dollars, we had to be careful that we were receiving nice, crisp and clean notes. After inspecting them all, only one wasn’t, a $10 note which we tried to swap with him but he said it was fine. We thought it wouldn’t be, but it didn’t bother me too much as we’d be able to spend it in another country. We grabbed our bags and were shown the rooms. They weren’t exactly spacious, more like cubicles with just enough room for a bed and a desk fan, but it would do. The entire place gave the impression of sleeping in a ships galley, somewhat claustrophobic but good enough. The staff were incredibly friendly and spoke good English though.

We headed out into the world to find a tea house, and to do a walk that was in our guide book that supposedly introduced us to a number of things in the local area. We found a teashop just up the road en route, where we found out that it wasn’t just the coffee you could get in 3 in 1 form, but tea also. An odd, sugary affair, with what was effectively coffeemate added. Not as nice, but still very drinkable and reminiscent of the sweetness of Indian chai. After this, we headed on the way to where we’d start the walk, spotting a male Great Dane in Ruby style colours, with such blue eyes we initially thought he was blind. Very friendly and obedient, much unlike his distant British bitch cousin!

After being told to lay down. Much more obedient than other Great Danes I know of.

We’d barely started our route at all, before we were accosted by a midget. A friendly midget, who I took the benefit of the doubt that he just wanted a chat rather than to try and sell us something, although he was a motorcycle tuktuk driver. We went and sat with him, and spent a good 45 minutes chatting about Myanmar, English and, mostly, religion and Buddhism. Apparently, he’d tried almost every religion to see which worked for him, and ended up at Buddhism, as he believed that it was the most reasonable for him. He used several analogies, for instance, if you are hanging from a cliff, you can call for Jesus to come and help you, or Shiva or Ganesh, but they won’t come. Buddhism is for helping yourself. If you can’t help yourself, nobody else can. It somewhat made sense, but I’m still as unreligious as I was prior to the conversation. He started going through some photos of foreigners on his phone he’d spoken to, when we found out the answer to an age old question. And the answer is, yes. We do all look the same to Asian people. Because he brought up a photo of a random white girl, and started exclaiming ‘Look! Your twin! Exactly the same!’ to Diana. Absolutely no similarity we could see at all, but he was absolutely convinced. So don’t worry everyone, it’s not racist, everyone looks the same.

We eventually broke free, although we had his phone number in case we wanted to go to see some of the nearby sites. We then followed the route, going past some interesting sites and trying some of the local food and drinks along the way, such as a deep fried pancake (Roti, really) with sugar. The general theme here is that nothing at all is healthy. Nothing. Nada. Sugar and oil are staple foods and no mistake. Along the way we came to a pagoda which overlooked the entire city, a Christian church and ended up in a park with a children’s playground and many families playing.

Tasty, but not exactly nutricious

A church in Mawlamyine

Church interior

View around Mawlamyine

We headed for dinner, a place called Grandma and Grandpa with a logo of an old man and woman, where apparently some of their profits go towards looking after the local elderly. We had arrived in the middle of a huge football match, I believe between Myanmar and Thailand, and almost every person had their eyes glued to a screen on the wall. The food was okay, and we returned back to the guest house to find they had converted the reception area into a football viewing area also, where mostly women were watching and getting incredibly passionate about the results. I believe this was a repeat showing though, as people were going up and down the road on motorbikes, most of them sounding drunk and waving Myanmar flags around, which was odd as Thailand won the match.

Just like being at the pub when a games on, only with more Burmese.

The owner of the guest house approached us about visiting a nearby island, called Ogre Island. For $15 each we would have a tour of the island and its villages, lunch and so on. Seemed like a good deal, they needed at least 4 people for it to be viable, and they had 3, so we said we’d go for it. We handed over $30, the $10 note being the scruffy one they’d handed us that morning, and they told us they couldn’t take that note as it wasn’t good condition. I informed them we wouldn’t have this note had they not given us it. They reluctantly accepted it back and we headed to bed.

Setting our alarm early for breakfast and the trip, we got a knock on the door as we were getting ready, saying it wouldn’t be possible as the couple who were going to go didn’t want to pay. It was impossible, he repeated maybe 6 times. We accepted that to be the case, and headed to breakfast, being refunded our money in Kyat instead of Dollars and confusing the entire issue. At breakfast we ended up chatting for a while with some of the other people there and decided we’d leave for Yangon this day, getting the 1pm bus. We went for dinner at a nearby South Indian restaurant to see how it compared, receiving something akin to a Thali, but not quite. Joining us at our meal was a four legged, long tailed creature, running around the floor, the first time we’d had the pleasure to have a mouse for company whilst we ate, but probably not the last.

Unfortunately for us wasting the time away, we asked at 12pm if we could get a lift to the bus station, only to be told the bus was at 12pm and not 1pm. After quickly arranging us a ticket, the taxi driver took us to a place the bus would stop further along its route, and we hopped on, the last two empty seats. We played it a little too fine really, but the bus was nice and provided us blankets and neck pillows. We were on our way to our next stop, Yangon.

I feel preeeettttyyyy...

Kanchanaburi

We arrived at the bus station in Kanchanaburi and luckily for us our guest house was only a 2 minute walk away from the station. We had done some research and it seemed like the only way to get to Myanmar was to go back to Bangkok to get a bus from there to the Mae Sot border crossing (There seemed to be three land crossings from Thailand to Myanmar that we could use- the far south, far north and middle of Thailand, Mae Sot being the middle one). Also that the border crossing on the Myanmar side had only one road from it, and the road was one way on alternate days. If you arrived on the day the road was running the wrong way, you would have to wait until the next day. There was no website or place to get the information about which way the traffic was running on any given day, just one blog online which said on the day they went in January 2015 the traffic was going this way. It all seemed like a very complex procedure, and because of the day we thought we might have to arrive at the border, we had only planned for one day in Kanchanaburi. So anything we wanted to do would have to be squeezed into this time.

Beautiful views on the River Kwai

Kanchanaburi is most famous for having the bridge over the river Kwai. Some people may have seen the film (which is actually very inaccurate) and there is also a book. Basically in World War 2 the Japanese used their prisoners of war, mostly British, Australian and Dutch to build a railway line between Myanmar and Thailand. The conditions were horrendous, and many died from starvation and disease. The building work also included a bridge over the river Kwai. When the Japanese heard of the news that the bridge was going to be bombed by the allies, they sent many of the prisoners of war to go and stand on the bridge to wave, so that the allies would not destroy it. However, the bombing went ahead and apparently the river was still running red with their blood for a week afterwards.

War Cemetary

So of course the main thing on our list was to visit the bridge, which was about an hour walk from our hotel- a very sweaty walk as the temperature was 39 degrees. There was also a museum next to the bridge which we visited, which explained the history of the bridge and the railway (with some very interesting choice of translated English words).

Really the best use of 'higgledy piggledy'?

The museum

 Next to the museum we also found another set of museums, one of which seemed like a store of herbal medicines but also contained dead snakes and animals in jars, not one of the nicest sights.

I have never seen these stocked in Boots chemists before

After a walk over the bridge and back again, we headed back towards the hotel via one of the war cemeteries. We also passed a few travel agents, and thought we might as well ask them if there is an easier way to get to Myanmar without going all the way back to Bangkok- the first one said unfortunately that was the only way, but the second one who hardly spoke a word of English pointed to a place called Phunamron on the map after we had done all sorts of mimes and pointing. Thinking he probably hadn’t understood us, we resigned ourselves to going back to Bangkok. However, when we looked up Phunamron online just to double check, it turned out that this was a new land border crossing that had opened up in the last 2 years, which not many people were aware of. And there was a regular direct bus from Kanchanaburi to this border- success! This meant we were no longer in a rush to leave, and could spend at least another day here (we heard there was some beautiful waterfalls around). We also needed another day for Jonno to get his second rabies vaccine shot, and to sort out the currency for Myanmar. On our research into Myanmar, we had also discovered that money was also not going to be easy for us. According to the guide books and the internet, we would be lucky if we found an ATM in the country, maybe in the big cities like Yangon and Mandalay, but other places had yet to install them. This meant that we should take all the money that we think we might need in cash before we entered the country in case we did not find any ATMs. As you cannot get the Myanmar currency, kyat (pronounced chet) outside of Myanmar, this would need to be in US dollars. The hotels will accept payment in dollars and you would then need a currency exchange in Myanmar for kyat for food, transport and most other expenses. However, the dollars also have to meet a specific criteria- they have to be crisp, clean notes with no folds or creases or marks, otherwise they cannot accept them. This was not going to be easy! We reckoned that we could get a hospital visit for Jonno and the bank visit for the dollars sorted the next morning, which left us an afternoon to go to one of the nature reserves which had some waterfalls.

The bridge!

Compulsory walk across the bridge

The hospital trip went fairly smoothly and on schedule, and we returned back to the hotel to rent a scooter for the rest of the day. What we didn’t realise is that the scooter came from a shop on the other side of town, so this took about 45 minutes to organize. The scooter was also not the safest one- it had gears but no clutch, and every gear change the bike bucked around like a rodeo. So we set out on the death machine to sort out the dollars, reckoning that most banks should have dollars which met our criteria. However, after the first few banks we visited said they did not have any US dollars, we realized it was not going to be quick and easy to sort out. One place recommended a currency exchange that opened at 1pm, so after some hanging around we got to the desk and were relieved to discover they did have dollars. We accepted the exchange rate and handed over our Thai Baht, but when the woman gave us the dollars they had a few marks on them and all had been folded in the middle. We had no idea how fussy Myanmar was going to be with the dollar criteria, but decided not to risk it and had to ask the very unimpressed woman to change it back- I think she thought we were just being difficult. After a few more banks and no success, we finally found one that had the perfect dollars we were looking for- it was basically the same feeling as finding the holy grail.

By this time it was too late to go to the waterfall but we still wanted to visit it, so we decided to delay our departure for another day. Instead, we spent the remainder of the day on the death machine, riding around the area. We crossed the river and came across a sign for a cave, and decided to investigate. The place seemed completely deserted apart from one old lady carrying fruit. She didn’t speak any English at all but pointed us towards the stairs down into the cave. The first level was fairly big and spacious, with many shrines and statues of Buddha, but as we continued down through the network of alleyways, the spaces became smaller and we could feel bats swooping around above us. We went through one tiny tunnel and found that it lead to a kind of meditation room, which was filled with bats. We sat in there for a while in silence, feeling the bats flying around our heads and avoiding us at the last minute, before making our way to the exit. We also found some beautiful temples and monasteries to explore.

Inside the cave

Ominous red arrow pointing deeper into the cave

The bat room

After a while, the skies started turning grey so we decided to head back to the hotel. On the way we spotted a park area with some gym equipment, and had a play around on them before the rain started and we hurried back to the hotel.

The woman in front getting the most exhilarating workout

Jonno on the equipment that seemed to work on thrusting movements

It looked like time to get to some shelter...

The following day we went in search of the Erawan Waterfalls after swapping the death machine for something a little less deathy, about an hour and a half drive from Kanchanaburi, which wasn’t so comfortable on the scooter and also not helped by badly fitting helmets that kept slipping off. It was lucky that Jonno was the one riding at the time because we passed a police checkpoint and had to stop and show our license to the police- I don’t know if they would have known the difference between a full and provisional UK driving license but I’m sure I would have had a guilty look on my face which revealed all if it was me riding. We arrived at Erawan, a national park, at about midday. From the entrance, it is a short walk to the waterfall and you can continue walking to a further 6 levels of waterfall. The water was a beautiful shade of blue and each pool was filled with fish- the smaller ones being the fish that like to nibble on your feet. At the beginning I was pretty disgusted by it (I am not keen on fish at all) but I manned up and after a few attempts, let them do their weird fishy sucky thing on me.

The first level of the waterfall

At first I was afraid, I was petrified....

Wouldn't say it was the nicest sensation ever but I did it

The walk up the levels took a while but was definitely worth it when reaching the highest level, as it was beautiful and very few people were at the top by the time we reached there. We climbed into the water here, the floor of the pool very slippery with algae, and the occasional fish trying to nibble you as you walked (luckily I’d had the training before this or I’d probably have freaked out quite considerably). After a few moments of enjoying the cool water in contrast to the heat from the sweltering climb up, we had the surreal experience of being submerged in water and torrential rain from above, which was incredibly refreshing although after a while a little too cold. A great reward for a long climb up though!

Feeling like a mermaid!

The national park had decided that the way to stop people dropping litter around the waterfalls was for everyone to pay a deposit for each water bottle they had with them, and they could get the deposit back upon showing the bottles at the end. We had 2 bottles, which equated to about 80 pence. However, we did not realise that the deposit counter closed at 4.30. When we casually strolled down at 4.45, the desk had been completely cleared and there was no staff member in sight. However, I was not going to let go of the deposit that easily- we had played by the rules, had our 2 bottles in hand, and they had run away with the money! We managed to find an information desk towards the entrance of the park and jumped on the nearest unsuspecting staff member. I think they may have been a bit confused as to why we were chasing around after 80p but I couldn’t let the system win! The staff member made a few phone calls, and asked us to wait for 10 minutes. We saw a car pull up, and a stocky, grumpy looking man got out, asked to see our bottles and returned our money- I think he might have been the man at the desk who finished at 4.30, went home, and then got called all the way back just to return 80p. Still, justice was now restored.

If there ever was a sign to lure backpackers in...

After another painful hour and a half ride back, which involved a downpour of rain and an almost empty fuel tank, we returned to Kanchanaburi and found a night market to get some dinner. We looked around the food stalls, and what I really fancied was a salad similar to the one we had in Prachaup Khiri Khan. I did spot one place, which had a few similar items, such as sweetcorn, the green salad jelly and something that tasted a bit like potato cubes. It also had other strange things which seemed like multicoloured jelly worms, but I thought I could get away with ordering a small bowl of the things I knew and even though it would not be a proper salad it would have to do. I started pointing at items- first the sweetcorn, then the potato cubes, and before I could carry on the woman behind the counter started pouring some white coloured sauce over it and then put a scoop of crushed ice on top- not what I had in mind at all! Turns out it was a kind of dessert and the sauce was coconut flavoured- I have no idea why they would put sweetcorn and potato in a frozen dessert. When trying new things though I guess you have to expect things to go wrong sometimes. After the disappointing starter/dessert, we found a stall that had some nice looking noodle dishes. Jonno ordered crispy noodles which tasted pretty awesome, and one local man recommended I should get their pad thai. Unfortunately again for me, this pad thai came packed with tiny little shrimps, which I am not a fan of. That makes 2 disappointing courses. And then the day was saved- we found a dessert stall which made huge crispy pancakes with chocolate that were unbelievably good! Feeling more satisfied we returned to the hotel.

Amazing pancakes

The next morning we had decided that Myanmar had waited long enough for us and it was time to leave Kanchanaburi and Thailand. We dropped the scooter back at the rental shop, and on our way back to the hotel went via the bus stop to check what time the bus left. We asked one woman, who confirmed the time we thought it would be and then pointed to a large shifty looking woman sitting on the bench who laughed and mimed that she was driving the bus. Not being entirely sure whether to believe her or not but not really having much choice anyway, we got our bags and returned to the bus stop. The shifty woman turned out to be the conductor, and it was lucky that we could follow her and another woman who pointed the bus out as there was no English writing on the bus for us to understand. We sat ourselves at the back of the bus, and after getting quite a few stares, one man who spoke a little English asked us if we knew where we were going. After telling him we did, he said that he had never seen a foreigner on this bus before. After dropping off people at various destinations, including bags of rice and other produce to a few shops, we were told that we had arrived at the Thailand-Myanmar border. Onto the next country!