MAE SOT

Transport options into, within & out of Mae Sot would yet again provide the entertainment for the day, which is just as well because none was to be found in Mae Sot. Mae Sot is a frontier town on the western border with Myanmar (Burma) and as such merely exists to facilitate the trafficking of gems, clothing, natural resources & indeed the Burmese people themselves. In other words, and to put it as frankly as possible, it's an absolute s*** hole & I'm glad we weren't intent on staying here for long.

The day's 1st bus journey (after the obligatory tuk tuk ride, being as it has never occured to anyone in South East Asia to put the bus station in the centre of town where people may find it useful) involved being crammed with more people than there were seats, lots of (mostly our) luggage and - as it later became apparent - several boxes of live chickens, in the back of a minibus. This wasn't to be a pleasant ride for anyone, not least Allan due to his chicken phobia, but I took it particularly badly being squashed in the back unable to move my legs or open the window and proceeded to get exceptionally claustrophobic and start having a panic attack. I was almost in tears and demanding to be let out that instant half way down the motorway when thankfully Allan swapped seats with me to get away from the chickens which made it marginally more bearable for us both. I didn't even realise until I got off the bus, however, that the box I'd had my legs on was actually the live chickens because I'd heard someone the previous day have the sound of a cockrel as their text message tone and I just thought some dude on the bus was getting a lot of text messages *shakes head at self*.

After surviving the bus journey, surviving the near-attack from a pack of stray dogs whilst trying to find a toilet and surviving dying from germs subjected to whilst using said toilet, we then managed to survive a motorbike taxi ride from one bus station to the other (why in a town this big?). What makes this particularly notable is that we all had our massive rucksacks strapped to our backs and were each carrying several smaller bags thus providing limited capacity to actually hold onto the guy riding the bike. I spent the whole time wishing that the driver had allowed me to fix my helmet on properly before he sped off.

The next leg of the journey was a ridiculously long ride in the back of an open-ended 'bus' type thing through the mountains. It was like the driving equivalent of Yo! Sushi - it just never ended. The scenery was amazing which did sort of make it worthwhile, but the fun wore off rapidly when it started to throw it down and we realised it would have been a good idea to keep handy some waterproofs and a jumper.

Being so close to the Burmese border on the journey did open our eyes to the human cost of an unstable frontier. The route through the mountains was littered with refugee camps and the numerous police and army checkpoints which required the locals to produce their papers did give some indication of how serious the Burmese refugee problem actually was. Several people were removed from the bus on our journey for not having the correct papers and the likelihood is that they would either be deposited in one of the refugee camps or returned across the border. One group which consisted of an elderly woman and two children were clearly poor and obviously hungry & unhealthy and it was particularly upsetting to see them being carted off. As a tourist though in that position you can't say anything or protest - you just let the police and the army do whatever they're doing, smile politely at them and hope they just leave you alone to carry on with your journey. Even though at home you're regularly subjected to stories of such things through the media, it's not until you see them happening 1st hand that you realise the world is still a vastly unjust place and that being born in a free, wealthy & developed country makes us extremely lucky indeed. So despite the weather, despite Gordon Brown, and despite the fact there's virtually no chance of ever owning a house, perhaps the UK isn't quite that bad after all.