Despite having lived in Thailand for three years and visited for ten, the geographical horizons of my experience have been fairly limited, though enjoyable. Recent purchase of a car and the positive impressions of a French English teaching colleague persuaded me the visit to Mae Sot was a must, so on the recent long weekend it was time to go β with my stepdaughter Bow and my French friend. What a wonderful and moving experience. We left after school on Wednesday afternoon and drove all the way to Tak pronounced Dtaak.
For the most part I am happy enough with my life in Isaan, but scenic paradise it is not. To be sure, now the rainy season is finally underway very late! But a little more than an hour west the scenery changes to the mountains and forests of a succession of national parks and I wonder how I neglected them so long. The mountains drive begins just out of Chumpae, ends just before Phitsanulok, and the scenery is breathtaking.
By the time we arrived at Phitsanulok around 8. We found a hotel with fan rooms at Tak is a river town and possibly worth a day exploring but we had other vistas to explore and by 8am were on the final 90km to Mae Sot on a beautiful mountain road. We passed though three or four army and police checkpoints with barely a cursory glance β the checkpoints are to prevent illegal movement of Burmese refugees, although they scarcely achieve that.
The drive is simply stunning, and despite the rainy season morning fog we were in frequent awe at the mountainscapes, before arriving at one of the nicest mountainside temples I have seen. Unlike so many, the modest complex is not surrounded with scaffolding and has a lovely symmetry of form. Mae Sot is home to about one hundred and fifty thousand Burmese refugees. They are illegal but the scale of the problem is such that the Thai authorities seek to contain them there rather than stop them entering.
Mae Sot is a town of contrast between the miserable conditions of the refugees and the considerable sums of money the Thais are making off their backs. The traffic jams are not quite Bangkok in scale but the traffic density is incredible for the size of the town. Many of the refugees work illegally or sometimes legally in Thai factories for THB a month out of which they must pay off the Thai military and police a standard THB a month to avoid detention and deportation.
