Gauntlet - Episode 3: Mae Sot

Mae Sot township, Tak province, Thailand - July 3-5, 2014 - Having acquired a Burmese visa in Bangkok, we travelled up to the town of Mae Sot as a stop off on the way to doing a border crossing into Myanmar - one which we would prove to bungle for one reason or another, and would send us scarpering back to Bangkok to catch a flight in our uncertainty of whether Cambodians could get vis-exempt entry over land crossing or was it only at airports and it was the weekend so there was no one we could possibly call to find out, the Internet had no solid information whatsoever, and Neng's bank card wasn't working, blah blah blah you get the idea. Anyway Mae Sot was nice. All we did there was rent a motorcycle and drive through the hills and rice fields for a couple of days.

The legendary and mysterious Kickapoo. Only to be found in remote Thai villages.

The Mae Kasa hot springs. The are currently under renovation, channeling five steams of volcanic water into a kind of park. 

The springs are very hot. The only purpose for them at the moment is to soft-boil eggs.

Oops.

A snake had perished in the boiling, mineral-rich waters.

This is what happens when you accidentally smash an egg into their egg borling basin.

The final, less-than-culinarily-satisfactory result.

See the rest of the our Cambodia/Thailand/Burma/Laos trip:
Episode 1: Pailin, Cambodia
Episode 2: Bangkok, Thailand
Episode 4: Yangon, Myanmar
Episode 5: Bagan, Myanmar
Episode 6: Mandalay, Myanmar
Episode 7: Vientiane and Vang Vieng, Laos
Coda: Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Gauntlet - Episode 1: Pailin

Cambodia, Pailin province - Jun 24-26, 2014 - And so, we embarked on our first travelling trip together. It was to be an emancipatory journey of mutual discovery. However, I have now dubbed it "Gauntlet" because of poorly-planned, nerve-wracking hassle it sometimes ended up being. Luckily, I will endeavour to present the more interesting things I managed to capture on our three week gauntlet through Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos, instead of boring you with any less-than-humorous details of logistical fuckups and whatnot elses. Pailin is a very small province located on the Cambodian-Thai border, wedged in between the Cardomom Mountains in the South and the rice fields of Battambang to the North. Once one of Pol Pot's most infamous strongholds, it's now mainly farmland, as well as an attraction for scientists who are researching a medicine-resistant strain of malaria that has cropped up round there. It is very peaceful and calm in the hills.

Matt's selected readings (Brunner, Lewis, Hesse, Lao-English/English-Lao Dictionary).

Neng's selected readings (Shakespeare, Rousseau, world history, important names of science).

Memoria Palace is a beautiful, quaint little place nestled at the foot of the mountains. At $35 per night in low season, I'd highly recommend it.

There are plenty of geese running around.

And other things.

There is not a whole lot to do in Pailin, but go to fruit farms. These are saomao (rambutan) trees.

Turain (durian).

Delicious lychee-like fruit called ________________ in Khmer. English name unknown.

One of the main crops of Pailin is doh-loang (cassava).

A spot of earth where they dig gems out of. Unfortunately, the machine was not present that rainy day.

See the rest of the our Cambodia/Thailand/Burma/Laos trip:
Episode 2: Bangkok, Thailand
Episode 3: Mae Sot, Thailand
Episode 4: Yangon, Myanmar
Episode 5: Bagan, Myanmar
Episode 6: Mandalay, Myanmar
Episode 7: Vientiane and Vang Vieng, Laos
Coda: Sihanoukville, Cambodia

To the Village

Takeo Province, Cambodia - October 3-4, 2013 - So it's a hellish journey down to Takeo - first of all in a nightbus for six hours in which the driver who we were sat right behind was having lurid phone conversations and honking his horn, then he stopped and slept for one hour, locking everyone in the bus with the A/C turned off, while he proceeded to snore. I started losing it and making loud noises. He woke up and drank two Red Bulls then started driving insanely fast because he kept falling asleep at the wheel. Yup, transportation, eh? Next it's a two hour tuktuk ride from Phnom Penh to Takeo, through a massive traffic jam caused by the exodus of people leaving the city to go to their villages of origin. Although we only spent one day and one night, and spent over 16 hours in transit, it was worth every moment.

This visit was for Pchum Ben, but I didn't manage to get photos of any ceremonial stuff, as it's a bit hard to take photos when you're offering things in supplication to village elders. But here's some other stuff from the journey.

This traffic jam occurred on Thursday and Friday consecutively, and extended from the city many kilometers out into the countryside.

We were forced to take backroads, as the condition of the main road was deteriorating drastically.

Then finally we're on the village path.

Pig guts.

Eaten with prohok (fermented fish paste), very strong, heavy kind of rotten flavor.

Rice sproutlings.

This is what it's like to be a frog. Kind of.

Crabhunt.

Interesting ants floating on top of the water.

Harvest.

Vicious.

In this tree is an obscure fruit used to make soup taste sour. The Cambodian word for it is plai gror-sang, but because it is rarely used I have not been able to find out the English name for it, despite much searching.

A massive plai dror-lait (winter gourd).

A massive plai nor-noang (snake gourd).