I ended up staying three nights in Sukhothai. It was just that good.

Today I made the trip from Sukhothai, through Tak to Mae Sot in the far North-West of Thailand, near the Thai / Myanmar (Burma) border. I took one of the government bus service's "mini-buses" which are really just typical vans the size of a Toyota Tarago with an extra row of seats so they can take 11 passengers plus the driver. The trip involved 60 kilometres of windy roads through mountains, which didn't make me feel very well.

As we drove into Mae Sot, I was thinking, "ok, this is the slummy outskirts, where's the main city?", but then it turned out that the slummy outskirts were the main city.

I found Mae Sot initially very overwhelming, and intimidating. It's not really a stop on the typical tourist schedule, like Ayuthaya or Sukhothai, so there's not much English around, and I haven't seen any other westerners since I arrived. My feeling of insecurity was exacerbated by the fact that the bus dropped me off in the middle of a market area where everyone stared at me cause I'm a farang (western foreigner) and cause I'm really tall.

As I didn't know where I was, or where I wanted to go, I just picked a direction and started walking with the intention of finding a rahn-ahahn (a sidewalk restaurant) where I could sit and consult my guide book. While I was walking a samlor driver rode up beside me and asked me where I was going (bai nai?) I eventually got him to take me to a hotel called the DK Hotel, which is quite expensive, but I wasn't in the mood for experimenting with cheap guesthouses.

I rested in my room for a little while, and listened to a the chanting of Buddhist monks that wafted across from a temple I can see from my third floor room. Once I'd recovered a bit from the initial shock of Mae Sot's culture I read through my guide book a bit and decided to try out the Burmese Muslim tea house it mentions for dinner. It was pretty cool. It's right across the street from a large mosque, which was full of men and boys dressed like you see on T.V. news reports from the middle-east with their long beards, long white robes and small white round hats, or small wound turbans. About half-an-hour after I arrived at the tea-house, an islamic chant, amplified by a PA system, filled the street. I obviously had no idea what the chant was saying, but it was hauntingly beautiful.

The tea house itself was pretty popular among muslim men going to or from the mosque, and it also got some Thai patronage. There was a couple of old Thai ladies up the back who seemed to be connected to it somehow. The place was filled with Thai and Arabic (or maybe Burmese.. I'm not sure) speech. On the walls, as well as the obligatory photo's of the Thai royal family, were calendars with photo's of mosques, and banner's in Arabic text.

For dinner I had some beef curry, which was more like Indian food than Thai, with rice and roti (flat bread) and cucumber pieces. After I ate I got a little too adventurous and asked for some tea. I was expecting something along the lines of the tea you get in a chinese restaurant, but when it arrived, it looked more like coffee, and tasted, well, not like tea. I determined that I would drink it all, even though it tasted revolting, thinking that it must be an acquired taste, but I changed my mind after I drank about half of it.

I'm not sure what I think of Mae Sot now. It may or may not be a nice place to visit, but I'm pretty sure I would not want to live here, especially since there's no Internet Cafe's to speak of. Tomorrow I might go to the market at the Thai / Burmese border. After that, I'm going to Chiang Mai.