Jason's Life: Chiang Mai and beyond round 2 #7

Breakfast in Manop's music shop, downstairs from our room

papaya with yoghurt and some wheatgerm for added fiber and goodness:

Jason with the bus ticket to Mae Sai.

Mae Sai is a border town between Thailand and Burma.

We took our first visa-run journey there about 10 days ago and are going again on wednesday the 11th. The bus journey takes about 5 to 6 hours each way.

[by the way, if you click on this photograph and wait patiently then a picture viewer opens, where you will see this photo larger, you should from there be able to see a 'slideshow' of images from this blog post, this also works on some of the other posts we have made, unless the images were uploaded to Flickr, in that case clicking on the photo will lead you to Birgit's Flickr site.. click away and explore: you can always return to the original blog post]

This was the view from our seat on the 2nd class bus. the ticket cost us just 160 baht or thereabout, which is $5.25 / £3.20 (approximately, give or take a few cent/pence). An American in his 60's, from New Mexico and dressed like a Cowboy let us swap seats with him, which meant at that at least we had seats together, which on the long, bumpy and wobbly bus journey was a mild relief. Jason couldn't sleep, Birgit curled herself into a pretzel shape and slept for half the journey....

we didn't take any photos at the bus station when we arrived in Mae Sai but here is one from after leaving Thailand, standing on the "Friendship Bridge" all bridges crossing rivers that seperate Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) are called Friendship Bridge... imagination for inventing names was limited it seems.. Behind Jason you can see the Myanmar border. There is also a smaller sign (blue) that says something like: Welcome to the Golden Triangle.. Which effectively means: welcome to the place where the 3 principal Opium growing countries meet.. Although today the cultivation of Opium is no longer permitted, until not long ago Laos, Northern Thailand and Burma traded Opium - very encouraged by British Colonialism, but that's another story and a longer stream of thoughts... Very interesting, but also one's ears flutter just thinking about how much foreign invasions have changed the shape (and health) of entire countries and affected their cultures forever...

In the immigration office on the Myanmar side (Myanmar = Burma, why the name change? Because to explain it in very basic terms: government changed and insisted on the name change from Burma, which was a democratic country to Myanmar which is a military ruled country with some serious Human Rights Violation issues..)...

But: the officials in the immigration office were nice to allow me to take a photograph there:

notice the time difference? The Thai Time is 30 minutes ahead of Myanmar time......... Make of this what you will, but in our mind it sparks imaginations about the change of reality from one side of the border bridge to the other. :

For the most part toilets that we have visited in Thailand and Cambodia were the western style ones but this was also largely due to the places we visited. We haven't really left towns and cities much and in those we also stayed in more western orientated places. This is a squat toilet, which might seem odd at first sight but actually if you know a little about the anatomy of the human bowels: this encourages the full clearing of the bowels which is much healthier for the body than our lazy western toilets..

Here they also don't use a flushing system like we are used to but you scoop up some water from a bucket beside the toilet and flush so to speak: manually. Which is totally fine and once you've done it once you won't notice the difference. No problem at all..

The actual hygiene of these toilets does vary however. This one is located at a VERY busy market that is exactly next to the border crossing and it costs 5 baht to use this one. (10 pence, 15 cent) It doesn't look that great, but was decent enough. Other squat toilets might be a lot brighter and the surroundings more white and sterile looking. Of course that's nicer, but as long as the toilet bowl is as clean as this one was and the urine smell very low (as it was) we are fine with it.

It will actually be like this in most public toilets in India. (where we will rent a room we will most likely have a western toilet or else a very nice and bright clean version of the squat toilet - lucky we are so used to flexing our legs - through yoga and exercise - squatting is good for you!)