On Saturday we departed for Mae Sariang at 4am.  Mae Sariang is in Mae Hong Son Province in northern Thailand. Thankfully, Sam’s brother-in-law had volunteered to drive the entire trip, so I thought I would sleep some in the car on our all-day drive (it’s similar to driving from Los Angeles to San fancisco).  I didn’t count on the fact that we’d be traveling on country highways at close to, and often over, 100 miles and hour.

At our first rest stop I got a good look at my first “traditional” Thai toilet (to be fair, these are used all throughout southeast Asia and other countries).  These toilets are the kind that are basically a raised hole in the floor with two foot grip areas on either side.  There is no flushing mechanism, just a big bucket of water with a ladle for you to flush it yourself. I didn’t feel comfortable taking a photo of this – but other people have:

I tried the squatting technique, but I just couldn’t make it work. I also discovered there was no toilet paper.  This is also common for public toilets in Thailand, but they make up for it by usually having a sprayer handy.  I looked around for a bit and found one stall that had an “American style” toilet throne, but with no seat and no flush.  I got some Kleenex from the car and made the best of the situation. Despite the facilities being different, I have to say that on the whole Thai bathrooms, even gas station ones, are much cleaner than in most of America (Santa Monica perhaps being the exception). By the way, toilet paper was available at the convenience store for twelve baht per roll (abort 45 cents USD).

Later we stopped for lunch at a nice little authentic roadside restaurant.

After lunch we began our long  journey through the mountains.  Our first stop was a hot spring.

It was so hot that they sold people eggs to boil in the spring and eat.  We decided to have ice cream instead since it was already a very hot day (which is most days in Thailand).  I had Thai iced tea flavor – which was great.

Our next stop was a Buddhist Temple in a small town.  If you can read the Thai writing in the photo below maybe you can tell me the name of the place…

Then we drove along mountain roads through the jungle next to Burma.  At one point we stopped to take photos of a village next to cliffs and we were told that the village is actually a Burmese refugee camp with 30,000 residents.  I searched for it later and found out it was MaeLa Oon refugee camp and actually has 16,000 residents.  The setting was quite breathtaking and beautiful, which was quite a contrast with the stories of the residents.

After that we tried to visit “mash-sa caves” (I couldn’t find any information about the caves online so I probably have the name wrong) but the final road to get there was washed out. There were kids hanging out on the roadside.  I took their picture and then gave them some of Sam’s brother-in-law’s twinkies (we brought them for him because you can’t buy twinkies in Thailand).

On all of our travels in the north we were constantly coming across washed out roads as heavy rains had done major damage only a week before.  In some places we were spinning truck wheels in the mud alongside cliffs high in the mountains. Our next stop was a view of the Moei River which separates Thailand from Burma.  There was a light rain which was refreshing. I saw a stone walkway going down to the water.  Sam took a shot of me down there:

As I neared the water I heard frantic yelling in Thai from the gazebo above me overlooking the river.  It turns out that my choice of green shorts and shirt was a poor one as this made me look like a Thai military officer to Burmese sharpshooters across the river. They told me to come back up immediately.  On my way back up I took some quick shots of this guy:

We continued on the winding mountain road in the rain.  At one point we came along a rock waterfall just sitting there on the side of the road.

Below is a sample of the mountain washed away from rain.  We drove up that side and went around the curve – so the part in the picture you can see is where we were driving a few minutes before the photo was taken.

As we entered the valley next to the river it started raining and we came across many bucolic scenes like the one below.

Eventually we came to Mae Sariang and checked into the river house hotel.

It was an all-wood construction hotel built with the Yuam River rushing through the back yard.

We ate dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel.

Then we went up the street so I could try some Thai fruits for the first time.

The fruits I liked the best were mangosteen and rambutan (we weren’t able to find any mangosteen until a day later).

Since northern Thailand is essentially a rainforest dotted with villages the bugs and geckos are everywhere, including inside the hotel and even inside the rooms. I think the couple below was trying to get the honeymoon suite.

And the little guy below was on the floor right by our bed.