Burma Inside Thailand

February 10 - 20

Vacation is Over...Sort of

After our time in Doi Inthanon and a one night layover in Chiang Mai, we headed back to Bangkok to see Laura's mother off for the States. It had been an enjoyable trip for her even though Thailand was not exactly what she had expected. It had been nice for Laura as well to catch up and we had all enjoyed our month together traveling in Siam. While in Bangkok we visited the National Museum which turned out to have a very well laid out display on Thai history and also many other not so nicely laid out galleries of Thai artifacts. The volume of amazing things in this museum is outstanding however they are not very well labeled or cared for. Unfortunately it seems that much of it has fallen victim to a lack of funding and care and will soon fall further victim to the tropical climate.

We only spent one night in Bangkok and then headed off to the town of Mae Sot (a town in Western Thailand), the location of an organization, where we would hope to work for the next three months. We had been planning on volunteering in Thailand for three months from the beginning of our trip. However as we began looking further into the visa situation of Thailand and recent reports from other foreigners staying in the country, we were starting to wonder if this was going to be possible. In the past Thailand has been fairly lax about letting foreigners stay in the country as long as they want, just crossing the border every time their visa runs out and returning to the country just a few hours later. But after the recent coup in late 2006 and also the nabbing of the accused killer of Jean Bonnet Ramsey in Thailand, their policy has begun to change. Some say that it is to get rid of the sex tourists and others say it is to get rid of the long term visitors that spend very little money in the country (i.e. backpacker like us). While it has changed it is hard to really get a straight answer as to how it has changed and the how it has changed seems to further change depending on who you ask and when you ask them. But from what we ascertained it seemed that they are now only allowing foreigners to stay in the country for a period of 90 days for every six months. So since we had already been in Thailand for nearly a month and the minimum requirement for the volunteer position that we wanted to get was three months, we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle.

We still however wanted to go to Mae Sot, check out the volunteer position and see what other people's experiences were so that if we could not do it at this time maybe we could do it later. In the meantime, we began to search the internet for any other possible volunteer positions in the area that might want two ex-Peace Corps volunteers. There are actually quite a few volunteer opportunities but many of them are short term and require you to pay an exhorbant amount of money (in the thousands of dollars) in order for you to work for them. I assume this money does go to a good cause but still for anyone, like us, who does not have a large bank account, these programs are quite prohibitive. We did however find one in Cambodia that sounded interesting and required us only providing for our own lodging and food which was agreeable. So we contacted them and have been shooting e-mails back and forth since.

Luckily the volunteer position did work out in Mae Sot and we just hope that we do not run into any problems when we try to get a new visa after our three month stay here. From what we hear now, since we applied and paid for a visa we should be exempt from the 90 day rule which only applies to those who get the free 30 day visa and subsequently do a border run two more times. But we are still not positive and will find out soon enough.

After arriving in Mae Sot, we met with the coordinator of the organization that we are volunteering with and we had a three day orientation on their policies and were briefed on the work that we would be doing. We would be teaching English to the members of an organization of people from Burma (well actually two: one for each of us) who carry out projects along the Thai-Burma border. When we first heard about this position and applied we were not exactly sure what it entailed and who we would be teaching but once further reviewing with the coordinator the goals of the volunteer organization and the job of volunteers, we were excited to get started. The idea is to build the capacity of the Burmese organizations so that the members cannot only improve their own lives (English does help for schooling, employment, etc…) but also the lives of the people in the communities that these organizations assist (both inside Burma and in Thailand along the border (i.e. writing proposals and grants to fund projects, getting the message about Burma out to the international community). We were excited about the potential here and even though our experience is limited for teaching English we were ready to accept the challenge.

A Different Breed of Town

While hanging out for orientation and awaiting our eventual assignment to our respective organizations we had some time to take in a bit of Mae Sot. It is a town like no other town in Thailand, or at least any other ones that we have been to. It is only a few kilometers from the Burma border and many Burmese come over for the day to buy and sell goods and many others stay for a lot longer (both legally and illegally). It is estimated in fact that the majority of the population in town is Burmese (at least 60%) but there are also many other people from many places that call this place home or at least a transitory one. There is not only the large Burmese Buddhist population with Burmese style wats which are common near the border but also a decent sized Muslim community with a mosque and many delectable tea shops which serve up somosas and roti and make their mark on Mae Sot. This town as we would soon find out is a hotbed for human, drug and gem trafficking and a base for many of the political groups fighting for freedom from the Burmese government. It is certainly not your typical town and we would only gloss the very surface of this strange but probably my favorite town of Thailand.

One of the first things that we did upon arriving in town is something that we usually do when arriving in a new place: hit up the market. We think that it was market day as the place was packed and traffic was sometimes a standstill. There were folks on motorcycles, bicycles and on foot all trying to push their way through a 6 foot wide alleyway lined on all sides by stalls selling everything imaginable. Of course you had your usual fish, meat, vegetables, fruits and many delicious looking snacks on display for those who passed by. There were even some yummy looking frogs, forest roaches, turtles and eels for sale. There were many dry goods stalls selling your usual rice and cosmetic products selection but also a few book stores and some places selling aromatic spices and lots of beans.

As an outsider I would have maybe not been able to tell from their faces that most of these people were Burmese but they made it quite obvious by the powder cream that they place on their faces (we think for sun protection and healthy skin) and the longyis that were so prevalent (Burmese national dress like a sarong). It was a fun place to be in the morning and after we satisfied our appetite for people-watching we satisfied the hunger of our stomachs with some fried rice in the market. We came back to this market every morning just to walk around and I can honestly say that it is a top five market for me.

During our time in Mae Sot we had a chance to just relax a bit in between the orientation. It was nice just to chill out and our guesthouse had a nice little courtyard to read and just enjoy some peace and quiet. It had been a good number of months now that we had just sat and rested and had not had our schedule jam packed with things to do and places to see. It was a bit of a vacation from our vacation. This was certainly welcome and the low key town of Mae Sot offered a nice respite from our fast paced travel. We caught up on sleep, some of e-mails and blog and also prepared ourselves for the next adventure of teaching.

Off Again

We had originally expected to be staying in Mae Sot for our three months but it turns out that the coordinator of the volunteer program had an assignment in another border town quite a ways north of here that she thought would fit us perfectly. Two organizations whose offices were within a 30 minute walk of each other and who both associated with the same minority group were requesting a volunteer to teach English. The coordinator seemed excited about this placement and she said that it seemed like the groups were also doing interesting development work in nearby communities and that we would possibly be able to visit some of their project sites. This sounded interesting to us and the town where the groups were also sounded nice, peaceful and beautiful. So we packed up our bags again checked out a bunch of teaching resources from the volunteer library and headed on our way a week after we had arrived. While in Mae Sot we had met some of the other volunteers in Mae Sot and even sat in on one of their classes. It sounded like they all liked their work and we were excited about getting started with our own classes.