Pai (pronounced “pie” by hippies, and “bye” by Thais), is indeed incredibly mellow and relaxing, which means I am bored to tears since I’m here by myself.

I rented a mountain bike for $2 (same price as a motorbike, but ever since the incident on Pha Ngan island, I’m staying away from them), and rode out of town. The countryside is nice, but unremarkable. The hills are obscured by smoke from all the slashing and burning, and there are no smiling, waving kids. The tribal villages outside of town, including a Chinese Kuomintang settlement, while still poor, are more well-to-do then their counterparts in Vietnam and Burma, and are boring to look at. Even though I didn’t see anything interesting, the ride was grueling and I worked up a sweat.

Back in town I talked to the trekking agencies, but when I told them I was alone, they told me to come back later. There are no people signing up for treks, and they need four to go. I figured I’d give it another shot in Mae Hong Son.

One guy I met was bragging about how he trekked around Annapurna in Nepal for 25 days and he was having reservations because he didn’t think it would be the same experience. Of course it won’t. But while I don’t expect Annapurna, I am not too keen on it myself. Since all the treks have you stay in villages, the places have become human zoos. I’ve heard the trekking is better in Laos, because tourism is new there. It’s just a matter of time until it is spoiled there too.

My experience here is confirming what I expected. I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy traveling in Thailand again. For tourists fresh off the plan, Thailand is incredibly strange and exotic. But after you’ve been to places like Cambodia and Burma, Thailand is like “Asia Lite.” Smooth and easy to swallow, but ultimately not as satisfying.

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I woke up early and rode my bike out of town again. This time I passed through some nice, peaceful country. But I was amazed that every few minutes I would pass a guesthouse or resort or café or “elephant camp.” How can this place support so many tourist facilities? It’s nice here, but certainly nothing special.

Something special was the khao soi “Burmese curry noodle soup” I had for lunch. If only the food in Burma was so delicious.

Then another arduous three hours in the undersized bus up, down, and around the curvey hill road. It seems weird to bust my butt in such an uncomfortable bus, then look out and see big Wester-style gas stations, and be able to buy Cadbury’s chocolate bars when we stop. Am I in the third world or the first? Actually, that’s a question I ask every day in Thailand.

So I made it to Mae Hong Son town, the capitol of Thailand’s most northwestern province on the border with Burma. Whereas Pai was peaceful and laid back, this is just a busy, characterless Thai town. Thankfully, it doesn’t have Pai’s hippy infestation.

I went to some trekking agents and they are all confused when I tell them I am alone. Surely I can’t be the first person to come here by myself? I’ll try again tomorrow, but my heart isn’t in it. The only viable option is three days/two nights, which is a long time.

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Nights are boring here, so I’m in bed early, which means I’m up at 8. After a leisurly breakfast at one of the few farang cafes, I walked around town for an hour looking for a place that rents mountain bikes. There isn’t one. So I was forced to rent a motesai.

That turned out to be the best decision I made on this trip, and I had a blast tooling around on my 100cc Honda Dream. As usual, the journey was better then the destinations, thaam bplaa (fish cave, aptly named), and a “Long Neck” Karen village.

These people have a bad deal. They are refugees from Burma, and as such, cannot get Thai passports or ID cards, so cannot leave Mae Hong Son province to find work. Non-Thais living in the “Land of Thais” are treated like dirt.

But the strange-looking women, with their golden bands around their giraffe-like necks, are exotic to the Thais as they are to us. There is a Thai TV commercial where a guy is chatting online with a girl, and asks for her picture. He’s excited as he watches her pretty face appear. Suddenly her long golden neck appears, and he screams. Then it cuts to the “Karen” women with CGI necks in a modern, clean computer lab in the hills.

And her's wasn't even the longest

I don’t know what the commercial was for, but reality is nothing like it. The last thing the Karen need is a computer lab. The government doesn’t do much, if anything, for them, since they aren’t Thai. There was a school, but I wonder if the government paid for it? The kids weren’t wearing Thai school uniforms.

The town itself was pretty big, and made of wooden shacks. Not a single Long Neck woman was to be seen. I paid my money, and entered the zoo part of the village, where a few women in full regalia lounged about by souvenirs they were selling. Even though they all let me take their pictures, and even smiled, I still felt uncomfortable walking around with my camera.

Apparently, most of the entrance fee actually goes to an armed Karen insurgent group in Burma. It’s a shame, because the refuges need the money more than some rich warlords.

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I hate to reward stupidity, so instead of giving money to the trek operators, I decided to go out on my own on my Honda Dream again. The destination was Baan Rak Thai, the Thai-loving village, on the very edge of Thailand.

We tend to take paved roads for granted, but in many parts of the world, roads are a big deal. Cambodia has very few paved roads. Burma doesn’t have many either, and the ones it has are awful, but teams of women are being forced to make more, with their bare hands.

But Thailand is in a different league from its backwards neighbors. Mae Hong Son province is about as far from Bangkok as you can get, up in the hills on the border. Yet it’s possible to drive from Mae Hong Son town to Bangkok on modern, high-quality highway. There is also an airport.

That’s fine and well, but there are even paved roads going up into the hills. I took one of these two hours to reach the Thai-loving village. It’s a Kuomintang, or KMT settlement. Those are the guys who fought the communists in China and lost. Now they're in Thailand. And Taiwan. I don’t know why this bunch isn’t in Taiwan too, because they're certainly not as well off as their brethren, living in wooden and cinder block shacks, all adorned with red and gold Chinese lanterns.

In fact, I still don’t know anything about the place, even though I was there. It was mostly deserted, except for some old folks. Do the kids go to school? Do the youngsters go down to town to work? Can they even speak Thai?

There was a little area set up with tourist restaurants and shops selling tea and trinkets. When I ordered my fried rice I was the only foreigner there, but in the course of 45 minutes, two farang rode up on a motorbike, and a family of Swedes arrived on a 4WD tour. They certainly didn’t need the 4WD thanks to the road. This place must get a steady trickle of tourists every day.

There really is nothing to see, though. I think the hills around town were the border, but there’s no river or anything. I guess it’s just where the British arbitrarily decided to draw some lines on a map.

There’s also no road crossing the border. I find it fascinating that even though two countries may share a border, and one country builds roads to the border, if the other one doesn’t, the countries won’t be connected. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from just walking over the hills (if you don’t mind being illegal), but there is no way for people in the two countries to trade.

On the was back I turned down another paved road heading towards the border, going up into the hills and passing through villages. The last village had a coffee shop for tourists and some bungalows on a reservoir! Looked like a beautiful place to stay, but I don’t know what you would do there.

After that was a beautiful manicured garden, tended by a veritable army of gardeners. Strange place for a garden. I passed a couple of real soldiers, and I thought they wanted me to stop. I asked what was ahead and one soldier said “road finished.” I said I would go and turn around.

The road got smaller and smaller. Then I saw the soldiers coming up behind me. I stopped, and my friend from earlier stopped too. I asked what was ahead again, and he said “Thai army, Myanmar.” Then he went on ahead. I followed, but the road became dirt and got pretty bad, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to be there, so I turned back.

A final bit of weirdness. I stopped at the Pangtong Summer Palace, which Lonely Planet says nothing about. On a small (but paved) road that goes nowhere, near the border with Burma, is a huge complex filled with beautiful manicured gardens, zoos (complete with tiger), stables (the horses still roam free), and myriad building whose purpose I couldn’t ascertain. I walked up to the “palace” itself, which wasn’t a palace per say, but still a big, beautiful house. Strange.

I think it’s pretty hard to find a spot in Thailand that’s truly isolated and remote.

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Yesterday I took a bus to Mae Sariwan, to complete the loop around Mae Hong Son province. This place was the smallest town of the three, and only had a couple of confused farang wandering around (and no hippies), despite a write-up in Lonely Planet. Backpackers all go to the same places, and Mae Sariwan just isn’t one of them.

I wanted to see the National Park nearby, so I wandered around until I found the only place in town that rents motorbikes (my guesthouse!). By then it was too late, so I just rode out of town instead.

Today I got up early, and rode out to the park. It was all hilly dirt roads, so I got to do some dirt biking with my Honda Dream. The park was nice and peaceful (except for my bike), and I only saw two locals pass me on motorbikes, and some Hill Tribe women walking. I wonder where they were going, because there is nothing there? It was fun, but after three hours, I had enough.

THen my goal was Sukhothai, first capital of Thailand, which has some ruins. So five hours on a medium-sized bus to Chiang Mai. When I arrived I had missed the last bus to Sukhothai, but the last bus to Phitsanoulok, a nearby city, was about to leave. So six more hours. Ugh, 11 hours on busses is way too much, especially if you are awake the whole time.

I usually don’t use my Lonely Planet to find accommodations. I’d rather pick my own. But it does come in handy when you’ve been on a bus for 11 hours and get in to town at 11 pm. Lonely Planet described the Phitsanoulok Hotel as “classic,” and according to the map, next to the bus station.

It turned out to be nowhere near the bus station, and I don’t know if they were being sarcastic, but it was a “classic” suicide hotel, complete with filthy walls, fluorescent lights, noisy fan, cracked mirror, and squat toiled. It’s only $5, though (which is actually more than what I’ve been paying for decent places.)

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Typical temple

Buddha's always watching

I took a bus out to the Sukhothai Historical Park, which was quite good. Better than Ayuthaya, because a town has not grown up around the ruins, so you can ride a bike around in peace. The Ramkamhaeng Museum was quite good too.

Then six hours on a VIP bus, which sounds impressive, but is equivalent to a Greyhound. I finally figured out how to get home from the Mo Chit bus station without hassle: walk out onto the road, and flag down a taxi driving by. Every time I wait in the taxi queue, they refuse to use the meter, and kick me out when I refuse to pay the exorbitant prices they quote.

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That’s the Thai word for cheapskate, which I have become after a year of earning only $1,000 a month. But Thai New Years is coming up next month, and I get a week off, and I have to get out of Thailand! I can think of few things more annoying than being soaked in water for a week every time I stepped outside my apartment.

So I just dropped $250 for a ticket to Luang Prabang, Laos. Ouch, that’s a quarter of my salary! But, I’ll regret not traveling every chance I get, once I’m back home earning the big bucks. They actually celebrate Songkran there too, but it is more laid back, since Laos is more laid back than Thailand, and is perhaps the most laid back place on Earth.

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The good thing about an authoritarian government is that when it wants to do something, it will do it, and not worry about what the special interest think (arguably, the only “special interest” is the Prime Minister). At Seven 11 I saw cigarettes have new warning labels. They take up half the package, and consist of graphic, shocking full color pictures of blackened lungs, rotting teeth, and tracheotomies. We’ll never see anything like that in America! Maybe it will do some good. To many young Thais think smoking makes them cool.

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