Mae Sot
In Thailand, with a Non-Immigrant B Visa, I can stay for 90 days and then I have to renew by leaving the country. Last weekend I got to do this on a trip to the Burmese border that coincided with a stay with the family of one of my students.
I traveled to Mae Sot with Kaey's family- her husband, two shrill kids, and one of Kaey's students who acted as a sometime babysitter. Kaey is a professor at a local university where she teaches developmental psych. She's going to the US in May to study English and on the weekends I help her get her conversation skils up to par.
My last border experience was crossing into Cambodia, and it included masked men with guns running down alleyways, mountains of trash, and me feeling more unsafe than I ever want to feel again. To my great relief, Mae Sot was much calmer and at times startlingly beautiful.
My favorite part of the city was its improbable collection of people. Driving through the streets I saw Burmese men, with patterned sarongs and white-painted faces. Kaey explained to me that the custom is to make a paste out of herbs to use as sunblock on the face. Some of the women wore it in designs on their cheeks and forehead. Then in another part of the city was a Muslim community, identified by the crescent and star symbols over the doors and the many mosques. There the men had long beards and I saw women wearing veils moving slowly on bicycles. There were many other people more recognizeably Thai to me, as well as the ever-present Chinese gold shops trimmed in red and yellow, and I even saw several NGO-type farangs.
We stayed with Kaey's parents in a compound that houses her brother and his wife and several of her cousins as well. The power of family is magnetic here. In a surprise move, Kaey's younger brother Boy took me under his wing for the weekend. Even though he speaks little English he made it his project to entertain me. And I think he wanted to prove to me how modern his lifestyle is.
The parents are showy about their wealth, with Boy as the shining example. He took me through the streets of Mae Sot in his brand-new pickup, blasting Akon and Snoop Dogg on a sphincter-shaking subwoofer. It was a strange kind of culture shock to hear Snoop Dogg as we waited for cows to clear off the road. He dragged me into golfing with his friends, other young businessmen from Mae Sot: a pharmacist, a motorbike salesman, a restaurant owner, etc. They said I looked like Clark Kent with my glasses and asked me if I was wearing red underwear. Several times on the golf course an old man would walk out holding a baby. And on the fifth hole I could see a woman washing her clothes in a water trap. The greenside accomodations are not so desirable there I think. Our caddies were Burmese and they spoke as little Thai as I did. And back in the clubhouse we dined on food that was American in spirit, if not in presentation or ingredients. Heavy stuff like fried crickets dipped in ketchup and squid cooked in egg yolks.
Back at the family compound I had a totally different kind of cultural experience. Kaey's husband Oak woke me up at dawn one day to go shopping with him. I followed him to the town market, where I held bags for him as he bought enough meat to rebuild a pig. We spent most of the day in the kitchen preparing laab muu, which is a traditional dish in his family. It consists of basically taking each part of a pig, preparing it in its own savory way, and then mushing it back together in a black sauce. I got to pare intestines, deep fry the heart, and best of all, tenderize the leg meat until it was as creamy as cake frosting. The whole thing was actually pretty good, prepared with a lot of spice and served with fried onions and vegetables. I get the feeling that the family likes the food, but doesn't love it. So Oak was left eating laab leftovers at the next few meals.
The actual trip into Myanmar was brief and unremarkable. I walked over the Friendship Bridge, a massive concrete causeway, sat for five minutes in Burmese customs, and then walked back into Thailand. I got to see the dry and dusty bed of the Moei River below me, and some Thai policemen catching Burmese trying to sneak into Thailand.
The weekend was three days for me without another native English speaker. I was exhausted from trying to pare down my sentences and translate into Thai. It was surprising how much Chiang Mai felt like home when I returned.
I traveled to Mae Sot with Kaey's family- her husband, two shrill kids, and one of Kaey's students who acted as a sometime babysitter. Kaey is a professor at a local university where she teaches developmental psych. She's going to the US in May to study English and on the weekends I help her get her conversation skils up to par.
My last border experience was crossing into Cambodia, and it included masked men with guns running down alleyways, mountains of trash, and me feeling more unsafe than I ever want to feel again. To my great relief, Mae Sot was much calmer and at times startlingly beautiful.
My favorite part of the city was its improbable collection of people. Driving through the streets I saw Burmese men, with patterned sarongs and white-painted faces. Kaey explained to me that the custom is to make a paste out of herbs to use as sunblock on the face. Some of the women wore it in designs on their cheeks and forehead. Then in another part of the city was a Muslim community, identified by the crescent and star symbols over the doors and the many mosques. There the men had long beards and I saw women wearing veils moving slowly on bicycles. There were many other people more recognizeably Thai to me, as well as the ever-present Chinese gold shops trimmed in red and yellow, and I even saw several NGO-type farangs.
We stayed with Kaey's parents in a compound that houses her brother and his wife and several of her cousins as well. The power of family is magnetic here. In a surprise move, Kaey's younger brother Boy took me under his wing for the weekend. Even though he speaks little English he made it his project to entertain me. And I think he wanted to prove to me how modern his lifestyle is.
The parents are showy about their wealth, with Boy as the shining example. He took me through the streets of Mae Sot in his brand-new pickup, blasting Akon and Snoop Dogg on a sphincter-shaking subwoofer. It was a strange kind of culture shock to hear Snoop Dogg as we waited for cows to clear off the road. He dragged me into golfing with his friends, other young businessmen from Mae Sot: a pharmacist, a motorbike salesman, a restaurant owner, etc. They said I looked like Clark Kent with my glasses and asked me if I was wearing red underwear. Several times on the golf course an old man would walk out holding a baby. And on the fifth hole I could see a woman washing her clothes in a water trap. The greenside accomodations are not so desirable there I think. Our caddies were Burmese and they spoke as little Thai as I did. And back in the clubhouse we dined on food that was American in spirit, if not in presentation or ingredients. Heavy stuff like fried crickets dipped in ketchup and squid cooked in egg yolks.
Back at the family compound I had a totally different kind of cultural experience. Kaey's husband Oak woke me up at dawn one day to go shopping with him. I followed him to the town market, where I held bags for him as he bought enough meat to rebuild a pig. We spent most of the day in the kitchen preparing laab muu, which is a traditional dish in his family. It consists of basically taking each part of a pig, preparing it in its own savory way, and then mushing it back together in a black sauce. I got to pare intestines, deep fry the heart, and best of all, tenderize the leg meat until it was as creamy as cake frosting. The whole thing was actually pretty good, prepared with a lot of spice and served with fried onions and vegetables. I get the feeling that the family likes the food, but doesn't love it. So Oak was left eating laab leftovers at the next few meals.
The actual trip into Myanmar was brief and unremarkable. I walked over the Friendship Bridge, a massive concrete causeway, sat for five minutes in Burmese customs, and then walked back into Thailand. I got to see the dry and dusty bed of the Moei River below me, and some Thai policemen catching Burmese trying to sneak into Thailand.
The weekend was three days for me without another native English speaker. I was exhausted from trying to pare down my sentences and translate into Thai. It was surprising how much Chiang Mai felt like home when I returned.
posted by DMF at 4:36 PM
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