six hour sangthaew

We woke up in Mae Sariang hungover from the previous night's Loy Krathong festivities, and not particularly enthusiastic about sitting in the back of a pickup for six hours on our way to Mae Sot. We had to do what we had to do though, and what we had to do was take the only available means of transportation to Mae Sot. We wolfed down eggs, toast and coffee, and hustled to the bus station to catch the 10:30 sangthaew.

The sangthaew is an interesting facet of southeast Asian transport. "Sang" means two, and "thaew" means bench, and these vehicles are appropriately two benches in the back of a pickup truck. There is also a roof over the bed, and basically a kind of cage around you. Somewhere between a taxi and a bus, these puppies are popular for shared transport to common destinations in the cities (bus stations, etc.). They are also the only way to get to some of the more out of the way towns. People clamber in and out of the vehicle at various locations, and there is even sometimes a bell you can ring from the back to let the driver know you want to stop (on the luxury sangthaew only). People riding on these contraptions often have bags or baskets or boxes of items with them, varying from fresh produce to electronics equipment to undisclosed merchandise.

As it turned out, the 10:30 sangthaew wasn't running that day, but the guy making wood carvings in the bus station parking lot assured us that the 11:30 sangthaew would be able to take us. When the 11:30 sangthaew didn't show up, the novelty of sitting out a hangover in the dusty sunny open dirt patch that is the bus station was beginning to fade. About 11:40, a sangthaew showed up and we threw our bags right on top, anxious to get the ride started so we could get it over with. Our eagerness would have to go on hold, however, because this was the 12:30 sangthaew, so we had another fifty minutes to kill.

At 12:28, approximately 24 people clambered onto the benches with their various loads, and some had to hang off the back. The two monks coming along were the only people invited to sit in the cab with the driver. After gassing up on the outskirts of town, we were on our way. Luckily, most of our fellow passengers were headed to nearby destinations, so the overcrowded bed soon became more bearable. The scenery was similar to what we've been seeing fo days, mainly sharp mountain peaks blanketed by thick rainforest cover. For the most part, the drive was beautiful, what you could see of it by craning your neck around and peeking out of the cage. We were cruising along fairly untraveled roads, through small villages, roughly tracing our trajectory along the western border with Burma (Myanmar). A lot of the people living in this part of the world are ethnic minorities, many having fled government persecution and geurilla warfare in their native Burma. It was cool to go through the small villages and pick up people in their brightly colored (but often faded) traditional clothing, speaking in languages other than Thai, and chewing bettel nuts in their darkly stained mouths.

It is an interesting observation of mine that the more comfortable a method of transportation, the more often you stop to rest. Riding around in big air conditioned tourist buses, you stop all the time for bathrooms, snacks, you name it. Riding in the sangthaew, we stopped once, when a dude rang the bell in desperation. Maybe half of the time we weren't crammed in like sardines, but even then the hard benches and backrests were not the best for multi-hour sitting. The rhythm of the sangthaew became lulling and monotonous; the back would fill up, empty out, fill up again, empty out again. About two hours from our destination, the bed filled up and did not empty out again.

Not that is, until about an hour later when we reached a huge, sprawling refugee camp on the west side of the road. As far as refugee camps go, this one was quite scenic, climbing up to the base of a huge limestone cliff. The camp went on for kilometer after kilometer, with people getting out in various spots. Having never seen a refugee camp before, I found it a very interesting place to drive next to. Thousands of bamboo stilt houses with leaf roofs were tightly packed in among the hills. There were various official looking concrete buildings, maybe schools, and the whole shebang seemed very organized and well run. The people had houses, there were places for the kids to play, conditions seemed sanitary. However, I couldn't imagine what life must be like for the people living there. They have no land to farm, they probably don't speak very much Thai, they aren't near a city or town with any kind of work. They seem to be taken care of by someone, but what do they do with themselves? It was good to see and think about and imagine what life is like for those thousands of people and the millions of people around the world who are semi-permanent inhabitants of semi-temporary camps in foreign lands.

The sun set as we were passing the camp, so the last hour into town was a bit breezy and chilly. When we made it to Mae Sot, we didn't care how questionable the guesthouse at the bus station was, or worry about the fact that our room had no bed.