sweet garlic love

by the time we left chiang mai, i was getting pretty fed up with thailand. sure, the food was great and the country was pretty, but where was the action? where was the adventure? where were the hundreds of people trying to thieve from us, giving us great blog entries? WHERE WERE THE ADORING FANS?

thus, at the chiang mai bus station, i was unimpressed. we booked our ticket to go to mae hong son (after some confusion--the woman pointed us in another direction, and when we started to walk over there, she called us back and booked the tickets), and then we went where the woman had pointed. tim tried to distract me from my extreme grumpiness by pointing to the newstand, with what looked like english magazines. standing in the newstand, glaring at the thai version of OK! magazine (who knew?), i was hating thailand. suddenly, the girl at the cashier called out to me and we started talking. she is a university student who speaks 7 languages. she works at the newstand to make money for school, and she eventually wants to travel the world. i LOVED her. i loved her so much that she is going to be my new pen pal! suddenly, thailand didn't seem so bad. there WERE nice people, hiding out in newstands, wanting to be my friend! i gave her my address and as i was walking away, she called out, 'allie! have a good trip!' oh, new friend, how i love you!

thus, i was in a pretty good mood as we tried to find our bus to mae hong son. it seemed we were in the wrong place, and we were eventually directed back to the original ticket counter, where the woman pointed us to a minivan. A MINIVAN. say goodbye to the good mood! we climbed into the back (after watching some poor tiny thai man try to strap our 5436284552-pound bags onto the roof) and prepared for a long ride. as it turns out, the ride was about 2 hours shorter than it should have been! our driver careened (hurtled?) around the twisty, curvy roads of the northern thai mountains so fast we could barely see the scenery. we stopped for a break halfway through, and tim bought some food at the local store. when he said thank you in thai to the salesman, the man gave him a thumbs up and said 'number one!' tim was so happy, he called himself 'number one' for days. (okay, weeks. he STILL calls himself number one. i am going to hunt down that cashier and kill him!)

finally, we arrived in mae hong son, another dusty old-west-looking town. the owner of our guesthouse pulled up in a black jeep to take us to the hotel and straight away, i knew i would like it. THERE WAS A DOG IN THE JEEP! hooray! babs, the german owner of sang tong huts, is a lovely woman who has been running the place for 12 years. her husband died a few years ago, and now her boyfriend runs it with her. unfortunately, the boyfriend speaks barely any english, so our first night there was...awkward. the way it works there is that you can sign up for dinner, and the cook, muk, makes dinner for everyone. you all sit together at the table, in the yurt, next to the fire, and eat. our first night, it was just the four of us. until babs started making conversation, it was a quiet meal. the good news is that muk is the best cook on earth. dear god, the food she made was amazing! of course, it didn't hurt that she included 4637825 pounds of garlic with everything, which pleased us immensely.

our hut had a very luxurious bathroom (without hot water, sadly), with a FLUSHING EUROPEAN TOILET! we had a nice porch with pillows to sit on, and a big bed with a giant mozzie net over it. yay! and, babs has 7 dogs, so there were always dogs to play with.

our first day was spent walking around town doing errands (email, booking flights, sorting out our aussie visas), and booking a tour of the local hilltribe villages for the next day. we found a restaurant called the salween river restaurant, run by an englishman named allen, which was just like cheers! it was full of expat locals, and there was some damn fine green curry (which, i am sorry to say, was my last green curry in thailand because i am officially overloaded on green curry).

our second day, we had to get up early and go into town to find a phone because it was thanksgiving! we managed to find a phone card after about 3 tries, but then, MOST INCONVIENTLY, all the international phones were broken! argh! we ended up calling my parents from the tour office, and having them call back. then, we went on the tour. i forget our guide's name, but he was a very sweet and gentle man who spoke excellent english (we had been told he barely spoke at all and to ask back at the office if we had questions). we rode in the back of a pickup again, to see some fish caves and then to a waterfall, and then to the villages. we snaked up and down the hills by the burmese border, and stopped first at mae aw, a chinese tea village, where we sampled the merchandise. then we went to a meo (hmong) village, nicknamed 'switzerland of thailand', which was lovely--on a lake, with little huts along the shoreline. then, we went to another village, which is made up of four tribes, and then back again. and then? DINNER AT THE HOTEL! finally, some more guests had arrived--2 more germans, and 2 hilarious chinese guys, who entertained us all night. we chowed down big style on muk's delicious garlicky feast, and asked the guys all about china. (if you go to china, go to beijing and then to tibet, they say. also, be prepared for china to kick ass at the olympics--the rest of us have no chance.)

after 3 nights in mae hong son, it was finally time to leave. waaaah! the town itself is not much, but the hotel was lovely and the food (if you haven't yet noticed) is delicious, and the surrounding area is gorgeous. and so, on we went to pai.

(sorry these posts are so boring...with no one around to try and cheat us, there is not much action in thailand--everything is easy! how repulsive!)