leaving
Chiang Mai for Mae Hong Son - all kinds of roads from this one to
this ...
Misty
mountains and some serious alpine driving - up to about 1500 m
Lunch
in Pai - this is the main street
Pai
even has an airfield - then its more mountains ... in May/June
2006 the road between Pai and Mae Hong Song was partly very good
(new) and partly still under renovation
more
mountains and views like those ....
hard
to see - but the GPS showed almost 1400 m at this point
The
fuel prices up there in June 2006
at
the lake in Mae Hong Song
The
road maps show a straight connection between Mae Hong Song and Mae
Sot, via Mae Sariang. Our GPS kept telling us we should go back to
Chiang Mai to get to Mae Sot. We decided to believe the road
maps... The road from Mae Hong Song to Mae Sariang is quite good,
although also quite curvy, but nothing compared to what we had
experienced coming via Pai. Somebody in a bar in MHS told us that
the route from Chiang Mai via Pai has 1800 curves whereas the one
via Mae Sariang has "only" 1000.
At
Mae Sariang we actually found a road sign saying (in Thai only)
Tak and Mae Sot and for the first part, the road was like this..
it then
turned into this
and
at one point we were actually in the clouds. Hardly any traffic
there, but as the road runs very close to the Burmese border there
are quite a number of check points, which were all unmanned when
we passed through. Very lonely stretch - I would not want to drive
there at night.... Very few lonely villages too
Getting
closer to Mae Sot finally, we found this
I
am not quite sure, but suppose that this is a refugee village. At
lunch at the roadside nobody spoke any Thai.
at
the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge in Mae Sot.
There is a big market there
with some quite interesting stuff. It is also possible to go into
Myanmar on a day pass. But buyers beware: On the road from Mae Sot
to Tak there is a customs checkpoint where they look very closely
at what you have in your car... We got particularly checked for
illegal teakwood stuff
I
am always fascinated by the various forms of people transport, but
this new form of double decker beats all I have seen up to
now
