Mae Hong Son

I have been away from the internet for a while (which has actually been nice), here is a post that I wrote while I was in Mae Hong Son.....


Spent the last two days in a city called Mae Hong Son. We took about an 30 minute flight from chiang mai to MHS yesterday and spent the later part of the day roaming the town. The town has just barely undergone a mini tourist boom, we have not ran into any americans here and have come across very few travellers. I think Jenn and I stump the locals as they are not quite sure what we are. The speak to us in thai and then we give the whole “we don’t understand” look and say ‘engligh?’ Some speak, since it is the universal language and they know if they want your money they better know English.

So today we hired a driver to take us the Karen Village which is known for women having the long necks with rings around the necks. I am on the fence about the whole thing and am not sure how I really feel about it. So they charge 250 baht, about 6 bucks to enter the village to see these people. The money supposedly goes to food and what not but to me its almost like a human zoo. We drove about 20 or so minutes from the town of Mae Hon Song to this village in the hills and here they are setup with tables selling hand made goods (supposedly) and lots of tourists coming through. Yes, we are helping the village and Jenn did her fair share of shopping but something just does not seem right about the whole setup. I guess that’s tourism for you.

Every night in the middle of the town they have a nightly market. Street food galore and good and cheap street food. Jenn and I gorged out on satay, deep fried pork nuggets, crispy pork jerky (we think), fried papaya, and those flour, coconut, onion things that we get at the Sunday thai food market in berkely. This was the first time we saw them in Thailand and they were just as good! We had too much food and left some for the guy that sold us our thai ice teas.

So I forgot to mention the huts that we are staying at here in the middle of the rain forest. They are very simple and the beds are hard as sh*t but it’s nice being in the middle of the rain forest, hearing the different animals, bugs, and condensation throughout the forest all night and not hearing a horn, tuk tuk, or car engine.