TACHILEIK, BURMA
Mae Sai is a pretty average Northern Thai town, but just across the border is an entirely different world. The sidewalks are covered in brick-colored betel nut spit, old toothless women smoke green cheroots and, perhaps most strikingly, everybody looks completely different. Cosmopolitan Thailand is fairly homogeneous (mostly due to the success of Thaification), but the population of Tachileik is a bizarre mix of Shan, Bamar, Lahu, Akha, Muslim groups and Indians from all over the place.

Also, everything is in Burmese. That sounds obvious, but you’ll find some familiar script almost anywhere you go in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam. In Tachileik even the license plates are written in a language you’ve never seen before.

TACHILEIK, BURMA
We’ve visited Tachileik before, but the failed expedition to Mong La necessitated another three hours in the town. It’s much the same, but I did find out something interesting – the endangered animal parts they sell in the market are real. Being about two hundred meters from Thailand I always figured they were fake, but the general consensus is that Burma doesn’t have any problem with openly selling rhino assholes.

God help you if you bring that crap back into Thailand, though.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND -> TACHILEIK, BURMA
Thailand has tourism down to a science, but it isn’t really sure what to do about all these foreigners who want to live here. Most bring in a lot of money and have helped the country immensely, but some just do a ton of drugs and have sex with prostitutes. How in the world do you separate the two? Nobody’s quite figured it out yet, but the interim solution is hold them to insanely complicated and unpredictable visa regulations. So complicated and unpredictable, in fact, that there are entire websites devoted to keeping up with them.

I’ve been in Thailand over a month (though hopefully not much longer), so I needed to leave the country to get an extension on my visa. Through mechanisms too boring to explain I would have received sixty days if I’d gone to Laos, but it’s a four day trip and my friend norovirus made sure that wasn’t happening. Luckily the Union of Myanmar is only 200km away, and even though that trip’s only worth an extra two weeks it can be done in a single day.

These photos are from the way there. Tomorrow we’ll take a dip into Burma.