Yunnan & Myanmar

We woke up in Ban Rak Thai to a view of tea fields and Chinese style rooftops across a misty lake. Between the lovely view and sore legs, I advocated for a rest day. We walked along the lake to have breakfast with the friendly lady who served us tea the day before - tea, Yunnanese steamed buns, as well as more Thai language lessons from our new friend. 

After breakfast, we set off to walk to the Myanmar border - a whole kilometer away. On the walk there, we politely declined tea tasting from one shop, but stopped for coffee a few doors down. The coffee was served with a side of tea. To help the Chinese nationalist refugees move away from opium and jade smuggling, some governmental power (we heard both Thai and Taiwanese) stepped in to develop tea growing as a more lawful source of income. The program appears to have succeeded. Every tiny shop in town is filled with that family's packaged tea for sale. The tea is served in two cups: a tall thin cup full of tea is placed upside down in a shorter, fatter cup. You lift the inner cup to release the tea, smell the aroma from the vacated cup, roll it between your hands as a hand warming device, and then begin to actually drink tea from the other cup. Jove and I mastered the cup flipping process with only marginal tea casualties. Every tea we tried was fragrant and delicious. So much so that we bought 200g of tea, bike touring weight considerations be damned.


Burmese border guard
Full of tea, we continued the walk towards Myanmar. The border looked intense, with barbed wire, concrete bunkers and a no man's land between the two countries' guard stations, but it was all very relaxed. The Thai army guard at the border showed us around their army outpost (and gave us some language lessons), and calmly assented to our request to walk across the border. The Burmese guard also did not care whether we crossed, and also declined to check our documents or ask for any money. He did correct us when we called him Burmese - he is Shan, and belongs to the Shan State Army, not the Burmese Army. We walked around the tiny Shan/Burmese village for an hour, and found it similar to rural Thai villages, although with dirt roads instead of cement. The border region is spotted by predominatly hill tribe villages, which seem to be as important as nationality in shaping the town's character.
After repatriating to Thailand, I explored around the town some more, and Jove went for a bike ride to a nearby town that apparently sells itself as the Switzerland of Thailand.

View into Mynamar from a Thai bunker
At our Yunnanese dinner - tea included - a group of multilingual Malay tourists at the other table translated from Mandarin to English as the shop owner's dad told stories of his father's time in the Kuominhtang army, and his job of smuggling mule trains throughout the Golden Triangle as recently as twenty years ago. The back wall of the tea shop is a small museum with shelves of rifle barrels, shell casings, KMT uniform items, and pack mule saddles from the smuggling days. 

It was an excellent rest day overall, although by the end of the day, the ubiquitous complimentary tea ruined our attempts to sleep early. Tomorrow we'll descend our mountain and rejoin the Mae Hong Son loop.

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