Mae Hong Son Loop PT 1: Mae Sariang: We like a little danger in our sleepy river towns

A four day weekend had fallen upon the teaching community of Thailand, and that meant that it was time for my friends and I to get out of town for a few days. Nick was going down to Ko Chang, an island in the Southeast, Will and Elise were going to go to the relatively nearby towns of Mae Sariang and Mae Hong Son (in Mae Hong Son province just to the west of Chiang Mai province), and I was planning on visiting a Thai friend in Bangkok, then spending a few days in nearby Kanchanaburi, location of the legendary Bridge Over the River Kwai (note: “kwai” translates in English to “buffalo”, so it’s understandable why they didn’t translate it for the book/movie. “Bridge Over Buffalo River” sounds more like an episode of Dora the Explorer than an epic war story..) Lucky for Mae Hong Son, this plan fell through, and I was able to grace the province with my eminence, along with Will and Elise for 3.5 magical days.

We left Chiang Mai by bus on Thursday night, headed for Mae Sariang, the first of several towns along what is commonly referred to as The Mae Hong Son Loop. Observe:

We made it to the bus just as it was pulling away, and crammed ourselves into the remaining seats. When I say “crammed”, I mean we fit ourselves into a “3-seater” bench, with Will wedged up against the window, Elise nearly on top of him the whole ride, and me with half my butt on the bench and my left leg spread all the way across the aisle and into the foot space of the next seat over just so I could balance and stay upright. Fairly standard 4 hour bus ride for about $3 a pop. We pulled in to town around 1 AM, found our guesthouse, and promptly passed out, visions of sugar plums  day markets and Shan-style temples dancing in our heads.

After doing a bit of detective work the following morning, we decided it would be cool to head to a market village we’d heard about called Mae Sam Laep; it is about an hour outside of town, right on the Burmese border, and there is a great deal of trading (and smuggling) that passes through this remote market. It ended up being a far more eventful  ride than we expected.

We were about 45 minutes or more into our journey via pickup truck taxi through mountain passes and gravel roads, passing by Hill Tribe Villages and scenic view points at every turn. As we neared our destination, we stopped in a village to drop off a couple of our passengers. Just after we pulled up, a pair of Thai bros, probably between the ages of 19-25, dressed in just short-shorts (who likes short shorts? Hill Tribe ruffians like short-shorts), pulled up on a motorbike and hoped off. A few words were exchanged and they made a B-line for one of the Thai passengers in the back of our covered truck taxi. And the brawl began.
Both short-shorts bros start pounding on passenger bro, who was helpless at first, and shoved towards the front of the truck bed area, directly where me and my friends were sitting. They got pulled off the truck, and the fighting continued, something that I was certainly not going to try to step in and help stop; my convictions to stay put were bolstered when the drunkest and most angry of the 2 shorts-clad bros armed himself with a big glass beer bottle and a small machete.. I’ve seen fights, but never any where such dangerous weapons were being used in such an unregulated environment; realizing that you were in a place in the world where no police were ever going to arrive to break things up or protect the innocent is pretty unsettling. The fight continued to escalate, with most of the Thai people in the vicinity trying desperately yet fruitlessly to break things up, and they were unable to stop the drunk shorts bro from hurling his empty beer bottle towards the passenger bro near the truck (i.e. towards us), shattering the bottle and giving me the tiniest of cuts on my finger. A souvenir of the scariest moment of my travels thus far.
The bros were eventually all contained, with the help of the second shorts bro who was clearly not as passionate about the conflict as the drunker one was. We got back underway, and talked a bit with passenger bro, who was relatively unharmed considering the intensity of the fight. We discovered that he was the driver's brother, and there was obviously some long-standing beef with the shorts bros. As we rode along, thankful to be getting away from the scene of the crime, we were jolted by a deafening  “CRACK”, the sound of shorts bro hitting the back of the truck with a huge branch with all his might, right next to the head of passenger bro. Not over yet.
Somehow shorts bro, alone this time, had found a way to head us off and start things up again, and they were instantly back at it. They fought it out once more, this time with massively long and heavy branches, and eventually passenger bro landed a haymaker right to the side of shorts bro’s head/jaw. He wasn’t knocked out completely, but I bet he wished he was. The whole thing was pretty frightening, as we were fairly convinced a few times that were going to witness an actual murder, and we nearly did when passenger bro took a full-power swing at the staggering shorts bro as he walked away, missing by inches. I don’t even want to imagine what it would’ve looked like if he had connected on that swing, but believe me when I say death would’ve been a realistic possibility.
Another 3 minutes down the road and we were at our destination. Yikes. To quote a phrase from another well-known out-of-control brawl, “That escalated quickly!..” It was a bit difficult to relax and enjoy the sights of the market (which was closing up by the time we got there anyway) given the unexpected, severe, and proximate nature of the aforementioned events. But we did our best to chill out and enjoy the place we had come all this way to see, which was right on the Salaween River, which was dividing Thailand and Burma, and was actually quite beautiful:

We made it back to town without incident, and unwound with a beer on a hammock in a bar by the river. Overall a good day, and definitely unforgettable.

We were up early the next day, having gotten a lot of rest due to the lack of nightlife in Mae Sariang, and were ready to do some explorin’. We decided to rent bicycles from the guesthouse, and I ended up with this flashy little number:

A few minutes later, that little number was a bit less flashy:

The bike had basically broken in half as I rode it, and the only thing preventing me from smashing my face directly into the pavement were my lightening-quick injury-prevention reflexes, a leftover of years of skateboarding and snowboarding. Thanks extreme sports: you’ve not only provided me with hours and hours of happiness, but also preserved my good looks. Hats off to you.
I was a little beat up despite the reflexes, but recovered adequately and we continued on to see some amazing temples and views. Here’s a  sample:

Later in the afternoon, we bid a fond “Sawadee” to Mae Sariang, and caught another cheap bus – this time less crowded – to our next destination, the town of Mae Hong Son (yep, just like the province).

Tune in next time to hear the rest of our juicy tales from the Far West of the Far East. At the very least, there will be some nice pictures..