Love It Here!

(This is an old blog entry, but I haven't had a chance to get to a computer. Also, you will notice that the pictures have nothing to do with what I am talking about. Sorry about that. But Sarah always bitches when I don't include pictures. The pictures of just of the temples that I saw, except for the first shot which is of a fruit stand.)

I have been in Mae Sot for about two days now and I really like it a lot! It is a trendy little Thai town that is made up of about 80% Burmese. It's gotten to be a very popular hangout, mostly due to a book called “Restless Souls” that was released a few years back and sent people running to this town. Because of this, it has a lot of nice restaurants, hippie-ish guest houses yet still a lack of any English, probably because the majority of the people who live here are Burmese and having enough of a problem just learning Thai.

Compared to other counties that I have been to, this country has a lot of dignity. People don't honk at you, people don't run out of their houses to scream “welcome” at you (which sounds endearing, I know, but it gets annoying really really quickly. The streets are clean which is a miracle considering that finding a garbage can around here is a challenge within itself.

People wear helmets when riding their motorbikes, although not everyone does which tells me that wearing a helmet is recommended but not the law-- and which also tells me that a lot of people here think about their health and think ahead.

Another thing that I found in Mae Sot (actually, I found many of these) was a bookstore. Although everything was in Thai and Burmese, I wandered in one for a while picking up the translated copies of Harry Potter and flipping though Thai comic books before I realized why the site was so odd to me-- I haven't really seen a bookstore in the last two years that didn't sell only religious texts. There was a rather sizable religious area in one of the stores, but it was obviously secondary to the main use of the place. I have seen many people reading in coffee shops and on buses. I am looking forward to teaching students because I think that it will be much more fun and challenging. I have been told that my students will have issues with critical thinking, but I am finding that hard to believe compared to me previous students.

Finally, there are three temples (wot) in Mae Sot, but they have actually been a bit of a disappointment. They are beautiful, but the places are not very well kept up. One of them is actually a major traffic point between two major areas of town, and I have only seen one person actually there to use the temple grounds as something other then a tunnel, and I wasn't sure how he was managing to concentrate with all the motorbikes wizzing by him. The temples are pretty dirty, with the statues covered with dirt and bird feces. I was tempted to head over with a cloth and some water. I am also a little shy around the temples because they are the homes to numerous Monks who are not allowed to be around women. I feel bad stomping around on their home knowing that my presence might make them scurry into hiding.