Arrived in Mae Sot

The journey from Scotland was long. I had a 2 hour flight to Amsterdam and a 6 hour wait in Amsterdam airport. Then a 10 hour flight to Bangkok. After that I got a 1 hour flight to Chaing Mai. Then Murray and Stewart drove me to Mae Sot, which was very kind of them!  We went straight for dinner when we arrived in Mae Sot, we finally arrived on Monday at 8pm. 


When I got here, my mum looked like this!!! 


















































It was really lovely getting to see everyone I know at the restaurant, all the waitress and chef girls. We joined my mum and Geoff, Gaynor and David from Musselburgh and their four children - Maya, Seth, Imogen and Livvy, and our Burmese friend came along too. 


When I got to the DK hotel, my room was full of mosquitos so I sprayed it with killer spray and left the room for a while. When I came back in there were two huge cockroaches on their backs dying and hissing away! I had to get Geoff to take them away. 


                         Breakfast

Yesterday I woke up at 7am! I wanted to go to Lucky tea shop with our Burmese friend for breakfast. They stop serving food at 9:30am. I had potato curry with flat bread for breakfast, that's so not me! haha. 


Afterwards, we went to the market and I bought loads of lovely fruit like mangosteen and salak. 

We went to visit CDC school, where I taught last year. I got to see a lot of my old students and the teachers at the school which was lovely. 

Then we moved on to Hle Bee school where I saw a lot of old students. We spoke with Thazin, the headteacher of the school about previous students who had moved on from the school. I find it amazing that she continues to take care of previous students. Some students leave school because their families don't have enough money. So their children, who can be very young, go to work in the Mae Sot community as waitresses, shop keepers etc. It's upsetting, because they love to study so much and believe education in key to helping their country. Thazin always keeps in touch with previous students and tries to help them in any way she can. 

Mum sang with the students, who remembered songs they had learned from us years ago! It was amazing to see them all again. 

Singing 

In the afternoon we went swimming which was really nice. Me, Mum and Livvy got a tuk tuk back to the hotel.

In the tuk tuk

At night we went to Bai Fern for dinner and Gaynor and I both got Thai yellow curries, which taste amazing. She got tofu and I got chicken. I was sitting eating my curry like normal and Gaynor relly couldn't handle the heat, which is weird because mines was fine and we got the same thing. We were all thinking she was a wimp but when I tried hers it burned my mouth for about 10 minutes! haha strange..

All in all, I had a fantastic day yesterday, but it really is sad being in Mae Sot, remembering just how hard life is for the Burmese people here.