We thought we will have a relaxing day after all the driving we did in the last two days....but we ended up driving a lot of kilometers. We first went to Ban Rak Thai, a village of Chinese refugees just next to the border with Myanmar (50km North of Mae Hong Son). On the way we saw very nice landscapes, passed through small villages and saw people working in fields...full of cabbages! We stopped at the Pha Seau Waterfalls on the way. There was not much water as it is the dry season but the settings were very nice. The road at one stage was very steep and there were a lot of curves...but not worst than the roads we drove through during the last two days! The village of Ban Rak Thai is very small and is located next to a lake. A local tea grown in plantations near the village is sold in touristy shops where can also be bought cups and tea pots. Having lunch at one of the restaurants was a challenge as the menu was all in Thai and the woman could not speak a word of English, but the food was good (this was the first restaurant on the right when entering the village). One of the thing we liked the most was the football pitch, with bamboo goals and cows maintaining the grass! Just before the village the tea plantations are on each side of the road. It is so different from the one we saw in Malaysia, the bushes are much smaller, the leaves drier and the people were only collecting the leaves by hands. On our way back to Mae Hong Son we visited the Fish caves and we also tried to reach the Karen village of Ban Nai Soi, to see the long neck women. The fish cave is a nice, but very touristic site where a river surge at the bottom of a cliff. There are lots of big fishes that the Thai feed as they are sacred fishes. We have not been overwhelmed by this visit, nothing that special. We then tried to go to the Karen village but we turned back as the last few kilometers are unsealed and we were too tired to do some off road on a scooter. Moreover we were not sure we were ready to pay the Bh250 village entrance fee for foreigners. The Karen are refugees from Myanmar and cannot work in Thailand so the tourism is their only way to get some money. That's why they make tourists pay to come and visit their villages. After this long day we had a relaxing evening in Mae Hong Son, a pleasant town, as it is just a bit touristic, but mainly for Thai, so it kept its soul of a mountainous peaceful small town. A more authentic town than Pai that has been totally changed by the tourism.
