Thailand – October 202
After arriving in the Chinese-style village on the Thai-Myanmar border, I first have to find accommodation. Online bookings are only possible at the large resort with its own tea plantation. However, I have already made a note of the Ping Ping Guesthouse on Google Maps, which is located right by the lake. I’m lucky again and get to stay in the last hut painted with pandas.
Then I take my first walk through the town. I meet an old lady who warns me not to go down a street because the border crossing is at the end of it. Several people have recently been shot dead by soldiers on both sides of the border. I thank her for the information and turn round. She then invites me to take part in the villagers’ evening event: a wedding celebration. She would also be there around 11 pm to dance.
After exploring the tea plantations overlooking the lake, I return to the guesthouse for afternoon tea. In the evening, I head to a restaurant I discovered earlier for spicy noodle soup. I enjoy the sunset and take one last walk around the lake. On the way back, I suddenly come across a group of young people standing at the side of the road around a table with empty beer cans. The only European-looking man calls out to me in English that I should join in the drinking.
Because I have nothing better to do, I join the lively group. It turns out that the European is Swiss and is on holiday in Thailand with his Vietnamese girlfriend. The other people are the bar owner and his friends. It’s one of them’s birthday and the tourists have invited them round for beer and whisky. We drink, chat and laugh until someone announces at 10.30 pm that it’s time to go to the wedding. Of course, we tourists are supposed to come along too – so we all get on the back of 3 of the motorbikes and ride to the village square.
The party is already in full swing there. When we arrive, plastic chairs are pulled up to a table and large bowls of steaming noodles are placed in front of us. Grandmothers serve beer and the boys, with whom we had been drinking earlier, light up a bong. To our right, a ritual takes place in which a lute player dances in a circle followed by wedding guests. Naturally, the hosts ask us to join in. After a short dance, the other Swiss man and his wife decide it’s time to go to bed. We exchange numbers so that we can continue our journey to Pai together the next day.
I enjoy the special atmosphere with the red lanterns and the mural in homage to Taiwan for a while longer. As I’m about to head home at around 2.00 am, one of the young villagers offers me a lift to my guesthouse on his scooter. I gratefully accept and fall into bed tired shortly afterwards. I actually manage to take a short walk at sunrise to capture the morning atmosphere on the mist-covered lake. Afterwards, however, I fall asleep again, glad that I don’t have to rely on the only bus into town today, which leaves at 8.00 am.
When I wake up at around 11.00 a.m., I have no message from the Swiss man on my mobile phone. My calls don’t go through and I realise that he must have made a mistake when typing in his number. I accept the fact that I will be spending another night in the cosy village, pay for the guesthouse and then set off to explore. I walk past the village square, where the second day of the wedding ceremony is in full swing, through the small streets lined with wooden houses and clucking chickens. I soon reach the end of the inhabited area and find myself in a tea plantation. A man is trimming the individual bushes with a trimmer and on the way I see motorbikes waiting for their owners at the side of the road in 3 different places.
Then find a beautiful pond lined with banana trees. The afternoon sun makes the water glisten enticingly. But somehow it also looks as if crocodiles could live in it. So I prefer to sit on the remains of a derelict guesthouse and observe the jungle landscape from the banks of the pond. I seem to be well camouflaged, because at some point a man drives purposefully to the small bridge on the opposite side of the waterhole. He undresses, trudges into the knee-deep water and begins to soap himself thoroughly. It seems there are no crocodiles here after all. I decide to give the man some privacy and return to the village through another tea plantation.
Once there, I indulge in the main activity in Ban Rak Thai: drinking tea by the lake and enjoying the view. I communicate with the owners of the teahouse using my hands and feet. While I wait for my order, I watch the raft-like boats with the red lanterns chauffeuring paying tourists out onto the lake. Then someone brings me a large pot of tea and when I want to pay after an hour, I am told: no, the tasting is free. Baffled, I pay a visit to the souvenir shop and buy a packet of the delicious oolong tea.
With the precious commodity in my hand, I walk back to the Ping Ping Guesthouse and sit down by the lake again with a book. A short time later, the owner of the small inn comes running up with a pot of tea and I sip another cup of the delicious drink. As the sun sets, it quickly gets cooler. I treat myself to another warm shower before I start the hunt for one last portion of noodle soup. This time I find what I’m looking for on the small dam in the far corner of the lake. Surrounded by Thai and a few international tourists, I savour the hot soup. As I get up, a motorbike suddenly pulls up next to me. It’s one of the guys we partied with yesterday.
“You’re still here?” he asks in surprise. I briefly summarise the day’s events and he laughs. “Well then, let’s go to the second evening of the festivities together.” I get up and a short time later I’m sitting at a table in the village centre again with some familiar and some new faces. This time the group is a little smaller and I even meet the newlyweds. She comes from Ban Rak Thai, while he grew up in Chiang Dao. However, they now live in Bangkok because the economic situation is better there. The guest sitting next to me has also travelled from Bangkok. We share the task of petting the affectionate street dog called “Popcorn”. Of course, the beer and food are not neglected today either.
Gradually, more friends and relatives of the bride arrive. Like most of the villagers, they work in the tourism sector. That evening, I meet the owners of various cafés and guesthouses that I have seen over the past few days. And the young man who drove me here today earns his living as a photographer – a good business, especially as Ban Rak Thai with its picturesque location is predestined for photo shoots. I also learn a lot about the history of the village. At the beginning of communism in China, many renegade Chinese fled here, especially from Yunnan province. That’s why most of the inhabitants still speak Chinese, Thai and even one of the indigenous languages from the region.
As the karaoke session threatens to get out of hand, I say goodbye to my new friends. After all, I really want to take the 8 a.m. bus back to the city tomorrow. Because I’ve already seen the sunrise, I can at least sleep until 7am. Then I head to the lake for breakfast before lugging my rucksack to the main road and waiting for the honking yellow truck to take me back to the “real” Thailand. Read more about the region here:
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