Five Seven One

Umphang is located in North Western Thailand along the Myanmar border, and is home to Karen, Thai, Shan and other minority ethnic tribes. To get to Umphang you fly into the town of Mae Sot and take the 164km winding road through the Thanon Thongchai Mountain Range. This road is the only access from Thailand, there is another road that will take you to Myanmar, but to enter the country you have to leave your passports at the border.

In the north west of Vietnam, near the Chinese border, high in the Hoang Lien Son mountain range you will find the town of Sapa. To get there we took the overnight train from Hanoi. The ride was rough and noisy, but we were fairly comfortable in our private sleeping car. Near dawn we awoke and gazed out the window at the villages along the train tracks leading into Lao Cai. For a brief moment we caught a glimpse of a child that couldn’t have been more than three climbing down a ten food garden wall naked and seemingly unsupervised. I couldn’t help but think how hearty such an upbringing would make a person.

Coming form a western culture, the realities of traveling in South East Asia is a sounding for the compassion you have as well as the degradation you can bear whiteness to. After passing through customs at Angkor International Airport you immediately get a glimpse of the ignominy in which the descendants of the once great Khmer Empire live. Gaunt men with beautifully symmetrical faces and large eyes hustle every weary traveler as they exit the airport with an unsettling frantic desperation.