Random fact - we've been away for 29 weeks in total and have slept in about 64 different beds! (that's one way I amused myself on the bus journey from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son!). It was time to begin working our way down to Mae Sot in the west, so that we could cross by land into Myanmar. James was keen to visit Mae Hong Son and it was 'almost' on the way, so off we went! There's a famous loop you can do called the Mae Hong Son Loop, best on a motorbike it has over 1800 curves and very wiggly windy!...we have completed about two thirds now but mostly in a mini-van, so we haven't quite earned the t-shirt yet.

The mini-van took a cool 6 hours (cool, being the operative word here - in fact, more like bloody freezing!) and we arrived late afternoon, thankfully it had stopped raining and it was a little bit warmer than when we left Chiang Mai - yay! The bus station was out of town again, but we ignored the taxis and opted for the good old 'leg-power' option to try and stretch ourselves out a bit, and it wasn't that far. We'd had booked a lovely little guest house (The LikeView Guesthouse) by the lake and we were pleased to find they'd stocked the room with 2 thick blankets (amazing compared with the single very thin one we'd had in Chiang Mai!), however the walls were so thin, you could hear everything from the next room and anyone going upstairs sounded like a herd of elephants!

Anyway, our time in Mae Hong Son passed quite pleasantly, there wasn't a great amount to do in the town itself so we had a good couple of days of taking it easy - but of course we took time to visit the Wat on top of the hill! It was our anniversary while we were there - 5 years together!! My my, how time flies when you're having fun! We celebrated with a nice dinner out and an early night, ready for our mammoth journey the next day - next stop Mae Sot - ever closer to the border!

It wasn't a straight journey though, first we had to take a local bus to Mae Sariang in the morning which got us in at lunchtime, just in time for the last songatheaw (local bus/taxi/truck) to take us the rest of the way to Mae Sot - in total, about 10 hours…the last 5 being rather uncomfortable in the back of a truck. The driver was either in a rush, or completely mental - or both!- and got us there an hour ahead of schedule, but it was an interesting ride - parts of which I chose to close my eyes J

Again, as we were getting into town late, we'd booked a place to stay, the Erawan Palace hotel - nice enough, but quite far out of town and not much around at all. The staff were sweet, but didn't speak a word of English, so communicating was fun - that is, once we'd arrived as the map I had took us in a completely different direction! We stopped into another guest house to ask the way and they kindly phoned our place and arranged a pick up for us….saved us a long walk!

We weren't sure exactly when we were going to leave to cross the border so settled in for one night. Unfortunately, James wasn't feeling too well the next day though, so that answered that one - we'd head to Myanmar the day after. It gave me a chance to catch up on some bits, research for Myanmar and putting my brain to good use and setting up a budget tracker…bit geeky I know, but it helps!

In hindsight, we should have probably just gone straight to Mae Sot from Chiang Mai though as there wasn't much to inspire us in Mae Hong Son (as we don't ride motorbikes and we didn't have enough time for a trek) and Mae Sot was just a border town, again with not much going on. But you live and learn! Next stop, Myanmar - we're both excited to get to a new country and have a bit of a change.