To Pai with parasites

With only a week to go on my 30 day Thai visa I say farewell to my good travel buddy Scott as he had to cut his trip short, realising he only had a few days left on his Korean visa and had to get back to Korea for his job! Doh! So back on the solo mission I move out to Mae Sariang via bus from Chiang Mai hoping to see some hill tribes and minorities living in Thailand that have immigrated from Burma, China, Laos. These people live all around Northern Thailand's hilly regions pretty much self sufficiently. Their main produce is vege, rice, hand crafts and opium. My first stop in Mae Sariang is a great base camp to see some Karen villages and hill tribe people. It's only a tiny town on the West of Thailand close to the Myanmar boarder. I find a cheap room near the in a place called Road Side, I wouldn't recommend it as it was noisy, right next to the road with wafer thin walls. The owner came across as a greasy used car dealer too. I meet two German men who have recently come through Myanmar with little trouble and they are full of horror stories about the terrible public transport there. They are so shocked that the entire world is not as efficient as Germany! We all book a river tour to get up close and personal with some Karen villages. After a bumpy truck ride through some ruff terrain we get to a small boarder village and jump in a long boat. We see what looks like armed rebels all along the boarder of Myanmar. The region itself is full of hostility with the Thai army in force chasing away opium smugglers and other illegal traders - all very exciting. We wander through a isolated Karen village and meet some local kids at school with whom I play a few games I I picked up in Korea. These kids are absolute angels, so humble and nice, compared to those spoilt Korean brats! Our guide, Ben, is also a stand up Thai chap who grew up in the area and speaks several dialects of the the different hill tribes. He married a Chinese women a few years ago and did quite well in a children's clothing business in China until he separated from his wife suddenly (the reason, he wouldn't divulge to me) and coming home to Thailand he stumbled across this opportunity for a tour guide. He is such a genuine chap that he invites me to come stay at his newly built house in the mountains, as he has been quite lonely after the divorce and has few friends in the area. We have a great dinner and chat the night away in his beautiful new house. Thai people are very superstitious and Ben thinks it's bad luck to sleep in the main bedroom before he has the official ceremonial party to break in the new house. So he sleeps in the guestroom until then. I crash on the couch. The next day it's off to Mae Hong Song for some more temples, tribes and trekking. After that I make it to Pai, a kind of small hippy commune and really cool little village full of foreigners, exotic cuisine, live music and a good art scene. I plan to spend a while hear relaxing but, after a very very dodgy glass of water and ginger tea at my local guesthouse, I'm slapped hard with one of the nastiest parasites known to the traveller! Amoebic dysentery as I would later find out I had from the Pai hospital, completely knocked me out for 4 days. Four days of living hell, puking and crapping pure evil! I couldn't eat a thing, let alone move an inch from my bungalow! With only 2 days left on my visa I had to get better fast and get up to the boarder of Laos! I was pumped full of antibiotics and given an arsenal of anti-vomit and stomach cramp pills. A couple of days later I was where I needed to be in Chiang Khong and a short boat trip over the river I was in Laos to meet my buddy Pete for the Gibbon experience on the 15th!