Another way to get across the border.

No, no, no. You CANNOT have four chairs!”

“But I need FOUR for my family.”

“We are WAAAAY overweight. You can only buy TWO chairs!”

Hence, the Phang family members bickered over the purchase of teak stools in Mae Sot, western Thailand.

Brother Ming wanted four, Mom wanted two, second sister and third sister wanted two each, and I coveted two.
How could one not fall in love with Thailand’s wooden crafts? In Chiang Mai, we bought eight boxes of souvenirs.

Now we were in Mae Sot, a Thai border town. On the other side is Myanmar.

To say that Rim Moei Market in Mae Sot is a shopper’s paradise is an understatement. We eventually packed another seven boxes of goodies from Mae Sot alone.

Unlike the famous Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Rim Moei has good ventilation. We could spend a whole day shopping here.

Your hot flushes come not from menopause, but frenzied shopping. Since it’s right next door to Myanmar, Mae Sot has jade and other precious stones for sale.

We also browsed at the tiny market on the banks of Mae Nam Moi river. We saw locals carrying heavy sacks of produce sourced from Myanmar. Their “bridge” is a wooden boat strategically placed across a narrow tributary of the river. Porters need only walk over it.

They had onions, dried red chillies, garlic and dried shrimp. Three large bags of garlic only cost 100 baht (about RM10).

We saw Burmese ladies, their faces yellow from the cooling powder of tanukha wood, squatting on the roadside selling mud-caked crabs caught by the river and home-made salted fish.