Finally Maehongson

Leaving the big city...

...for a somewhat smaller one!

Jongkham Lake

Wat Doi Kong Mu

View from Wat Doi Kong Mu overlooking the city.

Long time readers of this blog will know that the province of Maehongson nestled on the very northwest edge of Thailand along the Myanmar border is near and dear to my heart. After finishing up the rice harvest at the end of 2019, I tried to get here last year but the Covid restrictions were too many. So finally as February was ending I was able to fly direct from Bangkok to this place where I am home - and just in time to experience a few cool nights before the really hot season arrived. And though I usually stay in the homes of friends, I decided that now as an adult:-), I like to control what and when I eat and not be on someone else's schedule, so I ended up staying the past six weeks at a small but beautiful and beautifully managed guest house called Jongkham View which as its name suggests is nestled right next to Jongkham Lake in the center of  town. 

Considering that I have spent most of the pandemic travelling and based out of four countries - AND that I couldn't even get to Maehongson last year due to the strict covid restrictions in place, it is ironic that I have had multiple covid exposures since arriving here  - largely  from friends who didn't realize it when we shared a meal or travelled in a car together.  Thankfully all of my  subsequent ATK tests have been negative, though covid has remained rampant the entire time I've been here.   Schools were scheduled to end at the end of March and they finally gave up about two weeks before the end of the year as they literally kept sending whole classrooms or grades home for a week only to have them return and another kid would test positive. Wash and repeat. Why the schools weren't testing regularly - for example, testing everyone on a Monday or once a week as students arrived prior to class and then just sending those who test positive home, I don't know. It hasn't been very well thought out IMHO. Covid also made visiting different villages difficult as each village would want you to show a negative test result from the previous three days - and some villages had their own flare ups at various times that I tried to avoid. I only made it to Patyng twice and never was able to get to Napajat.

Though I didn't make it to Napajat, I saw P'Toi frequently in town.

Visiting Patyng, but keeping my distance as Auntie Yui wasn't feeling great that day and Auntie Peng (Uncle Yurn's widow) had also been exposed to covid the day I was visiting.)

Patyng and 'my' rice fields

Dry rice fields, dry hills, dry and hot everything...