By this point in the trip, land borders had become practically pedestrian. So the knowledge that almost everyone who crossed overland into Myanmar from Thailand did so at Mae Sot / Myawaddy meant that we were far more intrigued by the less accessible alternative route further south.
I scoured online for information on the Phu Nam Ron / Htee Khee crossing and found two helpful accounts of bloggers who had trodden the path in previous years.
Step one: take the train from Bangkok.
I’m strangely intrigued by international borders. I think it’s because as a Brit, we don’t have any. I don’t really understand why I can’t simply step over the imaginary line a few miles down the road, thus avoiding all the tedious formalities, but that aside, they intrigue me with their subtlety. The scenery should be identical. The vegetation remains the same. Unlike in Britain, where crossing into a neighbouring state involves traversing either over or under a large body of water, there is no buffer zone to enable a distinct separation of cultures and therefore there should be no obvious difference.
There is, of course.
If Christmas crept up on us unannounced then that was nothing compared to New Year’s Eve.
There’s a certain anxiety that precedes a new country on a long-term trip like this. It’s that nervous fluttering which accompanies most excited holiday-makers in the days before they depart: the excitement of a new destination mixed with fear of the unknown. I’ve noticed it creeping up on me every time: from Poland to Belarus to Russia to Korea to Indonesia to Singapore and now here it was again. This time it was compounded by Singapore’s silky-smooth effortlessness and the knowledge that life on the trip would never be so easy again. Malaysia was talked of in somewhat patronising terms by most Singaporeans, who praised the beauty and wildness of its landscape but seemed only too grateful to return to their country’s well-oiled machine. Malaysia began to loom in my mind as a hotbed of piratical lawlessness.
Planning this trip didn’t really allow time for panic. It happened so quickly, in the event, that every spare moment was taken up with the practicalities of leaving home for six months and planning the initial stages. I doggedly fixated upon making it to Vladivostok via all the intended stops, and didn’t allow myself to think much beyond that.
The Trans-Siberian passed in something of a whirlwind and without any warning, it was time for Peter to leave. We had previously made the decision to part ways post-Russia; he to Melbourne for a wedding, and then to New Zealand for three weeks. Having already visited New Zealand, and with no overwhelming desire to go to Australia, I decided I’d rather spend my precious time exploring South Korea; a country that Peter had already been to and I knew nothing about. So I tearfully waved him off on Vladivostok’s airport shuttle train and suddenly there I was, alone, at quite literally the ends of the earth.
And suddenly it all felt very overwhelming.
Whilst in London, preemptively buying tickets, I had repeatedly hit a wall whilst attempting to get from Warsaw to Moscow, thanks entirely to the first half of the journey. Minsk-Moscow? No problem. Tickets booked. But Warsaw-Minsk? Impossible. Most websites seemed reluctant to admit that such a route even existed.
So immediately upon arriving in Poland, we bought our onward tickets to Minsk (from the only woman in the entirety of Warsaw’s central station who spoke English) and on the train discovered that the bloody thing went the whole way to Moscow. Thanks a lot, Bahn.de – the palava meant we had had to buy transit visas through Belarus and accommodation in Minsk and our first train arrived at the spectacularly inhospitable hour of 2:09am.
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