Mae Hong Son and Karen village

After hitching a ride South West to the city of Mae Hong Son, we perused the local market, quickly found a place to stay the night, dumped off our bags, I bought more slide film at a local shop (it's hard to find here!)and got something refreshing to drink at the sunflower cafe. We later interneted and made a plan of attack as to how we would have enough time to visit the Karen village (37km) the next day and make it back in time for the 1pm bus that leaves to Chiang Mai (as we both needed to visa runs in the next few days). We asked local tourist package places which told us that the cab out there would be 500 baht each way plus the 250 baht park entry fee. Local Sawng thauw's didn't go out there as it was too bumpy etc etc. It seemed as if it would be to costly to do it on our own. I still thought there would be a cheaper option though, because I saw many moto drivers lined up at the market place.
We decided that we would go early tomorrow morning to the bus station and book our tickets then ask around at the local market to see if we could get that price any lower.
We were out of the guesthouse by 7am (we stored our bags there for the day) and grabbed some munchies at a 711 on the way to the bus station. We found out that we could take a night bus to Chiang Mai, which would save $$ on a night at a guesthouse and allow us the whole day in Mae Hong Son. Next we went to the market and got two moto drivers to drive us there, wait for us while we toured around the village and back for 200 baht each. So we headed off. Here are some photos from that trip.





After a long ride on the all night bus (I didn't sleep at all) we arrived in Chiang Mai at 4:30am. We went to our favored guesthouse (Daret's) and the night watch man let us park our bags there until the owner got up at 7:30. We then headed out for some grub at a local all night diner. We ordered some delicious Pad Thai for 20baht and watched all the hookers and their Western john's exchange drunken broken english.
We then laid in the Sunday market square across from the guesthouse under some lighted trees and waited for morning to pull the sun out of it's hiding place.