It's not what you think

The thing about being in a volatile place like Mae Sot and having read a little too much about drive-by assassinations, is that when you hear what sounds like machine gun-fire in the middle of the night, well, it really could be.

So it was a relief to walk around the next morning, Chinese New Year, and realise that it was actually just strings of red-paper covered firecrackers all along. As an added bonus, I also understood why there were little scraps of red paper everywhere too!

Photo: The courtyard of the Chinese temple in Mae Sot - I don't think its name was written in a script I could read but I think it's the only one, not far from the police station.