Elevation Chart: Huai Klo Tho

Thee Lor Su Waterfall SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay)

Ko Tha Waterfall SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay)

Aerial Pictures of the Thee Lor Su Waterfall
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School in Ban Ko Tha http://www.trekthailand.net/places/5/

About 2 hours later we arrived at the village. It is small, less than 150 people. But it has been around for 130 years! They live in bamboo raised huts with attap roofs. Pigs, chickens and dogs roam around, as well as children. They are farmers, growing mostly rice. Their only income is from selling chilies they grow, and from tourism... The older people (about 40 years old and up) do not even understand Thai. They are quite shy, and we were disappointed we could not interact with them, despite eating our meals in one family's home and sleeping in one of their huts...
http://wappers.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_wappers_archive.html

Elevation Chart: R 1288

Route description (compiled from Three Pagodas) km 0: R 1288 branches off from R 1167 km 4.4: Ban De Lo Ki km 6.5: Way L to Thee Lor Su Waterfall (25km) km 27.5: Ban Klo To ( = Mae Chan) km 30.9: Ban Nu Sae Po km 40.0: Way R to Ti Jo Si (or Tee Chor See) (or Chi Cho Chi ?) km 48.3: Way L to Ti Po Ji (12.5km) km 49.9: Ban Nu Po (R) km 50.8: Nu Po refugee camp (L, 100m) km 58.6: Way L to Kui Le Tor (1km) km 71.9: Ban Boeng Kloeng km 73.8: Thai-Burmese frontier and border gate

Dominated by a white pagoda atop a karstic needle, it marked a significant unofficial border crossing point to the Karen State and Burma. Some kind of market was taking place on the playground of Klo To school, and here people told us about a big black market over the border at a place called Ban Mai (=new village). Ban Mai was seven or eight kms away, and we could visit it if we wanted. As the morning was not far advanced, we decided to have a quick look. A very bad 4WD track led past a checkpoint, over the Mae Chan river [Huai Klo Tho?], past a military camp, to the Karen settlement of Nupa Towa. Spread out along the route in three sections, the village had its own white chedi and was enhanced by many red-flowering trees. As we continued through woods and jungle, outcroppings in the form of a razor blade reared up above the vegetation to the south. A post at the trackside with no sign on it led us to believe that we had reached the border. Picking our way through a maze of criss-crossing tracks and paths, we went down a hill to arrive suddenly at a KNLA checkpoint and customs gate. We were at Ban Mai or, in Burmese, Sa Kaang Thit (Sakaangthit/Sakaanthi).

Then on his 2001 revisit:

It is no longer possible to visit Sa Kaang Thit. Nor is there any reason to do so. On or around 13 February 1997, the Burma army (helped by the DKBA), during its sweep up the border, overran the village, just as it seized all the other KNU villages and territory in 6^th Brigade area opposite Um Pang district. It burned down all the houses and shops in Sa Kaang Thit, and precipitated the flight into Thailand of all the local Karen and Indo-Burmese Muslims. Initially, they fled to Nupo Towa, where they took refuge, but were later moved along with Karen and Muslims sheltering at Ti Jo Si, Nu Po and Nong Nok Ped (8,000 people in all, of whom up to 2,000 may have been Muslims) to a big new refugee camp at Nu Po village. Nothing much remains of Sa Kaang Thit. People at Klo To and Thai army soldiers in Nupo Towa said that it now consists of just half a dozen houses, is dangerous because some land has been mined, and that Klo To people are afraid to go there, both because of the mines and because of the DKBA.

Nu Po Refugee Camp

Ban Nu Po and the refugee camp Google Earth + MapMagic Thailand Boeng Kloeng Google Earth + MapMagic Thailand Boeng Kloeng - eastern outskirts Google Earth Quickbird Boeng Kloeng - topography SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay) Boeng Kloeng - border crossing Photo from Three Pagodas Singular border - alignment Singular border - northern end SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay) Singular border - southern end SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay) Suriya River and Kasat River Landsat, RGB 742, resolution 1/8

Quoting Christien Gooden:

This large camp, run under UN auspices, contains 7,000 - 8,000 refugees and possibly as many as 10,000. The inmates are Karen and Indo-Burmese Muslims from Burma. Up to 2,000 of them are Muslim traders, many from the former black-market village of Sa Kaang Thit (Ban Mai), opposite Klo To. The refugees fled Burma in February 1997, when the Burma army and its fledgling protege the DKBA seized KNU 6th Brigade area opposite Um Pang district. Coming from Sa Kaang Thit, Mae Ta Ro Ta and many other villages, they sheltered initially at Nupo Towa (Between Sa Kaang Thit ang Klo To), Nong Nok Ped, Ti Jo Si (between Sa Kaang Thit and Nu Po) and Nu Po itself, before being gathered together and relocated to Nu Po refugee camp in about 1998, perhaps because the initial camps came under attack from SLORC troops or were threatened with attack by the DKBA.

Boeng Kloeng
The last stretch of R 1288 is covered by the Google Earth Quickbird, providing us with exquisite details of this remote corner of Thailand. In utter frustration, however, the Quickbird coverage fades out just 1km short of the end of R 1288 and the border crossing, covering only the eastern outskirts of Boeng Kloeng.

Notice, in the image on the right, the border cuts across crop fields, or, rather, the land is tilled across the border. This phenomenon can also be seen at the Cambodian border of Chanthaburi Province, where the border is defined by straight lines rather than a natural boundary like a river or a ridge.

Christian Gooden describes his first visit to this border village in 1992 as follows:

Boeng Kloeng (also Beung Keung) was much bigger than Kui Le Tor. With around 300 inhabitants, it was a mixed Karen, Burmese, Indo-Burmese and Lao place. This 'Lao' puzzled us because we could not understand how people from Laos could have got so far from home. We had a theory that they were the descendants of Khmu teak workers who had perhaps been brought here from Laos in the early years of the 20^th century by British logging companies operating in Thailand and Burma. But, in fact, they were just Thai people - 'Lao' was an old way of saying 'northern Thai'. The village was one of the most picturesque we saw anywhere on our journey. Set against a backdrop of rocky cliffs and pitted denticular mountains, it lay astride a long dusty, but shady and tranquil 'street'. Considering how rural and remote Boeng Kloeng was, many of the wooden houses lining this thoroughfare were surprisingly large and ornate. Some had lovingly tended front gardens with a profusion of colourful blooming plants and bushes.
  We were surprised to find the main street humming with activity. In both directions, there was a steady flow of people, old Chinese bicycles and bullock carts, piled high with rice and other goods. Even more astonishing, we found one or two beaten-up motorbikes and pick-ups. Where did they go? Did they no more than ply the main street? And where had they come from? Had they been helicoptered in? The mystery was solved when we learned that there was a track behind Boeng Kloeng, across the border and that most of these people were Karen refugees from Burma. In fact, in the days before our arrival there had been a massive influx of people, vehicles, food and animals into Boeng Kloeng, all fleeing in the face of a swingeing SLORC offensive. They were mostly being housed in a refugee camp at the bottom of the village near the river, and, when we went down to have a look, we found everybody in the process of settling in.

Then, on his revisit in 2001:

In February 2001, the village was completely transformed relative to what it had been nearly a decade earlier. As we rode into it and up the main street, I recognized almost nothing, except the local geography, and felt disoriented. With the completion of the Um Pang/ Boeng Kloeng road, at the end of which the village lay 86 kms S of Um Pang, Boeng Kloeng had been prised out of its age-old bucolic languor and was now connected up with the outside world. Where once you had had to trek several hours to it, now trucks, pick-ups, silor and motorcycles - although only a handful - rumbled in and out. From the edge of 'town', where it metamorphosed into asphalt, the road, skinny and mediocre since Nu Po, swept broad and wide through the centre, right up to the border. In 2001, the silor fare from Um Pang to the remote southernly frontier community was about 100 baht, and the same back to Um Pang.
  If the advent of the new access road was one big difference between then and now, another concerned the main street. My slide photos record a magical narrow dirt track winding between shade-giving palms and wooden houses (see photo). This had been replaced by a wide, cambered, hot and shadeless, tarred highway that struck through the heart of Boeng Kloeng, cutting it in two (see companion photo). The main drag seemed much longer than I remembered, stretching almost 2 kms from the village entrance sign at the eastern Christian end of 'town' to the border gate at the western Buddhist end. It was a long thin habitation, hemmed in to the N and S by low wooded ridges. The school, centrally located to the N of the main street, had been enlarged and rebuilt, and the small wooden field hospital where I had once had my ankle treated had turned into a regular health center (to the left/W of the school). Also to the N of the main drag lay the wat (right/E of the school), which was more impressive than I recalled. A beautiful monastery-temple in the Burmese style, it nestled in a palm-shaded compound, quite near a small pagoda perched on a rock.
  Boeng Kloeng had grown considerably from about 300 inhabitants in the early 1990s to some 1,000 in 2001, living in roughly 200 houses - extensive compared to Kui Le Tor or Nu Po. The refugee quarter we found in 1992 had already disappeared by 1993, but had probably reappeared a couple of times subsequently, until the events of 1997, after which the same refugees were undoubtedly definitively and for the long term housed in Nu Po refugee camp. The village now had many more shophouses and several simple eating places. You could even buy fuel at a couple of booths in the SW part of the main drag. But there was still no electricity in Boeng Kloeng - in the evening, illumination was by candles or battery-powered neon strip lights. Some atmospheric and picturesque elements remained. Bullock carts still trundled up and down the main street, some having crossed from Burma. Elephants continued to come in from Lae Tong Ku and elsewhere to be loaded up with provisions and goods in Boeng Kloeng before returning (see photo). Rishi followers from Lae Tong Ku and its associated cultist villages, with their topknots and colourful clothing, walked earnestly around, carrying out their errands, and there were girls with tanaka-adorned faces. Everywhere there were groves of lush green betel palms, quite especially to the N of the road near the village entrance, and in front of numerous houses people were drying and shelling betel nuts. It was a regular industry in Boeng Kloeng, with the nuts being sold in Mae Sot. We saw a cattle truck in the village, indicating that traders come to buy beef from Burma. Also, we met two Thai men from Lampang, who had come to buy 'Myanmar' beans. They said that they just waited until people brought sacks of beans across the border. The duo must have waited a long time, and the beans must have been very cheap to justify such a long and difficult journey. If you want to get an impression of what Boeng Kloeng and its main street used to be like before the arrival of the new road, explore up and down the second 'main' street, which lies S of the new main drag. A winding rutted dirt track passes idyllically through backwoods homesteads among coconut and betel palms, fording the Huai Boeng Kloeng a couple of times, which is the stream after which the village is named (kloeng = swamp or marsh in Karen).
  But perhaps the most significant change locally, one which impacted greatly on Boeng Kloeng, was that the border crossing and territory across the frontier was no longer controlled by the KNU Karen, but by the DKBA and Burma army, who had seized the land opposite in February 1997, during the tatmadaw's offensive sweep up the Burmese side of the border at that time. The border at Boeng Kloeng used to be really open - I do not recall ever seeing any kind of formal crossing point or boundary or checkpoint there - and Karen as well as Thai civilians, Thai soldiers, aid officials, medical personnel and farang crossed at will into Burmese KNU-held territory, perhaps to visit Lae Tong Ku or Mae Ta Ro Ta, or to go N to Klo To or S towards Sangkhlaburi on the 4WD track that went up the border on the Burmese side. All that had made Boeng Kloeng a busy free-wheeling place. But now the cross-border traffic had stopped except for a few peasants going to and fro with produce. For fear of the DKBA and Burma army, no one went to Lae Tong Ku through Burma any more, and Mae Ta Ro Ta had fallen. No KNU Karen crossed the border here any longer, and absolutely no Thai soldiers or farang. So no more little extraterritorial treks and thrills there now. Ordinary Thai civilians can and sometimes do cross for whatever reason (mostly trading), but, as our old friend and former guide Sooksi confirmed, no KNU sympathizer, including himself, went further beyond the crossing point (see colour photo) than the shops, about 20 metres away - if they went beyond that, they would be shot.

Border Alignment
Here we need to discuss the singular border alignment around this area which strays from the watershed divide and cuts across rugged plains. At the headwaters of the Huai Waley, the river border gives way to the land border (watershed divide) and faithfully follow the ridge of the Pawan Range for some 130km to the western peak of Khao Mu Gatu (9km north of Ban Boeng Kloeng). Then it follows the ridge for another 1km to the eastern peak but this is no longer the main watershed divide but a minor one that separates Mae Chan River tributaries. Then from the eastern peak, the border is defined by a series of straight lines - cutting across two valleys (Suriya and Kasat) - until it rejoins the main watershed divide at a 910m peak (name unknown) 5km south of Ban Tilaipa.

Observing accurate maps like the L 7017 or MapMagic Thailand, one can draw six straight segments as a first approximation. On closer examination, each segment seems to be composed of following numbers of straight sub-segments:

Segment 1: at least 3, preferably 4
Segment 2: 2
Segment 3: 1
Segment 4: 2
Segment 5: 1
Segment 6: 1

Quickbird scan: R 1288 - Kui Loe To - Mong Khwa - Le Tong Ku
Background (switch): 1. Google Earth 2. SRTM	Overview Landmarks 01 - 11 are described below. Landmarks a - d are defunct villages - still of archaeological curiosity. Landmark e is out of the Quickbird coverage, but Christian Gooden passed this site in 1992, and describes it as a deserted rishi village whose villagers had mostly moved to Lae Tong Ku. a. Ban Che Sa Le De b. Ban Kui Ta c. Ban Tawe d. Ban Khamu Ta Chu e. Ban Loe Ka Nae Tha The broken white line that connects east of Ban Mong Khwa and Le Tong Ku is traced from the L 7017. This line may or may not coincide with the current trek route to Le Tong Ku. Two short, white, straight lines in the southeast of Ban Boeng Kloeng suggest possible trek routes from Ban Boeng Kloeng to Ban Mong Khwa, bypassing Ban Kui Loe To.
	01. Ban Kui Loe To 0.9km (from R 1288) Listed on the L 7017 (established before the L 7017 publication - circa 1980) Christian Gooden trekked to this village in 1992 (R 1288 ended at Ban Nu Po then) and spent a night at the village headman's house. Quote: Around a parched clearing, we found about 20 wooden thatch-roofed Karen houses... Like Nu Po, Kui Le Tor was a less interesting Karen village. It did not even seem to have a shop. Of course, there was no electricity in the village and no vehicles. The only way to arrive here was on foot. All necessities had to be transported either in baskets on people's backs or by elephant. In among the houses and all over the central compound, domestic animals wandered around - buffaloes, pigs, goats, cows, chickens and cocks. Then in his 2001 update: In 2001, the way 1km to Kui Le Tor was a very bad trail indeed. We biked in from the 'main road' to find that the Karen village had hardly changed at all since Nittaya and I twice trekked through it nearly a decade earlier, in 1992 and 1993. It was still a small, traditional, relatively backward place, with uncertain staring people, many sitting around. An incongruous phone box had meanwhile arrived, powered by solar batteries and communicating via satellite. At the southern edge of Ban Kui Loe To, the route crosses over the Mae Chan River. I cannot confirm on the Quickbird image whether there is a bridge.
	02. Ban (name ?) 2.1km Not listed on the L 7017 (new establishment) Between 02 and 03 - around km 3.9 - the route again crosses over the Mae Chan River. I cannot confirm on the Quickbird image whether there is a bridge.
	03. Ban (name?) 6.1km Not listed on the L 7017
	04. Ban Kui Cho Ken 10.2km Listed on the L 7017
	05. Ban Kui Chu Dae (?) 13,0km Not listed on the L 7017
	06. Ban Kui Kloe (?) 17.0km Not listed on the L 7017
	07. Ban Mong Khwa 18.2km Listed on the L 7017 In Ban Mong Khwa, the route turns westward and connects to the next village. Also, an obscure track - only partially traceable on the Quickbird image - stretches southward connecting to even remote villages like Ban U-nai, Ban Kru-bo and - possibly - Ban Mae Chanta. I will discuss these villages in the next chapter.
	08. Ban Po Ka Ta (?) 19.6km Not listed on the L 7017 The end-of-the-road village in an ordinary sense, and the beginning of the trek to Ban Le Tong Ku. Reportedly, a 4WD can make it all the way to Ban Le Tong Ku during the dry season.
	09. ? Situated along the trek route to Ban Le Tong Ku. Possibly a forestry office?
SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay)	10. Ban Le Tong Ku Listed on the L 7017 Historically, the quickest - and most popular - route from Boeng Kloeng to Le Tong Ku was to cross the border at Boeng Kloeng and follow the Suriya valley - the route Christian Gooden took. This is no longer a viable choice in the same sense that the historical route from Waley to Umphang is closed. Thus, the roundabout route via Kui Loe To and Mong Khwa is the regular route now.
SRTM + Landsat (30% overlay)	11. Ban (name?) Not listed on the L 7017 Out of the Quickbird coverage. Sources indicate that there is a village at this location. This village may be a stopover along the "third route" to Ban Le Tong Ku. Quoting Christian Gooden, "It does not cross the border, remaining in Thailand, although rather hugs the frontier. It crosses three ridges, takes 4-6 hours on foot, and is said to be arduous. The route is used mainly by local Karen and Lae Tong Ku cultists with elephants, who come to Boeng Kloeng to collect supplies, before returning."
	12. road trace Apparently, this dirt track is connected to Boeng Kloeng (mostly traceable on the Quickbird image) - thus a 4WD can make it this far. From this point on, Village #11 can be reached along two Suriya tributaries. I cannot confirm on the Landsat image whether this track connects to the village, but fairly likely.

TAT brochure

The first thing we noticed about Lae Tong Ku was just what a spread out village it was. Actually, it was more like a village within a village, with a strict cultist hub and wat located amid a wider outer band containing a mixture of dwellings belonging to both cultists and ordinary Karen. We thought that our walking was over for the day, but it was a good km to the school, and another one beyond that to the village proper...

We asked the dorchodor about the eating habits of the rishi people. It was true, they said, that the cultists ate only the meat of game, not of domestic animals. They ate deer, boar, monkeys (four kinds), snakes, jungle fowl, fish - whatever they could hunt in the wild. Within the confines of the village, we would find no chickens, ducks or pigs. There were elephants, buffaloes and cows, but the people did not eat these, only used them for work. Neither did the rishi followers drink alcohol, although they did smoke. This was why the school and the army camp, even the hospitality house, were outside the real core village. Anybody who liked chicken or pork, or who enjoyed a drink, lived, literally, beyond the pale...

We had heard that a Karen Christian missionary woman, who spoke some English, was living near the mini waterfall, but we never encountered her. In the early 1990s, the principal trouble in the village was religious conflict between the sect and a Californian missionary, Mr Christopher. Cultural imperialists like him generated considerable ill feeling, which was then indiscriminately directed against any visitor, as we were later to discover...

From an early hour, the teachers had been blasting the immediate area through a tannoy with the Thai national anthem and Isaan pop music. This they did every morning...

The school was visible from where we sat, but we were surprised to see him together with only seven pupils, lined up before the Thai flag. We commented on the small number of children, and the other teacher explained that mostly the pupils did not come during the day. They went out collecting jaak and teak leaves to make roofing, and came to class in the evening. Altogether, there were 57 schoolchildren, aged between 7 and 15 years...

The second teacher took us on a guided morning tour of the village. Again, we were struck by the distances we had to walk and by how fragmented the place was. Often, houses stood quite isolated among the trees and fields. We saw also how relatively prosperous and established Lae Tong Ku was, compared to, say, Kui Le Tor. It was a study in self-sufficiency. There were rice and cereal fields (altogether some 100 and 50 rai respectively), and cotton, sugar cane and tobacco plantations. Fruit was a significant part of the local economy, people cultivating durian, grapefruit and betel trees. Of course, growing wild, were coconut and banana palms. Another important crop was chillies and sesame. In many places, we saw chillies and betel nuts drying in the sun, and in one spot we found a rotary mill, driven by an ox, grinding the oil out of sesame seeds. In many parts of Thailand, cereals were harvested more than once a year. Here there was just one annual crop. Some of the rice and other products were sold to Karen in Burma or exchanged with them for salt, dried fish, shrimp paste and tobacco. Most families were engaged in weaving, both of cotton and bamboo. The finished cloth, mats and baskets were mainly for personal use. In one house, we watched black gunpowder being prepared. Considering that the cultists people did not eat domestic quadrupeds, we were surprised to see so many cows and buffaloes wandering around. A recent census in Lae Tong Ku counted 81 cows, 39 buffaloes and also 7 elephants. But nowhere did we find a single chicken, duck, pig or goat.

"Way R to Ti Jo Si (Tee Chor See), another Karen village, where in early 1997 many 'Burmese' Karen and Muslims sheltered as SLORC troops seized KNU territory across the border."

Probably, Chi Cho Chi = Ti Jo Si. Along the way, the track passes near an unidentified deforested area (1.2km x 1.5km). The 1989 Landsat image doesn't show this deforestation, so it must be a recent creation. Possibly a temporary refugee camp prior to integration to the Nu Po refugee camp? Then there should be - and does seem to be - a 4WD track connecting Ban Klo Tho and Ban Ma-O Kho, though I can only partially trace its route. Once in the valley, there seems to be a 4WD track connecting each village.

Northwestern Corner Landsat 3D Border Crater SRTM + Landsat (50% overlay)

Ban Moeng Kloeng is probably the last regular village. As the SRTM image indicates, the village is situated at a pass (1225m (NW peak) - 840m (pass) - 1130m (SE peak)) and this explains its odd - yet strategic - location.

Beyond Ban Moeng Kloeng still can be seen signs of human activities (forest clearing) and traces of dirt tracks - sometimes crossing the border ridge.

Along the border ridge lies a tri-point peak (1670m) where the watersheds of Moei, Suriya and Mae Chan rivers meet. The highest peak in the vicinity (1922m) lies 1.5km northwest (in Burma) from this tri-point.

Border Crater
At the northern end of this area is a curious landscape - a crater-like depression (diam. 2.5km) hemmed in by the border ridge and what may turn out to be the second border ridge.

The rainwater is entrapped in this depression and there is no way out as a visible river or stream. As the Landsat image does not show any massive body of water here, the rainwater must sink underground - but to resurge on which side? Here the geography defies the convention of taking the watershed divide as the political boundary. Along the Thai-Burmese border, there are about a dozen such cases of unclear watershed, but rarely of this scale.

The L 7017 takes the somewhat higher northern ridge as the border. So do many other maps which adopt their mapping data from the L 7017. Then there are other government and non-government maps which take the somewhat lower southern ridge as the border. I haven't heard of any border dispute between Thailand and Burma at this particular site. Perhaps the L 7017 is correct. Or, perhaps, it is outdated.

As of year 2000 (Landsat image date), there seems to be minimum sign of human activity there. Whichever ridge may turn out to be the border, may this curious landscape retain its pristine forest, and be spared the fate of human exploitation or development.