Mae Sot is a tough town. It has to be. Located on a remote part of the Thai-Myanmar border it has seen its share of armed conflict, battered refugees, natural disasters and other hurts. Last week the town was thrown into a maelstrom of grief after a bus carrying 53 of its villagers plunged over a cliff killing 30 and seriously injuring another 23.
dangerous stretch: Trucks make moves to overtake on the Mae Sot-Tak Road, where more than 300 accidents occurred last year. photos: phil thornton
The 188 villagers were in a four-bus convoy on their way to a three-day field trip to Northeast Thailand and to neighbouring Laos.
The 88km stretch of the Asia Highway that connects Mae Sot to Tak is notorious for its blind bends, rugged mountain climbs, steep descents and gut-wrenching twists.
Professional drivers claim the road becomes a nightmare at night as slow moving trucks crawl up and then hurtle down the steep mountains. Garishly lit double-deck tourist buses sway and drift across both sides of the road as drivers attempt to keep balance. Convoys of VIP minibuses with flashing lights hog the centre of the road, demanding right-of-way. Waiting around blind bends, without warning lights or signs, broken down trucks block off traffic lanes.
The prospect of the three-day field trip, organised for local municipal workers, generated good holiday feeling among the villagers before they left Mae Sot. Passengers in the four-bus convoy settled in for the night without any suspicion that it would take only 67km before their excursion would turn to terror. Passengers said the driver of the last bus in the convoy to leave Mae Sot was late and in a hurry to catch up to the other three. Surin was on the ill-fated last bus and spoke to Spectrum about how it all started to wrong.
HE WAS OUT OF CONTROL
“I was on the top deck. It felt unsafe, lots of swaying, so I moved downstairs to the lower level. As we left town and got into the mountains I started to feel the driver was not in control of the bus. He was in a hurry. Drove too fast. I repeatedly told the driver’s assistant to get him to slow down and to check his brakes.”
trying to carry on: Distraught sisters Khanittha, nicknamed Ann, and Sirirat, Aoi, speak about the loss of their mother, Kanthong, in last week’s bus crash on the Mae Sot-Tak Road which killed 30 people.
Surin was right to be worried. The Mae Sot-Tak Road is treacherous and last year accounted for more than 300 accidents. A driver of a furniture van, furious at the bus driver, cursed him for forcing past him as it attempted to overtake the other three buses.
As a result, Surin, 65, now lies battered in Mae Sot Hospital with two broken ribs and is bleeding from a fractured skull. His face is bruised and bloodied, his eyes blacked are swollen shut, his legs lacerated, his arms scabbed and he is unsure if his broken ribs have punctured his lungs.
Surin shifts his hurting body to escape the physical pain that holds him to the hospital’s public ward bed. Surin explains that he drove buses in and out of Mae Sot for 25 years.
“I was a bus driver myself. I knew our driver was out of control. On hills going down he put the bus into neutral — it was crazy. He couldn’t engage the gears. On the hills going up he stalled.”
Surin said the driver ignored his repeated warnings. By the time the bus reached the Muser markets, 56km out of Mae Sot, Surin feared the trip was going to be cut short.
“If the bus stopped at the Ban Huai Ya U police checkpoint, I was going to get off, it didn’t, even though the other three buses had.”
It was about now that the bus overtook the furniture van. This section of road is steep, it zigzags around blind bends and has with no room for overtaking. Frustrated drivers start to jam up behind slow moving trucks on both sides of the road.
Surin said the bus driver forced his way past the furniture truck and the three buses in their group.
“The driver lost it. He panicked. He shouted he couldn’t find an emergency ramp. He couldn’t get it into gear. I could smell the brakes. Everyone started to scream. We crashed over the barricade ...”
Surin said the bus turned over.
“It rolled over and over and over ...”
Witness reports said the bus plunged 30m before coming to a stop against a tree. Surin stops talking at the memory, his wife Thim moves to rearrange his hospital robes, adjusts his scabbed arms and reassures him with her touch.
“I thought I was dead. I was covered in oil ... blood ... there was a fire. I blacked out, but I was told later that I walked out of the crash before collapsing.”
The shattered bus lay in pieces. Rescue crews carried bodies up the steep ravine, rushed the injured to hospital. Relatives close enough to go to the scene posted photos on social media to families desperate for information, reassurance or confirmation of the worst.
Thim underlines the extent of the tragedy on her village, Sahakorn, and displays on her phone a photo of a row of blue shirted villagers.
“Out of our village committee of 15, 11 women died — four of us didn’t go. I was supposed to go, but asked Surin to go in my place.”
Thim said Sahakorn village is hurting.
“We are sad. We have lost our lifelong friends, neighbours and relatives. My good friend, Mrs Kanthong, was chairwoman on the committee I was her deputy, we grew up together. We talked before she left, now she’s dead.”
The aftershock from the bus crash is felt throughout Mae Sot. Coffins are arranged for funeral at eight local temples. At food stalls people discuss how they knew people on the ill-fated bus.
A man tells Spectrum that the furniture truck driver who had cursed the bus driver found out when he got to Tak that his brother was dead and he had to collect and bring his body.
MUM LOOKED FORWARD TO THESE TRIPS
Over at Wat Aranykhet on Mae Sot’s Intharakhiri Road, funeral rites for Thim’s lifelong friend, Mrs Kanthong, are being held. Her daughters, Sirirat (nickname Aoi) and Khanittha, (nickname Ann) welcome relatives from Mae Sot and those who travelled from afar to pay their last respects.
“Mum looked forward to these trips. It was time out for her. Last year she went to Laos the year before to Cambodia,” Aoi said as she tried to make sense of her loss.
Ann proudly points out that her mother was an inspiration to her.
“Mum was head of the village women’s committee, a member of Mae Sot’s Women’s Association. Mum helped everyone. The poor, she organised community teams to help with flood relief and when refugees fled here from Burma [Myanmar] she organised food, water, clothing and blankets for them.”
In 2013, Mrs Kanthong’s community work was recognised and she was voted Mae Sot’s Mother of the Year and earlier this year she was given an award for her social work.
Aoi said she spoke to her mother by phone on the day she left.
“I live at Phitsanulok and when I talked to Mum she was so excited. She was thrilled with her new clothes, she had organised for the outing.”
Ann takes time out to reflect on the last moments she spent with her mother.
“I lived with Ma and I took her to the bus station. They left Mae Sot at around 5pm, hoping to get to Ubon Ratchathani by 6am the next day and then on to Laos.”
Ann tried to persuade her mother not to go on the trip.
“I said to her, ‘You’ve been on so many trips already, do you have to go?’ Ma said she wanted to be with her friends. Her last words were for her granddaughter, she asked her not to tease her younger brother. Ma promised to bring back presents and kanom [sweets]. It was just after 4pm. I cuddled her...”
Ann’s shows the hurt losing her mother is causing and sobs. Her two young children cling tight to her, unsure of the source of their mother’s pain.
Mrs Kanthong’s niece, Chaliya, joins Aoi and Ann. The three women are trying to make sense of the bus driver’s actions.
“The road there is all single lanes. There’s nowhere to overtake. The driver [claims] his brakes failed so why was he overtaking?”
Days after the fatal accident, Spectrum talked to a veteran driver at a popular Mae Sot petrol and food stop on the Asia Highway. Truck drivers, minivan drivers, passengers and private cars are taking time out to eat and to stock up on fuel.
IT’S DEADLY
Sombat has been a driver for more than 20 years and in that time has driven the Mae Sot-Tak Road at least three times a week. He explains what makes the AH1 dangerous.
scene of devastation: Thirty people were killed and 23 seriously injured in Monday’s crash. photo: Assawin Pinijwong
“It’s a difficult road. You have to concentrate all the way. It’s not the place for inexperienced drivers and it’s dangerous. Local drivers know to overtake trucks on the inside — outsiders don’t understand this. They try to exercise their rights and overtake on the outside. Truck drivers, if they feel their load is at risk of unbalancing, will stick to the flattest lane, irrespective of who has right of way.”
It is early morning and drivers and passengers crowd the petrol station’s concourse, oblivious to the lethal dangers of the 88km road they are about to travel on. The petrol station cafe serves up a constant supply of fried eggs, toast and espresso coffee. Lottery ticket sellers hustle between tables. Tired looking cafe customers — hungover from the previous night’s drinking or weary because of the early start — swig from small caffeine drinks in the hope to switch start alert.
Because of the tired drivers, Sombat’s advice is to avoid travelling on the Mae Sot-Tak Road both early in the morning, between 7am and 9am, and in the evening.
“At night between 8 and 10 is murderous. Coaches, buses, trucks, pickups and car drivers — many have been out eating and drinking. Last night a tree fell across the road from a forest fire. Last year one fell on a minivan killing two.”
Sombat said in his 20 years on the road he had witnessed head-on collisions, overturned oil tankers, cattle trucks, vegetable trucks and buses smashed beyond recognition.
“One of the worst was last year. A minivan with 16 passengers went over the cliff. Three days later friends of the driver went looking for him. They spotted skids marks leading off the road. All sixteen were dead at the bottom of the ravine. It didn’t even make the news. That was about 1km pass where the bus went over.”
Sombat is not the only one who rates Thailand’s roads as death traps. A study into road deaths released in February by the University of Michigan ranked Thailand as the world’s second-worst — Namibia was listed as the worst.
Sombat advises car drivers to avoid buses and trucks when they have just crested hills.
“They crawl up at about 10km per hour, but when they change gears and start to descend, get past them as quick as you can. They are not in total control — they try to build up speed to carry them up the next hill.”
On a stretch of AH1, 15km out of Mae Sot, a 30-minute stop adds meaning to Sombat’s warning. The sound of slow moving trucks can be heard above all the other roadside noise as they grind through gears, brakes screech and wail in protest at attempting to slow massive loads on the steep descent — the smell of hot metal is a constant.
Sombat believes passengers and customers have to take on more responsibility.
“Some customers think because they have hired you for a day that you drive them around for 24 hours.
“They fall asleep, but either don’t care or don’t realise that they are pushing the driver too far. They leave at 5am to visit temples, shop, eat out at night, drink, play karaoke and then sleep as we drive them hundreds of kilometres to their homes. I have stopped working for those customers.”
Sombat advises school excursion and village trips to travel during the day and not to try to save paying for a hotel room by travelling through the night.
“They disregard the drivers condition while they sleep. They don’t know if he’s capable of handling the night driving or the roads.”
Sombat said the latest bus crash has had a huge affect on Mae Sot people.
“We all know someone. The community health worker from my village was killed, she was married with two kids.”
WE WILL HELP EACH OTHER
Over at the popular, if not flash, Koopoothai Som Tum Gai Yang restaurant on the AH1, owner and cook Warunee tells off the impact the crash has had on the surrounding communities.
Warunee explains that in a 3km stretch from her food stall, the 30 dead passengers all came from eight small villages that run off both sides of the highway.
“In our village, Sahakorn, there are only 50 households. The village is silent. All the teenagers are off the streets and indoors. They’re scared, they feel the spirits of the dead are all around.”
Warunee said that 34 years ago the people carved Sahakorn village out of the rice fields.
“There was nothing here. No roads, no electricity, no running water. We worked together to improve the area. We built the roads, dug the wells. We’re like family. This is our community and now we have lost our elders who laid the foundations for us to build on. We’re a close village, we look out for each other, the young and the old.”
Her sister-in-law, Vinut, who is a local motorcycle taxi rider, shakes her head and tries to make sense of what the crash means to her.
“I find it difficult to think that I will go to the cremation of friends that I was joking with a few days ago.”
Warunee looks around the empty shop and says, “They were my friends, my neighbours. Nine of my closest friends are dead and one direct family member. We don’t want to believe it is happening to us. Poor Ann waved her Mum off and hours later she’s dead. She still can’t comprehend it.”
Warunee and Vinut both echo what the other villagers, Ann, Aoi, Thim and Surin insist will help them to get through the aftershock of losing family.
“We are all in this together. We have all lost someone. We are all pulling together to help each other. We have a roster in place to help take people to the temple and the funerals. We share the chores. Our villagers are at three temples. It’s hard to believe that we lost so many.” n
left in pain: A battered Surin, cared for by wife Thim, tried to warn the driver to slow down.
community in shock: mourners pay their respects at Friday’s cremation ceremony for eight of the 30 victims from the bus crash which left Mae Sot reeling.