MAE SOT, Thailand– The smell of deep fried snacks mingling with sweet tea, the ladies with shopping baskets laden with fresh greens, the men puffing on cigars in teashops with blaring TVs, teenagers milling about stalls with the latest mobile phones and gadgets – it’s a typical market scene in any small town in Southeast Asia.

But this is no town. This is Mae La, a sprawling refugee camp an hour’s drive from the border town of Mae Sot in northwest Thailand.

It is home to over 45,000 people from Myanmar who fled their homeland as a result of the world’s longest running civil war between the national army and indigenous ethnic groups.


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