I caught the bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot overnight. Mae Sot is right near the Thai-Burma Border & all of the refugee camps. 

The bus trip takes about 8 hours and I made the "Great Asian Bus Trip Error" - underdressing. After about 1hr of solid aircon it is freezing inside the bus. After 8 hours I was a frozen little brown pea, scared something would snap off!

Within about 5 kilometres of our destination our bus was pulled over by a makeshift military police checkpoint. People were randomly asked for identification. The passengers that couldn’t produce any (read Burmese refugees) were immediately arrested & were taken to the Immigration Detention Centre, unless they could bribe their way out of it.

No one complained, it was nothing new. Some will be sent back to Burma, where they will be imprisoned or worse still, simply be made to "dissappear".

I was just so shocked at the orderliness of the whole procedure: How Life & Death was as randomly assigned as seat numbers on a bus…