Breakfast in Burma

Just like John Rambo, I made it over the Burma border and back alive.  (Actually, having not seen Rambo IV, I don't know if he makes it back alive... don't spoil it for me!) 

 

The Thai side, Mae Sot, is cute, with ice cream shops, a promenade, and a very clean, well-kept market.  People smile, and stop to chat, and seem content.  Then there's a highway-sized bridge over a river, connecting the two countries, but it's mostly empty -- only a few cars and pedestrians go thru the immigration booths.  Most of the traffic sneaks below the bridge, where a steady stream of refugees and illegal workers pay to be ferried across the river on huge inner-tubes.  Three of them, each carrying five or six people, were continuously moving back and forth, while armed border cops casually text-messaged and snoozed away.

 

This morning I decided it would be good to breakfast in Burma.  Unsure about how a farang would be received on the illegal crossing, I took the more formal route.

 

And over the border, in Burma, it was a different story.  I'd jokingly described Mae Sot as the wild west, but Myawaddy really was.  Jeeps flew down the middle of torn-up streets, honking their horns, with soldiers (from one of three rival occupying armies) glaring down with their guns.  Huge opulent houses and flamboyant statues flank ramshackle houses made of scavenged wood, leaning precariously.  Men sit, unemployed and miserable, all over, while women hawk goods from baskets on their heads.  I was told that most of the jobs are over the border, in Thai factories.  You can pay to sneak over and work cheaply there, or you can suffer without employment hetre.  (Hence the steady commute.)

 

Here in Mae Sot, I've been spending time with a Burmese monk named Ashin Sopaka, who escaped several years ago, and -- being a great speaker -- has become a flag-bearer of the freedom movement.  A monk usually by his side, KenZero, was a leader of the September 2007 peace marches, where the military beat and gunned down monks openly in the streets of Burma.  KenZero was undercover for a year, and finally managed to escape over the border, dressed in a lyongi and shirt, alongside factory workers and refugees.  KenZero is nervous about his English, so speaks very little, but listens a lot.  The two of them talk late into the night, planning for the next actions.  I feel like I'm beside Fidel and Che, at the infamous dinner party, or perhaps listening in on the apostles and Jesus making their plans. 

 

Back in Myawaddy, a guide showed me the glamorous side, the temples and hotel, but then reluctantly agreed to take me into some other places -- the beaten back streets with children burning trash, a desolate monastary, a school where only a handful of the kids could afford uniforms, and the one teacher I found couldn't speak a word of english, an outdoor bar filled with well-dressed military-looking employees, and a couple of off-work bar girls, all of which looked so out of place mere feet from a screaming-child-filled shack that was about to fall over. 

We dipped our heads into a garish Baptist wedding, and of course ended up seated front and center.  It was likely a military wedding (some of the immigration officers, I think, were there.) 

 

And, finally, I visited a Burmese palm reader.  He warned me not to invest, or date women, until april.  "You will be very unlucky."  And to stay in after 9pm.  "Or else go with a friend."  And that selling cars would be a good career for me.  (Um.)  He then asked if I had any questions for him, things he hadn't addressed.  "What is the future for Burma?", I asked.  he froze.  he looked at my guide.  my guide looked at me.  they looked at each other, unsure of how to respond.  "It will not be good."  They both nervously laughed, and then my guide ran off to pee.

 

Oh, yeah, I also ate some roadside palata in sugar.  de-lish!

 

Mae Sot (the Thai town) is otherwise a fascinating place -- completelty brimming with NGOs.  (they look down on the rare tourists, like me, who pass through.  and on journalists, like Nick Kristoff, who've been writing "the same story" about mae sot for the last ten years.  and on each other, who are lying, or cheating the system, or etc etc...)  I've spent more of my time here with Neil and his family, but a good deal just meeting expats who are spending months or years here.  Jonathan the leprosy doctor.  Elie the dam fighter.  Beth the educator.  (Beth offered me a position teaching sex ed in a refugee camp -- they need someone here.  I'm not sure if my qualifications count.)

 

I'm here for a couple more days, and then either head up the border (which Ouie, a cafe manager, wants me to do) or go to Sukothai.  It seems like Ashin (the monk) and I will both be in Chiang Mai after that, so perhaps we'll continue to see each other.  (He's old friends with my pal Cristina, which seems mildly odd.)