Burma Thoughts

[Blogger's having problems posting pictures. I'll add more tomorrow]


[This is a little disjointed, but I just don’t have the energy to make it more coherentGoing into Burma felt a little strange and exciting. The contrast between Thailand and Burma - just walking over the bridge over the river Moei (in Thai, the Burmese call it something else) you could feel it. It is a major entry way in both directions for goods. Lots of Chinese things come in from Burma to Thailand. I’m not sure what all goes the other way - though we did see a couple of trucks loaded with plastic garbage cans.

And our guides told us that a lot of motorcycles - mostly used - come to Burma where they are repaired and sent back to be sold at a profit. I wasn’t sure to what extent the motorcycles were old clunkers they were salvaged or bought, or whether some where stolen and brought over the border. There’s a picture of a repair shop in yesterday’s post.

And Burmese drive on the right side of the road. Unusual for a former colony and with neighboring Thailand driving on the left. Our 'guide' said it happened in 1967 when the prime minister decided the left side was a British legacy he could do without.

But I felt uncomfortable at first going into this country where the elected president has been under house arrest for years and a rich ruling class supported by Western companies that extract natural resources from Burma - including US oil companies - and by the Chinese government. On the Burmese side there were far fewer motorized vehicles. A lot of men wore long sarongs, and things just seemed much slower and seedier and poorer. They also had goats which you don’t see that much in Thailand. Joan and I had to pay 500 (about $15) Baht each to enter Burma. Mook and Manoo, as Thais, had to pay 20 Baht each. They kept our passports at the border crossing at the end of the bridge and gave us a receipt for them and Mook and Manoo’s day passes.

Already on the bridge we got picked up by two Burmese men, one who spook good English to me and to Joan and one who spoke good Thai to Mook and Manoo. Actually our ‘guide’ spoke good Thai too. No agreements were made, but each guide began explaining things as we went along. They tried to get us into little tricycle carts to ride to the temple we’d decided to visit, but we wanted to walk so they walked along with us.

The temple was very nice. There was scaffolding around the pagoda, but even the scaffolding was aesthetic. And the pagoda was very similar to the one we’d seen next to Manoo’s house earlier that morning. It was in the temple that the English speaking guide started opening up more. Well, he did tell us about how hard he works and his son in college and daugher in high school and the rising cost of housing as people are now speculating that Myawadi land will get much more valuable as the Asian Highway - driving east to west from Hanoi to New Delhi - becomes a major route. It made me think about the movie Bagdad cafe which is just inside the Iran border and caters to the many truck drivers of all nationalities who need a place to eat. He never asks for money, but leaves that up to the people he guides. If I understood him correct, he said there was a group from the Discovery Chaneel that morning. Seems I’ve written about them already not too long ago.

Part of me wanted to ask lots of questions about the political situation, and part of me felt that wasn’t a good idea. But we saw a guy in a military uniform in the back of a pickup truck and a machine gun over his back. This was not the Burmese military, but a KMT ???? Soldier. I expressed surprise he is riding around so openly. There’s a cease fire and both can be open now in the province. Eventually we got to talking about the government. There was a sort of verbal dance as he gently tested me out and I him. But, ‘we have to be careful, there are spies everywhere.”

Everyhouse had a two story bamboo pole with a flat piece of metal maybe 10 inches by 8 inches. These are used to put out fires we were told. I guess if you see the fire right away and can beat it out this might work.

We had no Burmese currency and everything was quoted in Thai Baht.

I posted a picture yesterday of some kids playing footbal on a field that had a white stone monument on the right end. The Thai speaking guide told me it was in honor of Aung San Suu Kyi and that there were monuments like that in every province. But they weren’t allowed to clean them up or otherwise maintain them. But I got the sense that just having it there was enough.

And then we got to the Burmese immigration office. I gave them the receipt and they gave us our passports and the two Thai day passes back and we walked back over the bridge. I gave my guide 200 Baht, Mook gave his 100 Baht. We didn’t see any other Westerners during the time we were in Burma - maybe 2 ½ hours - and Mook said there weren’t that many Thais either. People were friendly. In one case my guide pulled me away from someone who was getting too friendly - he was pretty drunk. Alcohol was one thing, I was told, that was very cheap.