My book club is reading Amatav Ghosh's The Glass Palace.
The meeting host generally tries to make refreshments with an eye to food that was in the book. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes a bit more difficult.
The Glass Palace begins in the mid 1800s when the British demands for access to more teak forests are turned down by the King of Burma so the British fleet moves up the Irriwaddy and overwhelms the Burmese military and then send the King and Queen into exile on the west coast of India. A key theme of the book is how the British used Indians to become their soldiers - who then do most of the Burmese invasion (killing and dying) work.
In any case, there was a fair amount of food mentioned, but as often happens, I wasn't thinking about the book club refreshments (it was at our place last time when we discussed The Three Body Problem). But then on page 190, the key characters are gathered for a meal in Malaca (now Malaysia just south of the island of Penang) and the whole menu is listed.
I couldn't resist sending the list to our next host, and I wondered if I could even find the recipes for these dishes. For some I was more successful than others. But here it is:
Peanut crumpets - This was harder. The link goes to peanut honey crumpets. There were also names like peanut butter crumpets. When I added Malaysia to the search terms, I got peanut pancakes instead of crumpets
Salad of shredded squid and polygonum and dan kado, a creeper that smells like a spice-garden - couldn't find this one, but here's a great video for shredded squid.
When I sent the list, I noted these recipes were way beyond the call of duty for our book club meeting, but his reply suggested he might try one or two.
By the way, the book is an interesting romp through the history of that region from the view of an Indian. You get a much different picture of that region of the world than you do from The Camp Of The Saints. One of the characters - Uma - lives a number of years in London and then New York. She gets involved with other ex-pat Indians who are concerned about the plight of their homeland. Their view sees how India was exploited by the British empire and then set up for failure in the newly industrialized world.
"Witnessing the nascency of the new century in America, they were able to watch at first hand the tides and currents of the new epoch. They went to visit mills and factories and the latest mechanized farms. They saw that new patterns of work were being invented, calling for new patterns of movement, new ways of thought. They saw that in the world ahead literacy would be crucial to survival; they saw that education had become a matter of such urgency as to prompt every modern nation to make it compulsory. From those of their peers who had traveled eastwards they learnt that Japan had moved quickly in this direction; in Siam too education had become a dynastic crusade for the royal family.
In India, on the other hand, it was the military that devoured the bulk of public monies: although the army was small in number, it consumed more than sixty percent of the Government's revenues, more even than was the case in countries that were castigated as "militaristic." Lala Har Dayal, one of Uma's most brilliant contemporaries, never tired of pointing out that india was, in effect, a vast garrison and that it was the impoverished Indian peasant who paid both for the upkeep of the conquering army and for Britain's eastern campaigns.
What would become of India's population when the future they had glimpsed in America had become the world's present condition? They could see that it was not they themselves nor even their children who would pay the true price of this Empire: that the conditions being created in their homeland were such as to ensure that their descendants would enter the new epoch as cripples, lacking the most fundamental means of survival; that they would truly become int the future what they had never been in the past, a burden upon the world. They could see too that already time was running out, that it would soon become impossible to change the angle of their country's entry into the future; that a time was at hand when even the fall of the Empire and the departure of their rulers would make little difference; that their homeland's trajectory was being set on an unbridgeable path that would thrust it inexorably in the direction of future catastrophe."
There's also an interesting tidbit on how the Indians in the US were learning from the Irish in the US about how to resist the British.
"The Indians were, comparatively, novices in the arts of sedition. It was the Irish who were their mentors and allies, schooling them in their methods of organization, teaching them the tricks of shopping for arms to send back home; giving them instruction in the techniques of fomenting mutiny among those of their countrymen who served the empire as soldiers. On St. Patrick's Day in New York a small Indian contingent would sometimes march in the Irish parade with their own banners, dressed in sherwanis and turbans, dhotis andkurtas, angarkhas and angavastrams."
Studying the past certainly does put a fresh light on the present.
Monday night at the Bear Tooth we saw Burma JV - a movie about a handful of Burmese video journalists (VJ) who took it on themselves to document what was happening in Burma using video cameras. So, when the monks began a demonstration in 2007, the group had contacts outside of Burma and was ready to send their video images of the demonstration and the government crackdown to the world via internet and satellite phones. For this blogger who sometimes dabbles with video reporting, this was an inspiring film. This is what journalism in the extreme is all about - informing the world and your fellow citizens what is really happening. They all did this at great personal risk. It's a compelling movie mostly narrated by one of the journalists who had to flee to Thailand because the government had clearly seen him filming at one of the demonstrations. You see the actual footage and his phone communications with his colleagues still in Burma. The Anchorage showing was sponsored in part by the Alaska Immigration Justice Project which gives legal support to immigrants, including some Burmese. The movie helps show the sort of political oppression that many refugees in Anchorage are fleeing and why the AIJP's work is important.
I have a friend who doesn't like to go see political movies or other movies that have depressing scenes. Movies, for him, should entertainment and uplifting. I like genuinely good uplifting movies too. But they are far more than that. Well made movies are the most compelling way to learn connect emotionally to what is happening around the world. They can, of course, be used to mislead as well, so video literacy is an important skill that needs to be taught along with reading.
Now we see that even Burma's ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) neighbors are putting on pressure over Aung San Su Kyi's sentence. A post at ThaiVisa.com by John LeFevre reports:
Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anifah Aman said: "We were hoping that the junta will release her unconditionally and will hold an election to enable Suu Kyi and other political detainees to participate in that election.”
Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said: "They don't want her to be out before the election."
India refrained from denouncing the outcome, but foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said New Delhi, "has emphasised to the government of Burma the need to expedite the political reform and national reconciliation process".
Locally, Thailand, as the revolving head of Asean, issued a statement saying it was with "deep disappointment" it had heard of Suu Kyi’s sentence.
The statement, issued by the Thai Foreign Ministry further said the Chair of Asean reiterates “the calls by the Asean Foreign Ministers attending the 42nd Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the 16th Asean Regional Forum held in July 2009 for the immediate release of all those under detention, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, with a view to enabling them to participate in the 2010 General Elections”.
The statement said Asean “stands ready to cooperate with the Myanmar (Burma) Government in its efforts to realize the seven steps to democracy and remain constructively engaged with Myanmar in order to build the Asean Community together.
“We also continue to support the ongoing good offices of the United Nations Secretary-General and urge Myanmar’s (Burma’s) full cooperation with the United Nations.
In May a war of wards broke out between Thailand and Burma over the detention of Suu Kyi after Thailand, the current rotating chair of the 10-member regional block, issued a statement saying Asean had "grave concern" over her situation.
The statement also said, “the honor and the credibility of the (Burma government) are at stake.”
Burma quickly fired back, attacking Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and accusing its neighbor of meddling in it’s internal affairs.
Thailand responded saying the original statement was made with the “best of intentions towards (Burma) Myanmar and reflects the desire for the process of national reconciliation in (Burma) Myanmar to move forward on the basis of inclusiveness, with the participation of all sectors of society.”
Below is a list of where it will be showing in the US next. Note: The Anchorage showing was not on the website's list of US showings, so it may be showing in other locations not on the list:
21-Aug – Hilo, HI – Palace Theater 28-Aug – Seattle, WA – NW Film Forum 28-Aug – New Haven, CT – Criterion 06-Sep – Albuquerque, NM – Guild Cinema 23-Sep – Tucson, AZ – The Loft 04-Oct – San Francisco, CA – Red Vic 08-Oct – Utica, NY – Utica College 09-Oct – Pleasantville, NY – Jacob Burns Film Center 24-Oct – Boulder, CO – UC-Boulder Int’l Film Series
And because I have way more to post than time, I'll add this picture of the bike rack at the Bear Tooth Monday night. The number of bikers keeps going up this summer.
[Feb. 13, 2009, 12:30am Thai Time] "This has to be a hoax" was my first reaction. "This is how bloggers and newspapers get caught up in phony stories."
As I was looking up the Giles case, I found this other post on the New Mandala blog about the Burmese Consul General in Hong Kong's response to an opinion piece about the Rohingya. The Burmese Consulate's letter certainly looks legitimate, but it's hard to believe that a diplomat in this day would write something like this. So I googled a phrase from the letter. There were only six hits. But one is the Bangkok Post.
The rest are blogs. I guess this one is called A Bit More Detail. It cites the whole letter as does Normblog.
With this warning to readers to read this with some skepticism until there is more confirmation, here's an excerpt from the alleged letter:
In reality, Rohingya are neither "Myanmar People" nor Myanmar's ethnic group. You will see in the photos that their complexion is "dark brown". The complexion of Myanmar people is fair and soft, good looking as well. (My complexion is a typical genuine one of a Myanmar gentleman and you will accept that how handsome your colleague Mr. Ye is.) It is quite different from what you have seen and read in the papers. (They are as ugly as ogres.)
New Mandela has a link to what, if it is genuine, is a copy of the letter from the Burmese Consul as well as the opinion piece that seems to have triggered the letter.
If this is true, it needs to be spread so people see what is happening. If it isn't, then the attention should expose it as a fraud.
After class today, I biked over to Scott's office to return his camera. The glorious morning sunshine was gone, the trail around University Lake was muddy, but it was still good to be on the bike after yesterday's gloomy rain. Taped on Scott's wall was a flyer for Namaste Shangri-la Restaurant - serving Burmese, Nepali, Indian, and Tibetan food. Where I asked? 2442 E. Tudor. Calculating from my own address, I figured it was just east of Lake Otis.
So, with my wife in class, JL came over (his wife's in New York) and we went searching for Namaste Shangri-la. Turns out it's in the strip mall with Ichiban, UPS, and a number of other diverse shops. In fact, it's taken over the spot where Mumbo Jumbo was not that long ago.
While we waited for our meal, we watched this truck come toward us, go up on the curb a bit, then back up into this parking space. The fact that the right tires were up on the curb didn't seem to bother him. We're not sure where he went, but there was a one in three chance it was the liquor store on that side. Our hosts were great. She is a Tibetan born in India. He's Nepali. And the food was delicious. I won't use my time in Thailand as credentials for saying this, because there was no Thai food. But J and I did spend a month in India in 2006 so I do have an idea of good Indian food. We also had Burmese food in Chiangmai. We were regulars at the Tibetan Kitchen in Portland during our six months there. And I've eaten in Nepal.
The food was really, really good. A significant portion of the menu is Veg. That was something we liked in India. I'm not a restaurant reviewer and won't get into the game of trying to come up with original ways to describe the food. It was good. Interesting flavors and textures. Light. They prepared each dish carefully - and dishes in that region of the world aren't simple to prepare.
You can see the three dishes we ate. I took the descriptions from the menu. The Thali plate is a combination of three vegetarian dishes that are special for that day. (I felt a little stupid because that was something I'd learned in India - that Thali is a combination plate and I'd forgotten. They have a non-Veg Thali plate too.)
The Thali plate is good for them because they can prepare the dishes fresh, but in large batches each day. Since a lot of the dishes take time, they're going to have to figure out how to get things out to the tables fairly quickly when people discover them and it gets crowded. The Thali will help with that. Even if they have customers who like to sit and eat slowly, they'll need a certain amount of table turnover to be profitable.
All three dishes tasted even better than they looked.
Does this sound like a commercial? Well, I have a vested interest in their staying open. It's a place with a good veg selection (she said mostly vegan). It's easy walking distance from our house. The food is delicious. The hosts charming. And the prices more than reasonable for what you get. The restaurant business is hard. Just cooking great meals isn't enough. There's the whole business of running a restaurant that trips up many great cooks.
So, Scott, thanks for alerting me to this place. And the rest of you, keep them open by eating there.
Driving on Tudor from the Seward Highway, go past Lake Otis to the second block on your right. It's the little strip mall. They are next to the UPS store and this tattoo parlor.
They set up a blog - Namaste Shangri-la - yesterday that has their menu.
do you know the earthquake in Wenchuan of China on May 12?
I'm pretty sure that Frank is one of my former students who lives in Beijing. It isn't always easy for people in China to gauge what the rest of the world is hearing about China.
So, yes Frank, the news here is dominated by stories about the earthquake and about how well the Chinese government is responding to the earthquake and how Chinese citizens are all volunteering to help in any way possible. For the most part the news is strongly positive, and I'm wondering a little bit about how the reporters are getting the stories. Who are the interpreters? How are they getting to the various sites? What is happening in areas where Western journalists are not getting access? I don't know, I'm just a little skeptical.
For the western readers of the blog who aren't sure where the earthquake and the cyclone happened, here are some maps.
You can see on the first map where China and Burma are in relationship to Alaska. (And for those of you wondering why Alaska is the benchmark, well, I live in Alaska. Since we have to see everything in the Main Stream Media from New York or LA's perspective, it does the NY and LA types some good to see that not everyone thinks that they are the center of the universe.)
And then this map shows where Sichuan Province (the location of the earthquake) is in relationship to where the cyclone did most damage in Burma. It's only about 1000 miles apart. The same approximate distance as: Berlin-Istanbul Moscow-Prague Bangkok-Hong Kong Cleveland-Dallas Pittsburgh-Miami Boston-St. Louis San Francisco-El Paso Los Angeles - Seattle
I'm thinking about the enormous difference in response between the Burmese cyclone and the Chinese earthquake. Sichuan is about 1000 miles away from the Irrawaddy Delta where the cyclone had its biggest effect.
China is the major supporter of the Burmese government. Without China's economic and political support, the Burmese regime would fall. Some news reports have said that China's openness to the world press in the earthquake disaster is aimed at showing that China is a world player that can handle emergencies. And the contrast between the way China is handling the earthquake and the way Burma is handling the cyclone is extreme.
But I can't help but wonder why, with Burma on its border, and with so much influence over the Burmese government, China hasn't helped to save tens of thousands of lives in Burma. They could have leaned on the military leaders quietly and even gotten publicly invited to assist. So they wouldn't have to worry about setting a precedent for interfering with the internal matters of another country. What they are doing in Sichuan proves they can do this work. So they certainly could have gone into Burma.
Perhaps Burmese lives aren't important, only Chinese lives. Helping the victims of the earthquake in China effectively will help China's world image. But not nearly as much as helping the victims in Burma would.
By the way, my post called "What's the difference between a cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, and tornado?" got listed as the first blog post in Google Trends "Difference between hurricane and cyclone" which was number 90 on May 6 and suddenly today is sending a lot of folks my way. I should have my highest single day hit count (I think I got to about 270 once during one of the trials). I was never aware of Google Trends and I'm not quite sure how it works. And very few have stopped to see more than that one page.
Last week I posted a copy of an email about a presentation in Chiang Mai entitled "Bio Fuel By Decree." Now I'm following that up with a little more substance. This is a report I got in an email from someone I met in Chiang Mai who works for EarthRights, a group that works to help Burmese Refugees in Thailand as well as Burmese still in Burma. I know a little about this organization and met various people who worked for them. They are dedicated and very competent. The people of Burma - including the last democratically elected President of Burma, Aung Sang Suu Kyi - have basically been imprisoned in their home by the SLORC for 20 years.
When people watched Schindler's List and other movies about the Holocaust, many asked, "How could people let this happen?" Well, variations of the Holocaust are happening now in various parts of the world, including Burma.
I'm posting here the EarthRights report. This report was done by people who have been working on these issues in and out of Burma for many years now. It is well documented. Certainly it does not tell everything because access to information in Burma and from Chevron is limited. But if you want to know what is happening in Burma, and how you support it when you buy Cheveron gasoline, read.
Below is most of the executive summary for those who don't have time to read the whole report. And for those thinking, "What can I do?" there is a recommendation highlighted in the executive summary below of recommendations "To the United States and the world community." [You can easily enlarge the pages of the document by clicking on the magnifying glass]
. . . EarthRights International (ERI) began documenting the human Residents and refugees from fourteen villages throughout the pipeline region, with whom ERI conducted over 70 formal interviews in the past five years as well as additional corroborative contacts, confirm that, for the people of Burma, “human energy” means human exploitation. Chevron and its consor- tium partners continue to rely on the Burmese army for pipeline security, and those forces continue to conscript thousands of villagers for forced labor, and to commit torture, rape, murder and other serious abuses in the course of
Part 1 describes the background of the Yadana Project, which involves a pipeline constructed to carry gas from offshore fields, across Burma, and into Thailand. In 2005, Chevron became part of the Yadana Project through its acquisition of Unocal, one of the original developers of the project. The Burmese military junta, a brutal regime routinely condemned by the United Nations and the world community for its widespread violations of basic human rights, is one of Chevron’s partners in the project through its military-run oil company, Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise.
Part 2 explains how the Yadana Proj- ect finances oppression. The project is the single largest source of income for the Burmese military; it was instru- mental in bailing out the junta when it faced a severe financial crisis in the late 1990s, and it has enabled the regime to dramatically increase its military spending and continue its rule without popular support.
Part 3 describes how Chevron was fully aware of the human rights abuses associated with the Yadana Project when it acquired Unocal in 2005, but nonethe- less chose to stay involved with the project and the Burmese military. The Yadana pipeline is guarded by the Bur- mese army, and the human rights abuses committed by the army in the course of providing security have been widely re- ported and documented; victims of the project sued Unocal in U.S. courts in the landmark case Doe v. Unocal.
Part 4 documents the continuing seri- ous human rights abuses by the pipeline security forces, including torture, rape, murder, and forced labor. Seventeen years after abuses connected to the Yadana Project were first documented, and years after they were highlighted in Doe v. Unocal, these human rights abuses continue in the pipeline corri- dor. Residents and refugees fleeing the pipeline region report that they are still forced to work for the pipeline security forces, who continue to commit acts of violence and terrorize the local popula- tion. This forced labor occurs thousands of times each year.
Part 5 debunks the oil companies’ claims that life in the pipeline region has improved. While some villages have re- alized minimal benefits from the compa- nies’ socio-economic program, the ben- efits do not reach the entire population affected by the pipeline security forces. Even for the chosen “pipeline villages” life remains so difficult and dangerous that families continue to flee for the rela- tive safety of the Thai-Burma border.
Part 6 discusses Chevron’s response to the 2007 demonstrations in Burma against the military regime and the re- gime’s crackdown. Despite its threefold status as the largest U.S. investor in Burma, the military’s direct business partner, and a partner in the project that constitutes the largest source of income for the regime, Chevron has failed to take any noticeable steps to condemn the violent repression or to pressure the military to respect human rights.
Finally, Part 7 describes Chevron’s ongoing potential legal liability for its role in the Yadana Project. Although the Doe v. Unocal litigation resulted in a settlement in 2005, that settlement only covers the claims of the victims involved in that suit; Chevron remains responsible for compensating the thou- sands of other residents of the pipeline region who have suffered abuse by pipe- line security forces.
Two appendices offer additional detail on oil and gas investment in Burma. Appendix A details the Shwe Project, a new gas project which could dwarf Yadana both in revenues for the military and in the abusive impact on the local population. The project is being devel- oped by South Korea’s Daewoo Interna- tional along with other companies from Korea, India and China. Appendix B briefly outlines China’s growing involve- ment in Burma, especially in the oil and gas sector. The Yadana Project remains a serious problem both for the people of Burma and for Chevron itself.
In light of this, EarthRights International makes the following recommendations: To the Burmese military regime: » The SPDC should cease human rights abuses against the people of the pipe- line region and throughout Burma, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, torture, excessive force, ar- bitrary detentions and imprisonment, forced labor, and forced relocation, and abide by its obligations under in- ternational law to respect fundamen- tal human rights and environmental protection.
» The regime should begin a full transi- tion to a system of government that allows for all of Burma’s peoples to fully participate in development deci- sions and freely determine their own futures.
To Chevron Corporation and its partners: » Chevron, Total, PTTEP, and all other oil and gas companies in Burma should suspend ongoing projects, cease de- velopment of new projects, and refuse to sell gas that enriches the Burmese regime until the SPDC fully respects internationally-guaranteed human rights and environmental protections and allows for a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above.
» The Yadana consortium and other com- panies should terminate any contracts that require them to provide monetary support to the military regime or that contemplate or require the use of the Burmese military as security forces.
» The companies should publicly con- demn past human rights abuses and use their influence with the SPDC, their business partner, to press for respect for human rights in the future, not only in the pipeline region itself but throughout the country.
» The companies should immediately stop relying on the Burmese military for any security or other services. If alternate security measures are taken, Chevron and its partners must provide adequate human rights train- ing and supervision in order to ensure respect for fundamental human rights (in accordance with international law and Chevron’s stated commitment to respect human rights).
» The companies should allow indepen- dent third-parties with experience documenting human rights abuses in Burma access to the pipeline region, without military supervision, in order to monitor the situation. Such moni- toring should include a mechanism to allow local residents to bring com- plaints to an independent body on a confidential basis.
» The companies should provide ad- equate compensation to all individu- als and communities harmed by the Yadana Project.
» The companies should demonstrate a serious commitment to their socio- economic program by expanding it to include all of the villages that have suffered adverse impacts from the Yadana Project, and by inviting groups experienced in documenting condi- tions in Burma to participate in de- veloping, implementing, and regularly evaluating the effectiveness of, their programs.
» The companies should support efforts that promote transparency through disclosure of payments to all govern- ment and state-owned or state-con- trolled partners.
To Chevron’s shareholders: » The shareholders of Chevron should support shareholder resolutions that promote policies and practices de- signed to improve the promotion and protection of human rights, the envi- ronment, rule of law, transparency, and the rights of indigenous peoples and affected communities to informed consent before projects begin and dur- ing operation phases.
» The shareholders of Chevron should communicate their concern over the situation in Burma, the reputational and legal risks it poses to their com- pany, and their wish for Chevron to follow the recommendations outlined above, to Chevron’s CEO and Board of Directors.
To the Royal Thai government: » Thailand should immediately cease purchasing gas from the SPDC and cease payments for such gas until the Burmese regime respects fundamental human rights and environmental pro- tections and begins a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above. Alternatively, Thailand should place all such pay- ments in escrow for the benefit of the people of Burma under a future gov- ernment.
» Thailand should immediately require that its state-owned company PTTEP suspend its ongoing natural gas explo- ration in the Bay of Bengal until the company conducts environmental and human rights impact assessments, and until appropriate preconditions for responsible investment in Burma are in place, such as a full transition to a participatory system of govern- ment as described above.
» Thailand should allow safe refuge to all Burmese refugees fleeing the abuses there, in accordance with in- ternational law.
» Thailand should provide legal mecha- nisms that allow Thai companies, such as PTTEP, to be held accountable for their responsibility and complicity in human rights abuses in Burma. Civil society organizations and citizens of Thailand should advocate for legisla- tion to create such mechanisms.
To the United States and the world community: » The United States and the world com- munity should make immediate efforts to cut the flow of money to the Bur- mese regime, including stopping the Yadana Project payments and other gas payments through targeted finan- cial sanctions.
» The United States and the world com- munity should condemn the abuses committed in Burma on projects ben- efiting multinational corporations, including Chevron, and pressure the companies to end these abuses and adopt the recommendations outlined above.
» The United States should continue to pressure the Burmese regime to respect human rights and the environ- ment and begin a full transition to a participatory system of government as described above; the world communi- ty, especially China, India, Korea, and Thailand, should join in these efforts. for complicity in abuses abroad, and enable access to justice for survivors of abuses abroad. Civil society organi- zations and citizens of these countries should advocate for legislation to cre- ate such mechanisms.
To Daewoo and its partners in the Shwe Project, and other gas compa- nies in Burma: [See Complete Document for more]
I haven't posted much about Burma - except the border runs - because what I did hear from people working with Burmese organizations in Thailand wasn't sharable. Thai officials can look away if nothing is explicitly out in the open, but if it is in their face they have to take action. That doesn't mean the new government isn't making nice to the Burmese government, but they also aren't fanatic about dealing with Burmese refugees in Thailand. Though I did hear stories about police having quotas for how many illegal Burmese they had to round up per day in one town. All this is word of mouth from people I don't know all that well. But I heard similar stories from different people.
But this was emailed to me and so it is a little more official, though I note that the location will be announced at the last minute. I don't think it's because they haven't found a place. I don't know if I'm being overly cautious, but I left out the name, phone numbers, and email as well.
INVITATION
Date:April 29, 2008
Dear Sir or Madam,
A warm greeting from ECDF
Ethnic Community Development Forum is cordially invite you to join us on the special event of launching our report "Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma's bio-energy fiasco" on May 1 at (10:00) am to (12:00) am. For the conference place we will informing you on (30 April 2008).
Why we are launching the report on Labor Day, May first because in the implementation of SPDC Jet Suu plantation project is using forced labor, land confiscation and other human rights abuses,
During launching the report we will have some VIDEO show about SPDC forced to the people and including the video clips of interviewing from who are refugees by SPDC Jet Suu project.
However ECDF would like you to join our press conference and if you have any question, you can contact with the spokesperson as below address please.
Burmese exile Kyi May Maung put links to my Border Run posts on her blog this week. She's also got two poems in a new anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond. She has glowing praise for the book from the likes of Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States. Also lots of links to sites about Burma.
And Refugee Nation, the Laotian American theater group out of LA that wowed the audience at Out North last fall, has started writing on their blog again and will be performing in April in Berkeley.
April 25th Benefit Tickets: Center for Lao Studies / Legacies of War
April 26th Tickets La Pena Cultural Center
So this is a warning to my Berkeley/Oakland readers (both of you that I know of) to check it out. They offered a great view into what it means to be Laotian-American today. Their blog seems to have started in Alaska last November at the end of their national tour and petered out after they got back to LA.
Just consider for a moment all that traveling: planes, trains and automobiles from June to December in and out of town from New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Alaska, the miles, the people, the energy and effort, the changes in time and weather...it's exhausting! It's work!! So we felt we needed to take a breather. Calm ourselves. Be with ourselves. Be down with ourselves and during that time we took time to evaluate 2007 and all it's struggles and successes and take that knowledge to plan out the 2008 series of Refugee Nation events to come. We hope you follow us again because our batteries are fully charged and we look forward to making impact with people, places and things...promise. So come along for the ride or better yet come see us in person when we are in town. It's a lot nicer face to face, smile to smile.
We had a little time before the bus left and we found this organic shop. Since my organization is working on these issues, I naturally take an interest in all these shops - how are they doing, how they advertise, who their customers are. I talked with one of the people working in the shop. They are making a slight profit. They have sponsorship of the Queen of Thailand which certainly doesn't hurt. They have customers from across the board. And organic wild honey they have to process themselves because it tends to come in with things floating in it.
Some of the farmers my organizations works with grow organic strawberries and I've been saying that jam has to be an option if they don't sell them all fresh. So, here is some strawberry jam.
When we got off the bus, and got into a song thaew for the ride home. Then it suddenly filled up with foreigners. Here's a Thai traveler who talked loudly the whole way, whose lived in Ireland for several years. Next to her is a Dutch woman.
This first man was a Scot who'd just spent 28 days traveling through Burma. He said he saw no signs of trouble anywhere, though there were places that were restricted to foreigners.
We went back into Thailand, then went to check out the riverside guest houses for lunch. Our Lonely Planet book says about the guest house in the picture,
Unfortunately, the great river views are overshadowed by a general lack of upkeep. If you stay here, pay close attention to how to find your way in and out, and pray that your hut hangs on just one more night.
We ended up almost under the border crossing bridge at a table on the water's edge, watching these kids enjoy themselves all through our lunch. This river separates Thailand and Burma. Campbell Creek is deeper and just as wide. Who says you need money to have fun?
They dove in here on this side, then floated down the river and came quickly back to dive in again.
Now, here's the real reason Tachileik is a destination for Thai tourists - shopping for Chinese goods. I finally found a pair of sandals - I can feel the ground through my old ones - a case for my camera, and a longyi for a friend who asked for a pakama. Will a Burmese man's sarong do instead Lewis Since he doesn't read this blog to my knowledge, I don't have to worry. Des, don't tell him. Ron ZZ, I really have no idea about these fishing reels, but this will give you another reason to put Northern Thailand on your travel list.
And this is one of the shops that carries animal parts - many if not most prohibited in most countries. But they no longer have tiger skins, just small pieces of tiger skin.
Coming out of the Thai-Yai village we passed a Chinese Buddhist temple that had a small forest of beautiful trees still on the back of the grounds.
And there's garbage piles here and there.
I have no idea what the sign says. But it's to the left.
This guy knows how to pack his bike with vegies. It was ok to take a picture of the bike, but not to take his picture. Compare these vegies on the back street with the fruit stand on the main street.
Two monks walking onto a backstreet from the main street. You can see J in the background in the new shorts she got at the Textile Fair while we were waiting for the bus back in Chiang Mai.
The back streets are a real contrast to the main street that you see as you come across from Thailand. When we were in Burma at Mae Sot our guide said that rich people own the shops in town and the land prices have been going up very fast as they expect lots of traffic when the road from Thailand opens and you can drive from Hanoi to Yangoon.
But Mae Sot was a backwater town 40 years ago. Gems and other goods got smuggled over the border, but I suspect the Burmese border village was just as much of a backwater as Maesod. I'm guessing that Tachileik has been a much more important town for centuries. While it's not on the Mekong and its river was certainly not navigable while we were there, nevertheless it is very close to Yunan province in China and it certainly looked much more prosperous than Myawaddi, the town across from Mae Sot. But I'm just conjecturing, I need to look this up. But our guide then did say that a few Burmese get rich and the rest of the people are poor. The contrast between all the Chinese goods for sale - next post will have a little of that - and the unpaved back streets and tiny shops would be consistent with that.
While I was trying to find more on Tachileik, I came across this discussion of opium in the region. The post is a year old, but the comments are clearly by people who know about Burma.
Just behind the temple we wandered down this back street with seemingly tiny crude houses. Actually, these were shops and the house was below on the hill.
Here they had birds to put in tiny cages to sell to temple visitors to release. You're supposed to get merit by setting a bird free. But I could never understand how this all worked out. Since you must lose merit by putting the bird in the cage in the first place. So, by buying the bird to set free, you really encourage capturing more birds.
I noticed this tattoo on the back of one of the men and he consented to have me take a picture of it.
And then a picture of him from the front. One of the people in the small shop spoke Thai fairly well so we could communicate.
We came across this woman drying peanuts and she spoke very good Thai. A friend of hers sold us 20 Baht worth of bananas and then they invited us into the Thai-Yai village that we could walk through to the main street again. I was only vaguely aware of the word Thai-Yai. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
The Tai-Shan people are believed to have migrated from Yunnan in China. The Shan are descendants of the oldest branch of the Tai-Shan, known as Tai Long (Great Tai) or Thai Yai (Big Thai). The Tai-Shan who migrated to the south and now inhabit modern-day Laos and Thailand are known as Tai Noi (or Tai Nyai), while those in parts of northern Thailand and Laos are commonly known as Tai Noi (Little Tai - Lao spoken) [2] The Shan have inhabited the Shan Plateau and other parts of modern-day Myanmar as far back as the 10th century AD. The Shan kingdom of Mong Mao (Muang Mao) existed as early as the 10th century AD but became a Burmese vassal state during the reign of King Anawrahta of Bagan (1044-1077). Note: the Mao people are considered a Shan subgroup.
After the Bagan kingdom fell to the Mongols in 1287, the Tai-Shan people quickly gained power throughout South East Asia,
So here, apparently, was this Thai-Yai village nestled inside of a Tachileik side street.
Our casual destination was the large pagoda we'd seen from the hotel all lit up last night. But this exquisite pagoda caught our attention first. We wandered around the temple grounds and out the back to a flight of stairs.
At the top we met a couple of young Thai monks coming down.
There was a smaller pagoda at the top and views through the trees of the town. And this young monk having fun on the bike.
Just across a small road was a short walk up to this gate and the pagoda we'd seen from the hotel. It was beautiful and quiet until we heard the roar of.....then around the corner came tuk-tuk thundering up the hill with a couple of tourists. Then another, another, another, about a dozen altogether shattering the peace and quiet. We were really glad we'd turned down the hour tour of town by tuk-tuk as we got off the bridge.
Here are the noisy tourists. Looking at the picture I can't confirm that this was the group of Swiss tourists who got to immigration just before we did and thus made our two minute wait into a 30 minute wait. But because of the wait, we got to meet the head of the Korean Cultural Center in Chiang Mai who gave us his card and invited us to visit when they have open house on Friday nights.
Here's the pagoda we saw from the hotel last night.
And this is a view of Tachileik from pagoda. I looked, but I'm not sure if our hotel is in the picture.
And another view of the houses just below the pagoda
A young monk followed us from the pagoda demanding a payment. A Burmese man scolded him and J decided he wasn't quite right in the head. Soon after we saw this butterfly.
Our room was on the 5th floor. In the evening we were going to walk down the stairs to the lobby, but discovered that only the 5th floor had lights. My crank up flashlight didn't put much of a dent into the complete blackness of the fourth floor so we took the elevator down. But in the morning, we took the stairs and could see the swimming pool. You can also see the shops underneath. All around the border area are shops with everything from pearls to dried everything imaginable. This was mirrored by similar stores on the Burmese side.
J is by the window having breakfast at the hotel before we head for the border crossing to get another 30 days in Thailand stamped into our passports.
When we crossed a month ago at Maesod, it all seemed much more imposing. Here we have just gone out of Thailand and are on the bridge. This one was much shorter than at Maaesod. I guess we survived that wtih no problems and so this time it was no big deal. But we didn't get captured by an English speaking guide on the bridge this time so we had to do our own interpretations.
Here's the river that separates Thailand and Burma at this point in the Thai far North.
If you have a big screen you can see the Welcome to Myanmar on the blue sign on the right.
I'm not even going to try to say what anything means. All I can honestly do is show you the pictures and add a little more context. Any interpretation would simply be me imposing my own stories onto what I see. As we walked up this street, we heard, blaring out of a music shop, "Freedom.... Freedom Now..." It was a music video in English. I thought it a little interesting to hear this blaring into the street in this country where there have been government arrests of monks not that long ago. I went in and tried to engage the young man and woman about the music and what it meant. They apparently spoke no English or Thai and had no idea of what they were playing. Or they pretended not to speak Thai or English, not knowing who I was. While a lot of people we met spoke Thai, my gut says that they really had no idea of the message they were blaring out into the street.
Tachileik seems much more prosperous and lively than the Burmese town across from Maesod. Perhaps it's because we crossed at 9am (Burma time is a half hour later than Thai time) instead of 1pm. It was relatively cool and monks were still out with their begging bowls.
Note: I've spelled the name of the Burmese border town both Thachilek (the Thai Anglicization) and Tachileik (the Burmese version.)
