Burma's Perpetual War

Illegal crossing at Mae Sot

The small town of Mae Sot in Thailand is located on the border of Thailand and Burma.  A river separates the two nations. There used to be a border crossing at Mae Sot - the Bridge of Freedom brought you to the Union of Myanmar, but the bridge and the border crossing have been closed for over a year.  The only way to cross from one country to another in Mae Sot is to do so illegally.  It's not hard to do.  You pay a bribe to the Burmese police and you pay a person to tow in an inner tube to the other side. 
  Across the river from Mae Sot is home to the ethnic group called the Karen who have been at war with the Burmese military junta for over 40 years.  The Karen want a democratic Burma or an autonomous Karen union where they can make a living and be free from terrorism by the Burmese army and state police.  A sham election in Burma last November legitimized the military government which is one of the most corrupt governments in the world.  At one time, Burma used to be the rice bowl of SE Asia, but since the mid 80's it has been on the U.N.'s least developed country list.  This designation probably marks the beginning of the intense civil war in Burma.
    Many of the Karen villages have been destroyed by the Burmese army.  The displaced Karen people either become refugees or migrants in Thailand or they go into hiding in the jungles of Burma.  Mae Sot has become a predominantly Burmese town of migrants.  The migrants cannot leave Mae Sot.  If they do they can be arrested by Thai authorities and sent back to Burma.  Just south of Mae Sot is the largest of the 9 Burmese refugee camps in Thailand (holding 45,000 or more people).  Residents in refugee camps also lack the freedom to leave the camp.  As we were leaving Mae Sot to return to Chiang Mai, we passed through 4 military check points. 
    One way that the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) protects the Karen villages in Burma is to plant home-made land mines around the villages.  These landmines aren't intended to kill, just create considerable bodily harm and a lot of fear.  The land mines are a cheap and effective.  However, sometimes the villagers step on the landmines.
     During our stay in Mae Sot, we visited a health clinic and several NGOs that are helping the Karen who have entered Thailand legally or illegally or who are internally displaced in Burma, or who are political prisoners in Burma.  Mae Sot is also a town of NGOs working with Burmese migrants and, actually, so is Chiang Mai.  I taught Burmese migrants at an NGO in Chiang Mai.

A list of people  waiting for artificial limbs

not the best, but they work

He'll be getting legs soon

  

Refugees are provided with daily rations of rice, fish paste, mung beans, plus some other things.  The number of calories per day is adequate, but the diet is deficient in many vitamins and minerals, even when the refugees supplement their rations with vegetables and chickens that they raise in the camps. 

Migrants do not get rations.   However, it is probably easier for them to work illegally in Thailand.  In fact, Burmese migrants contribute to over 6% of Thailand's GDP.  There probably aren't many compelling reasons to eliminate migrants in Thailand.  They take jobs that Thais wouldn't take.  On our visit to Mae Sot, we caught a glimpse of how hard and tenuous life is for migrants and refugees.  It was impossible to imagine that life was worse in Burma.  

The food and markets in Mae Sot were outstanding.  I'll describe them in another blog.

This is fish paste

Mae La Refugee camp

The day I should have had my camera

This is Hi, my tuk tuk driver

On day 3 of visiting the Angkor temples, we went to the farthest out temples.  The tuk tuk ride to the first temple was over an hour long and we passed through several small villages.  If I had my camera, I would have taken 100s of pictures of the rice farming, fishing, village life, etc.  But instead, I just enjoyed the scenery.  The hour went by quickly. 

The first temple was the most well preserved temple in the Angkor complex and it gave you and idea of what the temples must have looked like when they were used.  It was a very interesting temple, particularly with the help of an interpretation center that identified who all of the deities were and what the pictures meant and how the various temples in the Angkor complex differed in style from one another.  This would have been a good place to start.

After the 2nd temple, Hi disconnected the tuk tuk and I sat on the back of his motor cycle.  Hi had proven to be a safe, slow motorcycle driver and we were well out of the city.  He warned me the day before that part of the 3rd day would be on motorcycle.  I was under the impression that he was going to take me to the large lake for a boat ride to the Vietnamese floating village while he went to his friend's wedding in a near by village. I must have misunderstood him, because he took me to the wedding party.  I wasn't dressed for a wedding.

I sat at the wedding party with my bare legs buried under the table cloth because I was so embarrassed partly for being under-dressed and mostly from being the only white person at the dinner.  We watched the bride and groom greet each of the guests as they arrived at the dinner party (outdoors in the heat, of course).  During the 2 hours that we were at the wedding reception, the bride and groom wore 4 different gaudy costumes:  orange, then turquoise, then green, and finally silver.  They wore large, plastic, brightly colored gems that accentuated the gaudiness.  The bride wore an obnoxious wig and orange lipstick.  The wedding party also changed clothes to match the color of the bride and groom.  A stack of napkins (toilet paper in Thailand) was sitting on a table beside the bride and groom.  It was so hot yesterday that the groom used more than one package to wipe the sweat off his face.  Each dinner table had a packet of napkins for the same purpose.  The sweating was profuse. 

The dinner consisted of several courses of meat:  lunch meat, beef tripe (surprisingly good), chicken, beef, fish and finally chicken soup.  No one got a plate.  Instead everybody picked from the same platter with their chopsticks.  That created another potentially embarrassing moment because I'm not that adept with chopsticks.  Thais use a spoon to eat with.  But I picked up the roasted cashews flawlessly with my chopsticks.  Used napkins, pop cans, chicken and fish bones, and all other forms of garbage were thrown on the ground. 

When we finally left the wedding party, we walked across the road to get the motorcycle, and the buddhist nun asked if I needed to go to the bathroom.  Her toilet was out behind the house. Interestingly, they assumed that I knew how to use a squat pot and flush it.  To her delight (she even hugged me) I used her toilet.

So off we went to pick up the tuk tuk and visit the last temple.  When we got there, a film crew was setting up to film a movie with a hot Cambodian actor.  The stands that people sold food at were cleaned up, brightly colored baskets were carefully arranged and lined with banana leaves.  Hi seemed mesmerized by the whole process of setting the scene.

We arrived back at the hotel at 3:00.  I really didn't feel like going to the Tonle Sap and the floating village.  I had enough adventure for one day. 

3 Days in the Ancient City of Angkor

Tuk tuk is not the only way to see Angkor Wat

Tuk tuking through Angkor

In its prime, Angkor was the largest pre-industrial city in the world.  Magnificent temples were built in Angkor between the 8th and 13th century by a string of kings, some of whom were Hindu and some of whom were Buddhist.  Each of the temples reflects a predominant religion, but has aspects of both Hinduism and Buddhism.

May is probably not the best time to see ancient Angkor because it is beastly hot.  But I didn't have much choice.  I hired a tuk tuk driver (named Hi) who took me around Siem Reap (the town close to Ankgor) and the Angkor complex.  For 3 days in Angkor, I walked and walked, looked at bas reliefs, climbed steep stairs, got swindled, drank water, ducked through short doorways, climbed more scary stairs, drank more water, got buried in hoards of little children selling stuff, and tripped over uneven stones.  The tuk tuk rides between temples were as interesting as the temples themselves.    

I took a couple hundred photos.  I would have had more photos, but on day 3 I left my camera in my hotel room.  And day 3 was not a day to be without a camera.  More about day 3 in another blog. 

Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom

Angkor Wat

Bas reliefs around each wall of Angkor Wat

Ta Prohm being eaten by trees

Plastic bottle collector in Angkor Thom

You can see all the way through most temples

Hindu images

Buddhist images

Banteay Kdei