A long day has passed since we got up at 4.45am this morning to make our way to the bus station, catch a bus north to Mae Sai, via Chiang Rai, to walk across the border to Burma, which doesn't exist because it is now Myanmar, where the time is 30 minutes behind the time just 20 meters back, where it is Thailand.. Why the time warp? I think a perfect signifier of where we arrived: in a country with one of the most controlling military regimes, priding itself on an endless itinerary of human rights abuses/ violations... None of which affects us as pale skinned westerners, but you wouldn't want to be one of the many minority groups around the country, now would you want to be an outspoken stand up comedian or pro democracy politician or simply a pro democracy supporter... It would also be uncomfortable if you had a family member who was any of the above.. Oh and you might not want to enter political discourse with foreigners either... It wouldn't matter if you were a civilian, a teacher, a manual labourer, an academic or monk.. the wrong opinion could land you an open ended jail term; and the comfort levels would be well below minimal also you might want to make arrangements for how to get nourishing food, because it's unlikely that the prison would provide this...
Anyhow...
none of this concerns or affects us little tourists (unless we want a mark against our name which might ensure we couldn't cross this border again..).
So we arrived in Myanmar, where the time is half an hour in the past, where they keep your passport to make sure you don't run off into the country that you are not permitted to visit freely, but you could have asked for a 14 day permit (not called a visa here), which would have permitted travel in the Khan State, no other. (limited options, but foreigners access to the country is limited, the government isn't too keen on us spreading the gospel of democracy, even if it appears to be revealing itself even in the west: to be more a fairy tale than reality)...
So.. Myanmar.. We walked around the market right by the border for some time, were offered copious quantities of viagra, which I am not sure what it is for.. why did they keep offering it to me..? Do they realize I lack the appropriate body part? (this is of course Birgit speaking)..
Jason was offered unspoken other things, that involved pointing to the nose and mouth.. I wonder if the man was offering to kiss Jason or let J touch his nose? Whatever it was we declined many times to many sellers.. One thing that went a LOT to far for me was seeing a boy-child with the same basket of items trying to sell us stuff which also included very cheap bright yellow dildos or vibrators (not really sure what they were). I was pretty shocked by that, that's just a lot of a steps too far!
Myanmar, the place of time past, we had great espresso (some happy trivia) and eventually walked back in reverse across the border, experiencing no problems - bar the incident when a small boy who had been trying to beg of us for the past 2 hours- shouted a few 'fuck-you's" at Birgit which she took a bit too much to heart. But it was a huge shock. That hasn't happened since Liverpool, where kids are tough and rough and their families riddled with poverty and no education.. (last happened quite a long time ago).
We just weren't expecting it HERE! Asia is so polite! It's just unthinkable that anyone here might swear. Much less a child. But today it happened.
And it's so tough to see them shoeless, poor, clearly in need or else who would beg like this.. It's so tough to not have the power ( $£$£$£) to help with effect. We can't even afford to hand out 50 cent to everyone who asks. And really you'd want to give $50 notes to REALLY make an impact on how the rest of the month goes.. SO when after all the heartbreaking moments when all we can give is a tiny thing or no thing one person shouts abuse it just hurts even more.
It's sad to see real poverty, existential poverty!
Cutting the long story short: we caught our bus and landed back in Chiang Mai..
The overall bus journeys came to around 11 or 12 hours plus some local travel time and lingering around time..
4.45am - 8.45pm (the time here now)
and Jason just popped back in with our rice and stir fried vegetables..
Our Visa is good for 15 days.. That's how it is with Visas obtained at land border crossings.
If you were to fly in you would automatically get 30 days... Oh that would have been nice!
Bon appetit to us, and we'll add some pictures to this later.
Jason and Birgit
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