Burmese Secret Police
I took a bus from Bagan to Pyay that takes about 10 hours. It was on a single lane public road and drove through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen since entering Myanmar. Bagan is on east bank of the Irrawaddy River that has its own contour to the ocean. The road on the other hand climbs along the foothills with confluence flash flood beds and living creeks running from east to west. We dropped into a low valley for a bus break just at sunset. The bus needed attention both with water for the cooling and some not so delicate hammering on the linkage. We hung out about an hour. The restaurant owner asked me who I was, where from, where to, how long, etc. etc. I didn’t eat anything just paced around and moved my legs for the second half of the journey and the sun set as I stood in the middle of the road. The road was engulfed in gigantic Tamarind trees and I became surrounded by little old ladies selling their food trays of stuff that had out lived its shelf life.
As I clambered out at the bus station in Pyay there were only two or three hard-sell tuk-tuk drivers about and one spoke fair English. His face and throat were full of beetle-nut, his teeth stumps were half sawn and heavily stained red. Yoshi from Japan, the only other tourist on the bus, and I teamed up for the ride into town, about 5 kms away. Yoshi knew he was staying at the Lucky Dragon and I asked for the cheapest place in the neighborhood. Our driver mentioned the Sri Ksetra Tour that I agreed to if there was more than one person.
The Sri Ksetra tour of the museum and city and palace grounds were well worth it as I wrote in the last blog. The next day after the tour I ventured up and down the quaint little crossroads town, north-south meets east-west. Bagan is to the north, Yangon to the south south-east, Arakine (Rakine) State to the west and the Irrawaddy delta to the east. The tuk-tuk driver drove me by a beer station for a take away and on to Pann Gabar Guest House. 342 Merchant Street, Pyay. Tel. (053) 26543. $7/night with bathroom down the hall and breakfast included. The guesthouse boasts WiFi but not Internet. It does have it but it’s weak. Guests are better off crossing the street to and Internet restaurant with good food but not at midnight.
I had lunch at a sports bar/restaurant and then wandered around for another couple hours before returning for a shower and some writing. I stopped in and watched a board game on a corner for half an hour. I will recreate this game in the future. The game was played on a roughly 3’ by 3’ square raised framed polished wood surface. It can be played by two or four.
Around 8 pm I decided to go back to the Sports Bar/Restaurant to disconnect from my day, to disengage from the manuscript I’m writing, and just to detach, have a beer and watch football (soccer) in a language I have only touched the surface. At the time I had a few days left in Myanmar, a country I have only scratched the surface of and find more intriguing everyday. So I sat there for about an hour enjoying the sport and cold beer when an Indian-Burmese man moved in and sat at my table without invite. My skin crawled. I knew who he was before he and his sulky companion sat down and grilled me. My night was shot. One man watched with narrow eyes as the other pounded questions who, what, where, when, why and wanted passport number, email address, and I watched as the staff coward away from my table and kept their heads lower than his as they passed. I handed him my book card that has two websites and an email address on it. He looked it over then asked me for another email address, a gmail.com address. I told him that my email address is on the card. He wanted it anyway and I denied him. He followed up with wanting a meeting tomorrow and where was I staying? I of course followed up with the Lucky Dragon and why would a secret police officer want to hang out with a tourist. I had plans and he wasn’t part of it. I said sure, meet at 10 tomorrow. The two officers got up and went back to their old table and broke out their smart phones with out paying.
I paid my bill and left in the direction of the Lucky Dragon. Soon into the shadows I sprinted down a couple crooked streets grabbed my stuff, hopped a tuk-tuk and boarded a night bus for Yangon. Before the bus arrived at the Yangon bus station I got out at a small town with a short string of roadside cafes just after day break and had Roti and Sweet tea. This was all just in case there was a welcoming committee at the other end. I began suspecting the tuk-tuk driver in Pyay of being a go between, a plausible conclusion considering how many doors he could open compared to maybe some others.
This same thing happened to me in Moulmein where I was hit up by two secret police with the same standard questions and their answer for asking the questions was the same in both cases, ‘for your protection’, I wondered and still wonder, ‘from whom?’
I believe I was more or less targeted because I’ve been to Burma before and I’ve written a book about the repression I observed first hand. I buried a non-fiction part two, in a fiction sandwich in my book, ‘Cale Dixon and the Moguk Murders’ so I could get back in the country. Somebody told me recently, ‘Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean your not being followed.’ In Burma the old saying of the locals was, 'The walls have eyes and ears' and they wouldn't talk to foreigners in fear of their families and prison or forced labor. Today, watch the locals as they move around. They will duck and bow at all costs to a mean secret police officer who abuses his power. The secret police have assimilated into the fabric of society and they're still taking notes and prisoners.
I only have one Burmese Blog left to put up and it’s meant to be a compilation of observations, helpful criticisms and awareness.
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