Burmese Secret Police

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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Katha By Boat To Mandalay

Katha by Boat To Mandalay

We got up early and paid with kyat and boarded at 515 a.m. The ‘Fast Boat’ was sparsely loaded as we began our journey down river and we got a whole two person wood bench each as we left the silt beach at 530 a.m. and still in the dark.

It may be a fast boat but within an hour we had grounded with speed on a sand bar. We sat for 2 hours waiting for a tugboat to pull us this way and that up river while many locals showed up and jumped in the water. It was about a foot deep the length of the boat. There was a patch of grass holding to the river floor 10 meters off the bow. Could have been a signal. All other boats went far to port where went once we were freed.

I got up and took a look around the boat. There was a man sleeping over the engine in the blistering sun and behind him sat a two-pronged propeller with rock bent blades and one entirely missing. It didn’t bode well. The toilet emptied into the river. As we traveled down river the locals would grab a cup, rinse it out and drink out of the river, something that if you and I did we would go straight to the hospital and suffer severe weight loss and probably amebic dysentery.

Once we were free from the sand and heading down river the captain honked at the banks for more passengers. On shore someone would waive a t-shirt and the captain would pull over. Sometimes the locals would sell goods along the boat side or come on board if there was time and sell water, soft drinks, platters of dried fish, rice and chicken in Styrofoam boxes. Beer was very expensive so BYOB and save hotel fare. The boat filled up with people, furniture, and bags of rice in the isle. Many times people could be seen washing their teeth and doing laundry.

There were hundreds logging boats and barges carrying tropical hardwoods heading down stream for extraction by bigger ships and shipped to foreign powers. I don’t know how much is legal or illegal but at the rate they are decimating the forest one should wonder. The 40’ x 3’ in diameter are being loaded along the shoreline with heavy equipment including cranes with hundreds of trees on each barge. I didn’t see any tops or bottoms of the trees just the prime cut. Dump trucks are being loaded by hand baskets usually by women, children and the elderly. They get paid about $2/day off of a barge load of sand and put on trucks to head into the interior most likely for road construction.

After numerous stops for passengers we realized we were not going to arrive at 7pm, more like midnight. I had a quick look in the wheelhouse and saw no instruments, not even a depth finder. Driving at night for the boat captain was going to be complicated with no running lights due to generator inconsistent failure. We traveled down river in the dark and the captain did a great job of dropping people off and avoiding further delays, all in all a great trip.

When we arrived it was midnight and we grabbed a tuk-tuk to the Golden Dream Hotel for one night and off to Bagan by boat the next day. A different kind of boat.

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Mandalay, Myanmar

Mandalay, Myanmar

I booked a bus to Mandalay and a room reservation at the Peacock Lodge at an over priced hotel for one night hoping the next day I would find something cheaper. There is a bus at 800 am, one at 900, and a bus leaving in the afternoon. The 900 am arrives ½ after the first but the first one goes through some small towns and lets a few people off along the way. I chose the first bus and paid for a taxi to take me to the bus station. That went terribly wrong due to taxi drivers wanting money and not listening. The driver spoke English, I told him I already paid for the ride and had a receipt. When we got to the bus station he asked me for money and I showed him the receipt and he rolled his eyes. I explained again, ‘I already paid’. I gave him the receipt and the card of the travel agency where I made the arrangements and walked on to the bus. The AC bus company was Mandalar Minn and the bus was brand new and came with a stewardess who handed out plastic bags to all those who thought they might need a second or already felt sick before the bus moved. The bus left promptly at 800 am with the intension of arriving at 500 pm. By this time I have begun adding an hour or two to the scheduled arrival. We drove up the ‘new’ highway with no traffic until we turned off the highway then it got precarious turning around to get back to the highway. The bus arrived an hour late at the edge of dusk. I hoped in a taxi and drove to the Peacock Lodge. It was $30/night, which is outrageous for what I need but all the backpacker type guesthouses were booked up so you do what you have to. Food at the Peacock was wonderful and prepared to order. I ate a late dinner and went for a walk around the neighborhood. The Peacock Lodge isn’t close to anything so a taxi is also necessary to leave.

The next morning I thought I’d pack and maybe just catch a train north knowing I was coming back through Mandalay after some river boating. Getting a train ticket proved very difficult first in one line then another then another. I was leap frogging with another couple. I was trying to get to as far north as possible and buses are out of the equation so it’s fly or train. Another couple Poul (Danish spelling) and Steph (Kiwi living in Fiji), they were trying to get to Na Pa, 12 hours north by train. When I heard them make contact and order their tickets I jumped over and got one more ticket. As requested we paid in U.S. currency with crisp clean bills, no blemishes, no bent corners or they won’t take them. After acquiring the ticket we moved away from the station and I asked them where they were staying and they told me they were staying at the Golden Dream, $20/night a brand new hotel open only one month in a great location closer to the center of town in a neighborhood 20 minutes from the train station and 20 minutes from the Irrawaddy River jetty. No. (225) 30^th street, between 89^thand 90^th streets. The hotel is north of Pyi Kyan Market. Tel: 09-259065955. They speak good English. And breakfast is served on the roof from 7-9. They have WiFi but not internet.

After settling in I hoped on a motorcycle taxi with a Shan Christian man also named Paul for a cheap way to see the town. We first went up to Mandalay Hill to the Pagoda and the viewpoint. I walked up through the maze of shops and when I got up to the Pagoda I noticed the colors had changed since the last time I was here from light blue with mirror squares to gold with mirrored squares. I’m pretty sure everything has been remodeled for the tourists. In Buddhism beliefs, everything is left to disintegrate at its own pace through weather and time.

After a Shan lunch Paul took me to Mandalay Palace for a look inside. There is a military entrance on the north side and a public entrance where they charge you $10 USD. This appears to go straight into the military pockets even though there’s a sign that tells where the money goes. This ticket is good for 5 days and covers a few other archeological zone sights. I still have strong feelings about giving anything, especially money to the Myanmar military.

I did a drive by the prison just to see how it looked. It was quiet but full.

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