On the May 1st Wu-Yi Holiday, Lester, Will, and I took the night bus to Ruili, arriving in the mid-morning. The signs were in Chinese, Dai language, and English. We had some noodles, and I took a taxi to the border, the opulent Jiegao, dubiously rich as it sits on the border with one of the poorest countries in the world. The Chinese border guards informed me that I must have a pre-arranged guide if I wanted to enter Myanmar. The sent me to Hai Wai to arrange the paperwork. So I took a taxi back to Ruili, to Hai Wai, and was told that this office dealt with the affairs of overseas Chinese, not foreigners. I went around the corner to a travel agency and she wrote something down which I could not read, I found a taxi driver who took me to the destination—which turned out to be the border again. Jiegao.

The border area seems to be a Special Economic Zone, a thumb of land that crosses the Ruili River into what used to be Burma. It is a gleaming development of new buildings, wide streets, nice cars, mansions, and Burmese day laborers sleeping under giant banyan trees. There is a brand new custom house that puts American border crossings to shame. And this is the Burmese border.

This time at gate I met a friendly border guard whose first words were, “I wish you have a good trip.” She then went out of her way to find me a guide, but there was none available at 3 p.m. She gave me a phone number and told me I should come back the next day.

I took the taxi back to Ruili, where I met up with Letser & Will at Bobo’s a small drink shop. Very crowded. We tried some Myanmar Beer, not bad but a little expensive at 15 yuan.



Somehow I made it through the night. Lester’s tremulous snoring made it hard to sleep. At times he’d stop breathing and suddenly be gasping for air. This happened in 15 minute cycles. Will did his snoring bit as well. The bedbugs played their part on my back. The mosquitoes whispered in my ear, and the heat kept me sweating. At 6 a.m., I was up and ready to go. I wanted a quick bowl of noodles and then to be at the border around 8. I couldn’t get Lester & Will going. They were arguing about Tiberius or some other Roman emperor, blah, blah, Quo Vadis. I didn’t care—I just wanted to eat!!

Finally I made it to the border. We found a guide—I just had to wait for him to cross from Burma and meet me in China. In the meantime, the Chinese border guards were chatting away with me—I later saw on the Burmese side that I was the first foreigner to pass through in two weeks. One brought out a digital camera and had me pose for a couple of pictures, one by myself, and one in an “action pose,” looking at my passport with another border guard. This was not the US. I don’t know if they were taking pictures for fun or for propaganda purposes or because I was a potential spy—I was warned about this on the way to Ruili by a Chinese.

So after an hour, I made it through Chinese emigration, with my guide a friendly fellow named Tun Khaing. We went to a tiny immigration station where some surly guards in drab olive green army uniforms filled out paperwork. Above them was a portrait of Myanmar’s Dear Leader, General Than Shwe. A woman filled out all my papers and the guide was the one who actually stamped my passport. And immigration officer was too busy chewing betel nut and spit a large load of red juice into the garbage can. He smelled like cheap chewing tobacco.

We went to the office of the agency who was to escort me to Lashio. This area of Burma is a center of opium and methamphetamine manufacture and a smuggling gateway to China, not firmly under the central government’s control. This is Shan State, and most of it is closed to foreigners, so you must have some permits, a guide, and a driver to escort you five hours to the first open town after China. I sat in that office, which was also a home, for two hours. I had to sign a form that I was here for traveling, and not for political or religious reasons. I just wanted to go!

Burma is an hour and a half behind China. I didn’t know time zones also were adjusted by 30 minutes instead of just hour blocks. That gained me some time, and I chatted with a few people, one man who was translating a Burmese document into Chinese. Finally, we climbed into a dilapidated Toyota. My companions were a Chinese woman from Wuhan who was on her way to Mandalay, her guide a Chinese-Burmese girl from Hsipaw, my guide, and the driver, who was also a lawyer.

The steering wheel was on the right, as most cars I saw, but the cars drive on the right as well. It made passing slow-moving trucks a little dangerous, especially as the roads are narrow. However, there are not many cars. Most people wear the traditional longyi, which is a kind of sarong. Almost all women, children, and some men smear, sprinkle, blotch, stripe their faces with thanakha (powdered tree bark) as make up/sunblock. It gives them a peachy complexion. The red droplets all over the ground are now blood but the remains of betel spit.

The road we were on turned out to be National Highway 3, which would be a blacktop county road anywhere else. Sometimes we got stopped by a cattle traffic jam, but other than that there was not much traffic. Some huge Nissan trucks were heading for China. We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, staffed by children. They had a buffet style meal, all you could eat for 2000 kyats, about $1.60.

We went through two checkpoints where I was twice reminded not to take any photos. The authorities time-stamped my papers. This was self-financed oppression, as the officials required permits in order to keep track of the movements of the people. It has been said that Burma is a prison with 40 million inhabitants.

We made a brief stop at the driver’s father’s house. His father was a lawyer too, 84 years old and could speak English, Burmese, Chinese, Shan, and French. I got dropped off in the small, sleepy town of Hsipaw at the Mr. Charles Guest House. I got a room with a bathroom for $5, including breakfast. I immediately made a dash for Nine Buddha Hill to catch the sunset. A lone Westener was up there, passed out in a chair. I told him, “You’re gonna miss it” and he glanced up at me in a glassy red-eye stoned stare. He was on something—hash or heroin, take your pick. The sunset was spectacular and all my huffing and puffing got me up there just in time. On my way down, some kids shouted, “Bye, bye!” to me as I walked past—a welcome break from all the obnoxious “HELLOOOOOs” I get in China.

I walked over a long rickety wooden bridge that spans (not for long, I imagine) the Dot’htawaddy River. I squeezed between a massive Nissan truck and the side of the bridge. Back in town, it was dark. There were streetlights, but they weren’t on. There was no electricity. Some shops had their own generators which supplied light, and some families were eating candlelit dinners, but for the most part it was dark. If you go to Burma, bring a flashlight.

Three older men said hello to me and invited me to sit down for a beer. One man was 80 years old. They were Shan people, which are related to the Thais and the Dais of China. We chatted for a few minutes and I stepped into a restaurant called “Burmese Cuisine” which I later found out was called “Forget Me Not.” It’s run by three Burmese sisters and a mother. I watched Korean music videos dubbed over with Burmese pop music. I had some curry, rice, soup, and five vegetable dishes for 1200 kyats, less than $1. After that, I went home and fell asleep. My first day in Burma, and I was feeling great peace. It is known as the Golden Land.

The next morning, I got up at 4 a.m., jumped over the wall of my hotel (since the gate was locked), and went to the candle market. The market was packed! I listened to some Shan opera music (think marimba/Zappa/Indian time signatures/Steve Reich/Beijing opera). I walked past a Christian Chinese school that was having Chinese class from 6-8 a.m. The teacher let me sit in and watch. The classrooms were indoors but open to the outside. They were learning the traditional Chinese characters, not the simplified ones they use here in Mainland China.

After this, I went to a monastery. Burma is a heavily Buddhist country. I saw monks everywhere. Every boy must go through a few years of being a novice monk, and I saw many boy monks walking down the street, barefoot, with metal jars asking for alms. A monk came down and talked to me in English, and showed me around the temple. In the background, I heard a beautiful melody that was being broadcast over loudspeakers day and night. He told me they were reading a Pali sutra and it would take seven days and nights to finish. The main hall of the temple’s floor was teak wood. You always have to remove your shoes when entering a Burmese home or temple. The main hall had some beautiful statuary, long locks of women’s hair hanging from the ceiling (so they would have beautiful hair in the next life), old photos of monks and the last saopha of Northern Shan State and his Austrian wife.

He told me that the word “Shan” is related to “Siam,” the old name for Thailand. The reason it was “Shan” was because, “the Burmese don’t know how to close their mouths!” He also told me that Thai/Dai/Shan people were in India, in Assam State. I also met some ethnic Thais in Vietnam (Ban Lac, Hoabinh Province).

The next thing I did was rent a bike. I biked out of Hsipaw and through some neighboring Shan villages. Most houses didn’t have electricity, were built on stilts, and had thatched roofs. Below the house would be a work area/living room/small shop/chicken coop. It was hot, this was hot season, about 35 degrees Celsius. I finally made it back to Hsipaw, had lunch at Mr. Food. I saw a funeral procession. It started with someone carrying the graduation portrait of the deceased (this seems to be the most prized photograph for parents), followed by chanting monks, friends bearing flowers and incense, a pickup truck overflowing with people, and then hundreds of Japanese motorbikes.

I biked around some more, found a coffeeshop on the Dot’htawaddy run by an Australian woman. She had been living in Burma for nine months. We chatted for a little while, but it looked like it would rain so I biked back to the hotel. The staff turned on the generator and some kids broke out an old videogame console and played for a while. Then it was time for some Burmese films, which always seemed to involve the military and fighting and propaganda. I chatted with one staff member who had excellent English (as many Burmese people do) about her plans to come to Yunnan Province. Everyone should come to Yunnan.

That night I went to the Burmese restaurant again, bought a ticket for the morning bus to Mandalay, and went to sleep. It had been a long, eventful day, and I felt a little sad to be leaving beautiful Hsipaw. There wasn’t really much to do there, just the atmosphere of the place made a great town to relax and hang out.

At 5:00 a.m., the bus pulled up to my hotel (they even pick you up). The man who had sold me the ticket the day earlier was there. He was bouncing with energy. I told him he had a lot of energy for 5 a.m., and he told me that he had played two tennis games the day before. Two weeks ago he had played against a professional tennis player. He didn’t smoke or drink or chew betel nut, and he meditated twice each day. He apologized that we would have to change buses in another town.

The road out of Hsipaw ran up and down mountains and through tiny villages. After two or three hours, we stopped in a town to change buses. I had a small breakfast of dahl and rice in a wooden shack while they were transferring all the goods to the new bus. I stepped on the bus and saw the floor covered with bags of potatoes. The entire bus, the aisles, even under the seats were full of bags of raw potatoes, so for the next six hours my knees would be banging against my chin while I sat next to a mother, her baby, and her young son. Half the bus was people, the other half was crammed full of goods going to market, along with plenty of goods strapped to the roof. The bus was in terrible condition—a 1970s era Japanese bus that they probably didn’t want anymore in Japan so they sold it to Myanmar.

We went through some other small towns and past the Defense Training Center, the military’s headquarters which was a set of beautiful buildings set on finely landscaped grounds. This was surrounded by the wretched poverty of a country which has been on lockdown ever since the military takeover in 1962. The generals live rich and opulent lives in a resource-rich nation while most of the population struggle through their day-to-day lives.

In 1988, the military allowed elections, which 85% of the population voted for the NLD party, putting Aung Sang Suu Kyi in power. The authorities quickly invalidated the results, killed hundreds maybe thousands in the ensuing protests, and threw Aung Sang Suu Kyi in jail. She is still under house arrest. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. I encourage all of you to read more about what’s going on in Burma. They are cut off from the world, and it’s a tragedy.