Everything about going to Myanmar has been a mystery. From getting the visa in Bangkok - itself a very strange process - to talking to people about what to expect, there has been little consistency. More often there have been full on contradictions. I'm trying to set the record straight here.
So, I decided to cross at Mae Sot. I took a bus from Chiang Mai to Mae Sot. Mae Sot is a small town in the north west of Thailand. I'm using it to cross into Burma because the other crossings (Mai Sai up north, Rangon in the south) prohibit onward travel into the country.
After arriving in this town of 32,000 from the tourist burrows of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, something about the town becomes immediately clear: this is not the typical tourist-track way of entering Burma. Nor is Mae Sot a typical tourist town.
Not even the best writer could describe Mae Sot. It has an energy that nowhere else in the world has - an aurora of helplessness, but not despair. It also has a sense of peaceful understanding - there are Hmongs, Indians, Burmese, Chinese, and NGO workers scattered in pockets around the place. English, Chinese, Hindi, and Burmese are each spoken far more than Thai. The Bhat is accepted, but the Yuan, Ruppee, and Kyat are also widely circulated. There are Muslim women wrapped in headscarves or even wearing burkas living next to open-air Burmese brothels. But unlike Pattaya or Phuket, the sex for sale here is for domestic consumption. HIV has a clear presence here, and women with pencil-thin legs and narrow faces line the street wearing miniskirts each night. According to an NGO worker I met at my guesthouse, a full sixty percent if the Burmese women involved in trafficking are infected. She guessed 7-8% of Mae Sot had the disease.
Something everyone whose been here can agree on is that Mae Sot is mysterious. Because it's a trade town, markets are all around, and everything - including people - has a price. The first hotel I walked into offered me a woman ($2-4). When I declined, I was offered a man ($1). After leaving this hotel, the second hotel offered me the same, plus a virgin ($400). Their final offer? Three woman, all night ($11). The third hotel offered me a child ($6). Finally, after three tries, I was able to find a decent guesthouse which seemed to cater to expatriates.
After staying here only a day, I've learned a lot about Mae Sot. There was a few illuminating stories about gem smuggling. A women told me she had smuggled ivory inside some of her more sacred body cavities. I met a man who stepped on a landmine, lost his leg, and was subsequently fined by the Burmese army for “destroying” government property. I also heard about the cost of hiring a hitman to kill a Burnese refugee ($25).
I went down to the river that demarcated the Thai-Burma boarder and watched thousands of Burmese cross the river on intertubes. The illigal boarder crossing is tolerated by both countries because it helps their economies. But there's a curious situation that develops here as well.
You see, the railing above the shore is where the river 'officially' starts. But below this railing is a very small stretch of swampy shoreline jetting out perhaps twenty feet at it's widest. Because it's officially river, this area is a no man's land which falls outside the control of both country's authorities. But Burmese marketers setup shop on the river side of the railing, meaning that they are putting their illegal goods outside of Thailand, literally by a few centimetres. But they're also outside of Myanmar.
If you're brave you can step beyond the railing into in these markets. Here you can find the open sale of anything illigal. Bags of opium and bricks of herion are marketed - in the open - like they are rice or spice. Guns? Check. Granades? Check. Fake money? Check. Passports? Check. I had no idea that places like this still existed outside of Khyber, Peshwar, and Mogidishu.
But Mae Sot is a fascinating for the intrepid traveler for other reasons, too. When I arrived here, nobody seemed to know much about traveling into inland Myanmar once across the boarder. Because highways are only one lane, buses in Myanmar run on a complex system: one day they run in one direction, the next they go the opposite direction. My guesthouse had an extremely large whiteboard dedicated to figuring out which days what buses went where. Even so, they were going on predications and rumors, not official schedules. My intuition is there is a method to the madness, so when I figure it out I'll report back.
Exchanging currency is also shrouded in secrecy, as was how to summon a bus on the boarder. I had to go to one of the many black markets in Mai Sot to buy Myanmar Kyat (pronounced Chaat). My guesthouse operator, a migrant Karen from a teeny Burmese village, gave me the following instructions: "Take the first right on the street. There is a large market. Find the stall selling fish. Theb there is some red clothes. Go into that stall with the clothes. They will exchange your money there."
I followed his advice; but if you've ever been to a Burmese market you know there are tons of places selling fish. So, I had someone translate into Thai and Burmese that I was looking to buy Kyat. Then I topknot to the sha first guy I could find.
"Come" he said, leading me into a room. He pulled some clothes hanging up for sale around us as to shroud our activity.
"How much baht you have?"
"6,000"
"I give you 179,500 kyat."
Kyat comes in relatively small denominations (5,000, 1,000, 500, 200, 100) while baht does not. So reciving 170,000 kyat was a chaotic experience that took about a half-hour counting and recounting to make sure there wasn't any fast hands (there wasn't). I ended up exchanging my six 1,000 baht bills with around 150 or so kyat bills.
Exchanging money this way felt extremely shady, but that's because everything involving Myanmar is shady. By the way, my guesthouse operator's English was exceptional and the service and advice given at Bai Fern Guesthouse can't be more highly recommended. Rooms are clean & cheap ($5), too.
This, I think, is not a town for the inexperienced traveler.
The general cluelessness of the locals that surrounds the country less than one mile away - a country many of these people are from and return to regularly - is very strange. I've never been anywhere like Mae Sot before, but if it's any indication of what to expect in Myanmar, this will be a very interesting trip.
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