Dear little friends,

In Kawkareik our kind, kind driver swung by his house and told his smiling, kindly-looking wife he was taking us to Myawaddy. His brother jumped into the back with Bruce so the driver would have company on the way back home from the border. I sat up front and we chatted, his English was fairly good and we got some rudimentary information exchanged, he had a five-year-old in kindergarten, yes, this road was hilly (it certainly was!) and, nodding at several trucks with front ends completely destroyed, and a very dangerous road, he commented.

We don’t know why the very first driver we waved down was willing on the spot to take us and our bikes and numerous bags. We could have stood there for hours trying to get a ride but it was actually probably less than a minute. He spoke English. He was not resentful of having responsibility, just concerned for our safety while we were in his hands.

I was thinking a lot about luck. In Myanmar it’s all Shwe (gold) this and Lucky that. Lottery ticket sellers line the market entrance and wander the streets. This road that kicked us to shreds also placed us with this extraordinary kindness and generosity. I thought of the emaciated woman I saw earlier in the day and felt deeper shame than I have in a long, long time. This is how it is when we come to Myanmar, it’s shwe this and lucky that and tarnish and terrible terrible luck for so many that come into our gaze. We don’t deserve anything we have, not from karma, not from Providence or divine baptism, no, we simply won the lottery when we were born where and when we were, no ticket needed. These thoughts seemed heavier than the panniers in the back with Bruce and yet as light as air as we zoomed effortlessly up the hills that would have broken me more than I already was.

As we neared the outskirts of Myawaddy our driver started pointing out hotels. No doubt he was interested in getting back home as soon as he could because it would be dark in an hour or so. I had a couple of hotels already marked on my map so directed him to one of them and there across the street from it we unloaded ourselves and kit and caboodle.

“You stay here?” he asked pointedly. 

“Uh, yeah, probably,” I replied. Bruce was making noises to indicate maybe not and the driver was worried. We assured him we would be fine, that we were so grateful for his help, so his brother climbed into the cab and he did a U-turn, waved goodbye and drove off into the dusk.

“Let’s go to the border.” 

Bruce was ready to leave Myanmar, right now. It was about 3:30 and we still had two hours of light left, and I had flagged a couple of places to stay on the other side of the border in Mae Sot, so I agreed, let’s go to the border. We were eight days over our visa and we had crisp new US bills to pay the $3/day overstay fine. Okey doke, Thailand here we come.

It was a couple of miles to Myanmar Immigration. It was pure chaos, no surprise there. We overstayed our visa five years ago and it was a truly memorable experience documented here. 

Bruce went into the office first while I stood out by the bikes and watched people and their shenanigans. It’s not like there were a lot of shady characters or anything but sometimes shady characters don’t look shady so I stood and waited in the narrow space between the immigration building and where cars were driving through. 

I waited and waited. Some random teenaged boy emerged with an American passport, presumably Bruce’s, and disappeared around a corner. Great. I peeked in and Bruce was sitting patiently in front of a desk and discussing how many days he had overstayed. I ducked out and waited some more. The sun went down in a blaze of sunset glory, the chaos continued.

Bruce had gone in with exactly $24, he came back out and said they told him he only owed them $18. Uh, okay. And that they had rejected his pristine money. He counted out new money, handed me the same amount, I stood there with my passport and pristine $18. I wanted to open my handlebar bag and hide them there but my bag was filthy with dust, I was filthy with dust. I was going to ruin my pristine money. It was going to get stolen from me. And I had to pee.

Finally I stashed the passport and money and dug around for two wet towelette things to wash myself off with. They came away filthy, I stashed them in the bag but not next to the pristine money. 

It was getting dark. Any hopes of riding into Mae Sot in daylight were gone. Finally Bruce came out but this time he needed his Myanmar e-Visa, which nobody had told us to hang onto, after all, they had let us into the country, right? But we had hung onto them because you never know and so now I was fishing around for mine too, with smeary, sweaty tired fingers.

Eventually he came back out shaking his head saying, “You won’t believe what’s going on in there.”

Oh goodie, my turn! I scuttled in and put on my Angelic Face of Patience and Tolerance even though I felt like crying. They sort of knew that and after they counted up my days on their fingers they asked for $24. Oh-kayyyy. I told them Bruce had just paid $18 and they pretended he had tried to rip them off so then he had to come back in and we squared everything away with $48 total and then they diddled around checking the contents of their cash drawer and adding up various overstay fees collected that day and generally being morons. I don’t like to use that word but it was ridiculous, counting and recounting amounts that any third grader could have figured out in five minutes. 

A cute Thai or Burmese girl came in and they processed her in 20 seconds flat, flirting the whole time. I sat and waited while these knuckleheads dilly-dallied and waited for me to explode so they could passive-aggressively have a reason to stall further. I sat with my AFPT mien firmly placed on, nodding agreeably and thinking, no wonder this country is in the toilet with guys like this throwing their power around and completely unqualified to do even the slightest of tasks. One guy was making a big show of writing down a bunch of passport numbers. The other one strutted around with a large calculator. The bag o’ dicks vibe was pretty thick. A German guy came in and was processed in 25 seconds with no flirting just to show the American that they were playing her.

I followed the boy with my passport to the copy shop and found my entrance stamp in the passport because he wasn’t any more clever than the suits in the office. Finally they took my photo, stamped some things, and I went back out. It had taken two full hours to get our exit stamps.

We rode across the bridge to Thailand, changed sides from right lane to left lane, filled out our Thai paperwork, had our pix and fingerprints taken, traded pleasantries with a genial and courteously professional Thai official who spoke perfect English. The women who worked there came out and gently moved the sleeping dog that blocked our bikes, the dog that every other person passing through immigration stepped over without comment or surprise. We were out of there in ten minutes.

And then, there we were. Free. We rode in the cooling dark a couple of miles to the guest house, whose owner did not comment on our ghastly appearance, just gave us a key and pointed us to the door of a spotless little bungalow.

Inside we stashed our dusty panniers near the shower where they were going to get rinsed off, my clothes fell into a dusty heap, and I was nearly weeping with relief as the dust and dirt and sweat of 36 days of Myanmar rolled down the shower drain. 

It was hard, you know? I’ve talked a lot about how hard it’s been. It feels like I stand with a group of my closest friends, people I love dearly, respect for their courage and grace and loving hearts. Vivid, full of life, every day in Myanmar was surprising and beautiful and terrible. But the group is bossed around and bullied by one person who picks on everybody in turn, nobody knows how to get the cruel person out of the group and you can’t be with your beloved friends without tolerating the casual injustice of the shithead who has dug himself in like a dirty rotten tick.

We now know that the road project was started with funds from international NGO money, even though the top brass in Myanmar are filthier with money than I was with road dust. The project ground to a halt because of some controversy over a nearby quarry and the road has been awful for nearly two years. The NGO took their ball and went home. And the guest house closing to foreigners is because a nearby town had a terrorist attack during the Tazaungdaing festival and two police officers and another person were killed. So yeah, it makes total sense to close the guesthouses near the border? The old .005% rule still applies.

I have never yet left Myanmar without serious conflicting feelings. It is so worth it. I’m really proud of this leg of the trip even though mileage was low and bellyaching was constant. But it is not worth riding bicycles in, I’ve decided, until some infrastructure improvements happen which will probably be a long time from now. We got our asses kicked on the way out but we were also sent another angel to help us and so we were super fortunate and we know it. And you know what? We can leave even if it takes two hours with a fake face on. I can’t imagine wearing it every single day.

The day had started a lifetime ago and we were too exhausted and traumatized to go out and eat. We lay on the bed in our clean skin and hair and thought about all of the food we were going to eat tomorrow and every day we were in Thailand, and of the smooth roads, the cleanliness, the ability to speak and read a bit of Thai and communicate, to feel just a bit more civilized. Thailand has its own sets of problems but right then we were justly feeling relief. 

We named this journal ‘Unmettled Roads’ for a reason. Leaving Myanmar with that familiar mix of failure, pride, rage, gratitude, love, guilt, respect, and an existential horror that a country could sabotage its own citizens so much and bind them to the cruelty of poverty and eternal difficulty meant that even though the day had started a lifetime ago, I lay awake and was hungry and full of thoughts racing, racing, racing down a road boiling with red dust that settles nowhere and can never be washed out of anything it has touched. 

Heart

8

Comment

1

Link

Jen RahnThat's definitely a smile that will shine through the ridiculosity of the immigrations office experience!
Reply to this comment
4 years ago

Log in to comment or reply