The Border Run and More Fun

10/27/09 1:53pm

The Border Run

On October 25th I was required to go to Burma, on a “border run”, in order to validate my visa again. Before I left I had gotten a 3x multiple entry visa which is intended to cover the full required 6 months I need to be here for my internship. The problem is that nowhere on my visa does it indicate I had requested 60 day entries and usually they just give out routine 30 day ones, visa or not. This, obviously, is a problem for me since every time I enter Thailand now I need to figure out how I am going to convince the immigration officer that I should get 60 days instead of 30. The first time went well when I flew in and explained nicely I had made a request for 60 days in advance, and I assumed that with my first 60 day stamp it would be easier to get subsequent 60 day ones. Even so, I was still nervous to try since I kept on hearing from foreigners in Mae Sot that had to do runs that the officers were being strict and only giving 15-30 day stamps for walking in, not flying in. No matter, I still had to try my best.

The whole thing took no longer than 30-45 minutes, especially considering I had no intentions of spending any time in Burma, only going there to get my stamp. You have to cross by foot on the “Thai/Burma Friendship Bridge” which goes over a nice big river that divides the two countries. On my walk I was greeted by a Burmese man who spoke English well and was very keen to engage in lots of conversation. He told me all about the nice temples and beautiful places in Burma he wanted to show me and at this point I thought he was accompanying me on my walk because he was looking for some employment as a tour guide on the other side. I told him I wasn’t going to be staying, that I had friends waiting for me to get back (which wasn’t a lie) but this information did not put him off. He was wearing an FBI hat, I told him what it meant and he was humored by this but it also opened a door to talk about politics. He started to tell me how his boss isn’t a good manager and he is required to float materials illegally across the river. This actually wasn’t surprising news at all since if you look on either side of the bridge you can see people openly crossing in broad daylight with no authority attempting to stop them. In fact on my walk back I spent quite a lot of time taking photos of the “taxi” service, which includes a long rope and intertubes with “taxi drivers” that pull their customers in the tube across the river by this rope. More on that in a second but back to the story. This man continued to chat me up until he led me to a sketchy table a bit away from the Burmese immigration office which is where the new adventure began.

When we reached this table, this woman handed me a small make-shift sheet that was titled “Influenza Surveillance Form: Ministry of Health, Union of Myanmar”. What alarmed me the most, besides the fact it was requesting tons of personal and valuable information like my passport number and birth date, was the fact that no Burmese authority figure was requesting this information, instead it was this one man who had walked across the bridge with me and this woman. Once I was handed the form, I told the Burmese man that I would fill it out if requested by the immigration officer when I was receiving my stamp. He paused, had no response and we walked to the office where he opened the door for me.

The meeting was fairly quick, lots of people enjoying their lunch and the immigration officer I spoke with gladly took my 500 baht for a “stamp fee” (whatever, they don’t require that in Thailand, enough said), recorded all my info into a computer and I was soon on my way. Interesting, at no point did he ever ask for my Influenza form. When I left, the Burmese man was nowhere to be found. Hmmm. It made me wonder, was he just a part of some corrupt scheme his company had created to get foreigners’ information or was he working somehow with the Burmese Militia gathering this info for some other purpose? The latter option didn’t make sense to me since they had already recorded my info into their computer (again, this process isn’t done on the Thai side). Regardless, the whole thing was very sketchy.

Like I mentioned before on the walk back I saw several people using the “taxi” service. My favorite was a man leaving Thailand with a very large stuffed animal attached to him. There was also a family of about 6 in one tube with only one man pulling them along. Scary considering the size of the river and how heavy the currents are.

When I reached the Thai immigration office, I previously had dressed for the occasion by wearing a nice non-touristy shirt, and combined this with much patience, big smiles and a few lies and I got my 60 day visa with a promise of another 60 days if I visit the same immigration officer in 2 months. Very relieving! It’s nice to not have to think about it all for another two months.

More Fun

The reason why I am able to write this post in the middle of a workday is because of all the unexpected commotion today at the office.

So today I got ready to go to work like any other day. Once I got to the office I knew something was up when there was a padlock hooked into the door from the outside, but not locked. It completely looked like no one was in the building. I unhooked the lock, opened the door and it was pitch black inside with no people to be found. I entered anyways and went to my desk in the other room where I found only one other staff on the computer. I asked “where is everybody?” she said “didn’t you hear?” I said no and she told me that today is the day the Thai police will come to raid the office. They haven’t actually raided the office since 2008 but they tend to pick times linked closely to political uprising happening in Burma. In 2008 it was the creation of a new constitution while now it is related to the 2010 elections. The Thai police this time are worried plans are being created by organizations like KWO to do anti-Burmese protests, or other schemes, to counter the much anticipated 2010 Burmese election. The Thai government likes to make a point they are against these protest acts because they don’t like to be considered enemies of Burma since they receive a large percentage of their natural resources, such as gasoline, from them. It’s all very political, but what that means for KWO and myself is that there may be more and more frequent occurrences like this the closer we get to the 2010 election, which is still TBA, and intended to stay that way.

Anyways, I wasn’t sure what to do so the staff member called one of the more senior staff and she told me to wait in the office, do pretend work, until she could come and explain things to me more in detail. So I sat with the one other staff member for about an hour and started to become more and more anxious so she called the other staff member again then we talked on the phone instead. She simply said “today we have security issues, it’s better to come back tomorrow”, ok, so the other staff member and I both left very soon after. As far as I know, no one was caught but they are going to let me know if the security issues are still uneasy tomorrow. I’m sure more on that later.

*Update*

10/29/09

The KWO staff was ok during the day of the raid, but several other locations were raided and some people arrested. At least this time no one was injured.

The "Family" Outing

10/07/09 5:16pm

Last Wednesday one of the staff members came up to me with a few other staff members giggling and hesitating to talk to me. One of the KWO staff then said “we want to ask you something, be we are embarrassed to”. I told her she could feel comfortable asking me anything and eventually she asked me if I would like to join them for a “how do you call it”-eventually we figured out-barbeque. I was a bit confused with where it would be happening but it sounded like it was down the road somewhere. She was worried they wouldn’t have vegetarian dishes for me, very sweet of her, but I told her that if it was a restaurant to not worry I’m sure I could find something.

Friday rolls around and just before 5pm everyone starts quickly gathering their things to leave, so I did as well. I walked out the front door and there was a truck sitting there JAM PACKED with people sitting all over in the back, people I had never seen before but I learned people that all lived within the same living quarters next to the office. I wasn’t quite sure where to put myself so one of the staff said in the back seat. She opened the door and all you could see was about 6-8 people crammed in the front and back, not remotely room for one more person, not to mention a large girl like myself (especially when compared to most of the people here). I instead crawled in the bed of the truck with about 10 others, squatted and about 15-20 of us were on our way.

The drive wasn’t so bad but it felt much longer in a squatting position. We arrived and I noticed it was one of the restaurants I pass daily when I bike back to town. The restaurant was mostly empty even though it seats about 100 or so, but we sat near the back anyways. When we were seated some of the restaurant staff started to come out with plates and plates of “goodies”. I will just say, the BBQs here are just a tad different than back at home! On the plates were fresh squid, pig livers, pork, some unidentifiable meats and, the international meat, chicken. The barbecue’s themselves were things I’ve never seen before. They were large ceramic pot like things with holes on the sides that were placed sporadically along the table. They had hot charcoal in them and on top there was a metal piece that was shaped like a..hmmm..almost reminds me of an angel food cake mold, where it has a protruding top part-to give the cake its hole- but a circular base with a lip to hold liquid. Ok, that didn’t make much sense but if you could picture that upside down and placed on top of the barbeque then the protruding part is the part where the meats were put on to cook and the circular base with a lip is where the water is poured so it can boil and be used as a soup after putting meats and veggies in it. (I forgot my camera, very disappointing).

For HOURS we all sat there, heating up the meat, adding new water, boiling vegetables and rice noodles in the water and chatting with husbands, wives, cousins, friends, staff, neighbors, babies and all. I learned from the staff that they only go to this barbeque about once every 3-6 months because it is too expensive for them to go frequently, and the only reason why they were able to go this time was because a donor was treating them to the outing. The cost of the meal per person is 99 baht or $3 each. From the time we showed up to the time we left the place had completely filled up, there were at least 100 people there if not more. Also the restaurant staff made a buffet of extra vegetables and items to grill as well as dessert jelly pieces that you combine with ice and sugar flavored syrup, very tasty stuff!

Leaving was almost as adventurous as the meal. Since I can’t understand what’s happening half the time, due to the fact everyone speaks Karen, I didn’t realize that a bunch of people were leaving in groups because it had begun to rain and people were trying to prevent being in the back of the truck on the way back (at least I think that’s what was happening). So the first batch decides to take off and I was getting anxious to leave after a while since it had start to rain and also was getting very dark, something I didn’t consider before, yet I still needed to bike back. So the truck had already begun to leave when I asked if I could catch a ride. It was no problem because others decided at the last minute as well, so a big group of us began to run outside to reach the truck, then I realized we needed to run much farther than expected, across the median onto the other side of the road. I think we needed to get in the truck farther away because it needed to turn around before anyone could get into it due to security since there was a police checkpoint at the same location where the truck needed to circle around. Once the truck was ready for us, we all started to run in a group and scramble to get into the truck as quickly as possible to avoid the rain/security and quickly be on our way. We were just fine then upon arrival back to the office, the staff quickly said good bye and ran inside to not get wet. Pretty funny, here I was standing at my bike alone, in the rain, and the dark, in the country 3 kilometers way from town. All I could think was, how did I exactly get to this point? No matter, I biked like a fiend back to town and hoped upon hope I wouldn’t be attacked by the lovely dogs that run in packs in the night. I was just fine, but definitely out of breath when I arrived back home.