Back to Beautiful Burma: A Fleeting Visit to Kawthoung and Some Vaguely Political Ramblings

In theory Burma has changed a lot in the last year.

When I last and first visited, in spring 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from house arrest but wasn’t allowed to participate in elections. A year later, in early 2012, the NLD (her party) won 43 of the 45 seats for which they were allowed to compete; although a minuscule proportion of the total number of seats in parliament this was, debatably, of huge symbolic importance.

Aung San Suu Kyi has also been given seemingly free rein in the last few months to leave the country and to meet with foreign politicians such as Hilary Clinton and (unfortunately) David Cameron.

Other changes have included the apparent abolishment of media censorship (although the board of censors still exists and checks everything post publication) and the removal of 2000 names from the barred-from-entering blacklist.

In response to these apparent improvements many trade sanctions have been suspended by the US and the EU, (something that can be seen as either progress for Burma or simply condoning what is still an inherently evil junta).

In light of all this it was extremely interesting to go back, and to see whether anything was visibly different, or if these changes were too vague and distant to effect normal people.

Our initial verdict was that, on the surface (as it would be ridiculous to claim we saw any deeper in the short time we were there) little actually appeared any different, for better or for worse.

I was scared that the negative side of a potentially positive thing would be Burma becoming exposed to Thailand style mass tourism, however in Kawthoung we only met one middle aged American who had also decided to stay for a few days.

Despite the fact that this is now Air Asia’s virtual front page…

… it seems that the average traveller in Thailand is actually now more afraid of the country than before, having gone from barely knowing it existed to being vaguely aware that something bad happened there at some point; considering that the now politically pretty tame Cambodia and Laos are still widely considered dangerous new frontiers by most of the people you tend to meet in Southern Thailand, I think I was worrying prematurely.

Having said this I actually ended up wishing some more people would stay, or else would visa run somewhere different, because at the moment the government get to gather many, many tourist ten dollars while the very poor local people don’t get any. I felt bad for contributing to this problem by buying an entry permit, but at least by staying we had the opportunity to distribute  more than we gave to the government to real, very poor Burmese people.

Although it makes little material difference I’m also glad that we weren’t completely oblivious to the moral implications of what we were doing. Although in some ways this makes us more guilty than the oblivious majority, at least it also allowed us to make a considered decision and to compensate as much as possible for funding evil; I don’t think that Lonely Planet should cheerfully advertise the simplicity of visa runs to Kawthoung without even a paragraph encouraging people to consider the drawbacks.

Ranong Pier, where many, many boats wait to visa run across the border.

Anyway, hypocritically we  actually benefited hugely from precisely what I’ve just been complaining about; Kawthoung was a bizarre and delightful mixture of very accessible and totally ‘unspoiled’.

The immigration department has evolved to be very efficient and even (almost) friendly, in order to profit nearly effortlessly from the abundant supply of visa-runners who pop over, complain only about their dollar notes having to be immaculate, and then leave minutes later on the same boat. Meanwhile in the town itself people still smile, stare and love you just for being such a novelty; on the outskirts and in the suburbs, especially, we were complete anomalies simply for staying a couple of days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Kawthoung we hoped we’d be able to go a little further into Burma (I had some extra dollars set aside as encouragement) but the country was so closed and the area so carefully guarded that we were strictly limited to the 5km radius allowed by our permits; our passports were kept at the immigration office by the pier.

Instead we settled for exploring Kawthoung.

Assuming that all of Burma is the same in some government controlled ways the only big differences we observed between this time and last were a shiny new bank (there still weren’t any ATMs though) and a new, prominence to the ubiquitous Aung San Suu Kyi posters; whereas a year ago everyone had them but many were hidden- or at least subtly located behind counters and in dark corners- they were now in pride of place everywhere. We visited a church when our driver-come-tour-guide couldn’t think of anywhere else to take us, and even there Aung San Suu Kyi beamed out from one wall, at Jesus on the other.

In other ways everything was much the same, surprisingly so for such a different region; it was still lovely, beautiful, uplifting Burma, where the abundant smiles seemed to contrast jarringly with the equally abundant, very obvious  poverty.

This poverty, in itself, seems to me to imply that in many ways little has changed politically, as you would assume that in a fair and equal economy many people in Kawthoung would be reasonably prosperous, considering its ability to trade with rich, neighbouring Thailand. Instead a few people look very rich (in the immigration office and at the posh hotels), and are probably related to members of the military, and everyone else appears very poor .

Painfully, we had to stay in one of the only three very expensive hotels that are allowed to take foreigners- no doubt these were selected with the normal dose of nepotism and the profits go primarily to the government.

The only compensation for this was that ours had a television with an English language Burmese news channel, that was very interesting to watch (and they did really good rice soup for breakfast).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The peoples’ poverty was also very apparent in their attitudes, although conversely so was their honesty.

An example of this was when I impulse bought a beautiful red jacket in the small, town market. After much confusion we sort of managed to understand that it cost 2500 kyat, but we had just arrived and only had baht. Most people in Kawthoung happily accept this so I offered him 100 baht, which is 2 pounds, and very slightly more than 2500 kyat. The very small, pretty old man looked very concerned, handed me change and then made me wait when I tried to leave, while he sent his friend to get more change in the precise, correct denominations. The entire change amounted to about 40p, and this extra change was about 5p, but despite the small amount he was very careful not to rip me off a penny.

Later similar happened in reverse; we stopped by a park to buy sesame snaps, and our driver converted the price into baht for us. The sesame snap woman scowled and scowled when we gave her the amount he had told us and snapped at him in Burmese. Eventually we gathered that she was arguing for a further 2 baht and handed this straight over, at which she broke into a big, sincere Burmese smile, her mood changing in a second over 4p.

On our tour- with a driver who seemed fairly horrid when we haggled at the beginning but actually turned out to be really sweet- we were taken to temple after temple, up very steep hills and through almost rural, coconut lined streets.

Every temple was beautiful and calm and cheerful and welcoming. People slept in them and children played and women gossiped and signs spoke of noble umbrellas.

At the second temple we were adopted by a small child pack who gave me a flower to offer Buddha and ‘tricked’ us into saying mingala ba (hello), with our stupid accents, repeatedly for their entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we left- on a steep, spiraling road wrapped around and around the hilltop temple- they ran to each entrance to wave and to shout mingala ba some more.

At another temple I found a flea aneamic kitten and fed it melted ice cream, with the help of some small Burmese girls. The kitten’s siblings ate lots but the littlest, boniest most flea aneamic one wouldn’t eat anything however hard I tried.

When we went back to the pier at the end of the day the whole town seemed to know our plans and to have been looking for us, which was both disconcerting, unnerving and rather sweet, and were waiting to hurry us on to the last boat out.

We got our passports back and then walked a long way down the street to a boat, and thought how in theory we could have just made a break for it and escaped into Burma, although actually everyone was watching us, checking we left.

It was sad to leave.

P.S. I know it’s got less fashionable/politically correct to call it  Burma not Myanmar, but to me discarding the colonial name in exchange for the junta’s choice seems pointless, and, if anything, it seems counter productive to reject the lingering term of a ghost oppressor in favour of that of a real, current one. All the change does is imply the wests new acceptance of the junta (who renamed it Myanmar in 1989) and it seems a bit hypocritical really; as we lift the sanctions we accept the government as so legitimate that they get to name the place. Also Aung San Suu Kyi still frequently calls it Burma, and has been told off by the government for doing so, so perhaps its a good small sign of subtle resistance to follow her lead and continue to call it Burma and remember that it doesn’t belong to the junta. Or maybe we should make up an entirely new name- in Burma people told me they disliked both names; it made little difference to them what I called it because Burma belonged to the British and Myanmar to the junta- they’re much the same.