Sightseeing With The Enemy

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My goal was to be in Myanmar when the regime fell. I was backpacking around Southeast Asia and had concocted a plan to legally enter the country from northern Thailand on a tourist visa. Tensions were rising, and I was ready to begin my prestigious career as a foreign correspondent by covering the clashes between monk protestors and government troops, and hopefully the impending collapse of the corrupt military junta that had ruled the country for decades.

Thousands of monks were protesting in the streets, defying the fascist government on a grand scale not seen since similar protests occurred in 1988. Revolution seemed imminent, though there was also a chance that the government would react like it did during the last period of upheaval and massacre nonviolent protestors. The country was on the edge.

The plan to infiltrate Myanmar was not motivated solely by professional aspirations. There were personal reasons, as well. I fancied myself as someone with revolutionary ideals, someone who wanted to witness history firsthand instead of reading about it. The events in Myanmar exemplified the reasons I wanted to be a journalist: to shed light on the injustices of the world and those rebelling against them. While most kids my aged wished they could go back in time to see their team win the Super Bowl or to hear their favorite banda€™s last concert, I wished I could join the revelers in Berlin as the Wall came down, or in Spain when Franco died. An entire nation of long-suffering people was literally about to be handed freedom in one moment. I couldna€™t think of a more worthy experience.

I assumed Ia€™d be one of the only aspiring writers there, and simply being there would give me a leg up on the competition. Unfortunately the perfect plan met an early demise when my visa application was denied. Nonetheless, I would soon cross the Thai/Myanmar border, but only for an hour, and I would accomplish nothing besides once again getting caught up in a travelera€™s moral quandary with no clear-cut solution.

My visa application was denied while most of the world was waiting with bated breath. I was quite off put. My name no longer had any chance of soon appearing in boldface, my face as an exquisitely detailed cartoon in the Wall Street Journal. To make matters worse, the military junta ruling Burma had cracked down harshly on dissidents and the revolution no longer seemed remotely forthcoming. I tried to cloud my disappointment by settling into the routine hedonistic delights of the Southeast Asia backpacker trail, focusing on Scandinavian twentysomethings and Chang beer instead of politics and career breaks.

Had I been a braver man, with any semblance of an idea of what I was doing, or of moderate resources, or even a touch of experience, I might have tried to sneak into the country or finagle my way into a visa, but I didna€™t. I didna€™t even attempt to do so. Instead, the only time I set foot in Burma and came into contact with the regime was on a border run in northern Thailand.

Relations between Burma and Thailand have long been somewhat hostile, though they have improved of late. The border region, however, is a hotbed of conflict. It has long been associated with violence, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking and gem smuggling, not to mention the Burmese rebel groups that the Thai government, while not condoning, allows to operate in Thai territory. Refugee camps overpopulated with those escaping the atrocities perpetrated by the Burmese government dot the border as well.

Crossing into Burma from the Thai border is forbidden. The only legal way to enter Burma is to fly. The only exception, however, is a loophole that allows those coming from Thailand on a border run to purchase a one-day visa. [Sightseeing With The Enemy in full]

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Posted: April 4th, 2008
at 8:00am by Koookiecrumbles


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