Burmese Days - Prologue

“This is Burma. It is quite unlike any place you know of.”
-Rudyard Kipling


Burma is a country full of contradictions: Half the time you will embrace it with all your heart, while the other half you will be wondering what the hell you’re doing there. It will make you want to tear the eyeballs out of your skull, but at the same time restore your faith in the inherent goodness of mankind. Stepping off the plane in Yangon is like stepping into a time-warp, and travelling around is like it was in Southeast Asia decades ago, with the tradeoff between comfort and adventure being heavily tipped toward the latter. Kipling seems to have known what he was talking about.


In chronicling the Burmese excursion, perhaps I should start at the very beginning, as even getting a visa there was a hell of an ordeal.


Four simple rules for dealing with Asian bureaucrats


Want to get a visa for Myanmar? Might I suggest that instead, you find a sharp object and stab yourself in the groin repeatedly? It will be faster and almost certainly less painful. Of the above-mentioned options, I foolishly set out to accomplish the former, although plenty of sharp objects would have been available to me. The resulting escapade really showed me the meaning of an “emotional roller-coaster” and I believe the only fair way to chronicle it is as a timeline.


April 9th, 2009


7.30 –Wake up early to be at the embassy as soon as it opens.


8:50 – Brave death by darting in and out of highway traffic to get to the embassy.


9:00 – Arrive at the embassy reeling from the near-death experience, and find it is not open although it should be.


9:30 – Embassy actually opens.


9:32 – Find that the box labelled “Tourist visa applications” is empty.


9:33 - Enter queue to tourist visa counter.


9:50 – Get to the counter and tell the man behind it, let’s call him Gaylord, that the visa forms have run out. He apologizes and hands me one, but makes no effort to replenish the box, thus forcing everyone else to queue up for one as well.


10:00 – Re-enter queue with the form, having checked the box: “I will not interfere with the internal affairs of the Union of Myanmar.”


10:15 – Reach counter once more. Gaylord informs me that the embassy will effectively be closed for nearly two weeks starting Saturday. I know this already, so I calmly ask for an express visa. Gaylord says he will need to see my flight itinerary to prove I really need one. Of course I haven’t got it printed out, so now I have to find someplace with a printer and be back at the embassy before it closes for lunch at eleven.


10:22 - Dash out the door and start asking random people where I can go online. Finally, by simultaneously accosting an older woman who speaks English and a young girl who looks like she actually uses the internet, I get directed to a net-cafe.


10:28 – Brave death once again at the highway traffic junction.


10.40 – Find an internet cafe


10:41 - Realize that there are no available computers at the cafe, because school kids are playing World of Warcraft on all of them.


10:45 – Lessons must be starting or something, because dozens of kids leave at once. I print my itinerary off, thank the owner profusely and run back to the embassy in one of the most impressive flip-flop sprints ever seen.


10:57 – Arrive at embassy drenched in sweat, documents in hand.


10:58 - Find that embassy is actually open till twelve.


11:00 – Get in queue behind an annoying Brit and an even more annoying Canadian. They talk loudly and rudely about the admittedly slow employees at the embassy. I can tell Gaylord doesn’t like it, and I’m a little worried this might affect everyone’s chances at a visa.


Rule #1 for dealing with Asian bureaucrats: They all consider themselves masters of their own little domain, no matter how insignificant it might be! Show some respect or prepare to be frustrated!


11:10 – Canadian gets turned down for an express visa, and is informed that the first possible day he can get one is in two weeks. His flight is in two days. The asshole refuses to believe it, and keeps nagging at Gaylord, who gets more and more annoyed. Finally, after whining for about ten minutes, he walks off sulking.


11: 20 – The Brit is also turned down, and he just goes ballistic, screaming at Gaylord. In the end, he walks off to join the Canadian in the corner of the room. At this stage, I am very, very worried.


Rule #2 for dealing with Asian bureaucrats: Never ever lose your temper. If you lose face or cause them to lose face, any hope of finding a reasonable solution to the problem can be abandoned.


11:30 – I approach the counter and ask politely for an express visa, but unfortunately already know the answer: “No, no, express visa, you can get visa first in two weeks!” My flight is in less than a week, so I’m devastated. I’ve been really looking forward to this trip, and can’t even get a refund on my airfare. Fuck fuck fuck.


11:32 – Decide death is too good for Brit and Canadian. Will send hitmen after their families.


11:35 – Brit speculates that they refused our visas because of the New Year’s celebrations, which are sure to incite protests, which in turn they don’t want Westerners to see. My opinion is that these two idiots were being disrespectful, and effectively fucked over everybody else in the queue, who are now also being turned down uniformly as a frustrated Japanese man tells us.


11:40 – Hoping against hope, I queue up again. The jerkwads stay in the corner of the room.


Rule # 3 for dealing with Asian bureaucrats: Be persistent. Make it less trouble for them to do what you want than to keep refusing you.


11:50 – Reach the counter and enquire carefully what the problem is. Gaylord says that some “officer” needs to be there to sign express visas, but he will be away for two weeks. I ask discreetly whether the issue could be circumvented somehow, whereby Gaylord gestures at the assholes in the corner and whispers: “Come back at 1:30, don’t tell them.”


11:55 – As I am walking off, the retards ask me if anything has changed. Without a second’s hesitation, I say: “Nope, though I might try again in the afternoon.” A half-truth, I suppose, but I feel a little guilty. Just a few hours on Myanmar soil and I am already selling out my fellow Westerners. What will I be doing after two weeks, torturing dissidents?


12:40 and 13:20 – Two more near-death experiences in the midst of midday traffic at the junction of doom, but I no longer get the same kind of rush from it as previously. I mean, the cars are hardly even trying to run me over.


13:30 – Back at the embassy. No jerks in sight, and Gaylord instructs me to sit and wait.


13:50 – Embassy is nearly empty, and I have seen half a dozen well-behaving Westerners get turned down for a express visas already under the same pretence of an absent “officer”. Something weird is going on, and things are not looking too good when Gaylord gestures me to the counter.


Now we get to the final rule of dealing with Asian bureaucrats: MONEY TALKS!


13:51 – Give Gaylord my application documents, with one “additional document” enclosed between my passport: a 500 Baht (~ten Euro) bill. He smiles and says “It is all clear, Sir.”


14:00 - Walk out of the embassy with a receipt to pick up my passport the next day with a visa attached. Feeling pretty friggin’ smooth, if I don’t say so myself :)


Next day - Wake up to find that the prime minister of Thailand has declared it an extra public holiday because of the protests, so I am scared shitless that the embassy will be closed after all. No need to worry though, good old Gaylord had it covered and by late afternoon, although emotionally utterly punch-drunk, I had a visa in hand


After this, there was also the rigamarole of getting money into the country. Burma has no ATMs, nor any accepted credit cards, so you basically have to bring with you all the money you plan to use. The only accepted currency is the US dollar, and the going black-market rate for exchanging them into kyat, the local currency, is around one thousand kyat to every dollar. The Burmese government, however, refuses to acknowledge that their currency could possibly be so worthless, and so the official rate you get at banks is a ludicrous six (yes, SIX) kyat to the dollar. If this rate is to be believed, Burma is surely the most expensive country in the world, with bottle of water and a simple noodle costing around 50 dollars and 200 dollars respectively. Some added challenges include that only pristine dollar-bills are accepted, with crumpled-up ones being practically useless. Also, certain serial numbers are widely-rumoured to be counterfeit, and hence are not accepted by anyone. The end result is that you carry your dollars around with the utmost care, and obviously change your money at the black-market, which is also a bit of a hassle because they try to screw you over at every turn. After changing money you find yourself carrying these absolutely massive wads of Kyat around, feeling a bit like a drug dealer or professional gambler or something.


But is it ethically acceptable to go? After all, does visiting the country somehow condone the government, which lost by a landslide in the democratic elections of 1989 to the National League for Democracy (NLD), only to void the results and arrest most of the NLD leaders? The reason many people are concerned about this is that in 1996 the military regime launched a “Visit Myanmar”-campaign to promote tourism, and Aung San Suu Kyi , the charismatic leader of the NLD, pleaded for people to “Visit Myanmar later”, as she feared a visit could be seen to legitimize the government. Since then, however, several high ranking NLD members have begun to advocate tourism as well, and the “Visit Myanmar”-campaign has of course long since ended. Unfortunately, Burma’s main sources of income are heroin, timber and minerals, and most of the proceeds from these go straight the pockets of the greedy generals. Tourism, however, is a great way of getting money directly to the people, as you can easily boycott government-owned operations and only use private, family-run enterprises. By the way, it’s funny how in Myanmar even hippies agree that private enterprises are somehow good and pure, whereas publicly owned ones are evil and greedy. A refreshing change from home ;)


P. S. If there’s a song on the planet that spells C-H-I-L-L, it’s this one.
Sneaker Pimps – Six Underground

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrvk1bmTayg