Secretive, so secretive. I’m not even doing anything important, and here I go worrying about everything I say to anyone because I’ve been told so many times by my coordinators that Burmese spies are everywhere. Not that it benefits or threatens me at all, but supposedly Rangoon has spies all over this town wanting to know who’s working for the NGOs. A Burmese translator from five years ago supposedly had the Burmese Secret Police come to his family’s house within Burma and demand his son’s return upon immediate threat to the family. He went to Burma, was taken prisoner, and was threatened in no peaceful way to never again work with their enemy, the Karen, or else… He blames it on a chatty waiter here in Mae Sot.
This place does kinda read like a spy novel. Except that so far people seem so happy, who’d ever think anything wrong? I think the answer lies in my ignorance about the situation, and that since I’m only just starting to be able to tell the difference between Burmese and Thai, I haven’t yet noticed that the Thais are all cheery and happy, whereas the Burmese are serious and determined. When I walk the streets at night, it’s the Thai singing songs and drinking beer. It’s the Burmese that are slower and deliberate. Also it’s the Burmese that spend all their time either starving or helping.
It turns out there’s also a significant Muslim population, which was the first time I’ve ever seen Muslims in Southeast Asia (and no, I haven’t been to Malaysia or Indonesia). Thankfully, from what I understand anyway, there’s no solidarity with the Muslim separatist movement in the south (the terrorists causing all the headlines in Thailand). In any case, they’ve been here for generations and represent a much longer history than I first gave this town credit for.
But coming over the hills the first time on Wednesday gave this city, in fact this entire province, a new light. It’s a serious mountain range between the rest of Thailand and this long valley of borderland called Tak province. Beyond the valley rests another mountain range and Karen State in Burma, the site of the longest currently-running conflict in the world. So much of it is covered in landmines that it’s almost impossible to move anywhere without severely detailed maps. I guess that’s the point.
Mae Sot rests right before this mountain range, and is protected from the rest of Thailand by the other range. All the refugees that make it settle down into this limbo of a valley, only to be picked on by Thai police who refuse their entry into the rest of Thailand and occasionally raid the camps for “illegals,” which are most of them. So, Mae Sot is the fastest growing city in all of Thailand. And merchants are really taking advantage of it. Some of the COOLEST antique stores I’ve ever seen exist here, old colonial treasures left over by the British, though in order to buy anything it takes quite a leap of consentual negligence to forgo thinking about who had to flee the border in what kind of hurry and with what desperation with their family heirlooms to sell once they arrive in Thailand. Again, this place reads like a spy novel.