It was supposed to have one more day

I came home from work hungry, so I did the best thing for such a problem: I built myself a whopping PB+J, covered with that extra-gooey chunky, slathered in real strawberry jam. Then I poured a tall glass of milk.

This would have been a wonderful dinner, not a tragedy of simple pleasures, if things had gone as planned from there.

I took a huge bite. It was peanutty bliss, the perfect 3:1 ratio of peanut butter and jelly. The bread was just soft enough to get chewy, and stick to the roof of my mouth.

Incredible.

Then I went for the exquisite compliment, the missing third of the phrase; "like peanut butter and jelly -- and milk."

Without hesitation, I began to chug from my mug, the white ceramic cool from its contents.

Then I spit up the whole mess across the table; chewed bread, pureed peanut butter, masticated jam.

As it happened, the milk was not milk, but whitish curds of wince-worthy horror.

And the bottle said it was supposed to have one more day.

The milk jug, clearly marked to expire on June 4, not the day before.

Behind door no. 3: A harrowing tale from the halls of Gramercy Green

Through the revolving doors and past the doorman I went, up 12 floors to what I thought was my first apartment in New York City. The building still smelled crisp and new, like fresh paint and polished glass. Accents of bright hardwoods and buffed metal caught my eye high and low, the kind of little touches that make a place not only modern, but stylish and unique. Heck, even the New York Times wrote a story about how nice living here was, and now that I had arrived, I was not disappointed. Despite lugging my entire life behind me in a duffel bag and suitcase, I moved with a light-footed ease. I was excited. And then I arrived at the end of the hallway, at door number one, what I thought was the threshold of my first apartment in New York City.

On the way to this door, I'd passed a very round Korean man in the hallway. He asked if I was moving into room 1223. I told him I was. He said that was great, because he was going to be my roommate -- along with someone else who had dropped off a couple bags, then quickly departed. The portly young man said he was in a hurry and had to go, but would talk to me later. He waddled away toward the elevators. I would never see him again.

As I approached that first door, I should have seen the warning signs. Every other doorway along the hall was immaculate, welcoming in that pristine, never-lived-in sort of way. The door that was supposed to be mine had an old broken printer and scanner stacked just outside, and the welcome mat was decidedly not so; it literally read: "Not Welcome." I dropped my bags and took out my key. I didn't need to turn it to know what awaited me. I could smell the garbage from outside.

Behind the door was a scene I could only describe as "Puij-esque." Puij, you see, was a next-door neighbor of mine in college. His real name was Thomas (the nickname was from some anime), and the man was the least-kempt person I have ever met, including folks sleeping on sidewalks. One time, Puij left a urine-soaked phonebook in his shower for weeks after another friend threw it in there as a joke. Puij would sleep in a mess of dirty clothes on his bed like a hibernating hamster, cuckooning himself in the stench of sheets gone unwashed for months. Another time, Puij refused to get up and clean up his kitchen experiments gone wrong, even when a friend hurled a half-dozen mini-bibles at him, shouting, "The power of Christ compels you!"

The scene behind the door of my would-be apartment, with the multiple rice-cookers, rotting Korean cuisine, and unwashed pots and pans, was decidedly Puij-esque. I wandered into what was supposed to be my first bedroom in New York City and sat down my bags. I immediately wanted out. Aloud, I said to myself, "We're going to have to have a talk."

Being the type to try to work things out, I weighed my options. I could try to get another room, but hell, that might end up even worse. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer. And what if I landed here by fate, and I end up being good friends with this guy? I decided to wait until he came back. Maybe he was just going through a bad time and forgot to take out his garbage. I decided to forget the mess for the time being and get ready to go meet some friends out in Brooklyn for dinner and drinks.

But the mess, in a way, wouldn't stay forgotten. As I was about to leave, the door opened. A posse of young Asian men walked in. At the front of the pack was the person who had dropped off his bags and then quickly dashed. He'd brought back some friends to show how filthy the apartment was. His name was Shawn; he was one of those popped-collar, muscle-bound preppy Chinese guys. He told me he was from the nice part of Brooklyn, and before I could tell him my story, he launched into a chest-puffed tirade about how he couldn't believe how fucking disgusting the place was, how he's paying too much for this kind of shit, and how he was going to demand a new building entirely. I told him I had arrived only 10 minutes before, and the mess inside was the fault of the other guy, who had apparently been nesting here since the fall semester and decided not to move out. He demanded to know what the other resident looked like, as if he and his posse, equally spiky haired (though less muscle bound), would hunt him down and force the Korean Puij to clean up his mess.

I left shortly after, around 6 in the evening. I had an amazing time in Brooklyn. I stumbled back in the early morning and immediately passed out in my room, which was clean, though I still hadn't bought a blanket or sheets for the bed. At around 11 a.m., someone opened the door and woke me up.

"Yo. Can you believe this shit? This other guy still hasn't cleaned up."
It was Shawn. Shouting down at me as I poked my head from my sleeping bag.
"Really? Hell," I said.
"You see the guy?" Shawn asked.
"No. I still haven't seen him. I got home at like 4 a.m."
"You went out? That's cool. Where at?"
"Brooklyn, around Williamsburg, then BedSty."
"Oh man, you know that's the dangerous part, right?"
"My friends say it's in transition."
He looked at me like I was crazy. Biggy and Naz were from that part of town.
"Well, yo, I talked to the people. They said I can move, so I just came back to get my stuff."
I took a deep breath and smelled the spoiled kimchi waft into the room.
"You know, I might do the same," I said.

I showered, trying to ignore the scummy tile of what would be an otherwise beautiful bathroom.
After I got dressed, I went to the building manager's office on the second floor. I was hungry, thirsty and just wanted to get this over with. Behind a white desk covered in lists and post-it notes, a woman named Beatriz was doing something on an iMac. I walked up to her and cut to the chase. I told her I'm a moderately clean guy, and moving into a place so cluttered and dirty was not what I had in mind -- especially not since this was supposed to be my first apartment in New York City.

She shuffled through some papers. Looked at some lists. Tried to find a baby blue sticky note among a dozen other baby blue sticky notes. Then she called her assistant into the office. She sent him up to inspect the room -- just to be sure I wasn't being picky. The assistant looked, acted and talked rather effeminately. He was dressed impeccably. Luckily for me, even if I was exaggerating about the room -- which I wasn't -- I imagined he'd return with a favorable report. She handed him a baby blue sticky note with the room number before he left. I sat in an awkward silence with Beatriz for 10 minutes as she tapped at her iMac keyboard, the computer softly playing Latin love songs. My attempt at small talk didn't go too well.

"Looks like you've got a pretty big job here -- how many tenants are in this building anyway?" I asked.
"That's a good question. I don't really know. I just started," she replied.

Finally, the assistant returned.

"The room is pretty dirty -- especially the floors," he reported to Beatriz.
"Is the resident there?" she asked.
"He was sleeping. I guess he isn't now."

Beatriz turned to me.

"That room should have been cleaned a long time ago. Let me see what I can do."
She scanned another list, then told her assistant to go up and check to see if this new room -- just a few doors down from the first one -- was cleaner.

I panicked just enough to make a difference.

"Uh, is it possible for me to look at the room first? Just to be sure I'm not, like, jumping out of the frying pan and into the fryer?"
"Actually, you can't. We're required to give notice to the tenant before we show the apartment," Beatriz replied.

She told her assistant to go find keys to this new place, and I sat there, silently dreading what the outcome would be. And then Beatriz had a change of heart.

"You know what, this will save everyone some trouble," she said.

She had her assistant get a tiny envelope with a room number on it and keys inside from a big box of identical tiny envelopes. There were hundreds.

"Nobody's living in this unit yet. That way, you can set the rules," she said.

I was ecstatic.

"Thanks so much. I really didn't want to be the guy to come in and say, 'o.k., buddy, here's how things are going to be from now on,'" I said.

She handed me the keys to a big corner room on the 14th floor. I sneaked back into my old apartment, stuffed my things back into my bags, careful not to rouse the sleeping Puij in the other bedroom, and hauled like crazy back through the obstacle course of ethernet cords, a bike helmet, unused cleaning supplies and empty strawberry cartons.

Later, I would say to Beatriz, "He probably felt really bad, knowing all his roommates abandoned him because he was too dirty." She hid her snicker behind a fan of papers.

The red elevator doors opened onto the 14th floor. I was even more excited than I had been the day before. My entire life was in the luggage behind me, not quite packed as well as before, as I arrived at room 1403, what was supposed to be my second apartment in New York City. There were three fishbowls made from colorful construction paper pasted onto the door around the peephole. Inside each bowl was a goldfish with a name written on it: "Ashley!" "Stephanie!" "Amanda!"

This felt good. Girls like that usually keep their rooms pretty clean, I thought. At least all the girls I knew from college, anyway -- the kind who always kept a can of Fabreeze handy, who did laundry three times a week, who owned a Swiffer and actually changed the cloths. I opened the door of what was supposed to be my new home. Instead, it would become the address I would hold for the shortest amount of time -- ever -- despite my long list of short-term addresses.
When door number two opened, and the evidence registered in my brain (the shock of it caused reality to slow down), I said aloud: "Ho-lee shit."

Who would have thought three preppy, peppy little girls who pasted their walls with photo spreads from Vogue and hung framed vintage romantic pictures on their walls could cause this magnitude of rock star-in-a-hotel-room destruction?

They were Lindseys. Lindsey, to use another anecdote from my college days, was a girl who lived downstairs from me my junior year. She was the type of girl to stay out all night and come home with the sunrise only to fall asleep half-naked on the floor with her feet caked in barroom filth. She gave off a preppy vibe, drove a nice car, but simply didn't seem to properly manage any aspect of her life. She put off getting a proper bed for months, instead sleeping on a mattress on her bedroom floor. She had a little dog, which she left locked inside while she was away at class all day. I'm surprised the thing didn't die -- since one time, when I was hanging out with her roommate, I saw a couple packages of Plan B strewn next to her mattress, slightly chewed.

This room was decidedly worse. It appeared that the girls of 1403, the former occupants of what was supposed to be my second apartment in New York City, had thrown a massive party the night before they moved out. Confetti and glitter was somehow jammed into every nook and cranny in the place. Beer bottle caps and crumpled cans lay nonchalantly here and there. The garbage can was overflowing with the detritus of modern college living: cell phone charger, sugar free Red Bull cans, packaging from prescription samples, and more cigarette packs than I can count. A coffee cup was filled with that pungent juice that distills from beer being mixed with four dozen cigarette butts. Two holes were somehow punched into the kitchen wall. And in the bathroom, there was the crown jewel of this wreckage -- a scorched Pepsi bottle with a hole drilled into it, with a makeshift tinfoil cap over the top, filled with a half-smoked bowl of weed.
I repeated my refrain: "Ho-lee shit."

But in addition to the mess these girls had left behind for their daddies to pay for and the maids to clean up, they also left every thing else. By that, I mean everything. A closet full of coat hangers, a toaster, two desk lamps, a power strip, a pair of dice from Dad's Casino in Vegas, a duvet with cover and sheets and pillows, a corkscrew, and so much more. There was even a cluster of brand-new cleaning supplies, as if the girls started to clean up, realized the task was far beyond them, and just said "fuck it."

There was no way that I was going to stay there, or even wait for the staff to clean that hell hole. I left my stuff in the entryway and prepared to go back down to talk to Beatriz and get yet another room. But as I was about to leave, it donned on me: how about a shopping spree?
I had only brought the essentials with me to New York; clothes, computer, and that's about it. I was planning to buy everything else. But when the environment, even the urban environment, gives you lemons, you don't turn down the lemonade -- especially when it comes with sugar and a juicer. I took what I needed, wrapped the stuff in a bedsheet, and left the bundle in the vacant hallway. The stuff would have ended up down a garbage chute anyway.

I took the elevator back down to the second floor. Beatriz looked surprised to see me.

"You're not going to believe this," I said. "I'm going to need to return this one too. The room looks like a party bomb exploded, and nobody bothered to clean up."
"This has just been a nightmare for you, hasn't it?" she said.
"It's alright -- I know it's not your fault. I just want a clean room." On the outside, I appeared tired and plaintive. On the inside, I was smiling; I was about to walk away with a few hundred dollars worth of household goods and move into, what I hoped, would be my third apartment in New York City.

"Here, take this room. It's a studio, and nobody's scheduled to move in for a while," Beatriz said. She handed me the key to room 1117. I liked that number. It was sounded both clean, and lucky.

"Thanks. Hopefully I won't be back," I said.

I returned to the hellhole and gathered my things and left the bundle of swag behind for a second trip. I took the elevator down to the 11th floor. I arrived at door number three, what I hoped would be my first real apartment in New York City.

The chrome-coated lock tumbler twisted like perfection. The door opened, and sunlight from a bank of 5-foot-tall windows was cast over me. The wood floors shone like just-threshed wheat. I could see into the canyons of both 23rd and 24th streets. Not a single remnant of the previous occupants was left behind, except for the fact that they had scrubbed the place to a sparkle.

Behind door number three, I found my first apartment in New York City.

A story about shoes

The grimy coffee shop at the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga was too cold, and the shameless hipsters brooding in every nook, the pale glow of Apple computers making their slender faces even more pallid, was making the room still colder. For warmth in this wash of too-cool-to-care, I'd left my laptop behind, and decided to ease myself with the tactile comfort of a newspaper. Yes, that's right, I started reading an actual copy of the novel-thick Sunday edition of the L.A. Times.

For about an hour, I sifted through the massive folio section by section; Mexican cartells winning the war on drugs with bigger guns than the police, a teacher making a difference in his underfunded classroom, Obama doing something or another, and finally, to the business section.

After reading about job losses and corporate bailouts, and how greedy and fat the bald guys running AIG are, I stumbled upon an interesting little story about shoes: "Cobbling together shoe repair savings."

What a nice relief from the multi-armed automaton of buzz-saw budget shortfalls and clanking, rusting, collapsing economy columns. It was an article about how people can save money by taking their worn-out loafers to get repaired instead of throwing down another $200 for a new pair of pennys.

In the second graf, though, I stumbled upon a tidbit more interesting to me than the story, or even the whole newspaper. The main source quoted and cited throughout the entire article was a shoe repairer from Lakeland, Fla. -- my little-known home town. I would be leaving L.A. for Lakeland in two days.

Reading beyond the decently crafted how-to story, I put myself in the reporter's shoes. How did he find this cobbler from Lakeland, who essentially gave him the entire story that's being run in the L.A. Times and possibly every other affiliated newspaper around the country? I was certain he called the association of cobblers, and then was refered to the shoe man from Lakeland. And, like all stories like this, I was sure the disembodied journalist called up the cobbler, got his facts, and called it a day. Mr. McFarland, the cobbler in the story, would likely never see his words in print.

Or would he?

Heck, I will be in town in a couple days. It might be fun. One good deed to make up for all those sources I've quoted who never got to see their words on paper.

I was going to find Jim McFarland.

It turned out not to be very hard. Not only are there very few cobblers in Lakeland, but the store bears his name, and that of his father and grandfather. The day after I landed, I found the shop, just off South Florida Avenue near the Outback Steakhouse.

I went in with the newspaper folded in my hand. The store smelled of polish and leather.

I didn't need need to look around; the person I was seeking was right there behind the counter. I recognized the man from his picture on his shoe repair Web site.

"Can I help you?" he asked. The man looked friendly, like he enjoyed talking with his customers.

"Actually, I have something for you," I said. I spread out the business section on the counter, and opened it to page 4. "I was in Hollywood last week, and found this."

Before I needed to explain anything, McFarland spoke up with excitement.

"Oh, you brought it for me!"

"I know you probably don't get the L.A. Times out here, and figured you'd like to see it."

"Thank you so much. I don't have this one. This is great, this is just wonderful," the gusto-brimming cobbler replied. He spun the newsprint read it over. "Yeah, this one actually got it right, got into the details."

I explained my journalist's guilt, and how it was the least I could do. And how it was cool to see a source from Lakeland quoted in a newspaper 2,000 miles across the country.

McFarland told me if I ever needed any shoes repaired while I'm in New York, he knows a lot of people -- big shoe repair community up there, you know. He pointed to the spot on the wall where he planned to hang the article.

"Thanks again. I'll remember you," he said.

I left the store, and with me came proof that senseless, random good deeds are always worth the trouble.

Burma IV: The places we're drawn to

When a man is starving, he will do almost anything for food. When a man is merely hungry, he may simply make poor decisions. I was merely hungry.

I marched over to the first food stall I saw at the edge of the market. I eyed the offerings cooking atop the vendor's wheeled grill. The wench behind the grill, burly and bug-eyed, stared at me as I perused her selection of strange meats. I was already unsure of the quality of these simmering strips of protein, but, like I said, I was hungry. And I did not want to venture very far back into the market.

I pointed to what most closely resembled chicken and held up three fingers. I gave her three 10 baht coins. She smiled at me then, and I said "thank you," as I did not know the Burmese equivalent. Perhaps she knew some English, so I asked, "how do you say 'thank you' in Burmese?" I did not want to be the crude westerner who did not bother to learn the pleases and thank-yous of the places he visits.

She did know a little English, but she did not know much Burmese.

"I Thai people," she said.

She was a crude neighbor.

Many of the vendors here, with the minimal capital it took to have such a push cart operation, were Thai, apparently.

"Kup Kun Khrup," I said, in her native language. She smiled and bowed, though her fat lips and bug eyes still made me question the three "chicken" skewers I held in my hand inside a little plastic bag. The food may have been fine, but she apparently doesn't know just how important presentation is in the restaurant business -- even if your restaurant is just a makeshift grill on wheels.

There was nowhere to sit down, so I began eating and walking. The "chicken" skewers were very stringy. Though they were probably chicken, my imagination altered my taste buds and perhaps made them taste more off than they actually were. With all the animal parts for sale around here, jungle cat hides and monkey skulls, I didn't think it would be terribly far fetched for bush meat to have infiltrated the local meat supply. I only finished one of the skewers. I'd lost my appetite. Though I kept holding the remnants of my ill-fated meal. When you look busy, you see, you're bothered less. You're less fresh. You've demonstrated that you have already spilt some of your fat purse into the local economy. You're not the person wandering aimlessly, looking for something, or nothing at all. You're doing something. This is the case when you're carrying something neutral and active at the same time, like a cell phone, or in my case, a meat skewer.

I wandered rather aimlessly around the edges of the market, careful not to venture in very far. But drifting over me like a cool wind in my hair, I heard "Hotel California" playing somewhere in the distance. Just as alluring as the warm smell of colitas rising up through the air, I was drawn toward the music, even though it took me inside a place where the summer sweat certainly wasn't sweet. The Eagles were such a curious, foreign sound in this place. The music drew me to a store that sold pirated CDs. Since I can pirate all the music I want from the comfort of my computer, I did not go inside. So far, my stringy chicken had kept me safe, like a chewy talisman against the bats.

Down a nearby alleyway there were some men sitting around a table, just beyond the shadows at the far end. They were loud and doing something angry and quick with their hands. It reminded me of watching the black men in Miami's Liberty City shoot craps under the eaves of a faded pastel housing project. I wanted to get a closer look at the men and their game, but the alley was dark most of the way, and it reminded me that I was still inside the cave. I stepped out from the shaded market and back into the sun and wandered down a street, then another and another. I could have been going in circles, or I could have been zig-zagging. I didn't really know or care. All the buildings looked the same: sunbaked and forlorn. Outside the market, there was very little shade. I passed what passed for a nice hotel here. There were actually two cars parked outside the entrance. I wonder if the Swiss girl knew about this place. It looked safe, with a tall gate and a security guard out front. I kept walking, and eventually came to a dead end where I was forced to make a right turn. Suddenly, I realized: this was the other side of that dark alley I'd avoided.

The Burmese men were just around the corner, clustered around the outside of a closet-like grocery store. The store was a hole-in-the-wall -- literally. It appeared to be nestled inside a tall wall. Five of the men were seated on squat stools and upturned buckets around a low wooden table. The table was square and had a grid painted onto it. There were plastic chips covering the table, and in turn, they flicked a large chip at the smaller multicolored ones. They were aiming to knock them into small circular pockets at each corner of the board. It looked like a mix between air hockey and billiards.

At first, the men didn't notice my presence. I slipped around the corner and slid as close as I could to the far wall. But rather than continuing on, I stopped right at the line of shadow between the hard sunlight and the dark alley. I watched them for a minute, then stepped closer. One man looked over his shoulder at me. I smiled. He smiled back and nodded. I waved to him, and took this as a sign that I wasn't about to be attacked for spying on their game. Money was changing hands around the square table; they might have not wanted me to intrude on their gambling.

I took my camera from my pocket and stepped closer. I raised it to the man who had smiled and gave him a look, asking if the camera was alright. He smiled again and nodded. I began to record their game. I stepped even closer. This was when one of the men at the table wearing a drab coat and tattered black boots glanced up at me with hazy yellow eyes. Just for a moment, his eyes flickered, like a shock of danger or anger energized them long enough to jolt his languid stare. He stood up and quickly slunk away inside the nearby store. Before I could react to his abrupt desertion, he turned around and slunk back out and moved quickly toward the table. He reached behind one of the men who was sitting next to him. He had a pair of crossed battle axes tattooed on his hand. He hefted a black foreign-made assault rifle, its banana clip battered, and the synthetic stock scratched and scraped in hundreds of places. He walked away down the alley with his rifle.

The man who I made first contact with must have seen my surprise.

"He soldier. No want photograph," he said.

No shit.

"Ah, sorry," I said. I stood for a moment of silence, unsure whether to dart away or continue watching the game. I decided to squat down with the other men and have a closer look, figure out exactly what the rules were.

"Where you from?" asked the smiling man, who appeared to be the only one in the group who could speak English, or was confident enough to practice it with a stranger.

"America," I said. "Florida."

"U.S.A.? Barack Obama?"

"That's right, Barack Obama," I said. I was happy that he seemed pleased with my country's president.

I watched the men play, oohing and ahhing at the near misses and tough shots. After a few minutes, I asked: "Can I play?"

The man looked at me, smiled again, and offered me his seat. They started a new game. I threw down two 10 baht coins and took my first flick. They laughed. I didn't so much flick it like you're supposed to, but pushed the cue puck along. My break wasn't too bad, though, I managed to get one in. It was beginners luck. I was handily beaten. The experience, though, was worth my $0.45.

I wanted to play another game, but time was running short for me. I needed to get back to the bus, to safety. Before I left, a man covered in strange tattoos offered to take my picture as I sat with the gang of alley rats. Burma, I thought, isn't so bad once you escape the bat cave, the tourist traps.

Epilogue:
A smiling Burmese officer handed me back my passport on my way out. I asked him how to say "thank you" in Burmese. The answer: "Amyaji chezu tinbade." When I repeated that mouthfull back to him, it must have sounded like a mumble.

I stepped in a puddle of spit tobacco juice on the way out. The orange splotches are everywhere here; on walls, in the road, on car tires. The Burmese, it appears, love dip. Amid the carcinogenic splotches, 5-year-olds carry their infant siblings in slings on their backs, hands outstretched to the few tourists who walk back across the border. I put a 5 baht coin into each dirty little palm.

A silent and fast-handed immigration agent at the Thai-side border checkpoint hastily stamped my passport. Her body language spoke the equivalent of a bored and grumpy eye-roll.

"Will 5 o'clock ever get here!?" her uninterested face projected.

I had a few minutes before I needed to get back to the bus station. I bought some chao su bao and fried bananas from a street vendor and sat down on a bench inside a shaded eating area near the food stalls. Two boys, no more than 7 years old, jostled for the scraps of chicken bone left over at an adjacent table. The taller boy's face was scraped from his eyebrow to his chin, the wound just beginning to scab. The younger boy's hair was sun-streaked to a light brown. Children like this seem to be everywhere here, scraping up change and table scraps. I just figured out why I had gone all day and not seen a single dog, unusual for this part of the world. The children had taken their place. When the boys came over to me, naturally, to beg for money, I instead handed them my bag of uneaten bananas. The taller boy didn't hesitate a second when he saw that I was going to give them the food -- his hand shot out with ferocity, snatched the bag from me, and clutched it toward his chest. He looked like a hungry mutt snatching a bone from a garbage bag. The smaller boy could only look on in sadness. I saw this, and scolded the taller boy, gesturing between the younger boy and the bag of bananas.

"You, share with him. Sharing is good. Remember that."

The older boy probably didn't understand a word I said, but he must have picked up on my reprimanding tone. He looked inside the bag, as if trying to find the best pieces to keep for himself, then handed the smaller boy the runtiest of bananas. Such is life when you are a small boy living as a dog.

I took a moto taxi back to the bus station. The drunk brit from the bus was already there. An empty beer can sat at his feet, and he cracked open another Singha as I walked past toward the row of benches in the bus terminal. At the far end, I saw the pedophile looking man by himself, nervously glancing around. His bald head appeared slimy in the late-afternoon sun.

I sat down a few rows ahead of two monks. They'd make a nice buffer between me and slimy head man.

Just as I sat my backpack down, I saw the young mother walk into the station. She appeared from the bright sunlight, and moved with a casual elegance that made her seem to float as she walked over the scuffed and dirty tile.

She couldn't have been older than 30, yet here she was in the hardscrabble town of Mai Sai with a 1-year-old baby strapped to her chest. She sat down in the row in front of me and let her daughter out of a durable looking nylon sling. She was a willowy woman, tall, with short golden hair and wide blue-gray eyes. Her daughter, though still a chubby thing, had her mother's golden locks, and eyes that were an even more arresting deep blue. The little girl was wearing a tiny T-shirt that read, "Keep my Planet Clean."

This was a brave woman.

She was staying in Chiang Rai, an hour away, but decided to go on a day trip with her little girl to see more of the countryside. She didn't have a bus ticket, and was waiting to see what came along to get back. I was wowed at the fearlessness she had, and the serene calm she projected as she waited in the gritty station with her giggling infant.

But as time passed, I could see she was growing worried, as night was approaching, and no buses had shown up. Then my big bus pulled into the station. It was sold out for the ride back, I knew. I thought about offering her my ticket and figuring out a return trip on my own. I didn't want to board until I was sure this young mother had a safe ride back. Five minutes before my bus was set to depart, a rickety old blue local commuter bus pulled up. It had a TV antenna welded to the roof, no panes of glass in the windows, and was already packed with Thai travelers. It had "Chiang Rai" painted on its side. The young mother, without hesitation, hefted her squealing girl and put her back into the sling.

"Ooh, she's getting too big for this thing," the woman said. She walked to the bus, stepped aboard, and somehow, made the grimy old vehicle seem a little brighter. I knew she'd make it home just fine.

Burma, part 3: Bats and Trap Churches

Some things make you take a deep breath and steel yourself to the onslaught you know is about hit. Like bracing yourself before a crest of foaming surf crashes down, or feeling the heat of a defender on your neck as you rush toward the goal line, knowing you're about to be planted into the turf. Stepping around the corner and into that first real street in Burma was a moment like that.

They came at me in a loose cluster and locked on with dull but persistent eyes, numb and unflinching to rejection, unknowing of shame. These were the tuk tuk drivers, pirated video hustlers, scam tour operators, and cigarette peddlers of the Burmese borderland. You come to know their type well in this part of the world. There's a seemingly inexhaustible supply of these mangy men, from every big city to seedy backwater port.

You want movie? Motor bike, cheap cheap. Tuk tuk? Marlboros, sunglass, anything, you want?

I saw them through my smokey lenses and clenched my teeth, squaring my jaw, and felt my chest rise with a long, slow sucking of air. I needed the air. The flurry of dismissals, the roll of rote rebukes I'd steadily distribute among them, would take a lot out of me. I like to be left alone most of the time, unless you just want to talk. If I want something, I will ask for it. If I need help with anything, I will seek it out. But most of the time, I just like to do things for myself.

My preferences are completely incompatible with who these men are and what they want. Their goal is to pressure clueless schmucks unfamiliar with their surroundings into disgorging some of their conscience-burdening, lust-fueling, or shamelessly mad money.

I waded through the knot of short copper-brown men. Their hair was stiff from shampooing with bar soap, and their too-big polyester shirts made them sweatier than necessary. I wasn't desperate yet, but I was fervently looking for an escape. I only need to get away somewhere long enough pass an hour or two, to wait for suspicions to pass and paperwork to process. Then I would turn around and catch a bus back to safe, sunny Chiang Mai, to good food and hot showers, and that sweet, svelte coffee house waitress who's still on my mind.

But before I could even think about getting back, I needed to act, and act fast. The tree-lined road ahead was a crowded strip of gray asphalt paralleled by cracked sidewalks. These sidewalks were a gauntlet of push carts and beggar children and legions more of the hustler sort, their eyes already stonily grinding up at the sight of me. Today, you see, I'd decided to play the part of Joe Tourist. I'd faux-hawked my hair a little more, broke out the cotton khaki shorts, and rolled up the sleeves on my blue linen shirt from Banana Republic. I figured I'd have less trouble at the borders if nobody suspected me as a local, or a foreign drug runner trying to lay low.

But it also painted a big, fat mark my chest, and projected a green dollar-sign halo over my head.

Not that identifying me as a foreigner was hard to do, it's just that lately, I'd been trying to tone down my appearance. I had been perfecting a disguise over the past few weeks, picking up on certain wardrobe cues from the natives, trying to blend in as much as I could for daily operations. I found that my torn up leather sandals were perfect streetwear, accompanied by a generic polo shirt and the Thai-brand Greyhound jeans I'd picked up in Bangkok. Hardly the look of a farmer, but if I shaved, and kept my tan up and parted my hair, people would second-guess me. I am vaguely Asian, after all, though look more East Asian than Thai.

With no way to simply vanish, and the road ahead far too sticky with the nagging men and a few heart-rendingly poor children I didn't feel like feeling sorry for right then, I took the only other option I had: the narrow concrete steps I'd almost sworn off as being too anonymous. They led down from the raised street into the heart of the city's border market. If I'd known what was waiting for me at the bottom, I would have waded through the swamp of little dirty children along the road and given them all of my coins and felt guilty for not doing more.

The stalls of bric-a-brac and animal pelts, fake shoes, pirated movies, and thousands of other tacky items you could find in nearly every marketplace around the region stretched out to an intersection, and kept on going down each of the side streets. I'd stepped not ten steps away from the stairs when the first of the hardcore hustlers approached me. These men were a breed beyond the simple purveyors of scam tours and fake gems that predominantly populated the raised road I'd left behind. These were a different strain, the kind that would commit actual depravity for a dollar. I didn't know where they came from, but like bloodsucking bats hiding unseen in the darkness, they'd drop off their guano-covered cave walls and jerkily fly down when a hot meal came strolling past.

The first man had a simple, determined look on his face when he offered the prescription painkillers and boner pills to me. Selling felony-worthy amounts of drugs in broad daylight appeared no big thing to him. He had a shallow plastic basket with him, filled with controlled pharmaceuticals, likely knockoffs imported from China. The pills' packaging was not terribly well done. If I hadn't seen with my own eyes how beautiful in substance and spirit this part of the world was once you get away from the places like this, I would have been trying to hold down a bubbling resentment in my heart.

I decided that a joke and some posturing might be the best form of therapy for me and bat repellent for him.

"Buddy, do I look like I need stuff like that to get my game on? You know what I'm saying?" I clenched my fist and held my arm up for him, like an erection. I took off my glasses, winked at him, and smiled.

He did not smile back. He looked blank for a moment, then took out a squat brown vial from his basket.

"You put in lady drink, she fall love with you," he said.

I wasn't sure if the vial contained roofies or hormones. I didn't want to ask. I was beginning to think that men like this were so far gone, or so locked into scraping money into their hands whatever way they could, that even humor was lost on them. Couldn't he see how ridiculous this scenario really was? I tried to give his humanity the benefit of the doubt.

"I've got a lot of problems my friend, but I don't have any problems with that," I said, throwing some swagger into my voice. I grinned at him and turned away and kept walking down the street. He followed me, and tried to show me some wrapped bundles of porn.

"I have plenty at home, man. I don't need it. The Internet already has you out of business," I chided to him as I walked. Then he put his hand on my arm to stop me, and stood closer to me.

"You want girl? Very small, I can get. Little girl, no problem. You like."

A resentment bubbled over, and wiped away my winks and grins. I knocked his hand away and leaned into him.

"I don't want your shit, Ok?"

I turned down the road and kept walking, moving away from that market. Two more bloodsuckers would jerk over to me before I got out of that garish and malaise-stricken block.

The area beyond, though, was not much more pleasant.

I'd emerged onto a desolate street that was covered in dust, lined with trash, splashed with the direct glare of an unrelenting midday sun. The buildings were gray and white and shedding plaster and paint all over the street. I kept walking until I'd rounded a slight bend and the market was nearly out of sight. That was when I saw the church.

It was a pale building with a crimson roof that looked brittle at its seams. It was behind a tall fence of metal and concrete, the iron gate filled with ornate swirls of curled metal, with an ornamental flourish at its top. There was a Christmas tree outside the chapel's red doors, even though it was now February. Two raised boxes covered in Plexiglas outside contained neon lights, giving the bare churchyard a vegas-style kitsch that was badly out of place. In the middle of the churchyard, there was a thick concrete crucifix topped with an oversize crown, draped with a crimson shroud shaped from plaster.

Part of me wanted to go inside, if only for the quiet, and for the guarantee of a place clean from the muck spread around just outside its gate. But a fear lanced out from the part of my brain that I tend to trust; no, it wasn't the fear of dogma, or of the twisted cultish acolytes that might lurk inside. I was afraid that this church, so aptly placed and easily discovered, was a trap. The ever-restrictive government of Myanmar might have set this place up to find out exactly which visitors have tendencies to challenging their brutish inanity, to spread something that could undermine the restrictive tenets of their power.

I couldn't be seen here. I stepped away from the gate and began walking down the street away from the market again. And then I saw her. The steady-eyed Swiss girl.

Her hair was down and it flashed more auburn than blonde in the sunlight. Her shirt was coral pink, sleeveless and cotton. Her bra straps were exposed. She was trudging down the street just past the church, each step seeming belabored by the equivalent of a midget strapped to her back. She must have gone around the market and emerged from a side street ahead of me. I was happy she'd gotten clear of the immigration checkpoint without too much difficulty. From the direction she was walking, it appeared that she had indeed opted for the long haul, and was looking for a place to sleep.

Part of me wanted run up to her and walk with her down these desolate streets, at least until she'd found a place to stay. She would be a slow target if any of the fiendish short caught sight of her, with that pack pressing her to the ground so firmly. From what I'd seen of the character of this city, it was no place for a petite woman with enough cash to sustain herself in a country that had hardly any ATMs to be hiking around alone, obviously with little idea of where exactly she was going. Then again, who was I to inject myself into her adventure? She thought she could take care of herself. If she'd wanted help, she would have asked for it.

I watched her walk until she disappeared around another slight bend in the road. The last thing I saw was a flash of her hair over the top of her pack. I'm sure she'll return to Switzerland in six months or a year with a fabulous story to tell. But I couldn't help imagine an alternate future, one where all Interpol would eventually find after an exhaustive search was that hulking backpack, riddled with bullet holes and floating in a trash-clogged river. She'd gotten curious and come too close to an opium farm.

I turned back toward the market. I was getting hungry, and was willing to again face the bats for a bit of food for myself.

Burma, part 2: Checkpoints

Like a cast of characters from some bizarre off-Broadway experimental, the denizens at the Thai border each made their introductions.

There was the tall and thin Italian man pacing off to the side of the line. His cheeks were shaded with stubble, and his curly hair hung down to his shoulders, held stiff with gobs of styling gel. He had dark and shifty eyes. They shifted to me and I quickly looked away.

There were the two young Belgians, one wearing a New York Yankee's hat, the other, holding his hip with an effeminate bend. They'd earlier left the line to fill out exit forms, and when they came back, the pair decided to cut in front of me. They hovered a bit, then slowly inched in. I saw their intent, and almost said something rude. Instead, I stepped back, and let them merge.

Good karma, I hoped.

"Merci, thanks," said the one with the baseball cap.

They were the French kind of Belgians.

The German woman and the Swiss girl had settled in behind me and remained quiet. The Swiss girl was hunched under the weight of her heavy pack. She was clearly going in for the long haul. Guess you can do that in Myanmar with neutral credentials.

But a few places up in the line, there stood the motherload of what I consider entertainment in this bizarre sideshow of international transit. The man was the ultimate stereotype, the kind of American America has unfortunately gotten a bad name for over the years. He was talking to his Thai girlfriend. She was doting beside him in the line.

"I don't know how long I will be," he said. "You wait here. I will be back later."

His words were overly enunciated, so she could understand. She understood just fine.

The Thai girl arched her back and raised her dark chin toward his face. Her eyes were soft with a sort of coy pleading, cooing something up at him; "no, my big American man, how could you leave me all alone out here?"

She followed that glance with a squeaky, "I going miss you," and rubbed his pink sticky arm.

She was either that naive, which I would bet my passport she wasn't, or she was that good at getting what she wanted out of these big pink hairy farangs.

"Here, sweetheart, go buy yourself something in the market and something to eat," he said, reaching into the little camera bag he had strapped across his chest, pulling out a fat wad of Thai bills.

The Thai girl smiled at him, gently tugged his shirt sleeve, and stepped back to watch him walk through the checkpoint before she'd go back to the market and flirt around until her boyfriend came back from his day trip. As the American waddled ahead, I couldn't help but write down in my notebook just how silly he looked.

"The guy's shorts and t-shirt are soaked through. His bulges are apparent through the fabric, especially around his waist and nipples. His round little face and close-cropped graying hair and bald spot and petite nose look foreign to the way the rest of his body is clothed. A face like that looks out of place unless it's nestled deep into the recesses of a thick suit in a dark room in Boston in wintertime."

I got through the Thai border checkpoint with no problems. The immigration official smiled when I greeted and thanked him in Thai. Too many westerners, it seemed, insisted on not even learning the pleases and thankyous of the places they visit. Or maybe, he was laughing to himself at my pronunciation. I chose to believe the self-righteous of the two possibilities.

I stepped out from the dim tunnel and into the tropical midday sun. The German woman had left the tunnel just ahead of me. Her immigration agent was apparently quicker than mine at passport stamping. It was an awkward walk across that long bridge with her. After that first incident, I was not going to try again at striking up a conversation.

The white concrete bridge stretched out before me, spanning the sad trickle of a river that separated the two countries here. The bridge was more for show than practicality, much higher and longer than it likely needed to be. Even in the rainy season, the little stream below couldn't possibly inundate this much -- or maybe it could, and they were just being careful. Regardless, it was a long walk through no-man's land. The experience was even more unnerving as the bridge appeared wide and sturdy enough to support trucks and tanks, but there wasn't so much as even a car in sight.

Halfway across the bridge, two undernourished children ran toward me and waved their hands. How cute, I thought. I waved back and smiled. They must have been very disappointed. I would later figure out that they were not waving hello, but trying to make a living by performing one of the few jobs they're skilled enough to perform at age 4: usher tourists from the left side of the road to the right; halfway across the bridge, the lanes shifted directions of travel.

The two skinny boys waving at me were like all the other children I'd seen at similar border areas and tourist zones in Phnom Penh and Bangkok; they would find some way, any way, to perform a service, any little thing, to garner just a little bit of money. These children, I though, would grow up to be the hustlers and tuk tuk drivers of this world, not the poor beggars or weary farmhands. They had, at least, initiative and intelligence.

I continued past the children toward the strange conglomeration of wrought iron on the other side. The metal was painted a laundry water blue, and gold letters were drawn onto the arch the iron formed over the barricades: Union of Myanmar.

I passed through the gate, and right away, I knew where to go. Again, a line of sweaty, pale bodies pointed the way. Above them was a sign: Tachilek. Immigration Checkpoint. The sign was attached to a small concrete building. Its windows were heavily shaded, and its facade had a funny shape, like the ridges on an accordion.

By the time I got to the doorway, the line outside had suddenly disappeared. Perhaps the Burmese officials were just re-opening from a lunch break. I found that a curtain shrouded the doorway. I looked left, then right, to be sure this was the right curtain to pull back, and drew the blue sheet to one side and peered into the dim, crowded room beyond.

There were at least a dozen people inside the small space, about as large as your average college dorm room. I remember joking to my roommate freshman year after an anti-gun commercial flashed on our television that the jail cell in the TV spot looked bigger than our room. This is how I felt in that tiny space with all those people.

From the craning necks and tightly clutched passports, the nervous glances and crossed arms, I could tell the crowd inside was about as confused as I was. How the hell does this process work?

Forming an L-shape around the crowd were two long tables, each with three Burmese officials behind them. One table was covered in money and passports and entry permits. The other was laden with two old CRT monitors and hulking inkjet printers.

A Burmese man at the table covered in Thai Baht and U.S. dollars was exchanging money for entry permits. You'd give him $10, or B500, and he'd give you a glossy paper card. Of course, most people here had Baht with them. The Burmese were making a killing off the exchange rate -- B500 is worth about $14.50. Shows their preference for the good 'ole greenback, though.

After you've paid your entry fee, like buying a ticket to some amusement, you shuffle through the knot of smelly bodies to the table with computers. There, you sit down in a battered wooden chair, directly facing the immigration agent, and have your picture taken with a little Web cam. You sit there nervously tapping your feet while the official looks over your passport, copying information onto the entry permit. The permit goes through the printer, which has slender jerry-rigged hoses snaking out into big vials of ink, and your information and photo get printed onto it. You keep this as a receipt -- because after you get handed back the glossy paper, you hand over your passport to an agent of one of the most restrictive governments on the planet. They hang on to it until you come back -- just to be sure you don't go meddling around too much in the business of the Burmese.

When I went to the table to turn in my passport, I saw the Swiss girl there, caught up in some confusion with the man who exchanged the money. Her huge bag had been dragged off into a corner like a passed-out dwarf, and her steady eyes were wavering just a little.

"I don't know how long I will stay," she said. "I may go and come back today, or I may stay longer. I'm not sure. I want to go in and see."

"How long will you stay? Just for shopping?" the Burmese official said. He was a head shorter than she was.

"No, maybe. I don't know," said the Swiss girl. "Do I need to know now?"

This exchange continued on for a few more rounds. The Burmese man's "shop-ing? shop-ing?" ringing somewhere in every one of his sentences.

I didn't hear the rest of the conversation. I handed over my passport, longingly looked at it as it was placed atop a stack of lonely maroon and forest green and dark blue documents just like it, and stepped out through the curtain.

Burma, part 1: Strange Bedfellows on the Way to Myanmar

Seats on planes, trains and buses and all manner of similar transportation are always a roulette game. I remember that very morning, scrawling in my notepad, "dodged bullet dodged bullet dodged bullet" as the old Chinese tourists and lazy looking Thai women and fat Australians shuffled onto the bus and took seats all around me, but lord, somehow, not next to me.

This is how I started my day, just after sunrise, on my first trip into Burma.

I thought I bought a ticket for the cheap bus. Was cheap enough for me, anyway, the cost of the air conditioned ride across the few hundred kilometers from Chiang Mai to Mai Sai. Turns out, though, the stub they gave me put me up in first class. I was shown to a leather seat, and given packaged cookies by a sweet little bus lady with a neckerchief like a flight attendant.

The ride was four hours of falling in and out of sleep, and half-listening to the damn rock music I'd loaded onto my iPod. From the scenery fluttering past outside the window when I blinked into consciousness every now and then, it would have been much more fitting if I'd loaded a bit of Pan-Asian orchestrals with an epic bent for the trip: Almost the whole way, my view was spire-like green mountains, the spine of some snake dragon undulating a sharp-crested sine wave through the countryside. Definitely not the place for the System of a Down or Nine Inch Nails I had. Though the shredding, roaring, grating sounds were fitting at some moments; You see, I'd eventually lost that roulette game.

When the steady-eyed Swiss girl came onto the bus, her blonde hair in a scarf atop her head, I was thinking, "hope this one strikes!" In my notepad, the quickly jotted feeling was, "hit target hit target hit target."

No such luck. Missed me wide, three rows up.

At least I'm not that poor young Thai guy, I thought, stuck next to the earring-wearing drunken Brit who's mumbling all kinds of crazy in between sips of the three Chang beers he's snuck on and stuffed in the magazine holder in front of him.

Then again, maybe I wish I was. This brings me back to the rock music and my run of bad luck at roulette.

The seat-mate who eventually came shuffling up the aisle with his numbered ticket stub was a French Canadian too tall for his frame. Something was just a little off about his face, too. It was too long, and too slack. He was young, but there was something odd about his demeanor, like he was up to something, or smirking for no good reason.

Not ten minutes into the ride, Slackface kept slouching over the line between the two-by-two seats. I was fine, I had the window to sleep on. But he kept slouching over too close to me. One time, he was really out cold, and when he slouched over an inch from my shoulder, I put an elbow right into his ribs. His head bobbed up, and I pretended to sleep, like I'd just unconsciously shifted in my seat and jabbed him. I turned up songs like Spiders and Toxicity loud as I could, hoping the racket would spill out from my earbuds and remind Slackface, wearing his stupid matching khaki pants and jacket, to stay on his side of things. It must have worked. He eventually started slouching off into the aisle.

Just before noon, the big green bus pulls into an eerily empty bus station. This is the main transport hub of the northernmost city in Thailand, Mai Sai. It's the gateway to Burma, and a quick and easy outlet for most expats anywhere near Chiang Mai to go for a visa run. Through the giant polarized glass windows, I saw the red taxi trucks waiting. So did everyone else. A dozen nervous eyes glance around the bus.

Those the things supposed to take us to the border? Nothing to see or do out here but the border; must be, right?

Nobody, of course, said anything. Too many languages, too many strangers. I think it's one of the most awkward things. Somebody can at least show a little expression, like revealing how happy they are to be out from under those plastic-smelling air conditioning nozzles on the bus. I know I sure as hell am. But I keep my thoughts to myself for the time being. Not sure how much longer I can hold them in, though.

Everyone files out onto the tarmac. The sweet little attendant bows and in a tiny voice, much younger sounding than she actually is, thanks us for riding.

No, little sweet lady who gave me two packs of cookies, thank you.

Like a bunch of deaf-mutes dumped onto a runway, all with a collective notion to get to the same place, most of the passengers amble toward the cluster of waiting red taxi trucks. Everyone seems to slow their pace, to see what everyone else will do. The trajectory remains constant as the passengers heft their duffles and backpacks and plastic 7-11 bags -- a metered approach, a cluster of folks who don't want to seem too nervous or too eager. When they make it to the taxi trucks, not a soul asks the driver a thing. Like little dogs who know an open car door means a gateway to somewhere other than here, everyone just piles into the backs of the waiting vehicles. The passengers fill two and a half of the little red Mazda pickups that have a canopy over the bed and benches set up so people can sit. It's at least 12 people per truck. I follow suit, and climb in the second one in the line. Ooh, steady-eyed Swiss miss sits next to me. I help her lug her unbelievably heavy backpack into the truck bed. She smiles a little, and just nods.

What is it with all these people and not talking?

So far, nobody has said a word. Half the truck is westerners, too. I know they can all speak English, even if it's just a bit. They wouldn't be out here if they couldn't.

The truck starts up when it's got bodies crammed in so tight arms and legs are sticking out the windows and open back. It begins trundling north on the same highway the bus turned off from. I can see the signs: border, 4 kilometers. Almost there. I try to look cool and calm, letting my blue linen shirt open and billow in the wind, adjusting my shades close against my nose, hiding my eyes as they flash around, scanning every sign and building in the world outside the truck, and trying to read every face I could see on the inside.

The silence finally gets to me after one of the Thai passengers wordlessly gets off the truck outside of a squat old townhouse. When the truck starts moving again, I brace myself, then blurt: "So, who's excited to go to Burma today?" My comment was mostly directed toward a sturdy looking European woman across from me. She seemed like she'd be a willing participant, humoring this young American in his real Ray-Ban shades. She sort of just looked out the window across from her, giving me only a half-glance.

I know they all heard me. You could've heard the sweating, bald, scrunched pedophile-looking guy buried at the far end of the bench fart through the kind of silence that was sulking around back of that truck.

Damn, what's with these people!

I look around the little truck for help, like I'd just jumped into the center of a crowded room and yelled, "anyone having a good day?" and everyone just keeps milling about like I hadn't said a thing. A second, then another passes. In desperation, I turn to the Swiss girl. I knew she was Swiss because earlier I'd seen her bright red passport. She looked at me through my smokey lenses. "Yes, I'm pretty curious," she says quietly, her accent lovely as her steady eyes. I could tell she was consoling me, though, like I'd made a mistake and she'd felt bad.

Damn, what's with these people...

Can't have even a little friendly conversation with your fellow travelers? Guess everyone's got some super secret private business on the border they've all got to keep close to them, so clandestine even a mumble might reveal too much. For once, I wish there was a ruckus of young Australian guys around. The stereotype I've yet to see disproven: a hyperactive scrum of loud, obnoxious and rude ruffians, never too far from a couple 1-liter beer bottles. I'd prefer their kind of embarrassing tit-grabbing and poon joking over the sort of aloof quiet that weighed down on this little truck like something's amiss.

Two painfully wordless minutes later, the truck pulls up to the end of the road. Literally, this was the end of the road. It stopped at a huge arch with the immigration checkpoint nestled underneath. The area before the gate was as alive a place I'd seen since I'd left the bus station in Chiang Mai.

It was like most border markets, with shops set into the ground floor of row houses along the crowded sidewalks, vendors selling everything from plastic Hello Kitty hairpins to fried meal worms, pots and pans, fake watches, cheap clothes, lottery tickets and TV sets from Japan and Korea. I get out from the truck, heft by small backpack, and begin walking the 100 meters to the border checkpoint. I can't decide whether to hurry ahead of the other passengers, hang back, or casually match pace with them. I decide to push ahead. Though the Swiss girl and the European woman, who I determine to be German from a brief exchange in German she had with the Swiss girl, walk fast too. They were hot on my heels as I walked up the little concrete slope to the steps of the border station.

On approach, I could tell this would be one of the more interesting border crossings. I saw the usual signs above the metal corrals: Foreigner. Thai. Day Pass Holder. The day pass line, of course, meant the despised Burmese migrant workers who came across every day to do the work Americans give to their Mexicans. Though it wasn't the Day Pass line that caught my interest. It was the foreigner line. It looked like a fleshy pink herd made up of flip flops, tacky T-shirts, knockoff North Face and Puma athletic gear, bad suntans, and the sad little dreams of middle-aged white men hoping to make up for everything they lacked in the real world by buying their way to faux dominance in the faux wilds of Southeast Asia.

To be continued...