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.