so....i apologize for not writing sooner.... i'm finally back in thailand after the burmese escapades....it was amazing. we landed in yangon late in the afternoon, so we didn't get to see much outside of the hotel the first day, but that in itself was pretty interesting. the cab dropped us off at the newpark, or newday hotel, something like that. the door was opend for us by a little elderly burmese man. after seeing that we made it safely through the threshold, he returned to his ratty little lawn chair, and an almost complete state of dormancy. he sat and stared out the window with a blank look on his face, which still managed to depict a certain sense of purpose. we stood in the lobby for a moment, which was completely silent, save for the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. the fluorescent lights gave everything a greenish tint, and that, alternated with shafts of orange light coming in the windows from the streetlights, made it nearly impossible to tell what color anything in the room really was. it felt like i was inside of a television, and someone was rubbing a giant magnet on the screen. finally a little boy with yellow circles painted on his cheeks came running into the room, paused, smiled, and then ran out of the room, yelling something in burmese about the white-folk in the lobby with tattoos all over 'em. soon thereafter, his smiling mother came in and asked if we would like to see the rooms. she said she had rooms with air-con and hot water for 15, or rooms wth only a fan, and no hot water for $10. then she led us upstairs and opened up a nice room, with 2 beds, a window, air-con, and hot water. i told her it was very nice, but we would like to see the cheaper room, because we were on a budget. she nodded and smiled....and stood there. i told her that we didn't mind cold water, and that since we were leaving the next day, a fan would do just fine, we would like to see the cheaper room. she nodded and smiled...and stood there.getting frustrated, i took out $10 and showed it to her "$10 only...OK?" ..."nothing problem" she said, "this room $10. You no use hot water and air-con, OK?" i asked her how much it would be if we promised not to look out the window, but she didn't get it.
Yangon turned out to be the south east asian equivalent to Havana. All of the large buildings, save the buddhist temples of course, are beautiful british-colonial buildings, painted in an irrationally pastel palate, and then neglected for 30 years. The building across the street from our hotel is 4 stories of beautiful stone masonry, covered in teak-wood windows and ornament, topped by an amazing clock-tower. The entryway was framed by 4 corinthian columns, which extended up to the 3rd floor, behind which hung n amazing brass oil-lamp chandelier. now picture that building painted mint green, sprawling with black varicose veins of mold, and ferns sprouting out of the walls at will. all the vehicles in the city are either british cars, trucks, and busses from the 40's 50's and 60's , or they are late 80's toyota corollas. that's it. apparently the importation of anyhing requires government approval, which entails some heavy-duty greasing of the palms.
The government of myanmar is one of the most corrupt in the world. Even more so than Louisiana. Everything is run by the military, and the generals go to great lengths to ensure that it stays that way. All communication and media is government censored. Even the internet is for the most part, illegal. There is only one server for the entire country, and of course it is expensive, and government run. This means you can only access web-sites which the government deems "appropriate", which are few and far between. (yes, the burmese public has been kept from the wonders of scottcampbelltattoo.com for all these years) any e-mail transmission that is not monitored by the government is illegal. ( hotmail, yahoo, etc....) I did have one oppourtunity to check my e-mail during the trip, when we stumbled upon a black-market internet connection while changing money.
legally, you are only allowed to change foreign currency into kyat (pronounced "chet" ...how they came up with k-y-a-t as the english spelling i have no idea) with the myanmar national bank, so that no one can profit from the exchange other than the gov., but you can get a much better rate by changing money with a black-market money-changer. usually if you go to any of the more popular tea-houses in town, they'll find you. one of them tells us "i take you e-mail nothing problem, you pay, ok?" so we agree, and follow him a few blocks down the road, through the back of a candy-store, into someone's living room. he directs us to the sofa, where we sit. he leaves, and we're there, with no idea where the hell we are, watching someone's bratty little indian kids fighting over a vhs tape. After about 5 minutes, a fat indian man with no shirt, a lime green sarong, and the biggest gold pinky-ring i've ever seen leads us into the room with the computer. We sit down at the desk as a little asian secretarial version of farrah fawcett turns on the screen and proudly unveils hotmail before our very eyes. the connection was incredibly slow, so i just skimmed over the messages which looked important, and tried to finish as quickly as possible. while waiting for each page to load i noticed that the traffic coming in and out of the room was a bit odd. not only in a david lynch sort of way, but in a fucked up circus sideshow sort of way also. at one point, sitting on the sofa across the room, were 2 teenagers, one pretty clean-cut and well groomed, the other looked like his face was presently in the process of melting away. Imagine you left a burmese toddler next to the heater for too long, and then he grew up to be a burmese mafia lackey, and that's the guy. We all exchanged the occasional nervous glance, them, marveling at my tattoos, and me, marveling at the giant bricks of cash that they were stuffing into plastic shopping bags.
so, like i said i apologize for not writing sooner, i'll tell you about the rest soon...
-scott