Joyhtun

21: The number of people I shared a sawngthaew (taxi truck) with to the Burmese border.

That alone should have set me up for the way this trip over the border would be. First of all, I didn't even find the taxi on my own. I had stopped this morning at Oasis Cafe to get a fruit drink, and the owner, who is American, sent one of her Thai shop-girls with me to get me a taxi. We had to go through the market, and she held my hand the entire way. I rather felt like a little kid who got lost and couldn't find the way home. But she got me there and I knew I was going to pay the right price with her doing the talking. I laugh now because I remember how incredulous we were on our adventure trek last weekend when the tour guides wanted to pack 13 of us into a truck. Um. No. This was far more entertaining. Other than the fact that, like this morning, I was the one and only foreigner, so of course everyone stared at me. I felt kind of like Harry Potter after everyone starts thinking he's the Chosen One. Oh yes, I made that reference, Stacey.

The truck dropped us off at the border, and I was immediately (duh) picked from the crowd by this old, wizened but exuberant sort of man who pointed out the way to immigration. First I had to be "discharged" from Thailand, and then I could set off across the long bridge into Burma. I think the Thai immigration officer was surprised that my visa wasn't close to running out. He gave it a double take than looked at me more closely. Once he was sure that I really wanted to proceed, he gave it back with a smile and then warned me to be careful. At this point, I still hadn't shaken off that guy who pointed me over to immigration--he was waiting outside the office. I tried to ask someone if he was okay, but no one understood me and I thought it best not to act like a crazy person in front of a billion police officers who don't understand what I'm saying. I had the intention of shaking him off at the immigration office on the other side of the bridge, so I walked over with him, and found out that he speaks English well because his grandfather was an interpreter for the British in WWII, the river forms a border between Thailand and Myanmar (Burma) for I think he said over 1,000km, and that Burmese people are "very nice, no murder, no terrorists". I laughed at that one.

Joyhtun at the market with his grandmother.

Got through immigration. They take your passport and give you a receipt for it--foreigners are only permitted to stay in the town until 4pm without a visa, so the passport is a guarantee that you'll come back, I suppose. By now I was starting to feel iffy about this guy who had latched onto me, so it was a good thing that I ran into an older American couple who were just coming back on their way back into Thailand. Basically, they said I could hire a guide for 100 baht/hour who would drive me around and show me everything, and I was like, well, I think I already have one. Sure enough, when I got outside immigration, I was met with cries of "you come here, you sit, you sit" and was ushered into what can only be described as a bicycle push cart. But not one of those bicycle tuk-tuk things, it was like an actual cart with a wooden bench on it. I sat down in that cart and officially put my life in the hands of the driver and my crazy, crazy guide: Joyhtun.

The "lucky stone" at the first temple. You have to touch it to your forehead 3 times.

It weighed about thirty pounds.

We set off first for a temple a little ways down the road. The first thing I learned about Joyhtun was that he really, really loves pictures. He was completely obsessed with my camera, and insisted that I take pictures of absolutely everything, and then that he took pictures of me with absolutely everything. "You take photo, you take photo! Ok, I take photo of you. Check picture!" He actually gave a great tour of the temple, telling me about all of the different spirits, customs, and statues. Buddhist people pray 3 times per day, and there are 3 different types of statues of Buddha: sitting, standing, and reclining. I may have misunderstood, but I believe the sitting Buddha represents meditation, the reclining Buddha represents illness or death, and the standing Buddha represents--hm, I forgot that one. I'll have to look it up. Also, there are four stages of life. 1) young life is until 25-30, 2) mid-life is around 55, 3)old life is the rest, and 4) death, or I guess, afterlife. He said there was something like 28 kilograms of real gold painted onto the temple and the biggest Buddha statue.

Next, we visited a monastery and meditation camp. The building was really cool--it was huge and the floors were gorgeous wood with intricate paintings all along the tops of the walls. He said 3,000 people fit in there to hear the chief monk praying. We had to drive up a hill to get here, and I was feeling really bad about the guy driving our cart thing, because he started breathing pretty hard and Joyhtun had jumped off the back to help push, so I jumped out and helped them push it up the hill, and you should have heard the protesting that went on after that: "I pray you, I pray you, sit down please!" You would have thought it was the end of the world. I told them I didn't mind in the least, and actually I would have felt really bad if I had just sat in the cart while they struggled to get up that hill. I guess women don't really do things like that here. I told the driver guy that he works too hard.

The "reclining Buddha" statue.

Okay. Here's where it got scary. After we left the monastery, Joyhtun pointed to a temple not very far away that he said had really great views of the border and of the mountains so I was all for it. We had gone a ways away from the immigration site at the border at this point, and it seemed like we were on the edge of town. There also wasn't very much traffic other than some scooters and these bicycles. But that's not the scary part. Other than the fact that people in Burma did not look nearly as friendly as people in Thailand, against Joyhtun's numerous protests that they are (not that I ever argued this point with him). They stared me down every single place I went, and some of the men looked angry, but maybe that's just how they look, I don't know.

The boys who wanted their pictures taken.

So we walked up a short distance to this temple, and he was right, the views were fantastic. There were seven or eight boys running around and they all came up to us, wanting to say "hi" and wave at me (they were probably nine or ten years old), so I got out my camera to take a picture and they all got really excited, so I had Joyhtun take a picture of me with them ("I take photo for you!). Then we walked over to the edge of the temple, which was elevated on a hill and he was pointing out Mae Sot, the village nearby, etc. and I was taking pictures of everything, when he pointed right below us--literally, like twenty feet away--at four covered buses with a bunch of people milling around them, and goes "smuggling." I flipped a freaking shit. My first thought was "holy crap, holy crap, I'm taking pictures in full view of the smugglers, they're going to come up here and kill me." Pause the panic--had to get a really quick one of the smugglers, because in case I survived I knew I would want the evidence. Ok, panic back on, full force. What's the one movie you should probably not watch the night before venturing into Burma? Um, I think the answer would be Rambo 4. What movie did I watch the night before going into Burma? Yep. Rambo 4. Robbie, I will shoot you when I get back. Here I am, having visions of being stabbed, raped, or worse, and Joyhtun over here is still whispering to me about how the smugglers hate Americans, the British, the Norwegians, and the Swedish because we have something to do with the NGO and we don't like the militaristic government. I apologize for the loose transcription of that particular conversation, I was too busy HAVING A HEART ATTACK to pay attention. It's really a shame, too, because that temple was exquisite, probably the most unique I've seen so far. All I wanted at that point was to get to the market, which I knew was full of people and away from the American-hating smugglers.

The smugglers.
(I couldn't resist a picture, even in full panic mode)

Just to give you a sense of Joyhtun's personality--here we are, talking in whispered tones (ok, he was talking, I was catatonic) about these vicious smugglers hating Americans, and then after telling me to not talk about it loudly to anyone (duh) he says again in his normal voice "you safe here, I be your bodyguard--no terrorists." At this point, it dawned on me that much like stupid people feel the need to say "I'm not stupid," only a person from a country riddled with terrorism would feel the need to say "No terrorists, no bombs, no murders here." Yeahhhh, not really buying that.

He did seem to get the drift that I wanted out of there ASAP, because he didn't push it when I refused yet another photo op in front of the meditation tree (which incidentally would have been an excellent photo op), but I made a promise to Stacey that I wouldn't die on this trip, and lingering next to the smugglers seemed like it would throw that into question, so off we went.

At the market, I was introduced to what seemed like every member of Joyhtun's family, including his ancient grandmother (who had to be at least 100 years old, because he's pushing 70 himself) to his daughter (who's my age). Of course they all wanted pictures, so I have lots of photos. After the market, I was pretty keen to get back to the border, but I got Joyhtun's phone number, and I'm going to recommend him to Lonely Planet as a guide. Aside from his flippant attitude about smugglers who hate Americans, he was a blast to spend the afternoon with, and was very knowledgeable about Buddhism and the town itself.

My favorite Joyhtun quotes:

"Sometimes the Thai women, they poor, they like to marry the foreigner. Then they rich."
"I take photo for you!"
"I pray you, I pray you, please sit!"
"I be your bodyguard"
"No terrorists!"
"You take photo everywhere but not police. You no can take photo of police."
"Mind your step. Ooooo! Mind your step." (I almost fell down a billion times at the temples--it's been raining and I was barefoot.)