This was a planned day to pretty much drive the whole day towards the South East border of Myanmar. I was prepared to grind out and cover some miles however monotonous the drive and landscape may be. Soe mapped a route that took the whole day through the mountain range which by the very nature had multiple characteristics – terrace farming, waterfalls, showers, dew, filtered sun light through the clouds, rivulets, hair pin bends…
This is the day we gained the respect of Toyota Fortuner, a sturdy and comfortable beast. It took relentless beating in the mountains yet hardly whimpered.
Apart from the scenery and the joy of driving, the highlight of the day was lunch at a remote village. The lunch break broke the monotony of the revving engine sound. The quaint village instilled a sense of stillness. Of all the places and in this remote village, the care taker (daughter of the owner) had a relatively decent command of English with clear enunciation. She had completed completed her business administration and was helping run her family business.
Little did we realize that on this day we went past parts of the country that was not in the control of the Burmese government. We did notice the oddness of having to pass through a checkpoint of land ‘customs clearance’ at one point in the mountain range and not at country border point in particular. The officials were quite warm and offered us some shade and water; Soe had to catch up to provide local permissions and paper works. In general, the hospitality and humility of the Burmese people are quite a contrary welcome to my expectations of the land that had a nasty reputation of ethnic cleansing where refugees were sent enmasse to India in 60s and the ongoing Rohingya crisis.
We reached our hotel destination. Soe had to abandon his car with his brother as it had failed on them. He hitch hiked with a stranger to the hotel. Guess the hitch hiking turned out to be of symbiotic between the driver and Soe – Soe was able to bail out the driver with a compromised license by sweet talking his way through the checkpoints and get a timely ride to catch up with us.
The regular dinner was made memorable by the stories Soe shared with us. Growing up during the military junta regime, and with less opportunity, Soe was a self-taught man. Although trailed along by the ‘monitors’, Soe used to visit US and British embassies to learn English which subsequently led to his two mini libraries at his and his parent’s place. Despite shelling out hard earned money on his brother’s education, his Brother chose to join his parents in farming. To this day, Soe is bitter about his brother’s missed opportunity. A solid guy with strong convictions, the personality resonating very well to the impression we picked from the very first meet at the border
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