Banal Bureaucracy

Trip Start Aug 21, 2003

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Although we haven't been traveling, moving around, or sightseeing in the slightest, we are giving you a travelogue entry anyway. We have been in Bangkok for the past week, arranging visas and flight tickets for the next part of our journey. We decided to earn our visas ourselves, despite the nearby presence of hundreds of travel agents who will do it for you for a couple hundred extra baht. Last time we do that. We thought it would be neat going to the embassies, observing how they work, and so on, but all it turned out to be was a lesson in patience. Not only have we spent the last 5 days minus the weekend waiting in line, expressing frustration at nonresponsive embassy employees, and taking hour long taxi rides through Bangkok's traffic (which we recently heard is one of the top ten worst in the world!!)we also have had to once again endure Bangkok's repressive heat and polluted air. We have found refuge, unbelievably, in malls. Something we hate back home, but so modern and delightful here in Bangkok

fruit vendor at Chiang hole

. We got our Burmese visa yesterday, our plane tickets today, and tomorrow we pick up our Indian visas and fly out of this hellhole.

We are writing now, pre-Burma, because we expect that we won't be able to communicate much in Burma (known to the government as Myanmar) while we are there. Phone calls cost around $8/minute, and internet access is severly censored. We know that Yahoo and Hotmail have been banned, we are not sure about Excite. Either way, the internet cafe scene will be scarce. Why, you may ask, would a country go to all the trouble to censor something so innocent as Yahoo!? Well, we thought we would educate you a bit as well about the political and social situation occurring right now in Burma. The country is governed by one of the most repressive regimes in today's world. It is a military dictatorship that remains in power despite losing the national elections to a woman named Aung San Suu Kyi in 1990. Instead of handing her the reigns at that time, they placed her under house arrest for years and jailed most of her prominent supporters. She was recently placed under house arrest again and remains locked up. This regime has been known to improve the country's tourist infrastructure through slave labor, including the use of forced child labor. Political dissent is punished with imprisonment or worse. San Suu Kyi herself is adamantly against the presence of tourists in the country; she believes tourist dollars go straight into the pockets of government officials and fund the government's terror, thereby maintaining its existence in power

Hybrid Motorcycle

. However, many other political reformists believe that to isolate the Burmese would be devastating to their plight for freedom and democracy. We have taken both of these views into account, and will go to Burma with the intent to support only the locals by putting USD into their pockets rather than the government's. This means avoiding the national train system, Myanma Airlines, government-owned guesthouses, and so on. This avoidance of the government was recently made a bit easier with the abolition of FECs. FECs (Foreign Exchange Certificates) were required for each tourist until last August, meaning upon arrival you had to change at least $200 into FECs, which meant giving USD straight to the government. Most people got out of it by bribing officials; now this is no longer necessary. I guess it is obvious as to why the government has attempted to censor the Internet; they don't want the Burmese people broadcasting their plight to the rest of the world. Anyone interesting in learning about the international effort to free this country can check out www.freeburma.org, or www.Myanmar.com to check out the government's propaganda.

We are really excited for both Burma and India. By the time you hear from us we will most likely be in India (we plan to spend 2 weeks in Burma), and now we bid you adieu.