Videos of the Quake in Myanmar(Burma)

I got hold of a VCD from my neighbour whom bought the disc at Tachilek.  Its actually filled with video footages of the aftermath of the quake.  They are selling the disc for 25Baht each.  Hope they are using that money to donate to the needys.

Anyway, I ripped 3 of the more interesting footages from the VCD and uploaded to youtube.  Here's the playlist (http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=36F394D0AF345E54) in case you can't see the embedded video below.

The Invisible Lines

I managed to convince my Ang Mo friend (Mr G) to exercise more often by taking a walk. So for the pass few weeks. On and off, If I am not running for the day, I would join him in his walk around the neighbourhood.

Today, we had an interesting experience. We decided to take a walk to the nearby Friendship bridge just a km away from our house (yup, its that close). This bridge is already constructed but there are many constructions still going on at the entrance of the bridge. Mainly the immigration checkpoints and custom houses. We walked straight into the compound and none of the security guys stopped us. Maybe because Mr G is a farang :P. Anyway, there were two pathways in the construction site to the bridge. We took the nearer one which is on the left and head on to the bridge. Again, no one stopped us. All the people we saw were construction workers. No immigration or border police at all. Closer to the bridge was a custom house (like those we see in Woodlands or 2nd link in Singapore. And we could see the bridge from where we stand.

Feeling adventurous on how far we could go before being chased off. We crossed the semi-constructed immigration building and went straight to the bridge. On the bridge, we met a guy on bicycle that told us we could not go any further. We thanked him for the information and he left. This left 2 of us alone on the bridge! And its wide open (no barricades at all!). I looked at Mr G and smiled. He smiled back and we crossed the bridge... Maesai River (the border) was just below us. We stopped at the other end of the bridge anf officially, we were in Thachilek, Burma without any passports. hehehe. We actually wished to continue but we saw a Burmese guard sitting about 60m away from us. He didn't noticed us so we decided its enough and headed back. On our way back, we took the right path this time as we already took the left path. We were chatting on why there are no border police or immigration officers at all?? We were speculating that maybe today is a public holiday (Teacher's day in Thailand) so maybe all at home?? Well, just when we were joking about it, we saw some containers (make shift offices) on the path we were walking and discovered it was the immigration office!! We walked pass but an officer came out and questioned us where we are going. So we just told him that we were just touring around and he just left us.. haha.. He seemed a bit puzzled why we walked out from Burma to Thailand...

Anyway, its an interesting experience and reminds me of something too. Yanni the famous composer also said this before. An astronaut was in space, looking at our beautiful earth. He tried to spot a country and could not do it. Something was missing and he learn what is missing, the "lines" that supposes to be borders were missing. :) All these artificial lines are made by us. There are no lines in the beginning and we made these "lines" to differentiate ourselves, while humanity all along is the same.

Thachilek Trip

My Ang Mo (farang) friend asked me whether want to go to Tachilek for a day trip. He needs to cross over to get some jewelery from his supplier so I agreed. We park our bikes near the border and this time we cross over in VIP style. Made 2 copies of our pass port and placed a 100baht on top of them with our real passport. The custom took our passport and stamped a VIP pass on one of the copies and passed back to us. Over at Tachilek, we paid the $10 US day pass and within 15mins from our house, we are in another country.

How should I describe Tachilek? Its a bit run down but I actually felt its market is more vibrant and heretic. Of course, Tuk tuk drivers and fake cigarette peddlers keep on bothering you. So have to learn to ignore them. Sometimes, its so fustrating that you feel like punching them (especially the cigarette peddler which keeps on haggling you even though you politely told them that we do not smoke.)

We head down to his supplier to settle his work first and he spend about half and hour over there. We then proceeded to get some DVDs. Not bad man, the shops are opened again. There was a big raid last month but now it seems everything is back to normal. Bought some and continued to jalan jalan a bit. Ang Mo friend told me about a shop that sells all funny stuff from China. We went and found some interesting items over there. I bought a Head light magnifying glass for myself. Pretty cool. Basically its like a hat that has a torchlight with two clips in front. You could then attached the magnifying glasses on the clips. Very useful for my miniature modeling. And it only cost 500baht. Very happy.

We then shop for clothes for baby and wife. The range of clothing is quite similar to Maesai as most of them came from China anyway. But the price is a bit cheaper over here though. After the shopping, we were supposed to look for a nice restaurant that my Ang Mo friend saw when he visited last time. But we found out that it has closed. So we had Islamic food instead at a corner. Pretty good Nasi Ayam and the price is same as Maesai (consider expensive in Burma liao).

After lunch, walked a few more and headed back to the border and crossed over. Not bad for a half day trip. :P

Free Burma!!

Myanmar's Crisis

I doubt if any Singaporeans will really bother about the current crisis in Myanmar (Burma). The funny thing is that among the ASEAN countries, we had the most investments with Myanmar. Check out wiki and other their government website. It kinds of pain me to see the amount of inaction our own SG govt is dealing with the Junta. But of course, I think our gahment would prefer the current situation as Myanmar are rich in resources and due to the Junta's way of ruling. Our gahment get to buy cheap sand or other raw materials and exploit the poorer Burma. (Since the rest of the world except China, Thailand and India are not dealing with them).

Burma used to be the richest among the ASEAN. Now it came to this. My recent trip to KengTung was quite enjoyable by the hospitality shown by the peaceful people there (except the bloody military of course) and I sincerely think our gahment could do more by putting the Junta on check by stop dealing with them.

Sad to say, our gahment is to pragmatic and selfish. Rather we get rich then help others. But the funny thing hor... is how come our gahment always give money to Indonesia when there is Tsunami or Earthquake??

Anyway, wife called back to KengTung and everything is fine there. No protest and at all... people in KengTung is a bit more comfortable due to the close access to China (less than 300km will get to Kun Ming). Still, how long this will last I will not know. The Burmese people wants the military to be out of politics but without any physical support (military) from the international community. Doubt it will change, unless someday, someone in the Junta army is able to make that change for good.