by Chris Tharp
“Really?”
“Sure, man. There’s a crossing just twenty minutes from here.”
Steve looked at me and then shrugged: “Why not?”
“Cool, man. Let me take you.”
Tachileik is a Burmese border town just down from meeting of rivers that makes up the heart of the Golden Triangle. It lies across from the Thai town of Mae Sai, and is open for foreigners as a day-trip destination. Most people just pop across to get that exotic MYANMAR IMMIGRATION stamp in their passport and to have a peek into a country that, up until recently, was little visited by outsiders. These are the reasons we went, in addition to the fact that if anyone ever asks you the question “Do you want to go to Burma right now?” you emphatically answer “YES.”
“Here’s the deal: you pay the border guard five bucks US, and they’ll stamp your passport as well as give you a slip of paper that acts as your temporary visa. It’s good just for the day, and you’re not allowed to leave the actual town of Tachileik. There’s not so much to see there anyway, but have a walk around for an hour or so, and then you can tell all your friends that you’ve been to Myanmar.”
Joe parked the car and pointed us toward the border crossing.
“There it is. You got your passports on you?”
“Yup,” Steve said.
“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
“Nahhhh, man. I’ve been many times before. You guys have some fun.”
Steve and I walked with our little backpacks toward the border, assaulted by the afternoon sun which had now cranked the heat up to an angry sizzle. I was greasy with sweat and parched in the throat. I could also feel the effects of fatigue setting in, amplified by the tropical oven around us. When I looked over to Steve, I saw that he felt the same. We were crossing into Burma and already pissy about it.
The Thai guards quickly stamped us and waived us through. We strolled over the “friendship bridge” that spanned the trickle of a stream between the two nations, and soon found ourselves on the Burmese side of things. The officers wore pseudo-military, olive-green uniforms, and scanned the pages of our passports with bored, bloodshot eyes. After a lengthy perusal, my gatekeeper sneered my way and held up the fingers and thumbs of his right hand.
“Five dollars!”
My Lincoln was ready to go, and I handed it over at once.
Kachunk! I had my stamp.
Joined by Steve, I walked into Burma.
We were assaulted by a pack of touts as soon as we crossed the threshold. They were lying in wait, like leopards that hadn’t eaten in weeks.
“Postcard?”
“Cigarette?”
“DVD?”
“Bag?”
“Water? Drink?”
“Cigarette?”
“DVD?”
“Bag?”
“Postcard?”
This was repeated on loop—over and over again—as the touts locked step with us and buzzed like a swarm of gnats. They never gave an inch of ground, following us as we made our way down the little road that led from the border and funneled us into a sad market.
Steve looked my way: “Well THIS sucks.”
“Yeah…”
The market sold assorted goods—CD players, TVs, electronic toys, blankets, cookware, and clothing—but none of it interested us. It could have been a market anywhere in Asia, full of things that neither Steve nor I had the slightest need for. But the vendors jumped to their feet when they saw us approach with our mob of hangers-on, motioning to their wares with the intensity and desperation that only oppression and crushing poverty can produce. Everybody wanted a piece of us, and glared our way with needy vampire eyes. And the harder they tried to sell, the more determined we became not to buy a thing.
And we didn’t.
“Fuck this,” said Steve, brushing away the hand of a man clutching a leather wallet for sale. “We got our stamp. Let’s go back to Thailand. This is just… sad.”
“I have never agreed with you more, sir.”
And with that, we turned around and left the forbidden mystery of Burma.
*
Fatima laid out the spread once more that night with a savory, fiery green chicken curry, lime soup, and the wide fried-egg noodle dish known as pad see ew. Steve and I washed down the huge feed with a couple bottles of Singha, and then sat up with Joe while he held court.
Smokin’ Joe wasn’t a drinker, but as his nickname suggests, he liberally blazed weed. He smoked often and mightily. He was essentially a hippy—a long-haired child of the sixties and early seventies who was always in search of the mellowest of grooves and it should come as no surprise that pot gave this to him. When Joe smoked, he relaxed and opened up; for him, it had none of the dulling, stupefying effect that it has on some. It seemed to help him focus, even.
He loaded his pipe, lit the bowl, and took a long deep drag. I could hear the dried-out Thai dope crackle under the heat of the flame. He exhaled a bluish cloud and said, “This isn’t so easy to find these days. Things have been pretty dry since the crackdown in 2002.”
“The crackdown?” asked Steve.
“Yeah… in 2002 the Thai government and police declared war on drugs—and we’re not talking like the fake ‘War on Drugs’ back at home. These guys were not fucking around. The cops hunted down known drug dealers all across the country and executed them, straight-up. There was no trial, no due process… just a bullet through the head, man. Over 2,000 people were murdered. There was an international outcry over it at the UN. Heavy stuff, man. Ever since then the weed sellers have been a lot more discreet, if you know what I mean.”
Joe sparked the lighter and took another deep hit. He exhaled and leaned against the door leading out of the kitchen, tapping on the side of his pipe, lost in thought. Outside, a chorus of frogs and insects struck up their symphony. Joe looked up toward the ceiling with those big dark eyes for a nearly a minute, before carrying on.
“Did I ever tell you guys how I drove the old Hippy Trail?”
“You’ve mentioned it before,” said Steve, “but I’ve never gotten the details.”
“Well I did it. I drove from Paris to Kabul—that’s Afghanistan… twice, man. I did it two times. Totally overland. You couldn’t even dream of doing the same trip today.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Paris to Kabul? Through Iraq and Iran?”
“Sure as shit, man. But let me tell you how I ended up in Europe in the first place.”
Steve cued him: “Weren’t you a draft-dodger?”
“That I was. The Vietnam War was raging at the time and guess what? Old Joe’s number came up. That’s right, man, Uncle Sam wanted me to pick up a gun and go kill me some Vietcong, but I’d be damned if I was gonna go along with such a plan. So I decided to skedaddle.”
“To Europe?” I asked.
“Yeah. Fuck Canada, man. They were sending people back at that time. It just wasn’t safe. And my parents, thank God, were on my side, so they sprung for a plane ticket to Sweden, where, upon landing, I requested political asylum. And guess what, man? They gave it to me! They let me stay! They set me up with an apartment, a job at a bakery, and even bought me a brand-new suit.”
Steve couldn’t believe it: “They. Gave. You. A. Suit.”
“Yeah, man, and a nice one too. Good fit, but at the time I wasn’t so much one for wearing a suit and tie. Hell, I’m still not, if you know what I mean. Now there weren’t too many American draft-dodgers in Sweden at the time. In fact, I believe that I was the only one. So, as you can imagine, I became a bit of a cause célèbre. I got invited to parties with politicians and filmmakers and met a lot of nice blonde Swedish girls, who were every bit as lovely… and horny… as I had been led to believe.”
“Wow,” I just nodded and waited for more.
“Sweden was great. I had it made there, but the problem was I was kind of trapped. I couldn’t really leave the place, and moreover… there was no good acid to be had. It wasn’t like California, man. We were the LS
D capital of the world, and suddenly I found myself in a cold Scandinavian country with no real heads and nothing decent to drop. So I took it upon myself to rectify the situation.”
“What?” asked Steve. “You made acid?”
“Nahhh, man. I had a dealer buddy of mine from L.A. send me a bunch. In a Tampax box… but I got busted.”
“How?”
“Customs, man. They checked that shit out, and before you know it I went from golden boy refugee to convicted criminal. They sent me to prison.”
“What’s Swedish prison like?” I enquired.
“Let me just tell you this,” Joe said. “If you ever have to go to prison, it should be in Scandinavia, because they are some enlightened souls. It was only ‘prison’ in that you couldn’t leave… or more like you weren’t supposed to leave. There really weren’t any guards. It was more a luxurious work camp. I had my own small apartment, and would work a few hours every day cutting wood. But I had clean clothes, hot food, and everything I needed provided for me.”
Steve asked, “So how long was your sentence?”
“Three years. But after just one I got restless. I’m like that, man. I got some itchy feet and can’t be penned up. So one day, after serving about a year on my sentence, I just walked away.”
“It was that easy?” I said.
“Yeah… there were no barbed-wire fences or guard towers. The whole thing was pretty much run on the honor system. Crazy, yeah.”
“Yeah, crazy.”
“So eventually I make it down to West Germany and am hanging out in Hamburg. I stay there for a few months and really got it going on. I’m dealing hash and got a nice apartment and a brown-haired German girlfriend… I’m in my early twenties and loving it, but it all went crashing down, man. I got busted by the German cops for hash possession and deported back to Sweden!”
“Ah man!” I said. “Tough break, Joe.”
“Yeah, but I deserved it, man. The Swedes were good to me and I fucked it all up. So I went back to Sweden and served out the rest of my sentence… by now it was ‘73, and I still couldn’t go back home, so I decided to hit the Hippy Trail.”
“I’ve heard bits and pieces,” I said, “but never really knew what people meant by the ‘Hippy Trail.’”
“Well,” said Joe, taking another puff off the pipe and exhaling. “You, sir, are talking to the right man. The Hippy Trail refers to a popular route connecting Europe and Asia that was traveled by a certain group of young, dope-smokin’, long-haired freaks in the ’60s and ’70s. It started in Paris, went through Istanbul and Turkey, and then crossed Iraq and Iran. It then branched off in a few directions, which lead either to the beaches of Goa in the south, or Katmandu, Kashmir, and Kabul up north. People went to these places because they were beautiful, dirt cheap—you could literally survive on pennies a day—and had the best hash on the planet, which was pretty much sold openly in those days. This Hippy Trail was a brief flash of beauty which has since been erased by war and religious bigotry, but it DID exist… it was a real, doable thing… and I ran the fucker twice in a ‘66 Citroën.”
Steve sighed. “That must have been just amazing.”
“It was, man. It was. It was, by far, the coolest thing I have ever done. But it wasn’t without its dangers. Cops would shake you down. One time I got arrested in the middle of Iran—this was the Shah’s Iran, mind you, full of brutal, nasty pigs—they caught me with a nodge of hash and threw the both us in the jail in the middle of fucking nowhere… me and my old lady at the time. Iran is a big, empty country in places. It reminds me of Nevada, all desert and mountains and open space. Luckily I was able to bribe the night guard, or who knows how long I would have rotted away in that cold cell…”
“You got lucky,” Steve remarked.
“Yeah I did, man. But I wasn’t so lucky once I went back to America.”
“When did you return?”
“‘75, during the Ford administration. I had been told that it was safe to go back, that Ford was going to pardon all of the draft-dodgers, but… that was some serious misinformation, man… because I was arrested and thrown in L.A. County jail as soon as I got off the plane. That’s right, L.A. County. This was a world away from my cushy little cell back in Sweden. This was REAL jail. I was locked up with rapists and murderers. These guys were animals, man… and you know what?”
Joe’s face darkened.
“My first week there, I had to suck a guy’s dick. Mexican dude.”
“Why?” asked Steve.
“Well, it was pretty simple. He grabbed me and said, ‘Suck my dick, or I’ll kill you.’ So… I sucked his dick, right then and there. I didn’t really consider the alternative at the time. In fact, I still don’t.”
Steve sighed. “Wow.”
“Yeah, hard times. But I managed to secure protection from a black gang. My parents sent money to my prison account, so I was able to buy them enough cigarettes to guarantee that I’d never have to take another dick in my mouth for the rest of the time I was in lockup. These guys were big and black and didn’t take shit from no one, man.”
“Good guys to have on your side,” I said.
“Yessirree… well, I stayed in that jail until Jimmy Carter was elected in ‘76. On his first day in office, he pardoned all the draft-dodgers, which included ol’ Joe, here. I was a free man.”
He looked both of us in the eyes and smiled: “I bet you’ve never heard anything quite like that before, now have you?”
*
The next morning, we repacked our bags and threw them into the back of his Toyota. After some goodbyes and a few photos with the family, we pulled out of his concrete driveway and made our way north toward the border with Laos.
“You guys in any sort of hurry?” Joe asked.
“Nah, not really,” Steve said. “We plan on staying in Hoixai tonight and taking a boat to Luang Prabang in the morning.
“Good,” said Joe. “Let’s take a little detour.
Soon we were off the main road, heading up a dirt track into the nearby hills. The jungle immediately enveloped us as the little two-wheel-drive vehicle strained and groaned up the rutted dirt road. Tree branches slapped the windshield and scraped the sides and roof of the compact car.
“It’s good you came now,” Joe said. “In the rainy season, this road is impassible. Just a giant mud track, man.”
Underneath the canopy of trees, the dirt retained a lot of its moisture, and it still rained periodically during the dry season, resulting in some residual puddles and mud patches through which Joe gingerly piloted the vehicle.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“There are some hill-tribe villages up this way. You could take the tour with the thousands of other tourists, or go on Joe Excursions instead! I’m tellin’ you man, no other farang ever head up here. What you’re gonna see is pretty pure stuff.”
Eventually we came down a dip in the road and climbed back up again. At the top were some locals getting down with some serious labor. A pile of logs lay stacked on the side of the track. The men were hauling the logs down an adjacent path into the nearby village.
“Looks like they could use a hand,” Joe said.
Before I knew it, I was underneath a heavy piece of freshly cut timber, helping to tote it down the slick trail the cluster of houses. Wood smoke hung in the air as we approached the tiny village. Chickens ran free and pigs rooted in the dirt. Children stared from entranceways of the huts as we passed, finally depositing the wood at a small construction site where the men were erecting a new house. We repeated the trip three more times, until all the wood had been ferried into the village from the road.
“These are the Akha people,” said a winded Joe. “They emigrated from China about a hundred years ago. They’re a pretty common ethnic group in this area of northern Thailand.”
The men in the village wore jeans and T-shirts and to me were nearly indistinguishable from any other Thais I’d seen, though they seemed a bit small
er and darker skinned, as all country folk in Southeast Asia tend to be from working outside their whole lives. The women, on the other hand, wore the distinctive clothing that identified them as Akha—black tunics with brightly colored bands sewn on, and headdresses adorned with silver studs, baubles, and beads. They watched on from a slight distance; one glanced up while nursing her baby, shyly smiling at these three foreigners suddenly pitching in on the new construction project.
We lingered in the village for about twenty minutes, snapping a few discreet photos while Joe made small talk with some of the men in broken Thai. I’d never visited a “minority village” before and had read about some of the pros and cons. At the very least, I didn’t want to fall into the objectification that so many of us are guilty of when visiting such tribes—the “look at the quaint people here for our photo-taking pleasure” syndrome. The good thing was that, like Joe had said, this particular tribe wasn’t generally visited by outsiders. They were off the tourist circuit. As a result, the village hadn’t been gussied up for our pleasure. It was a bit shabby, with plenty of plastic bottles and other refuse scattered about the place, and some of the residents looked like they could do with a bath, or at least a change of clothes. It was a real, lived-in place and not a museum piece; we were greeted with no traditional dances or women hawking jewelry. No one asked us for any money at all, unless you count the guy offering to sell us some opium as we walked back toward the car.
As we made our way back to the main road and pressed on north, Joe made another detour, this time to a natural lake rimmed by tropical forest. Clouds had now moved in, obscuring the sun and bathing the body of water in morose shades of grey. We passed by a small guesthouse and observed a few small houses on the lakeshore, but otherwise the place remained in its beautiful, natural state. Joe stopped the car and we got out.
“I love this place,” he said. “But take it in while you still can. Because what you see is going to be gone in a year or two. They’re going to put in a multi-million-dollar vacation housing development that is just going to destroy the place as we know it, not to mention make it off limits for all the local people… gates, guards, the whole kit and caboodle. This is happening all over the country. All the good land is getting snatched up by big money and being turned into luxury bullshit. It’s not just Thailand—it’s the story world over.” He looked down and shook his head and then gazed out at the glassy water. “I’m lucky to have seen it while I could, because man, this is not the world I want to live in. They’re just ruining everything.”