He peers into Savannah’s eyes, then says something slowly in Thai. Until just now, I didn’t know it’s possible to speak Thai in less than fast-forward. He and Savannah had to start their discussion by asking each other about languages until they found one they could both understand.
Since I’m completely out of the conversational loop, I can look around without being disrespectful. The mountains of Myanmar look like what you get if you tell a child to draw hills—an abrupt rise, rolling rounded tops, green to the crests. They form a wall to the east, stretching north into the morning haze. The sun pushes shadows across the farmland toward Highway 45, the road we’ll take north to the Nam Ton if we ever get past here.
Savannah says “Co-lum-bi-a U-ni-vers-i-ty.” It’s the first thing she’s said over the past ten minutes that I’ve understood. She holds a business card so the sergeant can see. Then another long string of Thai while she somehow keeps smiling.
The three soldiers have managed to get the truck’s front driver’s seat to lean forward. One shimmies next to the bench that serves as a vestigial back seat and pulls on the seat cushions. He’ll have to work smarter, not harder; there’s a way to get the pads off, but it involves screwdrivers. Still, it’s worth watching him, because under the seat pads is a space big enough to hide the “gifts” (cigarettes, booze, diapers) we bought in Arunothai. I don’t know if this is standard equipment on a Hilux or a special deal through Olivia’s preferred car-rental agency.
The sergeant and Savannah have started debating. It’s not angry—Savannah says that people here don’t respond to public anger—but there’s a lively back-and-forth. He keeps tapping the passports with his fingertips and she keeps waving her right hand toward the north.
The soldiers haven’t made any progress with the back bench and are now peering under the truck. For a nation that’s a prime exporter of heroin and meth, what kind of import is so threatening that it’s worth this much trouble to find?
Now Savannah points toward the shack, then makes the “you and me” hand gesture between her and the sergeant. This one I get: she’s saying, “Let’s take this inside.” Where the bribery happens.
The sergeant nods, then throws a command in what I’ll assume is Burmese at the soldiers. The youngest trots to the guard post, grabs his assault rifle, then jogs to stand in front of me with his gun held across his chest.
Savannah says, “Stay there. I’ll be back soon.” She disappears into the shack with the sergeant.
Like I’m going anywhere. The kid soldier guarding me—he looks like he’s about fifteen—has a round face and broad nose, very different from the Chinese in Arunothai or the fine-boned Thais on the airplane and in the airports. His bush hat (basically a green fabric cowboy hat) is a tad too large. Luckily, so are his ears.
I say, “English?”
He scowls, adjusts his grip on his gun. So much for conversation.
His buddies are still trying to deconstruct the truck. One dude has the bright idea to look under the floor mats. It reminds me that I never checked those to see if the last driver left behind any Shan independence propaganda or satirical cartoons involving the Buddha (both extreme no-nos). The other still futzes with the back bench.
He worries me. If he keeps at it, he’ll eventually figure out how to get past the cushions. I’m not sure if smuggling is a capital crime in Myanmar and I don’t want to find out.
Savannah’s still gone. I don’t know for sure how long she’s been in there, but I know it’s longer than it takes to make a payoff. It would be just our luck to run across the only honest immigration officer in the whole country.
I smile at my guard. He looks confused.
Savannah marches out of the shack with the sergeant trailing along behind her. She’s clutching the passports to her chest. That looks like potential good news, but I don’t get too excited until she flashes me a big grin as she passes. “Got it.”
The sergeant barks at the three soldiers, who scurry like the werewolf from Oakland is after them. They have the barrier swung out of the way by the time Savannah and I have strapped in and the truck is ready to go.
We’re in Myanmar. In an area we’re not supposed to be in, with no legal visas and no intention of following the rules for foreign tourists. I can’t say this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s definitely in the top five.
“How much did the good sergeant cost us back there?”
Savannah concentrates on the road, which looks and drives more like a riverbed than a highway with a number. “About seven hundred baht.”
“That’s Thai money.”
“That’s what he wanted. It gives him options. He can go into Arunothai to shop, or he can change it into kyat at Ponparkyin, where he’s based.”
I do the math: thirty-five baht to the dollar. “Twenty bucks? That’s all?”
“That’s what he makes in a month.”
Seriously? No wonder they’re on the pad.
We stop after half a mile. Savannah pins up her hair, then covers it with a slate-blue kerchief. She also buttons her dress all the way up and down.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ready for the Wa checkpoint about half a mile up.”
“Are they Muslim?”
“No, they’re Christian or Buddhist, but I’m awfully blond for around here. I already stand out—I don’t need to make it worse. Can you dig some cigarettes out of the back?”
When I hear “ethnic rebel militia,” I think of skinny people in ragged clothes hauling cast-off weapons through the jungle. The United Wa State Army looks as organized as the Tatmadaw—the same green uniforms, the kind of flat-topped fatigue caps you see in Korean War pictures, even a red tape reading “U.W.S. ARMY” over their left chest pockets. Their patches are more colorful.
Compared to the prolonged negotiation at the government checkpoint, this is like checking out at Walmart—fast and impersonal. The head guy (I assume; he’s the oldest) strolls to Savannah’s window and asks in English where we’re going; Savannah tells him, “Mongton”; he names his price; she forks over four thousand kyat ($3.42) and a pack of Marlboros; he smiles and waves away the guy standing in front of the truck with his rifle aimed at us; and we’re off. The twelve-year-old behind the sandbags doesn’t even shoot us with his machine gun.
Once the checkpoint’s disappeared into the distance, I ask, “Should we be glad or sorry that those guys seemed more together than the government?”
“Around here, they are the government more-or-less.” Savannah unbuttons her dress to mid-thigh and mid-sternum. There must not be any more roadblocks coming soon. “Being more organized than the Naypyidaw government is a pretty low bar.”
We’re not in Kansas anymore. “Well, the good news is we’re only thirty-five kilometers or so from Wān Namhawng. We should make it by lunchtime.” Wān Namhawng is a village near the confluence of two rivers that create the Nam Hang, the closest I can find to an end to the Nam Ton.
Savannah peers at me over the top of her sunglasses. “Don’t count on it.”
Not surprisingly, both our cellphones lost signal once we crossed into Myanmar. I knew we’d need a GPS here—it’s not like AAA stocks maps of this place. While I chowed down on free food in the Oneworld Business Class Lounge at LAX, I searched for “use gps on cell phone without signal” and ended up on the Adventure Alan website. It’s doable so long as you download the maps ahead of time. I installed ViewRanger, a GPS app, on my phone and proceeded to scam off the lounge’s wifi to download every single street and topo map I could find for northern Thailand and eastern Myanmar. It works fine.
That’s how we know the names of the villages we pass through. It’s not like the local Kiwanas put up “Welcome to Wān Longhpakhpit” signs at the city limits. It’s also how we know where the Anti-Destination League does its best to stop us from making any progress.
First it’s the washout just south of Wān Namyūm, about fiv
e and a half kilometers from the border. Some UWSA soldiers watch a bunch of skinny civilians try to reassemble a short bridge across a stream that became a river in the past few days. We have to pay a $2 toll and creep across a rough wooden pontoon bridge at walking speed to get to the north bank.
Next it’s the flatbed truck overloaded with huge logs that forces us off the road above a nameless village about two and a half klicks past the washout. It took a while for us to get out of the ditch we ended up in.
As we approach the southern fringes of Wān Nam-hu, three klicks north of the Logging Truck Incident, a military convoy shoves us off the road again, this time into a farmer’s boggy field. Savannah grumbles “Tatmadaw” as the cargo trucks roar past us.
“How can you tell?”
“The soldiers have helmets.”
There’s a UWSA roadblock as we enter Ponparkyin, a village big enough to be considered a town. A mixed herd of trucks and motorbikes waits to get through. Young UWSA troops pace up and down the line, trying their best to look fierce.
I’m driving this time. “It’s taken us over an hour and a half to go fifteen kilometers.”
She nods. “That’s about right.”
“And we’ve almost gotten killed twice.”
“That’s about right, too.”
Great. The truck drivers mill around on the road, smoking, talking. A few look twitchy, pacing too fast, making abrupt gestures. I see one guy dig something out of a plastic bag and pop it like a pill. “Those guys are using?”
“A lot of truck drivers use meth to go long distances. I think now you see why.”
Forty minutes later, Savannah handles the checkpoint negotiations from the passenger’s side of the truck. We grab lunch at a makeshift grill in an open stall (Wa spicy fried fish for me), then crawl through midday foot and scooter traffic to get on our way. I almost flatten three bikers as we go. They don’t seem to notice.
The good news: the highway’s paved (after a fashion) once we leave Ponparkyin. The bad news: it’s a little over one lane wide. I’m constantly swerving onto the crumbling shoulder to let trucks or military vehicles pass.
Savannah taps my thigh, then points out my window. “See those terraces over there?”
I glance out the driver’s window long enough to see the stairsteps climbing the nearby hillsides. Each one has a tall fringe of green on top. “Yeah. What’s that they’re growing?”
“Corn now. Usually poppies.”
“Like… opium poppies?”
“Uh-huh. The farmers grow corn between April and August to recondition the soil.” She sweeps her hand across the valley ahead of us. “This is poppy country. It’s their whole economy.”
I’m not sure what to do with that information. I’ve always thought of pot and opium growing in jungles or under camouflaged nets so the narcs can’t see it from the air. Maybe I watch too many movies. “Just right out in the open like this?”
“Uh-huh. It seems strange, doesn’t it? But everything’s about heroin and meth here.”
I think about that until my brain makes a random connection. “Everything? Even pottery?”
“Everything.”
“So you already knew there was a connection between Nam Ton wares and drugs.”
“Uh-huh. It’s not much of a secret.”
“It was to me.” Something else she kept from me until the DEA blindsided me. “How do you know all this?”
“I got some of it at Stanford and Columbia; the rest I’ve had to learn for work. There’s a contemporary art community in Myanmar now. It’s small but it’s growing. Artists are getting more exposure to the outside world since the country started opening up.”
“That’s probably not happening here.”
“No, mostly in Yangon and Mandalay.”
“You seem pretty comfortable up here, though.”
She shrugs.
I should pursue that, but not now. I’m already painfully aware that I’m almost completely dependent on her. Pushing too hard might end up with me walking back to Thailand.
We creep into Wān Namhawng ninety minutes and twenty kilometers later behind a pair of overloaded motorbikes. My hands shake when I pry them loose from the wheel. I’ll never complain about L.A. rush-hour traffic again.
Now it’s time to do what we came here to do.
Chapter 47
5 DAYS LEFT
It looks so easy on a map.
We’re searching for anything that looks like an archaeological dig, even a dormant one. Somebody’s getting Nam Ton wares out of the ground, but where?
It must be somewhere along the eighteen kilometers (about ten miles) of river between Wān Namhawng and a bit north of Wan Mè-kin. Some of it closely parallels the highway; other parts have roads nearby.
No problem. We’ll head north, drive the parts of the river we can, walk the rest.
Sure.
If you take your eyes off the highway, you die. The driver can’t see shit on either side. All the passenger can see are buildings or trees, sometimes a field.
The roads near the river? All dirt. It rains almost every night, sometimes a sprinkle, sometimes buckets. The dirt roads are now long, thin mudholes, something we discovered two days ago when it took us two hours, a passing water buffalo, and three thousand kyat to get the truck out of one. So, driving the river? Not happening.
I thought we could ask people in the villages if any outsiders are digging big holes around town. Savannah said, “We need to limit our contact with the locals.”
We’re left with walking. One of us hikes a couple klicks; the other drives to the nearest passable road to pick up the walker.
It should work, except for one other glitch: the river mostly flows through a tree-canopy tunnel. If you’re on one bank, you may not be able to see past the other bank. This is a problem since what we’re looking for may not be larger than a couple typical suburban house lots.
I haven’t even mentioned the rain, the heat, the humidity, and the bugs.
This is all stuff you can’t get on maps or satellite pictures. There isn’t much documentation about this area that isn’t about drugs. There aren’t many photos that aren’t about the guerrilla wars. If there’d been a way to figure out whether this plan would work, we’d probably have come up with a different plan.
After the first day, four klicks a day seems impossibly ambitious.
But we walk. Because we have to. I have to.
It hasn’t rained yet today, though the gathering clouds look like they want to. It doesn’t matter much because I’m already drenched with sweat. I quickly understood why Savannah insisted that I get a pair of hiking sandals when we arrived in Chiang Mai. “You don’t want mud in your regular shoes,” she’d said. “You’ll never get it out. And when the rain turns the streets into rivers? You’ll still have to walk through it. Sandals dry out; gym shoes won’t.”
It’s pretty out here. The mountains on either side of the river are carpeted with dark blue-green trees. The fields I walk through are vivid green mixed with the rust of wet dirt. The river—more a creek here—flows fast and brown with earth washed down from the hills by the rain. Birds dart everywhere, singing and squabbling.
The farmers aren’t so pleased. Each one I pass stops to watch me. I try to be pleasant, saying “mengalaba” (hello) as I reach them. They stand silent as scarecrows in their wide-brimmed straw hats, long-sleeved shirts, and pasus (a kind of Burmese sarong), holding their hoes like weapons at the ready.
Yesterday we covered a whopping three kilometers. The river disappeared into wilderness; not even a track to follow. We ended up backtracking several klicks to get to a passable road that crossed the river. The locals weren’t any more welcoming on the rebound.
Savannah’s been a surprisingly good sport about all this. She doesn’t complain more than I do and she puts in her end of the slogging. Her legs may be pretty but they’re strong, too, and she walks like somebod
y used to doing it a lot. “It’s the other way I get my exercise,” she told me two days ago. “You should see me climb Nob Hill in heels.”
I’m a kilometer and some change into my second hike of the day and I’m ready to hang it up. The segments we’ve covered have gotten shorter as we get more tired and sore. I eat naproxen like M&Ms.
After three days of nada, I have to think: what happens if we don’t find anything?
Two possibilities, neither good.
One is that the site is on the upper Nam Ton in the trackless forests and mountains north of Mongton. Maybe there was arable land up there eight hundred years ago. Maybe the reason nobody excavated the site until 2008 is because nobody could get to it. We could spend weeks slogging through the bush, trying to find a little patch of dirt that grows pottery. Well, I could—Savannah’ll bug out if she’s even half as smart as she seems to be.
The other possibility? Dr. Udomprecha’s notion of “near the Nam Ton” is more expansive than mine. We may have already walked past the site, except we were thinking “near” means dozens of yards and the good doctor thinks it means hundreds of yards. The net result is the same: me bushwhacking for weeks through virgin forest while Savannah checks into the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok on the government’s dime.
Another klick later, I leave the river and head east along the edge of a swampy dirt track. I’ve just finished my fourth bottle of water since I started walking this afternoon and wouldn’t mind a fifth. Here I thought twelve flats of water was overkill; now I wonder if it’s enough.
I turn a corner and see our Hilux parked on a dirt-and-gravel road a hundred feet ahead. Savannah stands by the truck in a long, demure slate-blue dress and straw safari hat.
The soldier facing her wears a UWSA uniform.
Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3) Page 29