Nepal - The Annapurnas

This is it, the end of the adventure. It's a bit sad really. I'm sitting in the café in Kathmandu where I wrote basically my whole audit 2 months ago; our episode in Pokhara and our trek finished.

My elective ended early when I got fed up with learning nothing so geographically close to such awesome mountains and, with permission from concerned parties of course, Kel and I departed for Muktinath, one of the holiest places in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It boasts a unique earth-fire-water combo that is patently supernatural. It is the convergence of mountain with an icy stream and natural gas jets that produce a dubious "eternal flame". We didn't go there for the fire, which was lucky because while I wasn't expecting a Crown-Casino rivaling explosion of hydrocarbons from the ground, I was still a little disappointed by the pilot-light-sized spectacle sitting (mostly obscured) behind black chicken wire underneath statues of various Buddhas. It was okay, but I was hoping Hindudom (and/or Buddhadom) would hit me with more… Call me unappreciative if you will. I will say this unreservedly though: the mountain views were humbling.

Fortunately (or so one would have thought), having flown directly to Muktinath our trek was only just beginning, and there was plenty more on the itinerary. We were pumped for a week of great scenery, old historical villages, and a lot of exercise. The problem was that both of us started puking our guts up hours after arriving in Muktinath. This posed a problem because puking kills the motivation to enjoy just about anything, and the unpalatable kill-joy followed us like a desperate salesman for most of the next 3 days, alternately harassing one and then the other of us as we stumbled from town to town. I don't know if it was caused by altitude sickness or gastro, but I suspect on the basis of the full (unmentioned) symptomatology that is was gastro.

We soldiered on, and were just about better by the time we got to Marpha, the apple capital of the Himalayas. Kelly still had the runny nose that had plagued her since before we left home, and neither of us had the requisite appetite for full paced trekking, but we both really enjoyed Marpha, a very pretty and well organised town.

After a two more (long) days and treks we'd descended 1.5km (and that's net; it seemed we spent more time going up than down) and walked 45km horizontally, but we must have seen 30 waterfalls, navigated through dozens of landslides (which I found fun, if a little unnerving), passed through 15 or 20 unique and ancient villages, seen a thousand goats on the death-march to Pokhara, avoided being bowled over by troupe after troupe of heavily-laden and dogged ponies carting chocolate bars, pringles and mineral water to every conceivable corner of the Annapurna ranges (as long as foreigners can get there too!), and snapped 400 photos. It was a great couple of days, and ended up being the best we had on the journey…

We hit Tatopani, famous for its "luxurious" hotels and wonderful food (and that's by Annapurna circuit standards, I can assure you), and crashed for the night in relative comfort. At 2:00AM Kel woke up in agony with middle ear infections in both ears, and couldn't sleep. We hoped it would pass, but it didn't, so we were stuck in Tatopani for the whole next day, and Kel's ears were not getting any better. There was nothing I could do to help her either except hand-feed her paracetamol, since the health post was "closed for the festival" (yes, let's discuss what would happen if that health post was in Australia when I get back). The next night, Kel woke again at 2:00AM, pain much relieved, goo dripping out of both ears. I panicked and evacuated her that day just in case she'd perforated her eardrums. I use the word "evacuated" with the loosest possible definition of the word, because the evacuation consisted of her walking for 4.5 hours to the closest place with a jeep, which would have been 3 hours if a car hadn't broken down in the middle of the track and systematically blocked it off the day before.

Meanwhile, when stopped for a rest and a drink I opened a coke bottle at a deli with a bottle opener, as you do, and the neck of the bottle broke in my hand and cut a nasty deep gash in my ring finger that didn't want to stop bleeding.

I didn't pay for the coke.

So the trek was a debacle. But at least it was a debacle in a nice place. We got back to Pokhara, and a doctor who professed to be an ENT specialist subsequently told me that Kel hadn't damaged her eardrums, and then prescribed cefpodoxime and blamed the pain on barotrauma. I'm not sure what his explanation for the discharge is, because even though I specifically asked he didn't explain himself at all lucidly, which I put down to the fact that he was unused to his patient speaking the same language as him. My finger's healing well, and for some reason never really hurt much.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the incredible transformation that occurred in the orphanage while we were away. All the furniture Kel ordered has arrived, and the place looks much more habitable. The amount of money deposited into our accounts to help the children was really amazing. Even after buying them 5 bunk beds, mattresses and blankets, drawers for each child, benches for the classroom, a cabinet to store schoolwork and resources, a large collection of sports equipment, and a DVD player with a good collection of Hindi, Nepali and English DVDs, there was still money left over (!), so we got a quote and left a large sum of money with the only remaining volunteer in order to have the roof fixed properly so that it doesn't leak and ruin all the nice stuff you've everyone's bought...

The family we were living with in Pokhara held a nice party for us last night, complete with meat (a big deal)! It was a really nice gesture, and we had a good time. There were farewells to the doctors, the orphans, the other volunteer, and our de facto family, and then we jetted back to Kathmandu for a stop-off before flying into Adelaide via Bangkok and Melbourne tomorrow.

Thankyou for putting up with my crap for the last 4 months and not complaining about my long-windedness or incomprehensibility. For the last time, my PicasaWeb page will be updated with photos of our trek after I get home tomorrow, or you can always come round to our house and see the photos that will doubtless be plastered all over our walls. We just need to find a house first!

Dan

Nepal - Pokhara

The story continues: there are now almost as many episodes as there are Bond movies... and, not to toot my own horn, but I'd say my ramblings are equally exciting.

But enough about double-oh-seven. How's Pokhara? I know that's the question on everybody's lips, but you need wait no longer; here's the answer: Pokhara's going great!

Okay, we've had our trip-ups and snags, but we're living with a really nice family in a spectacularly beautiful valley, and that's the most important stuff. The city itself is a funny kind of L-shape, since it squeezes into the space left by the "hills" around it. (and I say "hills" only to differentiate them from the truly awesome mountains that poke through the clouds on the clearest days - the Annapurnas). At the tip of the "L" is Fewa Lake, around which is the tourist district, aptly and simply named "Lakeside". Kel and I find ourselves there whenever we need a "Western comfort", like the internet or toilet paper. I'm there right now. The lake really is surprisingly clean and nice, with huge jungle-covered hills rising from its edges, and steps of bright green rice-fields near the water itself. We went para-gliding from the top of one of the bigger hills on Sunday, and we got a really great view of the town (that actually reminded me a lot of the Google Maps of the area). That was a good time, until my para-glider guy decided to do a neat little trick with me, where he spiralled at top speed toward the lake. I'm kind of impressed with myself for holding on to what was a stupidly dense pre-para-gliding breakfast.

The family we're living with has been kind and has done what they can to include us in the family. There are very old school gender roles here, and I've found the "head of the house", Ramesh, seems to do a lot more talking and wheeling-and-dealing, while Gita, his wife, gets very little credit for doing a huge amount of work around the house. The family is rather extended, and all considered (including me, Kelly and another volunteer, Hayley), there are 9 people living in the house. We eat dhal bhat (dhal and rice) for every meal without exception, although on festivals we'll also have pappadums, prawn crackers and "buff chilli" (buffalo meat fried with tomato and chilli), and sometimes Western-style hot chips. These special occasions occur about once a week; since we've arrived we've had the Cow Festival, the Father's Festival, the (3-day) Woman's Festival, and the Transport Festival (yes, the have a public holiday to celebrate transport!).

My hospital experience at Manipal has been okay, not great, not terrible. I've spent the last fortnight doing "Community Medicine", going around to various medical facilities in or near Pokhara. I've seen a facility for poor children to help prepare them behaviourally and medically for the step up to real school; a "district out-post" which seems like the Nepali equivalent of a rural medical practice; a number of homes in a small village; the Regional Tuberculosis centre (which didn't have masks for us to wear while they gave us a tour, so I was holding my breath most of the time… seriously, I looked like an idiot!); and most recently Green Pastures Hospital, which is a leprosy hospital run mostly by Europeans. This week I started doing paediatrics, but I got acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis two days ago (which everyone in the country is getting right now), so I haven't gone in since then.

Kelly's volunteering has been simultaneously rewarding and frustrating. She's been looking after and teaching English to a bunch of frighteningly under-privileged street kids. The kids themselves are good kids, but they're dirty for a lack of clothes and knowledge about hygiene, and many are carrying significant psychological trauma related to the loss of loved ones or family violence. Some of them don't smile or talk much, and some hit out at others; a few have obvious physical scars. Despite their clear need, the orphanage they're living in "The Protection and Rehabilitation Centre for Street Children" was only started up a couple of months ago, and is managed less-than-optimally by a large group of "members" who have each contributed financially, and who all need to agree on something before any money is spent. As a result, you won't be surprised to hear that nothing ever seems to get done unless one of the volunteers or Ramesh just go out and pay for it themselves. As it is, the kids have no beds and sleep on the concrete floor, the roof leaks when it rains, the "classroom" has no tables or teaching aids, the yard consists of a parched area of dirt about 4-by-7m with a couple of old chickens pecking around in it, and the toilet door has broken off so that anyone who uses it is exposed to the yard and the road! To make matters worse, the volunteer organisation Kelly's working through (INFONepal) had been paying the rent until last week when a bizarre turn of events resulted in the head of the organisation washing his hands of the orphanage and refusing to donate any more money or provide any future volunteers. The biggest issue there is that the only love these kids get comes from the volunteers, and the only reason they don't run away to live on the street is because they get love at the orphanage…

The rain is coming less and less frequently, and the tourists are starting to arrive as the trekking season gets underway. We've been told that we ought to do our shopping now because the prices go up significantly over the next week or two!

I've come up with the top 10 creature comforts I miss the most, in order, and I'm surprised that they were all readily available in Thailand:

10: Fast internet (anything that can upload a 500kb picture in less than 5 minutes; it takes over 2 minutes just to load Gmail. I know: omfg roflmao!)
9: A consistent power supply
8: Cooper's ales (or at least any beer that's not Nepal Ice, Tuborg or Everest)
7: Beef (it's illegal to kill cows in Nepal, you get 7 years in the slammer, and buffalo just doesn't cut it as an alternative)
6: Espresso coffee (or any coffee that doesn't contain sugar and/or yak's milk)
5: Fixed prices (bartering gets old… fast)
4: Hot water (cold showers hurt, and I'm a shower princess)
3: Cold drinks (just like the showers, drinks seem to come only at or near ambient air temperature)
2: Western toilets (and toilet paper)
1: Spring mattresses and wonderful, soft, fluffy pillows (I'm tired of this torticollis)

Okay, I'm signing off. Did you hear that the Maoists quit the Government? Good move, dickheads. I don't think the November elections (here, not in Oz) are going to go ahead as planned, the Maoists will get slaughtered at the poles and they won't allow anything to give people the idea that they are unpopular, violent insurgents. Maybe if they didn't kill people who disagreed with them... As things stand, they're in the dangerous no-man's-land of being a bit violent but not entirely brutal, and they aren't stopping the press from slamming them daily. So they'll probably just kick up a big fuss near election time and stop the whole shebang in its tracks.

Nepal - Kathmandu

Holy shit, we are in Nepal! It sort of hit us like a tonne of bricks as we left the airport. It was like being a rock star, only instead of legitimate adoration we were getting false praise and seductive offers (to stay at various hotels - I'm sure they would have offered us "a special price, just for us"). As usual, we got suckered into parting with too much money, but myeh, it wasn't so much money that we were out on the street for the night. But let's just say, 1000 Rupees is a very generous tip under any circumstance...

Neither of us were expecting quite what we've seen and done here. The first thing that hit me, and it hit me on the plane as we were landing, was just how old and bare (and at times collapsed) the buildings in Kathmandu are. We'd been to Cambodia and Burma, but this place is a whole new level of dilapidated. I really need to have a word with the guy that does the town planning. Somehow though, as a whole, it doesn't look ugly. Its a bit like a trip back in time to a chaotic, beautiful, simpler place. The legendary views we were expecting haven't really been on offer, because the clouds are hanging low in the air as is usual in the rainy season. We've been told the Himalayas will come into view near the end of the month, and we're looking for a nice new wide-angle lens so that we can take some appropriately awesome panoramic photos of it...

Personally, my time in Kathmandu was frustrated by the impending due date for what turned out to be the biggest, most frustrating assignment in my academic life. Research is boring. Really boring. And writing about it is even more boring than actually doing it. So anyway there I was, sitting in the middle of this beautiful exotic city, laptop at my fingertips, crafting this stupid clinical audit while Kelly and others were off experiencing life in a small village in the Kathmandu Valley. I did manage to see some stuff though; I got out to Patan, one of the three old cities in the Kathmandu Valley, which had some fantastic old temples and buildings, including one temple with 9999 little Buddhas carved into it. I also managed to see Swayambunath Stupa, more commonly called the Monkey Temple, a name given to it for the obvious reason that there are monkeys there. Lots of monkeys. Big daddy monkeys, mummy monkeys, little wrinkly baby monkeys, mischievous monkeys, dare-devil monkeys. They seem to live off the rice that people throw on the statues there. Its on the top of a hill near the edge of the city, so you get this fantastic view. I can only imagine how great it would be in the dry season when the snow-capped mountains rise up behind everything else and the sky is blue with streaks of white... but I'm pretty sure it would be mighty fine.

We had a few worried parents (four to be exact) after the Sunday bombings in Kathmandu hit the media in Australia. Just for the record, they were careful to avoid tourists. They were going for the monarchists, those evil bastards. I can assure you all that I am not a monarchist. I'm pretty sure the same goes for Kelly. It was a salient reminder of the instability of the country though. Its sad to see how this ongoing ridiculousness has crippled a country which could have remained the major trading route from China to India, and which could have enjoyed a rich income from its tourist trade.

The bus trip to Pokhara was at times breath-taking, and at times nauseatingly windy. Probably the goodbye drinks we had with Pete, Mike and Freddy (the first two seem to be following us like blowflies - now they say they're coming to Pokhara, sheesh) didn't help much. The road follows a valley carved by a river, so there we saw many children playing in the water, and people crossing precarious wire bridges. We ourselves crossed the river many times in our ancient bus, a couple of times over bridges that didn't seem as though they would hold our weight. We barely missed a dozen cows at different times, and we were repeatedly forced into the seat in front of us as the bus driver slammed his breaks on to avoid an overtaking vehicle coming the other way in our lane!

The important thing is, we're alive. Kelly has just started her volunteer work at the Children's Welfare Association, which is basically an orphanage for street kids. They have nothing there, even compared to the refugee school in Thailand, mostly because the CWA only just opened up a couple of months ago, in order to try to tackle the problem Pokhara was having with the street kids. Its not technically a school, just a place to stay, but most of the kids haven't learned enough self-discipline or the basic manners to be able to survive the regular school, so those kids get taught during the day, and Kelly takes the English lessons.

I had my first day at the hospital today, sort of. I went in, and everyone was more interested in just sitting and chatting to me than getting me involved in any actual medicine. I've doctors coming out the ears asking me about how to work in Australia! The teaching is run in English, and everyone obviously speaks really good English. One of the professors asked me if I wanted to "take food with him" at lunch time, so I had a really nice Northern Indian lunch. But I never saw a patient. They do "community medicine" work, which they are almost insisting I get involved in, where they travel to nearby towns and villages to supply health care. I'm not complaining, but I was planning on an anaesthetics rotation...

One plus is, I get the feeling that they aren't going to have a problem cutting my rotation a bit short so that we can do a decent trek in October.

That's about it for now. As always, we have our photos up on PicasaWeb. I've uploaded photos into the Burma, Thailand and Nepal albums, which also contain all the previously uploaded photos (but I haven't got around to copying over the comments I've made). I've put together a couple of photos from the Mae Tao Clinic, but be warned that there are some gory photos of penile surgery in that album. Don't blame me if you see things you wish you hadn't.

Thailand - Chiang Mai & Sukhothai

Another week, another bowl of word salad in your inbox!

We're now into our last week in Mae Sot, and I'm just starting to get unpacked... We've spent the last two weekends trying to see some of the nearby towns, namely Chiang Mai (which is hardly a town as much as it is a city larger than Adelaide) and Sukhothai.

Chiang Mai

The weekend before last saw us in Chiang Mai, where we went with a couple of British medical students. We'd been out the night before seeing off John Melino (a fellow FMC student), and two of the poms (Pete and Mike) drank into the morning as if they weren't taking a bus ride through a mountain range the next day. Unfortunately for them, reality hit with a jackhammer to the brain and stomach a few hours later. I have to say I was very impressed with their fortitude to have survived the journey without using the vomit bags in front of them, though they did make full use of the toilet breaks!

Our first night in Chiang Mai consisted of Pete, Mike and myself heading out to see some muay thai kickboxing, while Kelly and Iris explored the night markets. I hadn't expected the chance to see any Thai kickboxing, so I was pretty stoked when the opportunity presented itself. I wasn't disappointed in it at all; although I didn't see any really amazing acrobatics it was a thoroughly entertaining evening punctuated by an appropriate number of cringe-worthy moments. The greatest of these was probably when they blindfolded four fighters and set them free in the ring to hit whatever moved. The referee seemed perfectly happy with this, even while they were getting king-hit repeatedly in the back of the head. Not that the referee got away unscathed himself...

Our second day there was spent at an elephant nature park, which was one of those amazing experiences I don't ever quite seem able to enjoy as much as I know I ought to. It was lucky I had Kelly next to me, delirious in a manic joy that only a girl surrounded by giant, tusked, trunked mammals could ever know. It was a beautiful day, where we fed, swam with, washed and hung out with 31 huge Asian elephants in a valley topped with mist so that the whole time it seemed like it wasn't quite real. And Kelly rested well that night, despite sleeping on a slab of uneven concrete masquerading as a mattress.

That was basically our experience of Chiang Mai, we'll be seeing Pete and Mike again in Kathmandu, as by some freak of circumstance they are making their way there for an elective at the same time that we do.

Sukhothai

A longer journey but a shorter story. After a chaotic but successful attempt to secure some seats in a packed minibus bound for Sukhothai, we were nearly smeared on the bitumen like canned sardines on toast by our maniacal driver. He seemed intent upon making up time lost on the up-slopes by flooring it on the down-slopes, irrespective of the camber of the road, the lane he happened to be in, or the presence of opposing traffic. Somehow the speedometer readings which I took at regular intervals were no consolation, since the arrow mocked me by bouncing limply between 0 and 5km/hr when we were clearly in excess of 100 and gaining rapidly on a fully laden truck.

Fortunately, the destination was a nice hotel run by a pleasantly dementing Italian and his wife. The weather was very hot due to a lack of rain and cloud cover, and we spent a proportion of our time lounging in or by the pool at the hotel during the middle of the day.

For historical understanding - Sukhothai itself was the first capital of what could be recognised as modern day Thailand (though it was known then as the Sukhothai Kingdom). Before 1238, Sukhothai was a part of the Khmer Empire, if you remember them, and it formed as the Khmer Empire crumbled under its own weight. The new empire expanded by aligning itself with nearby kingdoms... using Theravada Buddhism as the state religion in order to gain the impetus required to do this. The ruins at Old Sukhothai show the importance of this religion in the time of this kingdom, and they are in a much better state of repair than those at Angkor (even if they are tiny in comparison, and lack the same character on the whole). Anyway, we explored them by day and night and enjoyed ourselves mostly.

The next day, I ventured off to a nearby waterfall and cave with some of the others we went with, but Kelly wasn't game to come along, as we went by motorbike. Neither were overly spectacular, but it was fun to practice motorbiking on some almost deserted roads. Viewing the countryside at our own pace, and stopping for pictures when we desired, was nice.

I guess that's that. We leave in a few days, and it'll be sad to go. We've met lots of really nice people, and done a lot of really awesome stuff. But Nepal awaits... I just hope the flooding up there stops sometime soon!

Many thanks to all who have contributed to Kelly's unofficial "Stock The Karen Kids' School" fund! We did some shopping today and bought them a much needed CD player, as well as some CDs, new toys, soap, stationary, and a pump for the soccer balls that one of the guys staying here decided he wanted to donate.

I hope to have internet access in Nepal, but who knows what things will be like. I'm sure we won't have wireless broadband, that's for sure. Don't forget to look at our photos again, there are some great photos of the elephants and the ruins at Sukhothai.

Thailand - Mae Sot

Mae Sot has little in common with the place Kelly and I imagined when we thought of going to a small, rural, border town in Thailand. Its actually quite cosmopolitan in many ways, due in large part to the number of foreigners that come here to either help with the political situation, or report on it. As seems to be standard around here, we have wireless broadband access in our room (that we're paying a massive $13 a night for - and that's including the optional extra of daily laundry). Our food options are pretty diverse, with lots of restaurants nearby. Our favourites have become 'Aiya' (which serves the best Burmese food we can find), and 'Casa Mia' (which simultaneously has great Italian and Thai food, and is on the way to our respective jobs for breakfast), but we've braved (and survived) the street stalls, and some of them also make really awesome pad thai, curry, and khao soey (which is a Northern Thailand dish that is a lot like the most awesome 2-minute noodles ever, only quite a bit better). Eating around here is dirt cheap, and my daily lunch near the clinic rarely costs me more than a dollar.

But enough about the food, although I could go on happily (see our pictures!). I know the burning question is "what are we doing?". I'm obviously doing a medical elective, at the Mae Tao Clinic. Kel is teaching at a school for the refugee kids, which is a long story that she really ought to tell. Both places are a little out of town (Kel's further than mine), and we bought bikes to get around (thanks Nan!).

The Clinic is pretty interesting; it's basically a small, poorly-funded hospital. So far I've worked in the 'medical out-patient', 'surgical', and 'medical in-patient' departments, and this week I'm in 'paediatric in-patients'. Each of these departments is pretty unique. In Med OPD I mostly saw relatively mild ailments, such as stomach aches, headaches, mild pneumonias, that sort of thing. In Med IPD there are serious diarrhoea cases, lots of malaria and TB, which combined would make up about 2/3 of all Med IPD beds. In Surg I saw mostly things that needed draining (like abscesses and haematomas) and trauma cases (traffic accidents, and a surprising number of lost fingers and toes). Also, there's this really weird spate of self-induced penis problems going around the Burmese population in Mae Sot which require surgical intervention. Apparently lots of men around here don't feel that their package is up to snuff, and resort to backyard "enhancements". Most of the cases involve injecting 1-2ml of coconut oil just under the skin of the penis, this causes some serious scarring under the skin, and over the course of a few years worth of injections they end up with a massively enlarged appendage. Unfortunately, pain and poor erectile function are some of the side effects, and these guys come to Mae Tao to get it fixed. Our solution? We remove all the skin between the head and the base and give them a skin graft. I posted a couple of pictures on the web (In the 'Mae Tao Clinic' album, not in the 'Highlights' album!).

Paeds IPD has been interesting so far. A lot of tragic cases of HIV, malnutrition and meningitis. I haven't had anyone die on me so far, but another med student (from my uni) told me the horrible story of how he rocked up to the clinic to find all the staff huddled around a new baby that was comatose and severely dehydrated. Over the course of the next 1/2hr the baby deteriorated, and nobody could get any vein access, and he ended up having to do his first real life resuscitation on a 4 month old kid with a hysterical mother pleading with him incomprehensibly. The kid died, and he was pretty upset for quite a while. I'm hoping I don't have to do anything like that... There are a couple of kids in there right now that are going to die in there though, which is pretty sad.

To change the subject (which I think its about time I did), I'm going to try to explain why there are refugees in Mae Sot. Burma has a nasty government that is brutal in trying to hold together the country. Originally, Burma (aka Myanmar) was just a collection of disparate ethnic groups, and it just had a line of convenience drawn around it when the British colonised the area. After gaining its independence from Britain, Burma has undergone a change for the worse, with a military dictatorship giving way to the aptly-named SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), which itself is now called SPDC (State Peace and Development Council). Despite the changes, all of these governments have viciously guarded their power. The full story is long, even if it isn't that complicated, and you can read about it (with a slightly Karen biased flavour) here. Although its a pretty stock-standard military regime, a couple of things that make it stand out are:

1. It very publicly got completely flogged in the last elections, winning only 2% of parliamentary seats, compared to 82% won by the National League for Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi's party, who was subsequently put under house arrest, where she remains to this day)!
2. The SPDC has essentially no ideology at all, and is probably the best example of a purely militaristic government in the world today (from what I understand). It exists solely to protect its own power, and all of its energy goes into this. They don't even put on an international front, so far as I can tell; this is their official website, and it definitely doesn't suggest any kind of ideology!

In the end, the problem with it is that they are punishing villagers in Karen state as part of their "four cuts" policy, which aims to cut food, funds, recruits and information to insurgency groups by "systematically terrorising the civilian population in ethnic minority areas". In real terms this means all of: torture/interrogation, rape, summary execution, burning farms and villages then laying landmines to prevent villagers rebuilding, and forced labour/portering for the Tatmadaw (Burmese military) - i.e. slave labour. Because of all this, there are thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in the jungle, getting malaria, and having practically no access to clean water, healthcare or an education. Below is a story from a report ("State of Terror") written by the Karen Women's Organisation. I think its a translation, and its imperfect, but you get the gist of it:

Case #955
Name: Naw Win Shwe
Age: 35
Date of Incident: 13/03/2006
Place of Incident: Nwar Lay Koh, Mone Township Kler Lwee Htoo District
Perpetrator: SPDC troops

Human Rights abuse: Torture and Murder, Forced displacement

"I was born in Aw Law Si village and stayed there until I was 25 years. Then I married in 1997 and went to Nwar Lay Koh Mone Township Kler Lwee Htoo District because of the military attacks. I had 4 children and the eldest one was 9 years old and the youngest was 5. We had to flee because we could not survive our life. We were faced with many problems like the SPDC taking away our belongings and burning down our house, our farm, our food and our grain. As we are farmers my husband worked hard to have food for our family. We were always moving. 2006 is an unlucky year for our family. We fled from our place because we
heard that the SPDC troops made a heavy operation upon our Karen State and so we hid in the forest.

On 13th March 2006, my husband was arrested by the Burmese troops while he was coming back from the hill farm. We heard the gunshot and dared not go back to look for him. The Burmese soldiers brutally killed him by taking out his eyes, cutting his ears off and cutting out his mouth from his body. We heard his screams loudly because it was not too far from us. But we dared not go to that place. If we went then the SPDC would do the same to us as they did to my husband. So we fled from our house and we went outside our village and hid in the deep forest. Then the next day we went to Teh Na Hta village then to Pa Ta Hta so that we would be far from our village. My husband was 30 years old and he was only a villager not a Karen soldier. The SPDC troops shot him as a Karen soldier and killed him brutally.

As we went out from our village we also went far from our farm, because the SPDC troops went around our field and if they saw one of us they would have killed us or forced us to labour for them. This situation was in March 13th 2006 and so from the relocation side, from our hiding place we then moved from place to place and then came to the new camp. We were wandering for a month to reach the new place because the SPDC troops shot their guns and so we tried to escape from them and it took a long time. On our way it was rainy season and it was really hard for the children to walk or climb up the mountains. We didn't have enough food and so we had to share with each other. Sometimes the children were crying because they were afraid of the SPDC troops and sometimes they were thirsty and hungry and so they cried. But the elders stopped them crying because we were very close to the SPDC and if they cried loudly there would be a danger for others, so when there was some food they gave it to the children first.

I have four children, the oldest one is nine years old and the youngest is five years old. When they were in the village they attended school. After their father was killed by the SPDC the youngest son told me that when he becomes a young man he will join the Karen soldiers and take revenge on the SPDC for his father. I tried to explain him to go to school but he just told me that he wants to be a soldier. When we started our journey my husband was at the farm and worked for the whole day while we were in a hiding place and so after he was killed, I went on the journey with my 4 children. It is very dangerous and difficult for they were too small to walk or carry things. In the jungle they got sick and had diarrhoea. There were no medicines and no clean water. In our group there were about 14 families. Because of the
situation, being left alone with small children I cried at night. I didn't want my children to see me while I was crying. Now we are in the camp and I feel that it is better than living in the village because we get many things from the camp. I hope that my children will have a chance to study in the camp."

The whole report is really long, but the intro is worth reading if you're interested in what's happening to the Karen and other minorities in Burma. You can understand why these people want to escape to Thailand though... Unfortunately, the Thais aren't recognising them, and they are pretty restricted in what they can do ( i.e. they are mostly stuck in refugee camps outside of town, and can't legally work or earn any money). The police apparently have a racket going where they take refugees to gaol and then expect a bribe (consisting of everything in their pocket) before taking them right to the border, letting them go and turning around a driving off. Then the refugees just walk back into Thailand and try to avoid being taken to gaol again! So basically, the Thai authorities are just trying to make as much money off the refugees as they can. I suppose its better than letting them die in Burma!

You might be wondering how the Burmese government funds its operations. Burma is actually very rich in natural resources, at should be a well-off country. The government sells gems, drugs (unofficially) and natural gas to whoever is willing to buy it. Of these three, the natural gas the most feasible source of funds for the junta, and they just recently finalised a deal with China to build a gas pipeline between the two countries and to exclusively supply China with there natural gas. Fucking China! Where practically the entire world has sanctions against the Burmese, China is capitalising. And they have UN veto power so there's not much the UN can do...

Anyway, Kel and I are going to Chiang Mai on Saturday (i.e. tomorrow), to go swimming with elephants! It should be good! We've met a couple of poms that we're going with (and they're also going to be in Kathmandu when we're there so we're going to try to catch up with them then too!). Tonight is the both the birthday of a girl that's staying at Ban Thai, and the last night that John (another Flinders Med. Student) and a couple of others are in town, so the Ban Thai crew are partying hard tonight!

I finally, yesterday, got my new credit card. Thanks mum for sorting that out for me, I know it was a royal pain! We're going shopping for stuff for the kids at Kel's school today.

Thailand - Bangkok (Voglee Saga)

We'd just got to the hotel and dropped off our bags and decided that we'd spend the rest of the afternoon in Chinatown (where we were staying) looking at the Golden Buddha and nearby sites. We didn't have a very good map, and while we were trying to figure out where we were a man came up and asked us if we needed any help. He was obviously trying to get us into one of the tuk-tuks nearby, but we figured he'd be useful to point us on our way. He pointed out where we were and where we needed to go, but said that there were a few other nice places to go, and also suggested "a very good, cheap tailor" that was just out of Chinatown which he called "International Export Tailors". We gave him our map, and he plotted a couple of spots, including a nearby temple that was "nicer than any others around here". He convinced us to hop in a tuk-tuk by saying that we could have the tuk-tuk for 30 baht/hr (about $1), and we figured that was pretty cheap, and since we kept getting lost and didn't have much time it was a pretty good idea to have a tuk-tuk guide!

First we went to the Golden Buddha, which was really kind of tacky. It was an impressive hunk of solid gold (5 tons), but they haven't housed it in a temple yet so it was just sitting in a really inappropriate building. Anyway, that's not the point. After that we thought we may as well go just around the corner and see this other temple the nice tuk-tuk organiser guy suggested. Didn't think much of it, since the temple was already marked on our tourist map so we figured it was just another cool Thai temple. When we got there, it was a reasonably nice temple - nothing spectacular, but then neither was the Golden Buddha so we thought these Thais just over-estimated the coolness of their Buddhist monuments... While we were there (and we were the only ones there) a really nice man came in and prayed and then showed us how to pray properly. Then he asked us a bit about what we were doing in town and where we were from (stock standard questions that we've answered 8 thousand times since leaving home). He also said we should visit a bunch of places and marked them on our map. When he saw that someone had marked the "International Export Tailors" he said "who told you to go there", and we replied that it was our tuk-tuk driver (a slight untruth to save a full explanation). He told us he was very impressed with how honest our tuk-tuk driver was because most tailors give tuk-tuk drivers big commissions for taking tourists to their stores, but these guys didn't have any commissions and were the best tailors nearby. He said their trading name was "Voglee Tailors". They made some of the suits sold by Armani and Hugo Boss and others, and that if we wanted suits they were the best value place to go.

Awesome (we thought), two nice people had independently said this was a good tailor. My family had suggested that Thailand would be the best place to get a suit, I needed a suit for graduation and beyond, and since we were only in town for 3 days we should probably go somewhere that day to make sure we had time for a couple of re-fittings.

We asked our tuk-tuk driver to take us there. When we got there it was a normal, large tailor, with the name "Voglee Export Tailors". We were ushered into a private room and were shown a few brochures outlining some of the "suit styles" available. There was an Armani catalogue there and the man spontaneously explained that they were not able to put any other brand name on the suit other than their own (due to licensing restrictions, was the unstated reason), but reaffirmed that they did in fact supply a number of European companies including the ones the guy at the temple mentioned. We started talking price, in US dollars initially, but then he started jumping back and forth from baht to dollar and using the calculator to figure it all out. I was unsure of the exchange rate (and asked to confirm that it was 40 baht to the dollar), but he was confident that was right and judging by the other customers in the store he clearly dealt with white people all the time. He said they only dealt with wool/cashmere blends and all their suits were lined with Thai silk. The rolls of material did all say "cashmere + wool" on them and it felt pretty soft (I still don't know if it really is cashmere/wool, I don't know enough about cashmere!).

In the end, we decided to get 2 suits (one a mid-grey, one nearly black with pinstripes), both with a 2nd pair of pants (since I'd been complaining all year about only having 2 pairs of pants I could wear to uni), 3 fitted shirts, and 2 blouses (for Kelly, not me). The total: $US765. At 86USc to the $AU1, that would be about $870. In a pinch, I could afford that, and it was pretty good for 2 Armani-quality suits with all the trimmings. I paid upfront, like a good little tourist, 30,800 baht on my card. I thought I'd decide about home delivery later (an option they were pushing), after I'd got the suits.

When I got back to the hotel, I thought I'd look up Voglee's on the internet and see what people thought of their suits. Up came 20 stories of the Voglee scam: the nice guy on the side of the road suggesting some good tourist places (including a temple), the guy in the temple doing the same. Elsewhere, I found out that Voglee does in fact offer a large commission to tuk-tuk or taxi drivers who takes a tourist to their store (and that our tip to our nice, cheap tuk-tuk driver must have been accepted with an inner giggle on his part). Most people said they'd paid for suits for home delivery and never saw them. Others said they got suits that didn't fit at all right. Some couldn't believe how much they'd paid compared with other places.

I decided to check my bank account after that, and found that $1076 was pending removal by Visa and panicked that they may have done more than simply over-charge me (like steal my identity or something); I also thought it might not go through if I cancelled it straight away and told BankSA I'd lost the card.

In the end, we spend a large part of our time in Bangkok sitting in Voglee's, and most of the rest stressing out about never getting any products out of them. I tried to negotiate a refund of the amount they overcharged me, but they said it was my fault for not knowing the exchange rate, since they dealt exclusively in baht and could not be expected to know the exchange rate (an infuriating lie). After working hard to keep my cool (and not cause anyone to lose face, which I hear is the best way to get what you want around here) for an hour, I was offered free delivery to Adelaide... "No thankyou, I thought I'd use the pants and shirts during my travels" was my rather curt reply. After another hour, they'd offered me a partial refund (of about $50), which they said would take at least 2 weeks to get to me. Finally, they offered me a 3rd suit, which I really didn't need. It was this final offer that I accepted, because I was definitely going to make sure they gave me something, and the other options required too much of a waiting period before I saw results (and to be honest I didn't trust them at all!)...

I needed three fittings, and I'm still not entirely happy, particularly with my shirts (they just could not get my neck size right!). The suits don't look half-bad, and if they really are wool/cashmere with Thai silk, I definitely still paid less than I would have in Australia. Unfortunately, I had to cart them all the way to Mae Sot, and now I'll have to decide what to do with them here.

Thailand - Bangkok

Bangkok, what a ride... We're both relieved to have escaped alive, and it was definitely the most confusing, uncomfortable and just generally stressful couple of days we've had on our journey!

First of all, there really isn't very much to see and do in Bangkok. We were pretty surprised by that. Everything seems to centre around Buddha (someone that we're well and truly sick of) or the king of Thailand (who we're less sick of, but he isn't very interesting).

We saw the Golden Buddha, the Emerald Buddha, the Reclining Buddha, and a bunch of other lesser Buddhas. They're all very Buddha-y, with lots of precious metal and stone, and people praying and lighting incense, and monks all over the place doing monky stuff like sitting looking pious, but there's only so much Buddha one can take in a day. We definitely hit our quota and then some. Its hard to take all this very seriously; you aren't allowed to point your feet at a Buddha, but you are allowed to charge money to let non-believers pile in to look at said Buddha and photograph the hell out of him.

We saw the Grand Palace, and had a cruise along the river. People in Thailand really like their king. I mean, they really like their king. I'm not sure why, and I don't feel I can ask them without betraying my true feelings towards its hilarity, so I've kept my mouth shut. There are huge posters of him and his wife everywhere, and people wear yellow clothes all the time, because yellow is his colour (he was born on a Monday, and it seems Monday has been decreed Yellow Day by some higher power that has authority over this sort of thing). You see "long live the king" written all over the place too.

Bangkok is one big scam that everyone else is in on. We didn't realise this, so we were kind of at a disadvantage when the conmen came to collect their money from us innocent little farang (that's Thai for "stupid foreigner"). See the next post for our run in with Voglee Export Tailors, an adventure which cost me over $1000 (although at least I got something for my money!). We avoided the famous gem scam, but nobody warned us about the tailors. After this experience we heeded the advice we'd received from numerous sources, which was basically to never trust anybody on the street suggesting you do something or go somewhere. It was tiring though, being appropriately paranoid...

Siam Square was kind of like our little sanctuary after experiencing the farang-eaters around Chinatown (where we were based) and the tourist sites. Siam Square is the Bangkok equivalent of Rundle Mall. Its just got a huge number of shops and shopping centres and that sort of thing. Young and affluent Thais seem to be the major customers in Siam Square. But really (and we realised something about the merits of capitalism and big business as our feelings crystallised) we just felt safe sitting in a Starbucks drinking coffee and watching people shop. There were so many little barriers stopping conmen from getting to us while we were in Siam Square: there were people everywhere, rental prices were clearly sky high, most of the stores were international chains with reputations to protect, bartering was not the thing so everything had a price tag (ahhh, glorious glorious price tags - you have no idea). We watched two movies at the cinemas, Harry Potter and Transformers, and we spent an evening eating then drinking at Hard Rock Cafe. We really liked the normality of Siam Square, a stark contrast to Chinatown. I think we will stay in Siam Square when we go back after my elective!

So now we're in Mae Sot, which is a calm little city in comparison. We are really enjoying it here, which is a relief since we were both a little nervous after Bangkok. I can safely say that from my experience Bangkok is the worst city in south-east Asia - the people are generally untrustworthy, the place is dirty, there isn't much to see, it has no character or class and the traffic is horrible! Spend as little time as possible in Bangkok, as the rest of Thailand is where you want to be...

I've completely updated our photo album, since we have yet to take a photo in Mae Sot! You can see it here. We've added a couple more from Hoi An, Phnom Penh and Angkor that were overlooked initially, and I've labelled and written comment for them all now.