Under the Dragon (11 page)

‘That is not a right thing,’ said the Colonel with a dismissive shake of his umbrella. ‘On the street you can get at least 126 kyat. Follow me.’

He led us out of the park and across the street into the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank. The vast marble hall echoed with the din of a dealing floor. Tangles of anxious men clutched illegible slips of paper. Cocksure money-changers shared unheard jokes with army officers. Behind the counters, few of which had signs, employees drank from flasks of China tea and gossiped with friends. A snarl of customers surged up to a desk, pushed around its side to plead with the uninterested teller then, as if by instinct, twisted away to the opposite counter. Colonel Than uncoiled a path to the unmarked Travel Section and showed our travellers’ cheques to the clerk. She ignored him, unlike the helpful black marketeer who examined them with care and directed us to the next window. There, after five minutes’ pleading, our passports were examined and the cheques exchanged for ‘effees’, dollar-denominated Foreign Exchange Certificates that enabled the government to tax and control foreign currency. The attentive marketeer, who had waited beside us with the courtesy of a Swiss hotelier, then escorted us back onto the street and down a quiet alley to negotiate. Burma’s official exchange rate was fixed at six kyat to the American dollar, but the rate was twenty times that on the free market. From his Air France shoulderbag the dealer extracted a six-inch stack of two-hundred-kyat notes. He also gave us his business card. The money to finance our month of thrifty travel – a modest $250 – was enough to house and feed a Burmese family for a year.

‘The earning of pence is a small thing in comparison with the joy of life,’ Than pronounced on our way to the Strand Hotel, ‘and material things themselves are an illusion of the temporal flesh. You have observed how many citizens of this poor country have new television sets and top-notch high-fidelity apparatus?’ We had noticed, and had felt it seemed to be at odds with a culture which had no tradition of materialism. ‘It is because the Burman no longer trusts the banks,’ Than explained, gesturing back at the Foreign Trade building.

He said that few Burmese held bank accounts, as the government often levied arbitrary taxes on savings. Nor did they keep their earnings in cash for, in 1964 and then again in 1987, the year of my last visit, certain denominations of banknotes were demonetised. On both occasions private savings were eliminated, impoverishing the general public.

‘Overnight 80 per cent of our money became worthless. So now the wise Burman buys commodities, not to keep but to sell when cash is needed. Like money-changing it is not legal,’ sighed Than, ‘nor is it illegal.’

The Strand, he told us, had once been the wardroom of the Royal Navy. The hotel had been built at the end of the last century by the owners of Singapore’s Raffles as a comforting colonial outpost. British administrators, teak traders and writers had eaten roast beef in its dining room. The wives of plantation owners had taken suites while they were in town to buy prams or gramophones. In his last Burmese days Scott would have sipped gin and tonic in the lounge. But after the war the hotel had been nationalised, and become a shadow of its former self. On my last visit my order at the bar for a long, cool drink had produced a measure of warm, neat spirit. There had been neither tonic nor ice in the hotel for over a month.

‘The reception staff used to know me well,’ Than announced as we were ushered into the restored lobby, ‘but times have changed.’ The hotel had undergone a five-year modernisation programme financed by the Dutch-Indonesian owner of the luxurious Amanresorts group. Now, instead of the echoes of Empire, its air-conditioned bars and equally cool staff brought to mind any other five-star Asian hotel. The Strand was comfortable once more, but it was characterless.

I offered the Colonel a farewell drink, but it being after noon, and he being in monk’s robes, he turned me down. ‘In any event I haven’t touched the demon refreshment since I was with the RNVR in Ceylon. A very nice novelty it was back then too.’ So while the waiter poured tea we sat on the bamboo sofa and watched the traffic grind along the waterfront. As soon as we were alone, Than leaned forward to whisper, ‘There is another reason for those television, my dears,’

‘What’s that, Colonel?’ I asked, thinking of George Orwell. It could have been in this lounge, while on leave from the Indian Imperial Police, that he had dreamt up Big Brother and doublethink. The thought reminded me of an old joke.
Burmese Days
, based on Orwell’s time as a policeman here in the twenties, is a good book, but not as good as his second novel about the country,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
.

‘After the uprising our generals embraced the whole hog of capitalism,’ said the Colonel. ‘Foreign investment poured in, teak and oil drained out. Now we have factories and refineries and millionaire soldiers and a small middle class as rich as Midas. They placate the people with hi-fis to keep clear of politics and try their damnedest to create an effluent society.’ I considered correcting him, but thought better of it. ‘And you young things are the newest resource to be exploited.’ Than considered the Strand’s restored glory. ‘The military works with foreign entrepreneurs “on a mutual benefit basis” to promote tourism,’ he explained. In three years the number of hotel rooms in Rangoon had grown over four times. ‘Did you see today’s
New Light of Myanmar
?’ That morning’s leading article had celebrated the most recent hotel opening.

‘Secretary-1 of the State Law and Order Restoration Council Lt-Gen. Khin Nyunt,’ the article had reported, ‘pressed a button to formally open the signboard of the Yuzana Garden Hotel.’ Each paragraph had begun with the name of an officer present, arranged in descending order of rank. ‘Secretary-2 Lt-Gen. Tin Oo…Minster for Hotels and Tourism Lt-Gen. Kyaw Ba…The Commander-in-Chief (Navy) and the Commander-in-Chief (Air)…’ Every man at the ceremony had held a military title.

‘Colonel, so far we’ve been welcomed with open arms,’ I said. ‘Don’t the Burmese blame us – if you like, the children of former colonists – for these last years?’

‘The Burmese forgive easily, my dear.’

‘But don’t they think that we could have done more to help? Your government has taken so much from you, yet there is no sense of revenge.’

‘I told you once that the Burmese never understood
Hamlet
. I hoped that you would appreciate that now.’

‘It is an honourable virtue, a lack of vindictiveness. But if the Burmese always forgive, how can the system ever be changed?’

The Colonel gazed out through the tinted glass towards the harbour. ‘Our situation today is like Rangoon’s weather,’ he sighed. ‘A great rainy downpour that bubbles our hopes down the drains, then sunshine making everything looking picture-perfect. But really all is withering in thirsty drought, terrible dry-season drought.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘At least the Lady is devoted to healing our country.’

‘You have met her?’ I asked, excited, curious. The Lady was Aung San Suu Kyi.

‘We all know her,’ whispered Than. ‘Her example is always with us.’ Then he thumped the arm of the sofa. ‘How I wish I could join you young things on your jaunt. But instead I will transmit my
mettá
to you every day in prayers so no catastrophe, no cyclones or typhoons can reach you from any direction whatsoever.’

We thanked him for his time and guidance, even though it had not been of much use.

‘I am just a lonely old
bhikkhu
, or wayfarer, a leaver of home and family, striving for knowledge to help liberate other good citizens from suffering. Send me an SOS if I can provide any further assistance,’ he offered, standing up to bow to Katrin. ‘Tally-ho and safe footsteps, charmed girl,’ he said to her, then whispered in my ear, ‘Remember my dear, she is one who knows how to rock the cradle. Travel well.’

There is a deep sadness in Burmese travel; not for the traveller himself, who can come and go as he pleases, but for the Burman who is tied by fear and penury to one place, prevented from unravelling the filaments and strands which have formed his remarkable country. Yet the sadness does not come from the native people, in spite of their bondage. They appear to be free of envy and greed, seem to be at peace with themselves, remain cheerful, modest and happy. They smile, while telling a tragic story of eviction and execution. Rather the sadness comes from the outsider, the lucky traveller who is allowed to enjoy the places that a resident cannot visit. It gripped Katrin and me as we boarded the Leo Express bus that evening, and stayed with us long after the completion of our journey.

‘We pray and wish for the physical and spiritual comfort and well-being of our passengers throughout the journey,’ soothed the soft, on-board welcome. The pre-recorded English had an Oriental overlay. Its vowels sounded as rounded as Burmese lettering appears to the Western eye. ‘May our voyage together tonight be blessed with calm and peace.’

A squat traveller, wearing a drab suit and bright betel-stained tie, swayed down the aisle and fell into the seat across from us. A light shower of dandruff settled on his threadbare shoulders. The young man beside him, who had been listening to an English-language programme, switched off his shortwave radio and looked away. Our yellow-robed stewardess turned up the bland music as the passengers, who were mostly prosperous Burmese, settled into their books and magazines. A lone, heat-blanched Englishman sat at the back of the bus reading a two-day-old
Financial Times
. All were travelling overnight on the new private service to Mandalay, except for us. We planned to disembark at dawn to catch a local connection to Pagan.

We cruised through the early-evening traffic, past the ignoble White Bridge where protesting students had been drowned in 1988. Inya Lake was now best known to businessman as the site of the International Business Centre. We drove north along the Prome Road, where Ni Ni could have lived with her father, past the airport and poor Wayba-gi, onto Highway No. 1. I caught sight of the Tatmadaw Golf Club beyond the Defence Services General Hospital. A convoy of new khaki Chinese Lanjian pick-ups drove into the military compound in Mingaladon. Hilux line-buses, crammed with commuters and traders, coughed and spat their way towards the grimy suburbs. Ancient lorries without bonnets or doors, their engine blocks bolted onto bare chassises, blazed along the dusty shoulder. The stewardess turned on the video player.

Hidden away in the folds of mountains which reach down like the fingers of a hand from the heights of Asia to the sea, Burma has always been a nation apart. Its high ranges squeeze the country between India and China, cramming the diverse peoples into the deep river valleys of the Irrawaddy, the Chindwin, Sittang and Salween. Its borders contain one of the world’s most complex racial mixes: twenty-one major ethnic groups, divided into seven divisions and seven minority states, speaking over a hundred languages. The Burmans, who dominate the Irrawaddy’s vast, fertile flood plains, make up two-thirds of the population, but even their majority is not homogenous.

‘I feel like Rip van Winkle,’ volunteered the squat businessman, nodding out of the window. Along the rutted roadside women and children toiled in labour gangs. ‘The country has been asleep for decades.’

‘I imagine they wish that many things had changed,’ said Katrin. We had read that local authorities maintained the right to call on ‘voluntary’ labour in lieu of taxation. Children were paid about one dollar a week to work on projects ‘for the benefit of the community’. The improvement of the fifty-mile stretch of Highway No. 1 between Rangoon and Pegu, a popular tourist destination which featured the famed Great Golden God Pagoda, had earned it the name of ‘the road of no return’. According to Amnesty International, on this road two workers had been executed by their military supervisors after they had tried to escape. Another had been beaten to death with a hoe.

‘This is the tradition in Myanmar,’ said the businessman, using his country’s new official name. ‘People give their labour voluntarily and patriotically for the love of the Union.’ We watched a young boy, wearing only a short kilted
longyi
, struggle under the weight of a basket filled with stones. ‘I lived in Australia for twenty-seven years, so I realise that it can be difficult for Europeans to understand.’

‘It is terrible to see.’

‘I agree. That why most work is undertaken when there are no tourist buses passing. There must have been some sort of slip-up.’

Katrin looked around to see if there were any unoccupied seats, but the bus was full. She turned away, slipped on her pair of slumber goggles and pretended to sleep. ‘You lived in Australia?’ I asked.

‘Here’s my card,’ he smiled, passing me a business card and dislodging another downpour of dandruff, ‘Michael Naga of Naga Insurance. Maybe you’ve heard of the firm?’ I shook my head. ‘Then you’ve never been to Perth. I left Myanmar back in 1962, when the country began its march towards socialism. I didn’t fancy the walk so stowed away on a boat heading down under and claimed political asylum.’

‘You left your family?’

‘Of course,’ he shrugged, his gestures smoothed by vanity. ‘We stayed in touch at first, until we started speaking different languages. How could they understand about health care and Christmas holidays and buying a second family car?’

‘It must have been difficult, living your life disassociated form your past.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he replied, ‘but it sure was right grabbing the opportunity to come back.’

To encourage the country’s development, and in the hope of repairing the damage wreaked by the failure of Burmese socialism, the government had offered a general amnesty to its former adversaries – especially if they were successful businessmen. Those who returned to the country, and who took the precaution of aligning themselves with a SLORC minister, grew wealthy with alarming speed.

‘We’re building three shopping malls in Mandalay now,’ Michael gloated, with a fearless confidence. ‘Construction insurance is my niche.’

The coach lurched over single-track bridges, dipping and rising like a ship at sea. As dusk settled around us dim hearth-fires became visible in the distance. Our headlamps caught bullock carts and trishaws in their glare. They, and all manner of broken-down vehicles, appeared like apparitions in the colourless beam of light before being swallowed up again by the night. Michael fell asleep, a copy of an American self-help paperback,
The Leader in You
, on his belly. On the video a sci-fi kung-fu thriller, made for the Asian market in English with Japanese subtitles, was playing.