Akha Chronicles
Book 1: Maesai
Chapter 4: Maesai

Maesai
Maesai is where my work took shape and there were many days that I spent just in town, waiting for the opportunity to do the things that I wished to do.  I didn't always have the money to proceed. But there are many things you can learn when you don't have money.  From Maesai I learned of Asia, Thailand and the north. From Maesai I delivered services and made expeditions out into the Akha villages.
Maesai is a gangster border town known for smuggling, drugs and hookers.  There are more catholic girls in Maesai than there are at the mission in Keng Tung where they come from.  For them and the people who send them it is an acceptable contradiction.
One of the beauties of Maesai was its straight street to the bridge, the main road, knowing every shop, and the mountains of Burma straight ahead. I got a feeling like it was the deck of an aircraft carrier, launching people into Burma. Small enough to be comfortable, there was everything here. And the greatest part about it was that after you had been here a while and got to know people it was fun. I went there for breakfast, here for afternoon coffee, there to the bank, over there to get some item, and it was like one big living room, with the addition of lots of dust.
Here in the north the Thais were some different, and Chiangmai changed faster than Maesai, in part due to all the foreigners. Chiangmai did have that forever tropical feel to it, but I didn't like all the foreigners, how they were endlessly busy getting into hassles with their hookers or trying to screw everybody else over. The foreigners who came to Thailand were often cast out druggies or alcoholics. The missionaries were just as twisted, without so much alcohol. They came from places in the south of the US, to give you an idea of their racial perspective, and you didn't see any minority missionaries, just very white missionaries. No one else was blessed to be here. The missionaries had long histories here with the CIA all the while pretending that they didn't, that they were really normal spiritual people trying to do God's work, like anyone here for long would buy that.

Machinations of a small town
Everything went on here, if one thing could be said for Maesai, it was its tolerance, its very wide acceptance of different perspectives on life. Yours, mine, everybody's. What I like about the orient is the way in which people make in their society and minds so much room for other people.  Like the Thais might not like the Akha, but the Thais in Maesai who worked with the Akha had a different perspective, were accepting, depending on who they were.
     Some Maesai merchants were unable to see an Akha beyond a person to exploit, a household servant. Others were different.
     Sometimes one could see conflicts going on in town, and knew once again that it was best to stay out of it. But generally the Thais tride to negotiate things, resolve them there at the very moment, the system was not always trying to pull your life completely into the gears, not to say that some cash was not required. However, even this began to change as things westernized.
   Not counting the problems, if there was something distinctly nice about Thailand it was that Thailand was different from the west.  The problems with Thailand were the things that it did in response or as a result of payoff by the west. When it came to hazards to the indigenous, many of these hazards started from the west, the World Bank, western farm chemicals and fertilizers, western style prisons, the drug war, vaccinations, the western take on property, western land and forestry practices, consumerism, missionary hospitals that the indigenous could not afford, the CIA, DEA, the war in Laos, the war in Burma and China and the "opium" wars to name a few.

Towns
     Lack of city planning often plagued Thai towns, that had started out small and just sort of spun a web of congestion. Lampang was a hard town to park in. I went there to see Akha prisoners in the two prisons there. 
     Lack of education infrastructure was visible, like a library in Maesai, that took a long time to happen. The park was limited to the one near the hospital, an excercise park. Keeping streets clean would take a street sweeper, but one could not be found. Just people swept the street, they didn't do it often enough for a main thoroughfare and the dirt and dust blew everywhere. The people in Thailand didn't spit as much as some other places. Like China. But quite a few people did their spitting in the street, mixing with dust, and passing on TB where possible.
     As congestion and traffick grew lack of planning on the intersections, lights, location of markets, and cluttering of the sidewalks became a bigger and bigger problem. But that didn't change the fun of walking through an older Thai food market, smiling at the vendors, buying favorites of this and that, having some soy pudding with ginger syrup and just forgetting about it all for a while.  The people around didn't bother themselves with most of it. They were not from the west, they hadn't to worry so many things, they hadn't so many things whipping around in their minds. This became even more comparable when one got out in the smaller Thai towns, a temple in some beautiful lush green place, coconut palms, rice fields of the richest green the human eye can imagine, quiet lanes, and small gatherings of people in the noodle shop. One could slip quietly into one of these places and if you could speak Thai a little, didn't act like a demanding rude foreigner, then you could just slip in there mostly unnoticed and have fun like as if you were a local. That was fun Thailand.  Being white and western was an automatic obstacle to many things, people took you different, and when you saw  how foreigners acted, or remember how you had acted yourself, you could see some of the things they attatched to that, they swung WIDE and made big allowances for the western people who they saw as blind, big or fat, uncaring, rude, demanding, smelly, selfish, mono optic, stingy, quick to think they had been cheated and most dangerous of all, very quick to get angry.
One thing I noticed about Thai communities was that few will give up the personal for the betterment of the collective.  So that would mean that one might not see much sense about community, care of the streets, addressing community problems, fixing congestion, driving safely to keep other people alive, paying attention to other people in line, waiting your turn, putting trash where it belonged.
     To take care? You must be joking, and because we do they are always amazed. Not that all foreigners took care, but some did. The Thais always wondered why we took care at an accident, involved ourselves, tried to help. They often just had the spectator look, stood by, pointed at the body, or picked it up like potatoes and hauled it away with no sense of concern. Their capacity to distance themselves was great.  While the western capacity to be close to the scene, was in obvious contradiction to what western society could do to people at the same time as long it was hid from view.

Contradictions
     One of the nicest things about Thailand as compared to the west was that the Thai mind and society could allow a LOT of contradictions. People were considered friends and enemies on many levels, which of course did not require that you diss someone or not talk to them any more.  As well, people could allow you or themselves many different convergent or apparently contradicting opinions on something or someone, and did not automatically flip into a judgemental position just because you had taken a position.  At the same time they didn't expect you to hold them to it when they took a position and then start judging them harshly.  Thais appreciated to avoid conflict and so if you opted out, or gave them an easy way to opt out, or changed the conversation or topic, they were happy enough. If one overstepped ones self and said something rude or too harshly, one could immediately smile, change one's tone of voice, speak softly and slowly and be pleasant and the Thais were very glad to forget it all. Try doing that in the west. Do something and people will make that their only impression of you and hold it against you forever. Period. There is a black and a white view of everything, and that is that.
       The other thing I didn't see in Thai society that I always saw in America was the attitude of ego and ownership.  In the west, people were immediately ready to show you the liine and enforce what they considered their territory. Ego's were enormous, couldn't get bigger, big guts, big mouths, shoving you around, telling you how it was going to be, you parked in the wrong place, you were standing in the wrong line, it was enough to make you puke. Pulling rank at every turn of the road, then concealing and hiding events behind convenient rules.

Maesai Days, Years
Ah there are many stories from Thailand that I am sure I failed to tell. 
Afternoons at the market, friends.  A marriage that ended or walked out the door I should say.
Motorcycle rides to the mountains, Akha villages, staying over night.  New road construction.  The genocide of Akha culture in Thailand . Pollution.  Injustice. Prostitution on a mass scale.
     My friend, Hom Dwan, who went to Hatyai.
     The beautiful Doi Tung and adjacent mountains .  Orchids.  The many villages I visited. 
Surin. The train.  The Kmer's.  Nan Kai.
After I began my work with the Akha, very seperate than my persuit of money or wealth or business, it began to require more and more of my time, taking it in small bits here and there until it left very little room for anything else. 
As a result there were many hard times I endured in this town.  By logic, when I was out of money, I should have left.  But I knew of a reality that if I left, I would be in a different world and getting back to this place would be hard, and much time would be lost, and who would know if I would make it back at all?
Even in those times in which I did not have money, I had time to gather bits and pieces of knowledge and experience that benefitted me greatly for the work later on.  During times when I didn't have money I saw things that I would have passed by had I money, very important things.  I was also able to determine the emphasis on money between the times when I had it and when I didn't.  It was nice to get to know people that way. Later when I had money I was less likely to get burned. But the important thing is to follow life, not the money, to find some kind of peace in the heart, some hope, some joy, and some ambition.

Maesai Slowly
I was getting to know this region better in slow, forward moving steps.
Mental stimulation was the greatest lacking component.  A conversation or two wandered into town. Maesai had whore houses, a few bars with loud Thai bands and a dirty movie theatre.  No real new  stories here I sometimes felt.  Burma grows and the Tachilek economy is busy with Thai Tourists and cheap Chinese goods.  Some times chinese good were only 10% the cost of the Thai goods.
      The maesai plaza guest house is habitually empty.  Only two or three Japanese guests, most of the others had rented appartments.
Sailom Joi finally got its road side drain system and concrete paving.
The few westerners here either get dumb like Cary and Joe, their elevators not working, or they search for mental stimulation.  There were the occasional fifedoms.  Joe always wanted one of those, enough money and power so he could push people around and feel like a big shot.  Joe Esparza. Married a Wa girl, she was actually pretty nice, everyone deserves some good things. Once he got pissed at her and cut off her hair. She ran home to Keng Tung so Joe bought her dad a motorbike so that she would get sent back. Joe had a smaller wife. A Shan girl, two boys with her, but wouldn't take care of them, that is sad, wether you like someone or not, it is sad to see someone abandon their own. She was pretty smart too.
I was working on the idea of an occasional Akha magazine, so much per copy, when I get it produced.
     Oh yeah, we had 7-11 now here in Maesai.  Air filled food at expensive prices.  Great mark up.  A three baht egg and few greens called a salad, for 25 baht.  An icy coke for 14 baht instead of 8.
Donuts for 15 baht each. I figured if you had a backpack big enough you could easily carry all the contents of the store out on your back, it was all so light.
     The fried chicken stand was still the best deal in town, great flavor, tender chicken, garlic, 15 baht. I would get me a piece of this, some sticky rice, some egg plant and chili pepper mashed into a sauce and take it to the Top North where I would pull up a seat, order toast and coffee, and have a good meal, part mine, part theirs. They never minded, I watched the street go by, sitting at a table on the sidewalk out front.
     Sometimes I met friends there, sometimes I read the paper, sometimes I just sat there alone and had a coke.
     It was important to me to savor the food, to think all day, that one day when my money came, I'd get a piece of chicken, some sauce, and some sticky rice, and two cold cokes, not just one, and ice, the condensation running down the outside of the glass. Fizz coming off the top of it, the cold ice cubes.  And I'd sit there and eat it and drink the coke and think of how many days I had survived, or what had happened, or that I was still alive, in this town so real, so human, so full of humanity and life, at every stage, the winners, the loosers, the contenders, but all there right in front of you in all the grime and intensity, the struggle for life.

Motorcycle Fatality Curve
At the south end of Maesai the road went into a curve. That was the end of town. The man lay in the road dying if not dead, his pulverized twitching body no match for the truck which had crumpled his nearby motorcycle.
The crowd of spectators did no more than gawk until a I approached and then someone said "falang" like they were embarassed so they drug his body like so much trash to a nearby truck and threw him in back, by legs and feet, speeding away.

Maesai, What a place!
The morning was cool before the heat would come up. A killing heat.  You didn’t want to be out in it in the afternoon but around 10am it could also be quite directly hot.
Those who had fever on days like this were unfortunate.  I know of at least two, in a very small circle around here who were dying.  The old woman and Ah Dtee, I suppose.
Goodness  knew what was going on in the villages where there wasn’t the best or enough food.  Life was given up early, one unable to hold onto it.  I thought of all the ways people in the west talked about God. But that was easy for them to say where they felt they controlled so much.  What about people who lay dying here, or watched their kid lay dying, and prayed to God, and no help came?  It put everything in a different perspective when one shifted out of one culture into another and had to take a second look at their assumptions about God. You got cerebral malaria here and you died just as fast if not faster than the next guy.  Lots of people in the west took credit for their comfortable lives. I wondered if it wasn't the inverse of all the plundered third world one saw?  If the third world was plundered by the west, then was the west living on more than its share?  And if it was living on more than its share then was it always right for people in western churches to brag about how much God had blessed them and how lucky they were?  Were they thanking God for their greed, their selfishness and their claim that they didn't have any idea how the west got so much and how the third world appeared to have so little?
      Could one say that the western powerful and colonial world had impoverished the third world? But don't we always hear the west talking about DEVELOPING the third world?  And don't we always hear this sort of blame that is put on the third world for their own poverty, like we really don't know how they got that way or what part colonialism and gun boat diplomacy had on any of this?

Later Days In Maesai
In later days in Maesai, it became increasingly clear that much of what I encountered in the difficult situation of the Akha was VERY much tied to the missions and their relationship to the history of the place.  Helping the Akha wasn't just a matter of fixing a little poverty, but was in relationship to a lot of people and forces who would gladly give them nothing while grinding them to fine dust like between so many large stones.  The missions used them for money bait and cheap labor around many facilities, whose wealth continued to grow and grow. The Catholics in Keng Tung were no exception, and if there was anything noteworthy it was the possibility that the protestants had copied the model many times over and put it everywhere, how to exploit people, build a mission like a small franchise business in Jesus's name, and get money and power.  You could set up a McJesus anywhere.  What a scam. 

Slow Days in Maesai
I have been here a long time in Maesai.  I am not moving ahead with my project as fast as I want to.  There are various reasons for that. 
My writing has gotten more difficult.  Writer's block, who knows.
I have numerous language projects, an Akha word book, the children’s phrase book and a collection of words as well. Mooh Dzurh's brother is working on the NT to put it in the new script. There is also a 300 phrase book and a 1000 word list.  So there is much language work to do.  It took me more than seven years, working with the Akha, to complete the new script. A concise phonetic script.

Looking Back Maesai
Most of the time that I have spent in Thailand those first few years I have spent in Maesai for many different reasons.  All though the time was not wasted it was not always as productive as I wanted it to be.  Never the less I learned a lot about poor people from the experience and how they behave.  I also learned much about the orient.
      Early on I gained frustration with my spare time on hand waiting for orders and so I began to do first aid work and to work with the Akha language.  Some of the christian Akha  often exploited that effort as much as they could with no real responsibility that I was paying for their assistance and wether or not they should deliver results for money paid.  Such a story it is.  Never the less, I did make some progress on the language, getting a system of phonetic pronunciation started and getting a new tonal system designed.  Wether I will do any more with it remains to be seen.  So despite the hardships I made progress, just wasn't at the speed I would have enjoyed.
     Much of my work in Maesai had to do with beads.  Other than that I had lots of spare time, too much.  I made a trip or two to Surin, visa runs to Penang, trips to Bangkok, purchases of medicine, a trip to Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, China at Kunming and trips into Burma.  At Bangkok I sometimes got over to the Thai Pharmaceutical office and store and bought hard to get items up here in Maesai, like fungicide. Clotrimazole or Mircanazole cream.  Very effective against skin fungus.  Skin fungus could get out of control, and when it did, people really suffered.
      In Maesai I didn't feel I got as much done as I wanted, but I saw and wrote about many things.  Other than these stories that occur in a border town there was not much else to talk about.  My experiences with the foreigners was the same as theirs, none of us got along.  I found early on to avoid them, to be careful, one didn't know who one was really dealing with and weird things happened. Nuts, kooks, criminals, wackos.
      Occasionally I was of service to a tourist but this usually took far more time and energy and money than it paid.
In the end the bead business died.
The ruby business is a possibility which I learned something about.
The bead business may be resurrected.
However said or done, the loss, the closure, of the bead business was a great loss to me, both in friends, but also in opportunities that I had only begun to explore.
I tinker with the idea in my mind, that someday, after the project here is running well, I could very well put my hand to this again.
To have experience in the orient, being from the west, is very valuable, the more varied the experience the better the view on life.

Evening in Maesai
The street lay empty and mostly still except for a lone somlor creaking slowly down the gentle slope from the closed gates at the bridge that crossed to Burma.  A few last stragglers made their way home as if trying to get there before the powers that be threw some imaginary switch and brought everything to a halt.
     The long road that led up through town and ended at the bridge was lined with merchant’s buildings on both sides.  The town had a special feel to it, like it had many stories to tell, some obvious, some not so obvious.  When the street was empty like in the evenings there was this wild west feel to the place, like everyone and everything was getting ready for another day of relentless events, too many for the mind to keep track of, as so many things and so many peoples crossed this center of the earth as it were.

Back at the 7-11 Store
I went down to the 7-11, yes, Maesai had one now.  Didn’t hurt.  Someone had learned the idea about clean, well lit space and not too much of any one item.  The place was cool and I got a slurpee like I did when I was a kid of 7 so many years ago at the corner of Jurupa and Adams street in Riverside, California.
The slurpee was cool and I stood in the shade out front and watched people come and go.  Parking their motorbikes, shuffling inside in their thongs and out again.  Sometimes I squatted against the wall, on  my heels, and ate a hamburger there in the shade.
Beggar women from a different world came by.  The shop owner next door signalled to one to come and get some food that he set aside for her. She did. 
I got back on my Honda motorbike and drove down to the fish supply shop to get some food for my two fish that were in the large crock outside my door, room 61.  I had made shade there with sun cloth above and plants of green and cool below.  Then a stack of little turtles caught my eye so I got two for 80 baht each and some turtle food as well. 
One more stop at the copy shop near the old post office on the way out of town and I picked up 500 more sheets of paper for my printer.  Lots of computer work these days, getting some office work caught up and some writing done.
The weather was hot and dry and not too long till April, and they would start throwing water.  I didn’t care for it much, so I just stayed in doors and wrote.  Was suppose to be for three days or something like that but it lasted for two weeks here it seemed.  Part of my year.
Now I had a tv and vcr and could stay in my room.  I wish I had a little portable air conditioner like they make because my room was small, stuffy and hot.  Quieter than concrete but hot.
When I got back I cleaned out the one large crock where I had tried to grow some veggies but there wasn’t enough light so they didn’t do well and the rats ate the tops off.  I replanted some nice ferns, scooped out an area and put a shallow pot that I filled with water and let the two turtles go.  I would probably have to protect them from the rats too.  I remembered the possum that chewed the legs of that turtle my friend had in California and woke me up with its chewing on the shell outside my trailer, trying to get the turtle to stick its head out and feed on some brains.  I chased the overgrown rat off, finished the hideous job with a shovel and buried it and went back to bed.
The rats came to my room a lot.  Dinner was always there, bright pink rat pellets.  They loved them.  Then sometimes they liked water after to cool their hot little asses or whatever the pellets made hot and they drowned themselves in the fish crock or the water dipping crock outside my door.
But sometimes they ransacked around my room and I was obliged to get up and go after them with the fish spear, the rat jumping about and me trying to see where they got behind and then I killed them if they didn’t make it to some hole under the sink. 
But I caught on to the sink and put lots of pellets under it so they could get at the pellets without even coming up into the house.  That seemed to help.  And no visiting children could get the pellets either, which always worried me, the little crawlers.
The Akha family came over earlier in the day, watched a video of a Japanese girl who ran away in Australia from her miserable little husband with the tight shoes.
My room was not a mess, but pull anything out of its place and and it soon would be.

7 - 11 Red Head
Next door to the seven eleven there was a red head and her friends at the clothing shop. Seven eleven had these different prizes and coupons and stuff, which I never kept up with so I always gave them to these gals.  Part of the life here, knowing different people in different ways, all in a day. They always stopped me to take my children away from me, to hold them, to play with them.  Sometimes I didn't get to see my kid for quite some time as they passed the child about.  This clothing store belonged to the owner of the 7-11 and her brother and folks.  She never quit working I noticed.  We noticed it about each other.

25 noodle restaurant 
The "25" was a restaurant on the main street in Maesai towards the movie theatre, where the sign said Sakura House which was up the side street, a massage parlor.  The "25" stayed open very late. If you wanted a meal at two or three in the morning this would be about the only place to get it.
The late night party people came there after the hooker houses and bars closed.
The place was sort of sunk down below the new road now, some tables on the sidewalk, a dirty blue paint.
A fat guy slopping food out of caldrons, never looked apetizing to me.  But Jon knew what to order and we went there often after beer. Nam da ju or something like that, soup with pork and soi curds and greens.
     There was real good food in Thailand but the best stuff was expensive.  The average fair on the road and in the restaurants was greasy and tasted bland.  Spice was often a cover for not knowing how to cook at all or the meat having gone bad.  Well I shouldn't say that. A lot of food on the street was better than food in the restaurants, and safer.  If you got to know the carts you could put together some pretty good low tech fare.  One could always put together a meal, and not have to walk far to do it. And the experience, the people, each place with a different personality.  Mostly, people in restaurants always were good to me, I liked them, I liked to sit and wait, to watch, to enjoy, and to come back again and they recognized me. Its nice when people recognize you, saw you once before, they smile, that is the test, or maybe there is a frown behind it, but it is nice, and I smile back to them, compliment them on their good food, sah bai sah bai.  The small things in life between people.

Jo Jos. 
There was this dark pouty girl in there, many young women actually, racing around, moving the food real fast, your food could be at your table before you sat down. I liked the eggplant and curry chicken over rice, that was spicy but real good, a kind of milky green curry.  The girls moved hot trays, put your food in a small pan and fired it up even hotter, all looked dangerous to me. But in years it closed, around 2004.  The dark pouty girl was gone. I'd go in there just to smile to her, as it seemed to make her more pouty and all the other girls joked her about it.

Ancient massage
The ancient massage was a two story building on the south end of Maesai that was strung with long laces of lights from the top floors to the ground.  There was always a security guard out front, girls, guys and motorbikes.  Going inside you would have a photo album thrust in your hand and a bunch of pasty faced bored girls who would offer to chew gum while you watched for an hour for 150 baht, while they pretended to offer a massage.  Really the place was a brothel, and foreigners were not considered customers, and massage wasn't the real job, so to go there for a massage was in their mind wasting THEIR time.  It sure was a waste of one's own as they didn't know anything about massage.  Much of Thai massage was uncomfortable.  The girls had stiff mechanical routines. The concept that massage of the muscles and tendons could make one feel better, that the hand should try to perceive and the eye might look to the person to see if the grip was too strong or painful was totally lost on the people in even the genuine massage houses.  More often than not, the massage could be painful, or so boring and meaningless that your brain hurt just looking at this person who pretended not to be there.  On more than one occasion I said to the lady, look, you lay here and I will show you what massage is about, and spend most of an hour giving her a massage.  Fingers were eyes, looking for painful muscles, tension, taught skin.

Apples
Of late years you could buy apples from China in Maesai, they came down the Mekong river and were cheap.  An apple from Washington State cost a small fortune for one while you could buy a whole kilo from china.  The Washington state apples came in clearly marked boxes with little stickers on the apples, the apples were bright red and waxy polished and weren't very fresh, already mealy.  They looked very well preserved, almost artificial, unhealthy.  So normally for an apple that looked like an apple and tasted like one, I bought the Chinese ones and made apple pie when I had the time and energy.  There was a lot going on for me to be able to do this all the time. The most time consuming part was mixing and rolling out the pie dough.  I had thought to make a press to do this.  But I made up a couple other tricks instead that made it pretty easy.  Everyone like the pie.

An old bicycle?
Most all the bicycles seemed to lack for brakes and people use their sandle on the front tire to slow it down. Some people ride on a jump seat on back or even the men will ride on the front axle while their friend peddles, anything to get back across the bridge on time.  There aren't as many bicycles here as in China, but still quite a few.  On the Thai side, ladies rode bikes, ladies rode as passengers, but on the Burma side the bicycles were the family car.

Avacados
Dreams and memories of California.  Memories of friends who died, people you grew up with, teachers, students, relatives.  Amazing what a swarthy black skinned fruit can remind you of.  That is the way they were here, don't know if they came from Burma or through Burma from China.  Occasionally I would buy one and cut it, put salt and lime juice on it, was really great that way. They lined up the street in boxes, and fruit, mushrooms and nuts of all kinds in season. Of late years lots of confection fruits packaged fancy from China and tea, teapots with little strainers, fancy Tea shops for tasting.
The avacados sold near the bridge or they could also be found cheaply in Keng Tung.
Over the years there was more and more fruit in Maesai than before, everything in its season.  For anything else one might say, Thailand had more fruit than one could imagine.  One of my favorites was the mangosteen.  They had a fruit like sharamoyas here, but it wasn't quite as good as the ones I had in Whittier, California.  And I hadn't seen any St.Johns bread.  There were powdered flat persimons, dried persimons and oranges. A lot of food on the main street like nothing but a big market. Then sometimes the city fathers would push them all off the street. But actually the city fathers started it, because when Burma closed the bridge with Thailand, the people of Maesai lost their jobs and so out of compassion the mayor asked people to sell what ever they could in the street at the bridge to boost everyone's spirits and this is how the market started. Simple joys.

Axle repair shop, dead trucks on the Keng Tung road
Up the river road just a short way from the bridge there was a machine shop for a long time.  He repaired axles and differentials from broken trucks on the Keng Tung road. He wasn't a pleasant fellow.  Normally one doesn't associate machinists with sleaze and greed, there is too much work involved, it is an artisan trade, but in this case I found an exception. He was rude, greedy, like a shark. I would some times bring by a piece of steel for a pump to have it cut or welded and he was rude and dismissing.  His son was on the ugly side in this same kind of way.  There wasn't as much work these later years as the road to Keng Tung got better, but one could still see the broken trucks with men pulling out the axles, engines, transmissions, differentials, some major breakdown that had stopped them. Maybe when there weren't so many hostages to be taken at the machine shop, business slowed.  For what ever reason the shop was one day gone, maybe moved. I don't know. 
Over by Boom Street mini market down the side road there was a wrecker, he had lots of parts for everything, engines and more piled everywhere, he knew his stuff pretty well, an older man, reminded me of George C. Scott.
The trucks coming down the Keng Tung road were very old and very overloaded.  They groaned and rolled from side to side and they had many buckets, drums, water tanks, fuel tanks, spare tires, blocks, irons and of course a shipload of stowaways for taking care of all this should part of the truck break.  Once broken down they set up camp beside the road for the days it would take to make the repair and get the truck underway again. There was a kind of invincibility to the process. Everything prepared for. Life where you can taste the dirt, the oil, the dust, and see the steel up close, rather than polished paper thin sheet metal like is on everything these days, hiding its increased vulnerability.
The road to Keng Tung, repairs and breakdowns, these things were important. There was this wild west feel to it, the frontier, which it certainly was. To  me the road was great, it was an awesomoe experience each and every time I went  down it. The best times were when I went with friends or by myself.  When I took guests they were generally annoyed with inconveniences, like they missed the whole point of where they were. 
     There were long distances of jungle and farm land where no one much appeared to live and then some more villages, primitive in a world that had forgotten primitive, in a world that was all about manufacturing and the un-natural earth.  So this road, Keng Tung, I loved it very much.

Another Funeral
July 97
Sad music wept from a truck escort megaphone as another young man goes to his smoky funeral.  Now quite common from AIDS.
Some towns have more people dying of aids than new births.
Once again cut off from the land of the living, not much ceremony to it. Wasn't quite the same as going to a grave stone to visit a loved one who was gone, thinking of the times long forgotten, the harsh words, the moments of joy, the unfathomable loss of dreams realized too late to do anyone any good.  There were bridges between humans.  There should be, and often we didn't even realize what someone was about or meant to us until they were gone.  Even people who we didn't know and didn't pretend to like, they were actors on the edges of our life stage, ugly people maybe, but still crucial to all the memories.  I wondered if these ugly mean people weren't sometimes the people we looked back at the most, wondering why we had so misjudged them or felt so threatened by them when now they were dead. And we hoped those in life to whom we had been or still appeared to be ugly, didn't judge us too harshly, that as long as we had breath, we still laid repair to our life, to do better, to be kinder, more patient, more helpful.
I had buried my share of people, and at no time did I find it pleasant.  Not because of the smell or the site, but because of the incredible contradiction to the beauty of life in our eyes and in the bodies of those all around us.  Life was fluid.  Death was very still.  It was this incredibly unexplained collapse of all that was good and lived out, taken down to the cold in a final defeat.  Maybe not so final.  And maybe not so much a defeat, depending on how we lived it.
But there was joy in life, holiness, and people forgot to know this, to think of this, and lived in a puny way, there was so much more.
As humans it was hard sometimes to know how to bless people, to give all the thanks and gratitude that one could to someone. Some cultures had barriers up to this, so that people couldn't easily receive the good you wanted to give them. To accept it was to allow you to get some credit maybe and they begrudged this too. Some people even wanted to stand there and quibble if your good was good enough, or if it was good being it wasn't the exact package they felt they had coming. Maybe they would prefer a good case of leprosy.
Speaking of which, there was a leper colony in Keng Tung. Run by the catholics. A priest at Camillion social center in Chiangrai said nothing was as good as a leper colony for raising money, money just poured in when one had one of those. An interesting note, since the missions at Keng Tung always pretended they  had no money at all. But they did have a leper colony.

Akha Ridge Storm
Above Maesai on the west side there was a mountain ridge, and this was also the border with Burma. This ridge ran south all the length of the Thai Burmese border, a road on top in many places, dividing the water sheds and the countries. From the top you could see into Burma so very far, and the mountains there were beautiful.  Looking east back into Thailand one saw flat rice fields, the valley floor, for miles, as Thailand didn't have so many mountains, but more rice. Rice lands everywhere, sometimes full of water, a deep emerald green, clouds, rain, rainbows.
Once I was up in the border mountains near Maesai on a bigger motorbike and this incredible storm hit as I was driving up the ridge above Maesai.  It was so fierce I stopped the bike and ran and hid in a very thick bunch of bamboo.  The storm raged, at incredible speed there where it crossed the ridge and I waited.  I feared it would even throw the motorbike over on its side.  When the storm was over many trees were broken including one big banana tree.  So I cut through the great banana stems and loaded the bananas, two very large clusters, across my handlebars, to where I could barely control the motorbike, but made my way down the mountain anyway and gave them all to the guest house staff.  They squealed when a rats nest fell out full of baby pink rats. These were pitched into the klong for safe keeping.

The Akha At Joe's
She was rude and laughed, reminded me like a retired hooker, how she treated people.  She made fun of all the customers and didn't help them so finally she got thrown out. She would often carry on bawdy conversations with the one Thai woman there about all the men she had taken, what she liked, and didn't like, all between emphatic phrases and roars of laughter.  "One kilo.  No, No, that will never due, not enough, never less than two kilos!"

Ahm the wa girl, scabies and TB
Later I think she worked at a whore house and died, surely must have.
She worked for me.  For a few weeks only.  Couldn't have gotten thinner.  She chewed a huge clot of tobacco at all times, I mean huge, it filled her mouth, and she had TB and wouldn't take her medicine and left.  I saw her later walking with all the girls from a hooker house, and then didn't see her after this.  Getting these people to take their medicine was very hard.  They were over run and didn't take much of anything seriously, like survivors of a plane crash walking around in a daze, maybe for years.  TB required that you took your medicine sometimes for six months. I had heard enough stories.  One woman telling me that as a child she traveled long mountain trails with her mother and father and they came down this one river and they could see down into the river from the ridge.  There were many Yao tribes people laying dead in the river, so many bodies, they had all been slaughtered, far up in Burma.  Burma had been at war for years, the old Chinese, the new Chinese, all the ethnic groups, the Burmese.  Least now there was finally some order to it. Even the Thai had fought the Burmese in Burma. Elephants and all.

The 01 Karaoke and Bead Shop
The 01 Karoake belonged to Ma Ta as he was called.  The 01. He owned the bead shop too.   His wife was chinese but he was Akha from China.
I bought beads at his shop many times and had a few beers at his massage parlor where he "moved" Akha girls as well.  Actually one half of the place was massage, and the front half was a karaoke for chinese girls who were high priced. A lot of sex selling going on. Once I got talked into going to that side with a friend, by a couple of Thais, but they were real drunk and got upset and we thought it was better to leave, which we did. In upper entertainment places like this it was more polite to leave the Thais to their peace, not intruding, even if invited, it was more wise and in the long run polite to refuse.
     The massage parlor in back became a rather boring place as Maesai commercialized. Before one could get a good massage, but that changed. It was obvious they were interested in only the kind of transactions that made the motorbike payments on all the new motorbikes parked beside the building. 
     But then Ma Ta got killed in a gun battle outside Chiangrai in Jan of 2001. The Karoke closed and became an computer video arcade, the massage place continuing on. His wife's brother continued to tend to the businesses.  However, by this time the family had so much wealth stashed, sending their kids to all the best schools, that it didn't look like it affected them much. 
    A lot changed around Maesai as the army moved in close.

Akha Beggars In Chiangmai
The Akha beggars from Burma had a "train" that they took to Chiangmai.  I wasn't sure who or what it was but they were always able to get to Chiangmai to beg on the streets, make some money and come back. I ran into them often and would buy whatever medicine I needed to fix them up if they were down on their luck, or buy them a meal.
For many years my project was so poor that I didn't often get to Chiangmai.  The road was bad and the bus ride horribly slow and weaving.  Only after I got the truck did I go there much, driving down.

Akha on the bus
The bus attendants always said that the Akha got sick on the bus and they did, even if they stood in back, and the attendants were always kind to them and doused the area with water as a kindness to the rest of us.
When the Akha rode with me they by far prefered to ride outside the truck, rather than inside.  And if they did ride inside they consistently rolled the window down and got sick.

Akha zoo
Vans came up to the villages and markets, full of fat white people all wanting to shove their $1200 camera in the face of an Akha woman, but seldom wanting to be of any help.  The had a camera, that was their "permit" as they traveled about the world consuming.  Sometimes I wanted to think that they were not mean people, they just didn't know, but when people spend all their lives intentionally "just not knowing", then I think that like it or not, they are mean people, deaf to the pain of others, much of what they make advantage of.  The tourists with their spendy cameras always got pissed off when the Akha asked for a ten baht coin after the tourist took their picture. "No, NO" the fat tourist would say, "I don't pay for photos, I'm just a selfish fat f--k and I take what I want for free".

Akha Hand Bag Loi Tung
I had bought an Akha hand bag call a "peh tauh" from a girl on loi tung.  It had sunset colors and design to it.  I bought it because of the pastel effect upon the eyes that the pattern had. She sold near the temple on the Doi Tung mount along with the other Akha and all of their wares.  The mount was a beautiful place full of bells that you could ring.  I don't know what the history of this tradition was but it was beautiful enough. In the later years the Akha came and set up tables along the walk and sold many beautiful wares, I got to know so many of them, they were such fun to visit and talk to and find out if they had problems of this and that sort, what news they had, what they could tell me about conditions they faced.

Shan Attack on Tachilek 1994
The attack on Tachilek for me was without warning, though some reporters knew and were already in town waiting for it, as if it was a killing carnival, pictures of killing for fun.
Many people died, more suffering was brought on the poor and the bridge was closed because the Thais were involved and the Burmese suspected this.
The attack started early, before six I think, and I woke up to look out my guest house room window and saw tracers and explosions and gunfire on the other side of the river starting at the left and moving up the street towards the center of town.
The big gun on the hill opened up defensively, had no downward angle, so could only fire skyward.
I could hear the men yelling as they stormed up the street, much shooting, and then big clouds of black smoke from something set on fire.
Not knowing it was still going on, I went down for breakfast. As I sat beside the railing in my usual space the Shan soldiers soon poured back across the river to the Thai side and got in trucks. A few stragglers came out across the field, a Burmese soldier or two chasing them, and some didn't make it in time and got stranded on the Burma side of the river. About five Shan soldiers hid in the houses. 
The Burmese took up position and fought to get them out of the houses, firing with bazookas and 50 caliber machine guns into the houses, ripping through brick walls, tearing up tin roofs.  The non fighting Shans came out with their hands up and ran to the river. When a bazooka hit a house, the whole house thundered. The Burmese army used a bazooka on one house, quite a large explosion but the men were not in that house at the time. 
Finally the Burmese army burned the neighborhood down to get them out. I saw the long bamboo pole go up in the air with a white flag on it, and the Burmse took the prisoners away.
People fled across the river to the Thai side with some small belongings.  Smoke poured skyward, thick and black.
Mortars fell in the river and the Riverside guesthouse was struck by small gernades.
After the attack a Thai army man stayed in the guest house for many days with a special video camera filming the other side.
One man on the other side had lost a very big house and two dump trucks which he had no chance of getting out when the fire came. After a while he rebuilt with a bigger house than before.
The Burmese quickly built pillboxes of concrete on the other side and strung up much barbed wire but there was no more action between the two countries for a very long time.
This was the spring of 1994 before Khun Sa surrendered. Khun Sa had put it all on for show, and alerted the media, which was all up on top of the hotel we found out, and many people died that day, just for a show.

Akha man at market I split fish with
I had many Akha friends at the market. One fellow was very thin, a hard working Akha in his 40's. He was energetic and fun to talk to.  He had a deap scar on his face where he was cut by a knife one time.  Sometimes his wife came, sometimes not. I would buy a good cooked fish or some fried chicken and we would eat it there together in the shade of the Akha alley market, our backs against the block wall.  I knew many of the Akha there for years, many years, taking care for them with medicine, listening to the language, which you don't have to understand to enjoy.  Soft by times, poetic by others and emphatic so often.  I could still see all their faces and remember them although many were dead and many had gone away.

All the new shops on way to building
Sailom Joi was getting busy at one end with all the shops selling imported items from China for very cheap.  Video CD's were now barely a dollar for each movie. I could barely get my truck down the street on a busy day.  Sometimes it required I either go under the bridge and down the alley or up over the hill to the back side of town, and then out to the highway.

Ant villages
The Ant village that I knew of was east of Keng Tung and north a little.  I don't know much about the Ant people but they all dressed in black with black turbans on the heads of the women.  There were many distinct tribal groups in Burma. 

Banking: The lost 100,000 baht
Oh yes, banking experiences, they deserve their own chapter
Well my friend said he was going to send me a  large check which he did.  I told him how to go about sending it, bank check registered mail.  It came surface mail and on a personal account, a tax exempt account.  Well, he said send it back if I needed to but I went to the bank and asked them how long it would take to clear.  They said two weeks.  I didn’t want to trouble the donor so I said OK and gave it to the bank.  The Baht had been at an all time low of 56 to the dollar.  Well it didn’t take two weeks it took five and in that time the baht rose from 56 to 44.  So I lost about 100,000 or nearly 20%.
What can you do?

Banking Problems
Sooner or later if you live here very long you open a bank account.   The Thai bank personell are always nice and you can make a casual friend or two.  Someone speaks english and they help at the foreign exchange desk.  There was the short pretty girl and then the tall professional woman who I knew for so long. So you open up an account.  Then people send money and you don’t get it and so you keep checking Bangkok and so forth. I used to do business with the Krung Thai bank, it was close to the bridge, but the money got delayed so many times and they always told me to wait two weeks or a month for it after it had been sent so I switched to Bangkok Bank.  But another problem is that the people sending it often don’t really send it. I know they say they did, they really are going to, but it doesn’t get done and it sure didn't happen this time either. But you go and check anyway, and about the fiftieth time you really convince yourself they lied and really didn't send it. Later they may even tell you they didn't, like the six weeks you waited was no big deal, could all be fixed by them telling you now they never sent it. 
Generally most foreigners consider the bank people as stupid.  They aren’t, they just don’t know enough english to tell how the whole things works.  Generally they are pretty good people and always so polite.  The foreigners on the other hand come into the bank in any condition, from the sweaty outside. 
Maybe the money didn’t come so you had to walk everywhere and maybe you had to check once a day and it was all a lot of bother.  Maybe you weren’t eating and your shirt didn’t have air conditioning. They didn’t have the auto scanners in those days where you could check your account yourself like they have now.  But many foreigners don’t bathe or change their clothes and they come into the bank poorly dressed and so forth and then become angry at the bank people, sure, your money didn’t come and you aren’t going to be eating or paying for your room or whatever. Add to that you might have a stomach problem and gee you’re happy now.  So I did that a few times, looked like the angry foreigner because all that I hoped and all that didn’t happen all came together there in a moment of stopping time at the bank desk in that nice air conditioned bank, a sort of contradiction to walking back out onto the hot sweaty sidewalk which was what you were going to be doing next, still broke.  The trick was to prepare yourself for it, like jumping a big wave, so that you didn't get stuck with just that sinking feeling when you went back out and hit the street.  Maybe I had twenty baht left in my pocket, and on the way to the bank I would spot some good mangos and tell myself that after the money didn't come I would console myself there. Even if I had no money at all, then I would plan something else, like go sit on the bridge, or talk to a friend, or hope somebody I knew would show up in town.
In the lobby of the bank a big black grandfather clock ticked nearby, and there was the one guard and then there were a few Thai newspapers and a tv for all the employees to pass the time with as they worked.  Some had sofas while you waited for your bank book to be processed.  I was a cultural genius when I first figured out how the Thai line system works.  It goes like this or at least it used to in the bank. You walk in, you crowd to the front, you make eye contact with the teller you want and push your book under the teller's window or on top of the pile there already.  It was his job to remember who was next, etc.  If you stood in the line like a stiff goat, every body crowded past and you got all irritated at these smaller pushy faster asians who didn’t respect your size or that couldn’t see you thought you were in a line.  And then the bank teller usually took compassion on you as some big dinasour without eyes and got ahold of your book and got you out of there as fast as he could, because they all knew that foreigners blew up like that day in the post office.
Some foreigners even made a point of competing in the line like it was a contest in which he thought the other people there were in a line but they weren’t.  So he would try to prove that they couldn’t cut in front of him, oh no, that wasn’t going to happen, the world had lines and they would just have to learn, and so he would make all these obvious movements with his big sweaty smelly body exagerated to put them all on notice of what they had done and that he wasn’t a manican standing there.  That was always funny and embarrassing to watch if you were also a foreigner.  I got to where I didn’t like going places with foreigners because they always had some lesson to show off how they dealt with Thais, rather than learning to go with the flow. After all, if you were in Thailand you shouldn’t be in a hurry I would think, go to New York for that and run your ass off like a bicycle courier.

The time the $600 got held up
Onetime someone screwed up at the US end. It was the Interstate bank and the money didn’t come and had to be sent again after six weeks.  I was staying at Nimits, that turkey vulture.  Why did I ever work on behalf of these people? Not in a cold day in hell would they show the same traits of sharing with another.  Anyway, the clerk had typed the wrong number, lost the money, and I was in a bad situation to have to wait. Couldn't pay my bill in the village so of course the bill went up with each day.
Few people would imagine what it was like to live among the desperately poor, and in this village the house I was in was full of heroin and speed addicts.  And then you owe them money, while you are trying to help them, go figure. I mean, I was poorer than they were.

The Torn Bank Book
Money hadn't come in a very long time.  Promises that it had been sent, but hadn't.  I was so furious one time that when I walked out of the bank I tore the book in half.  Course next time I came back I had to have another one made and the bank staff joked that I and my girlfriend had a fight over money and thus it had occured.

The Banking girl looses money
I knew this one girl in the Krung Thai bank.
We often talked.  She was very talkative and civil. I liked her, she liked me.
Once we went to dinner with all the other bankers to the Riverside Guest House where the food was good at that time. The view of the river was great. I was shy, cause I spoke very little Thai, and this was all their back yard and they were very polite, neatly dressed business people. She said that normally Thai girls never wanted to be seen with foreigners, but she didn't care. I knew what she meant, so I thanked her for the invitation. 
     She worked at the money changing window.
     One time she came to the guest house at night with one of the other men bank tellers. She asked for me.  She had given one foreign customer a sizeable wrong amount of money too much and wanted to get it back if possible, but they weren't staying at my guest house.  She lost nearly $400 US dollars which would have to come out of her pay.  The person either didn't notice it either or saw it and said nothing. I felt real bad for my friend.

Back From Prison
The Shan fellow had just come back from the prison at Chiangrai.  He had taken cigarrettes to the markert on the Thai side in Maesai to sell and the police had caught him.  His family in Burma had to pay 50,000 baht which was two thousand dollars and he had to stay in jail two months.  He also lost the cigarettes.  He looked well none the less and said the treatment was good.  Just a business transaction.  No problem.  At least the Thais weren't Serbs. But he cursed the Thais anyway, because people, people with souls, just poor and trying to make a buck, got screwed this way. Some of them even died.
In fairness to Thais, I must say that Thailand is very much an open country. You can break the law and go to jail, but survive, and they do compromise, both the law and jail. But if you are not lucky you can die in jail too, sometimes mysteriously without a trace, many did, many Akha also, never had a chance, poor all their lives, tried to do good for their families, got caught at this or that and died. That was a poverty so mean, no one would believe it.  In the west no one knew shit about this kind of poverty and they didn't give a damn anyway.
If you are in a Thai jail you can try and beg on their mercy and get a reduced sentence, try doing that in America.
One Akha I knew had complained that he was habitually sick, so they finally got tired of it and let him out early.
I saw him the other day, running his little store again in San Chai, happy as a lark.  He chuckled just a little, but we were both glad that he was alive, he had been there for years, a long time, and it was happy to see a friend alive when so many were dead.  Everytime I went out in the villages someone else was dead, some tragedy had eaten up more lives, that is all there was to it, like clock work. That is why I kept on helping the Akha.

Big tree lizard

When I had time or needed a break from the congestion of town in Maesai, I would take a motorbike if I could afford it, and ride up on the ridge road. This was unimproved mud and dirt for many years, but later steep concrete.  The views on a clear day could let you see far over the rice lands of Thailand and deep into the mountains of Burma which were inviting and mysterious directly proportional for the fact that they took you AWAY from western civilization, things made of concrete and steel, painted buildings, things that had to be "correct" square, fast made, uniform made, factory made, all of this.
This once I saw this big scaggy tree lizard jump off the road. I turned the bike fast and chased it down a side road, quite a job on a small road with a big motorbike. The lizard was nearly two feet long, rose up clear off the ground when it ran and hauled ass.  Tail out behind, clawlike feet whipping like you were glad the think wasn't any bigger. I chased it till it ran off into the trees. 
I often had to go to Malaysia to do my visa and once I chased a big lizard that was more than a meter long in Malaysia that ran onto the road and then back into the ditch.  I chased it but the damn thing must have lived on chickens it was so fast, and it shot through a sheep fence like it wasn't even there in a blind rush to get away.
I was real lucky it didn't come at me.

Broom making season
Every year the hilltribe people collect the tassles from a tall mountain grass with stems and broad leaves.  They roll the tassles under their hands on the ground till all the seeds are knocked loose, making a green powder on the ground all over the road.
Then they sold the tassles by the kilo to the Thais and the Thais shipped the tassles to elsewhere by the huge truckload and made brooms which ended up in houses all over Thailand. 
By pushing the hilltribe more and more out of the mountains and taking more and more of the land from them, the hilltribe were not able to stimulate the growth of this grass as much and broom tassle was getting more and more scarce, the price going higher.

Army man rapes akha girl
One Sunday a team of Akha workers on the Tachilek side went out to do some kind of city service working in the homes of army officers and one girl went to clean house for a military doctor.  He raped her and killed her and dumped her body.  The Akha looked everywhere for her when she didn't come home at the appointed time in the evening and eventually someone found her body.  The Doctor was implicated and taken to Rangoon where he was later sent to CoCo Island to serve time for murder. But to hear people talk, you always thought that crime went unpunished in Burma.  Try reporting a rape if you were a woman in Thailand, you'd just get laughter.
Another time two soldiers raped a girl from Pah Luang village near Tachilek where Ymm Boeuh lives.  They got caught, the girl died.  They had to pay a lot of money to the family.  The families often got to choose, jail or money, and sometimes took the money.

Baked eggs on the bridge with soy sauce
The coca cola drink seller on the bridge lost his wife and took care of his tiny daughter by himself.  I often bought soda drinks from him during the early years that I was in Maesai.  I could sit on the bridge and watch all the traffic as there was hardly anything to do in Maesai as it was a small border town.  He had a red bicycle cart, with a big red and white umbrella, and made drinks of different flavors.  There was so little traffic on the bridge that he might be there with his cart all day.
A cart also came along selling baked eggs roasted over coals. There were little plastic bags of soy sauce to put on them.  The Thais put lots of things in plastic bags, rubber bands cleverly twisted around the top.

Bead Shop
There was a bead shop in town, well actually there were two, but I did my business mostly at one.  When there was business I bought a fair amount, sometimes cloth and a few baskets, never much cloth items though.  But there were old good beads and I bought what I could of them.  Old Czeck glass and bavarian stone, cobalts, whitehearts, etc.
An old Akha lady, the mother of the Akha husband, made Pah Meeh style head dresses at the door. She could be seen there often.  Except not lately.  I think her son was dead.  At any rate, I caught Ah Daw there sometimes and bought silver from her that she brought down from Keng Tung.  She was a story in herself.
The shop also sold Akha cloth, about 60 baht a loom, which is an Akha measurement about as wide as your arms, more than a meter.  I made a stick for it so I got it always long enough.  Some measured short. This was the Akha woven cloth about 9 inches wide, and dyed in plant leaf dye.  The Pah Meeh village in Keng Tung was good at doing this.  The old ladies had it down to a science.  From hand spinning the thread to be really smoothe, to the way they got the thread ready to weave, then the weaving in a small hut in the yard, and finally the dying process which to me was the most interesting.
For the dying they had many crocks.  The leaves came from two different plants, which they mashed into a paste.  One plant you propigated by cuttings and one plant you propigated by seed.  Once a mash was made the Akha women added Akha whiskey to it to keep it from spoiling.  One crock with the pure mash, then several with various mixes of the mash and water.  It was into these latter crocks that they dipped the cloth and then hung it on the fence to dry.  They dipped the cloth as many as 30 times in this liquid to get a proper blue looking cloth.
They also sold the Akha women's dresses at the bead shop, the synthetic ones and the traditional cloth ones.  They had assorted colored cloths for making the designs on the Akha jackets.  All of this was still hand dyed in some places. The women cut it into small strips to sew onto the jackets. 

Beads in surin
In the Thai town of  Surin, near the Cambodian border there were the silver filled beads.  I went there once to buy, don't remember if I went there twice.  It was a very interesting industry all done at people's homes and they seemed to get good money out of the deal, as compared to other things they might do.  Kaow Sin Arin was the name of the village outside of Surin.  I didn't see the beads around so much anymore, so I don't know if they are still making them. 
The villagers rolled out strips of silver in a metal roller after pulling silver wire through a die.  Then they cut the silver strip into lengths, which the curled around a wooden peg and soldered the side of.  After this they used a tiny hammer to tap the ends over to leave a small hole only.  Tiny wire shaped into rings was soldered around the end hole to make the bead more attractive  Once this was done they took pine pitch, pork fat and sifted dirt and heated it in the right proportions till they had a thick taffy like substance.  This they made into long stick like pieces.  One it was cool it turned hard, so they would heat one piece again, and pull on one end till it was in a taper. They would take each bead on a hot piece of steal, and press the taffy mixture into the end of the bead till the bead was full.  Then they took a hot nail and made a hole through the bead.  Once the bead cooled they would take a shaped piece of wood and make designs of flowers by pressing into the bead, impressing the design in the thin silver with the taffy fill.  One particular house might specialize in one size or style of bead while another house did another style. They would make beads in batches, and after each batch decide if they wanted to switch production to a new style of bead that there was not enough of.  So all in all, in the whole village, a large quantity of these silver foil beads were made.
The villagers were all actually Kmer as the area had been Cambodia territory before the Thais took parts of it over.  One could see the Kmer ruins here and there. The villagers also spoke Kmer as well as Thai.

Being chinese
The owners of the shops in Maesai who were Chinese, which made up most of them, were a hard bunch.  A chinese shop is a very strange arrangement, like a few items set in the mouth of a very large sea bass.  The owner and their elderly folks always live in the dark back, sometimes in view, sometimes not.  Occasionally they wander out.  The children of this family fortune are prisoners of the shop, and seldom get time off.  In addition there must be bright smiling faces at the sidewalk, so always for this you need slave girls, otherwise no one would ever come in and buy from these people.  Of course the slave girls are not Chinese, least not in Thailand, they are Shan or Burmese or Hilltribe.  The Chinese shop owners don't know how to smile much.  Now if you should come on a day when the slaves have quit or gone home, then the lady in the curled hair will be more in view and when you ask her if she has this or that she will just reply "no".  That is all.  You are looking for something.  You have money.  You want to buy it.  "no".  Do you have it? Do you know where I can get it.  Doesn't matter what the question, only "no".

Being the monkey is no fun
So in the early years in Maesai there were seldom any foreigners who lived here and I don't think that the Thais were really used to foreigners so no matter where you went you stirred laughter, no matter what you asked.  This was annoying sometimes, and always you heard endlessly "Falang"  as the Thais called foreigners.  If you could understand Thai you would hear even worse things sometimes.  The Thais could say really stupid rude things with you right there if they thought you didn't speak Thai.  Always it was something super dumb. My friend Jon, who understood Thai better than I did, often understood what people in restaurants said and it always made him mad, leaving me the feeling maybe I was better off not to speak or understand Thai better than I did.

Bicycle, mans shirt, I fall down
So I got this bicycle to ride around town for fun, nice bike, little long on the straight handlebars.  They had these sticky rubber grips.  I wasn't sure they weren't magnetic.  Anyway, they had an affinity for this man's shirt as I went by, caught just a little and then really bit into the shirt and whipped the front wheel, me going off to the right.  Gee, was I really  that close?  He of course was unharmed and we had an excellent laugh of the ridiculous matter.  I was some scratched up, and a little sore the next day, but otherwise unharmed.

Bicycle shop
The Chinese bicycle shop near the top north was quite useless, but the one down by the market in the middle of town was very helpful.  The owner, she spoke fluent english and was always in the shop and always very polite.  But then a friend stole the bicycle and I never bought a second one.  About the same time they stole my boots.

The Barber
There was this old barber behind the gem market. He had a bad eye.  He had been a Maesai cop. Someone shot him close up, but didn't kill him. Damaged his eye though. He wasn’t the best but I enjoyed relaxing while he took his time.  Sometimes he knicked me because I don’t think he could see all that good even with his glasses on but he was friendly and I always like a good close shave now and then and get all my whiskers trimmed and kick back in the heat and close my eyes while he worked.  Least they always put in a new razor.  But after a while he got the shakes and knicked me so much I stopped going to him. He  moved shops, was there a while and then I didn't see him anymore.  But I remember his wooden shop house, wooden doors open, pin up calenders on the wall.  If he was sleeping his wife would call him out, in this way, Thais were very nice. He was always accomodating, while other barbers were better shaving but not so relaxed in their shops.  So for me to go to his old shop was always a treat, he was always pleasant, told me he had a daughter in America or Australia, pointed to her picture on the wall.  Or he would be busy talking to some old man hanging out in the shop and I could pick up on this and that part of the conversation.

Building Maesai
Maesai was getting built up and so was Tachilek.
New tall buildings got built on the new concrete road we had here on Sailom Joi. Now the road was wide and nice and everyone began building nice houses, tearing down the old ones.  Soon you couldn’t see much of Burma, but Maesai wasn’t sleepy anymore so I wasn’t so sure it even mattered.

Edward
Edward the Pakistani had a shop in Bangkok now and I hadn’t seen him in a while.
Once we stopped in at this restaurant for a beer.  He was fast with the girls.  He made this one girl and took her to the back room for a good poke.  Asked me if I wanted a turn which I diplomatically turned down. 
Edward was one of the most enegetic obstacle overcoming people I ever met.  He was very careful how he wired his vocabulary.  He was very conscious that the words he picked and used, if not fully positive and success oriented in the beginning would bring about certain defeat.  I went far and beyond lip service, he put it firmly into practice, running on a self produced coffee at all times.  Did this mean he didn't have setbacks? No, matter of fact a deal had gone bad in Bangkok where he lost all his money and then the people came and shot him over and over, but he didn't die.
I saw the bullet holes.  Chest, arms, back.
He never used the NO word.  Not only didn't say it much, he never used it.  He always used the YES word, religiously, a solution to everything in every situation.  He was an excellent salesman.  He saw quite surely that people need to give themselves permission to succeed and that it is simply a matter of mental paper work being shuffled to make a sale of anything and that is what he did as a salesman.
He showed me how it worked, I wished I had studied it more because it was so clever.  There was sure a lot one could learn from this guy. 
He ran a clothing business, and also was married to a Thai, and also ran an English school in Maesai, one in Mae Chan and one in Chiang Saen for a while.  He was very fast at talking to people and helping them out.
He could move quickly from one sales job to another, not miss a beat. 
He had grown up in Pakistan and was now working back in Bangkok.
I never met a more energetic smiling person, quick to talk.  He grew however more on the dark side, not using his insight and gift always in a good way.

Baking oven
I got my first baking oven with the first school and baked bread and pies and all else.  Was a humble beginning and everything here was very hard to start up and keep going.  After a while the man wanted the oven back and I was willing to be done with it so he came and got it.
I let the school go and would start it again later.

Bamboo kick ball
The Akha and the Thai both played an energetic bamboo kickball.  Sometimes played in a circle on the street or in the village center, it got most energetic if a net was set up with a team on each side. This was a favorite of hill tribe and motorcycle taxi drivers. Sometimes when you went to hit the ball with your hand, your hand in fact would get nearly kicked off by the foot of a high flying young man on the run.

Bamboo rafts
Coming down the Maesai river like islands of green, these rafts made of many bamboo pieces tied together was how the jungle men got the bamboo down the mountain to Maesai to sell.  The rafts were heavy because the bamboo was fresh and green so water swept across the tops of them and the men poled them along.  West of Maesai in the mountains from where they had come the river was very rough and full of rocks. I was reminded of Huckleberry Finn.

Bats and bugs
There were lots of bats here in Maesai.  Once some kids gave me a tiny baby black one, soft black like leather, it climbed up whereever you put it.  Finally I left it outside, not much I could do for it.
Sometimes I hit the bats at night on the motorbike. They would swerve for a bug in the motorcycle light, I don't know why, and not pull up in time and hit the top of my helmet very hard. When they did this they would let out a tiny frightened cry.
There was a big buzz bug, cicada, that flew aggressively around a light at night and made a buzzing noise.  I caught one, and their entire abdomen was an empty shell and they had two hammers inside that vibrated together to make the incredible sound inside. A drum of their own.  The Akha pulled the legs off these bugs and gave them to the children to hold after tying a thread around them with a stick.  The Akha kids let the bug fly madly around buzzing as it went.

Bear at house of man who Atookala bought truck from
This guy lived up against the mountain not far from Som Pah Sak Akha and had a bear in a cage, bears get into lots of trouble otherwise.  But the cages are too small and the relationship between a bear and a cage always seems to end in cruely.
Two young men came up who were working for a wildlife project as volunteers.  They were traveling around Thailand and looking for caged bears.  They couldn't release them yet or buy them to freedom, but they were making maps of where all these captured unfortunate animals were.  Many of them were from Burma of course.  Once I saw two small cubs at a Chinese Circus in Tachilek which were for sale. They were small, muddy and stinky of course, about a foot or so long.

Bees
The Wang Tong was a big pretentious hotel near the bridge.  They said it was five star, surely was no better than a four star.  The owner was said to have sold icecream on the street in Keng Tung many years before.
They built it while I was first here in Maesai.  About eight floors up under the roof eaves there were some big honey combs hanging with bees as is the asia style.  I took an Akha up to the balcony to see them, he had never been in an elevator before.
The owner left them there because it was good luck for his building he said.
Maesai had a beekeepers association but Chiangmai had an association shop right across from the night market and compared to what things cost in the United States, the boxes and wax and all the tools were real cheap.

Bit by dog
I had these high top boots, and I was walking down the street one day when these two big mean dogs jumped on a smaller black poodle like dog at his own house.  This happened right at my feet and I kicked at the two big dogs because they were just wailing on this smaller dog and he was flailing all about to save his life, in which event he caught my boot, just above the top, and hooked my leg.  A few days later he was still alive so I didn't give it any worry.  The owner's son at the guesthouse had gotten bitten and taken all the shots for rabies.

Beggars rounded up by police
There were lots of beggars in town and occasionally there was a round up by police.  They always came back and so I always wondered why the police bothered since it didn't seem to be for more than a moment that they rounded these beggars up. The beggars pestered everyone on the main street near the bridge.  When there was war or something they didn't come, which of course was great. And that only got worse with years. In a casual kind of way you could teach them nothing, and they wanted to learn nothing.  Had one set up to work with them over many years, there might be some progress. I did what I could. Many of their parents were addicts to heroin or opium or both.  In the later years the boys got into sniffing gas and glue and messing about, which was rather sad. There were a lot more sad stories here than good and so many events and people willing to pull everyone down.  But the fact of the matter was that the beggars still made more cash for their families than many other families earned working hard, so the street always supported a number of them.  Be it Thai or western tourists, the beggars hoped to get some coins.
Some people came to town and feigned to help the children, but never in any way that had any continuity to it or took the time to break the cycle.  You could throw all the money in the world at it and yet if you didn't stick to it persistently long enough it would do no good or even make matters worse. You had to be  hard and caring both at the same time, nobody's fool, but always quite a lot of grace and mercy for the human condition.

Behind the press, the missing answers to the book about Naga and Lahu
So I paid this guy to put together some dictionaries for me, actually small pocket books, more or less.  He was suppose to do five hundred, and distribute them. In the meanwhile I had to travel and was in no position to know for sure if he in fact printed five hundred. But I didn't doubt him. But one day years later, when I was checking at the press shop I saw some left over covers from my book behind the press. It occured to me that I might have been tricked and to ask the printer how many he printed.  He said sixty maximum!  Oh well, so much for that story.  Probably, what I wanted to get done, was ranked less pressing than what my "friend" wanted to get done and in fact if that had been the case, would have been nice if he told me.

Big catfish, turtle
The guest house offered a great view from the balconies and one day I spotted the typical battery pack electric fishermen going up the river.  Soon someone had a big turtle, big as a football and another had a very large catfish nearly a meter long.  I was quite surprised and this was into the dry season with not much water in the river at all.  I then heard that this is when they go upstream.

R