internet:

i have given up on the chronological approach.

i am still back in ho chi minh city according to this silly blogger device - which is, im happy to report, entirely untrue.

i will be finishing with what little i can remember of vietnam to bring you back into my current life. ill at least provide a number of snapshots drawn from letters and other scribblings that i have put out to those close to me

to fill in in brief, im in Thailand, and have been for some months now - south, central, and now north. i have taken: an apartment in chaing mai, a liking to thailand, a reluctance to head immediately to the middle east that grows with every fucking isreali and saudi i meet (with one exception), a number of antibiotics, a blow to the face by a parked truck at 40 klicks, up the issue of burma, in 5 books on burma, and tonight, im finally taking off these socks which i have been wearing for now 3 days in rain.

thank fucking god.

right now i am writing you from Mae Sot Thailand, an ethnically schizophrenic bordertown set between jungle covered mountains and a river which seperates it from Burma. everywhere here there is a barely discernable tension. its an unusual abundance of second glances, its conversations that are sometimes hushed and sometimes halted, its an obvious dissonance between common sense and what is happening before you. when one digs a bit into burma's troubled past, the town becomes exponentially more complicated, and before you are set literally dozens of acronyms which when formalized come out, for example, like this

Karen National Union
Democratic Karen Burmese Army
All Arakan United Student Front
All Burma Students Democratic Front
Kachin Independance Army
Burma Volunteer Project
Open Society Institute
United States Central Intelligence Agency
United States Drug Enforcement Agency
Thai Border Security Force
Chinese Ministry of State Security
United Wa State Army
Mong Tai Army
Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army
Eastern Shan State Army
State Law and Order Restoration Council
State Peace and Development Council
National League for Democracy
Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence

appropriately, wild dogs fill the streets at night.

the shop signs here are in thai, english, burmese, and chinese. it is - a place of ugly underhanded dealings; an import point for unwitting novice sexworkers; peppered by highly pure heroin bound for detroit; of sweatshops filled by burmese from across the border; of fat, smiling, prosperous thais; of yellowtoothed han chinese shopowners who slurp their noodles loudly; of redtoothed burmese women who spit their beetle-nut lazily; of burman women with their traditional chalky curious facial make-up carrying hundreds of eggs on their head, truckfulls of exhausted looking manual laborers in longyis (also traditionally burmese), angry shan women serving up pad thai, nepali featured men in vintage us army flak vests, diminuative indian silkshop owners; of a comprehensively corrupt police force; of unfriendly stoic muslims.

i have eaten nothing today but a hasty pad thai and several samosas. this is due in equal parts to the beetle nut i have been chewing all day, the cheeroots i have been smoking all day, the and strong burmese tea i have been sipping.