Tachilek's street of shame

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

 Dear Netters,
                         I found the following article from Financial
Times.I hope you'll find it useful or interesting.

Peace.

Julien Moe
-------------
 
 
 SATURDAY MAY 30 1998  
 After Hours   

TRAVEL: Tachilek's street of shame
Walter Glaser reports from the Thailand-Burma border on the trade in tiger skins
Rimkok Hotel Resort is a beautiful Thai-style building directly overlooking
the Mae Kok River that flows past Chiang Rai in northern Thailand.


The terrain and atmos-phere of this region immediately conjures a sense of
adventure. No wonder so many James Bond-style movies are filmed there. Maybe
it is the tropical vegetation that is greener than green. Maybe the flashes
of colour from the brightly dyed and heavily ornamented hill-tribe costumes
to be seen occasionally on the streets. Or maybe it is the sweet scent of
plumeria lingering on the warm, humid breeze that does the trick.


Whatever the cause, the impression is that we are in the "real" Thailand, as
far from the girlie bars of Bangkok's Patpong Road, or the wall-to-wall
tourists of Pattaya, as one could be. After a long flight we are delighted
to be greeted by a longtime acquaintance, a member of the hotel staff who
had previously worked at the Phuket Yacht Club where we had spent some holidays.


He is a young man with an unpronounceable, 10 syllable Thai name, whom
everyone calls Joe. He is soon chatting about tourism in Thailand. "After
many years, the Burmese have now opened the border to foreigners. Would you
like me to take you across?" How could anyone refuse such an offer? Early
the next morning finds us on our way, heading for the Thai-Burmese
border-town of Mae Sai. The road takes us past concentrations of apartments,
stores and workshops to a plethora of pedicabs waiting for customers at the
end of the road.


Dust swirls as Thai children dressed in hill-tribe costumes cajole foreign
passers-by for money to pose for photos. "They're not really from the hill
tribes," says Joe with a grin. "Their parents have bought them costumes to
try and make a quick dollar."


A bridge takes the road over a gully down which a polluted-looking brown
river ripples its slow way. Halfway across the bridge are two barriers made
from iron piping. The far barrier carries a sign "Welcome to Myanmar". We
cross, and find ourselves in the small Burmese border village of Tachilek.


We buy our $10 day-pass, (the People's Republic of Myanmar will only accept
the until-recently-hated US dollar) and feel more than a bit nervous about
leaving our passports with the border guard. Then we walk past the
checkpoint - and into another world.


To the right, steps lead down to the market area, and further along we come
to a long line of shops and street stalls. People there look considerably
poorer than their Thai counterparts. There seems to be a formidable military
presence. As a small group of gun-carrying soldiers strolls along the
street, the locals move quietly sideways. Many of the stall-holders are
Bangladeshis, and most of the imported merchandise, from cigarettes to
whisky, is from China. We pass a stall selling peacock-feather dusters, and
suddenly - the first tiger skin.


As we move further down the road we see that many stalls have up to 20 or so
tiger and leopard skins hanging up for sale. Others display their skins
folded, in glass counters, along with hand-carved tiger fangs and pairs of
Indian elephant tusks. There are also monkey skulls, and some dried, brown
sacs that look like small deflated balloons.


All these items contravene the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species. Alongside them are dark-yellow bits of dried animal that
vaguely resemble small mountain-goat horns, yet clearly are something else.


When I ask Joe what they are, he grins. "Dried bear gallbladders and dried
tiger penises," he explains.


"They're quite expensive here, but cost only a fraction of what they would
bring in Bangkok, Singapore or Hong Kong. People in Asia will pay anything,
because they think they are great aphrodisiacs. First these animal parts are
air-dried, and you can buy them like that, too," Joe says. "But most people
here can't afford such expensive luxuries, so they settle for a cocktail."
He points to a square jar on the counter, filled with a dark brown fluid in
which mysterious bits and pieces are soaking. It seems that these are tiger
penises and bear gall-bladders marinating in alcohol.


We see that nearly every shop has a jar of this supposedly potent potion on
its counter. From time to time someone comes to the counter to buy a small
glass of this "Burma cocktail". Only the liquid is sold, and the jar is then
immediately topped up.


As we walk through Tachilek, the comparative poverty strikes us. There are
very few cars and much of the transport is by trishaw. The half-dozen
"taxis" in the village are primitive pick-up trucks with tiny Mazda motors
and benches on the back.


The further we walk along the road, the more tiger and leopard skins we see
- literally hundreds in Tachilek alone. It occurs to me that being a tiger
in Burma would not offer a long life expectancy.


I stop to talk to one of the English-speaking stallholders. He tells me that
the carved tiger fangs cost 300 baht each, the bear gall-bladders 1,000
baht, local tiger skins start at 3,600 and large leopard skins at 9,000. The
very large fully-grown Indian tiger skins, a rich golden-brown with black
stripes and in perfect condition, sell for 30,000. ($1 equals 45 baht).


If what we are seeing at Tachilek is any sort of indicator, these too will
be history by the end of the next decade. It is a sobering and depressing
notion.


Full of thought, we head back towards the border crossing. On the way we see
some hill-tribe women arrayed in full tribal dress, doing their shopping.
Joe asks if they will pose for pictures, and with a gap- toothed giggle they
agree.


It is not only the tigers that are facing momentous changes in this area.
The hill-tribes, many of which settled in this area after wandering from as
far away as Mongolia, are also at risk from "progress".


Each tribe has its distinctive customs and lifestyle, but it seems to me
that, especially on the Thai side of the border where a 20th century
lifestyle is beginning to creep into the area, they are as much of an
endangered species as the tiger.


In Thailand, we had visited two hill-tribe villages in one day. In the
first, further away from town and more isolated from modernity, young girls
were firing up wood-fuelled outdoor kitchens, and diligently working on the
intricate needlework that carried their traditional tribal designs.


In the second village, a little closer to town, the Thai government had
connected electricity just a few months earlier. And here the young girls
were now draped across the floor in the communal hut where the only large TV
set in the village was blaring away. The soap opera was American, the
dubbing Thai, and the attention to this so rapt that our entrance was not
even noticed.


But the gap-toothed ladies in Tachilek are clearly not affected in this way
as yet. The dollar we give them will buy much more for them than it would
for us.


We leave Burma by the same bridge by which we had entered. Again, every
local child that sees my camera wants to earn a tip by posing in hill-tribe
costume. It is hard for them to make big dollars. There are not enough
tourists that know about all this yet. When they do, the Golden Triangle
will change forever.