Visiting Tachileik: Sky-Crossed Vagabonds

“It’s astounding how far one can go on sheer, unplanned momentum.” -Old Sean

Poor Plans, Poor Lands

Yesterday, my roommate Kat and I left an elephant sanctuary (Elephant Valley) in Thailand with hastily printed E-visas. We then spent a few impromptu hours at the White Temple (Wat Rong Khun) in Chiang Rai.

Afterwards, we prepared to march toward the Myanmar/Burma border visiting Tachileik in the process. 

Surprisingly, we found a taxi to take us to the border and the actual entry into Myanmar/Burma was fairly painless.  The border crossing only took moments with a stamp in our passports before we were ushered inside a new country.  

Terminology

An important aside: Myanmar and Burma are the same country (in the sense that the two names refer to the same geopolitical national boundaries). 

However, both names are politically charged and tend to come with some confusing and unsavory baggage.  The use of the name is somewhat contested within the country and on the world stage.  

Basically, the country has several semi-unified but distinct ethnic factions that are all permitted (sort of) to maintain a militia for defense of the state. 

The Burmese people (an ethnic group) make up a strong majority.  Burma was the name of the country for generations, named after this particular group. 

Burma to Myanmar

Then, in 1989, the ruling military junta suppressed a democratic uprising which made the country a political pariah. 

Looking for legitimacy, the junta renamed the country “Myanmar” to impress on the world that they were evolving beyond their colonial history and name.  Myanmar, as a name, was supposed to prove the country was a multi-ethnic inclusive nation, instead of centralizing the Burmese people. However, the word “Myanmar” is actually the same term as “Burma”. It’s just more formalized.  

Naming Politics

Depending on which brand of journalistic Kool Aid a person drinks, the democratic faction of the country has stuck to the name “Burma.” 

Therefore, the United States and other western nations and their news outlets often call the country Burma to this day. 

However, proponents of the military or factions who provide tacit government support tend to use the name “Myanmar.” China, for example, usually refers to the nation as Myanmar in the news.  

That being said, many local people use these names interchangeably and the issue is somewhat less contested than in the early nineties.  Unfortunately, recent events have supercharged a lot of the issues once more.  

Current Political Statues

Currently, the country is a modern genocide zone, with the military crackdowns removing and killing citizens from the Rohingya Muslim minority population in the west. 

This makes the use of either name more contested, as using one or the other can be viewed as tacit support for the genocide or the other used as a passive criticism of the governing bodies of the country, current or past.  

In a nutshell, people in the camp of historic continuation, democracy and the elected governing bodies of the country use “Burma.”  People who support post-colonialism recovery and independence, the ruling junta or are against western interference, pointedly use “Myanmar.” 

And again, both names mean the same thing, just in a formal or informal format.  Many people even within the country use the names interchangeably.  Myanmar is the official name of the country and most other countries now choose to call it this.  

This is beyond my pay grade as a travel blogger and tourist, I don’t have a strong (or even informed) opinion one way or another. 

Therefore, for the duration of this blog, I’ll be using the name Burma to refer to the geopolitical zone.  This is an English-written travel blog made by a United States citizen, who’s government at the time of this writing is (mostly) choosing to call the country “Burma.”  I’ll follow suit for simplicity’s sake, and not for the sake of an (extremely) uninformed political or social opinion.

Entering Burma

Once Katherine and I arrived in Burma, there wasn’t much time to organize and rally.  I could see that the Burmese side was a bit stylistically different from the Thai side of the city. It was also a bit more worn, but we were already loading into a Tuk-Tuk and getting rushed along the roadway.  

We drove to the airport, hoping to snare our flight. Unwisely, we hadn’t booked a flight yet and online bookings had been a no-go. While in town, Kat and I had attempted to find a bus into the interior of the country, but none were available on the undeveloped roads.

So, a plane appeared to be our only option.

Unfortunetly, we slammed into an unpleasantly solid roadblock.  The airport was resolutely old school, filling out everything in a tidy handwritten scrawl. There were no credit card machines available in sight.  Our attempts to pay in cash further stalled out, as the airport was only willing to accept US Dollars or Thailand Baht from foreigners, neither of which we had. 

We had, somewhat naively, already transferred most of our cash into Burmese Kyat.  The staff was unwilling to accept the local currency.  We were told this was partially for counterfeit reasons and partially because the other two forms of currency were more stable bets in terms of inflation for the time being.

Stuck in Tachileik

Though it was unplanned, we were forced to spend our first night in Burma stuck visiting Tachileik. We used out meager amount of Kyat to get a small hotel room and then set off on a series of mini-adventures to gather supplies and figure out a way forward.

Our mini adventures included converting money at an old man’s fruit stand, lounging in our somewhat-clean-somewhat-questionable hotel room, checking out a few odd temples, slurping at warm-shade-cooled beer and gazing up at giant pagodas atop hills. 

The hillside adventures were excellent at proving that regardless of how many miles one may hike, uphill will always prove I’m a tad flabby.

Cash in Tachileik

Kat and I started out by resting along Taunggiyi-Tachileik Road, where Kat was able to find a semi-legal street-side money exchanger.  The man wore tiny, round sunglasses and flipped the bills artfully through his hands, turning Kat’s recently exchanged Kyat back into crisp Thai Baht. 

I’m sure the rate was slashing and tilted badly, but it was still easier to perform the exchange like this than hunt down an operable ATM. Finding a non-scam ATM in Tachileik which worked internationally for a Chinese debit card seemed unlikely.

An Unplanned Stay

Since flights were done for the day, we some time to enjoy in the town. 

I’ll freely admit that Tachileik isn’t the most navigable city to walk around. Kat and I got lost and ended up stopping into a few small restaurants for snacks frequently. 

Our major tourist stop was climbing the steep hill while visiting Tachileik Shwedagon Pagoda, a square of golden spires with a singular noble gilded pagoda in the center.  There are some other rather interesting temples to see in the area, especially on the Thai side, but we didn’t visit them.

Bear in mind that Kat and I had returned from Chiang Rai’s Wat Rong Khun White Temple in the afternoon, nabbed a bus to the border city, hopped in a taxi to reach the airport, found out we were unequipped to pay for tickets and then boomeranged back into the city. 

We were completely winded and there’s a reason that Tachileik isn’t a major tourism destination.  Furthermore, while flights can leave Tachileik for other portions of the country, direct buses are basically non-existent. 

In the end, it was an ill-planned flight in the morning or nothing.

Arise and Arrive

Finally, when the sun rose again Kat and I took a tuk-tuk back to the airport. 

The experience was completely different this time, with customs slowly writing out all of our flight information longhand.  Our new Thai baht were eagerly accepted and we were ushered through a security checkpoint consisting of a single guard.

The airport was less of a state-of-the-art runway with shops and more of a bus station with planes.  I don’t say that despairingly.  The rounded orange seats for waiting were comfortable, the staff was polite and the heat of the day hadn’t risen enough for me to bemoan the lack of an AC. 

Into the Sky

But when our plane finally arrived, it turned out to be a dual-propeller cargo plane with the back open like a pelican’s beak. 

We loaded inside, sitting in seats bolted into the walls before puttering down the runway and flinging ourselves against gravity. 

The thrum of the plane was daunting, a massive roar that accompanied us the entire flight. I became grateful for the earplugs I travel with, which diminished the sound to a quiet roar.  The safety instructions were provided as the plane’s wheels left the ground.

Finally, our unanticipated time visiting Tachileik was over. Kat and I were heading to one of Myanmar’s most famous locations, the incredible Inle Lake.

But for now, the windows are shaking and the odd vibrations of the aircraft are putting me into a snoozing state.

So until the next zone.

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written February 16th, 2018

Planning on visiting Tachileik and the surrounding highlands? Check out the Leftfade Trails destination recommendations by clicking here.

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