Strangers in the Night
Sawasdee Magazine (Bangkok, 1997)

We were the first group of tourists ever to visit Burma's remote Mergui archipelago by yacht, and for the first time in the trip, all nine of us were sitting together on deck. It was 9 pm on St Valentine's Day and Orion was standing on his head on top of the mast. A bottle of Mandalay rum and a box of cheroots had been passed around. B. B. King had just started growling about how his woman "done him wrong", when the sea gypsy dugout glided soundlessly into the pool of light that surrounded our solitary, 16-meter trimaran, the Gaea.

To the stern, one sea gypsy propelled the canoe with a long paddle; in front of him, another was bailing to keep the overloaded craft afloat. In the middle of the canoe stood a slim Burmese man, dressed in a lungi and a woman's long-sleeve, floral-print blouse, holding a rusty automatic rifle at port arms. In the narrow prow of the canoe squatted two more men, dressed in camouflage fatigues, holding similar rifles across their laps.

There was a moment of a stunned silence and then we all started shouting for the General's Nephew. This was our "tour guide" from the Ministry of Tourism, an effete and constantly smiling little man who had already chased away to narrow patrol boats that had challenged us at sea. The General's Nephew came up from the cabin and stood on the diving platform at Gaea's stern, exchanging what sounded like violent curses with the three armed men, underscored by the constant shuck-shuck-shuck of the bailing sea gypsy.

During the episode, the first nine tourists ever to tour the Mergui archipelago sat huddled in a group on deck: four Americans, three Swiss, one Japanese and one Chinese. The women clutched knifes from the galley and the men held stainless steel winch handles. We watched the glowing embers of at least 10 men smoking cheroots on shore, and B. B. King sang the same songs over and over again.

After an hour, the dugout glided back into the dark bay, heavier by the weight of our passenger list, crew list, and three packs of cigarettes. The General's Nephew came on deck to a hero's welcome. The armed men were an army shore patrol, he said, who evidently hadn't yet received the memo informing them that tourism had come to Burma. Their job was to walk around and around at Lampi Island, bay to bay to bay, and seize any strange vessels they came across. In all their lives, those soldiers had probably never seen any vessel half as strange as the Gaea.

Drinks were pressed on the General's Nephew, which he declined, and cigarettes, which he accepted. He apologized for the crude behavior of the soldiers, who had shouted at us when they first arrived. "You must understand, they waited on shore for one hour arguing about who had to come out to talk to us. They never see anything like this," he said, with a gesture that took in the Gaea, and all of us with it. "They were very afraid."