A DARK MATTER

There's no shortage of contraband moving through this town, but a noticeable insufficiency of currency denominations - so much so, change for noodles 1s given in Thai factory-produced banana chips. Just how much is determined by the calculations of a bright pink, Chinese, 8-bit Mickey Mouse calculator that marks each digit entry with a plinkety-plonk before robotically eliciting the total sum in a dialect alien to all. And so that the Indian teen vendor clutching the device can't count - or even, it appears, can't speak - doesn't inhibit the sale.

He looks up startled.

After a century of colonial tyranny and decades of systematic Tatmadaw oppression in the shape of extra-judicial state-sponsored rape, torture and slaughter, formerly resource-rich Burma is finally emerging from the darkness, though the shadows still, quite inevitably, are slow to recede. Relentlessly sucked dry of its teak, jade, rubies, oil and gas - and the last vestiges of trust and belief - any renewed promises of hope are peppered with spasms of fear.

While the military junta has been officially disbanded, many political prisoners released, ceasefires with several ethnic groups agreed and prepublication press censorship dissolved, lawless black holes readily subsist. Pockets of anarchy manned by shadowy guerrillas subsumed by the junta as border guards ensure towns like Myawaddy play like vacuums into which all nature of darkness pours in.

Meanwhile, the vendor holds his stare.

A half-naked, freshly bathed soldier inked with a tiger tattoo across his left shoulder and an AK-47 slung over the other, wanders from a tiny tin hut washroon behind the guard post that this little hamlet seems to be built around. Wearing a frown that almost hides completely his deeply-set eyes, he stops and drags hard on his cigarette. The cherry audibly burns - its smouldering amber a precursor to the events that bring everything to a halt. The soldier spits onto the dusty path and gestures at a jeep that's pulled up.

I'm beckoned over by a portly colonel in mix-and-match fatigues, who's already told me once today to stop photographing his small battalion of mercenaries. And now after seemingly buying my ploy of telling him I work in advertising, he has in fact developed his own creative idea: that his unit are the subject of a marketing campaign. No amount of creative development even on my part can imagine how this could be so - but no amount of creative development it seems can talk me out of the apparent stand-off.

So crouching at the colonel's feet now I waver, momentarily.

My attention drifts first to a Nazi helmet ironically perched above a stack of plastic chairs in the guard post - no more meaningful a cultural icon and no less potent a symbol of evil in these parts than Mickey Mouse - and then a chalk tally board alongside a rather effectively evil, spray-painted skull and crossbones. The colonel gestures towards the Orwellian welcome I received earlier in the day: Warmly Welcome & Take Care of Tourists (sic) and I nod, taking in the lecture that follows - as does the rest of the hamlet, before one by one they turn back to their business and I am able to make my excuses and slope off.

Sauntering on, I question my ‘camouflage’ of dark attire and make a mental note to myself that inconspicuous may in fact be more conspicuous than one would think and I decide I shall from now on always on any trip north fit in by standing out - sporting a loud Hawaii shirt, Bermuda shorts, white towelling socks, leather sandals and wearing a gaze of opened-mouthed naive bewilderment the entire time.