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After the show, the scene outside was scarcely believable. Five or six topless ladyboys stood beneath the noonday sun and invited Chinese tourists to pose with them. One was a wizened old lady, who stood sandwiched between two sets of surgically perfect breasts, valiantly flashing a V sign.
Chinese minibuses were soon squealing out of the parking lot in convoys, and I told my driver to follow. The minibuses wound back down the hill and parked before a temple with a giant sculpture of a reclining Buddha. The temple didn't have much in the way of meditative calm. Before the Buddha stood two pretty girls in cotton-candy dresses who for $1.20 posed for photos with their pet python. It was curled up miserably in a basin with its mouth taped shut. Next to them were two more girls with a peacock. Downstairs at the entrance, shops offered a narrow but highly popular selection of souvenirs: jade bracelets, packets of ginseng and hard-core pornographic VCDs.
There were also sets of postcards featuring Mongla's ladyboys in nipple-revealing evening wear. They starred in the official Mongla calendar, too. January showed a dazzling ladyboy swinging in the crook of an elephant's trunk; December had two ladyboys badly superimposed against a New Hampshire autumn. It was by far the cheapest, shoddiest, tackiest souvenir I had ever seen. I bought two.
Our next stop was the National Races Museumactually a kind of human zoo populated by members of the myriad ethnic groups living within Burma's borders. Chinese tourists streamed in boisterous high spirits through a decorative wooden gateway flanked by two lookout posts, each occupied by a man in faux-tribal dress blowing wearily on a conch shell. All the exhibits in this museum were alive, of course, although there was a lot of cheating. The young woman in Akha tribal costume standing at the gatethe one playing the Game Boywas a local Shan. So was the Lahu girl sitting on the motorbike next to her.
We were swept up on a wave of Chinese tourists and carried along a winding path that led past wooden huts occupied by various tribespeople. There were two old Shan women flogging herbal medicines, as well as a large contingent of Padaung or Kayan womenknown as "giraffe women" or "long-necks" for the brass coils stacked high around their throats. We crowded into a round hut to watch them perform a traditional dance, which involved the flicking of colorful hankies.
The next show was clearly anticipated by the Chinese tourists. While the wives dutifully hung back, the men crowded along a low wooden fence. Beyond it was an artificial grove of ferns and waterfalls. Five women wearing wet sarongs appeared and began to pour water slowly over themselves. Occasionally a woman would let a sarong slip to show a glistening brown breast. The Chinese men craned forward; two guards blew whistles and shooed them back. The women splashed about in desultory fashion for another five minutes and then, upon some hidden cue, picked up their buckets and tossed water over the leching spectators. The men scampered back to their wives. There was much hilarity.
Afterward one of the girls sat on the grass combing her wet hair. I asked her what aspect of tribal culture her display was meant to illustrate. "We are Burman ladies washing and playing with water," she explained sweetly.
And was she Burman? "Oh no. I'm Shan. All of us are from Mongla."
My next stop was Mongla's opium museum. This was opened in 1997 by Lieut. General Khin Nyunt, Burma's despised spy chief and de facto leader, to commemorate the supposed eradication of drugs in the Mongla region. The museum resembled a temple, with a seven-tiered spire, gold-painted finials and lots of architectural twiddly bits. Inside were all the exhibits one would expect: photos of dead junkies; photos of generals wagging their chins over packets of heroin; photos of the same heroin (one assumed) going up in flames at various drug-burning ceremonies.
I was drawn to a display about rehabilitation, which consisted of four tableaux incorporating life-size mannequins. The first tableau showed two youngsters shooting up; they have long hair, faded jeans and T shirts bearing the legend "Bad to the Bone." The next showed one junkie in handcuffs and the second lying dead with a syringe sticking from his arm. Then we see the survivor in a hospital bed surrounded by caring medical staff. Finally we witness the junkie's glorious rebirth. He now has short hair and wears a crisp green longyi, or Burmese sarong, and a white waistcoat.
This display illustrated not just a junkie's noble path to rehabilitation, but alsoand perhaps more importantly for the regime's propagandistshis glorious transformation from soap-dodging Westernized reprobate into a clean-cut Burman patriot. The Burmese military liked to characterize its war on drugs as part of a wider campaign against colonialism and all its nefarious agents. This was spelled out by Khin Nyunt in a speech at Mongla in 1999. He blamed Burma's drug scourge on the "pernicious legacy" of British colonialists, a legacy exacerbated by what he called "the unscrupulous actions of the politically motivated neocolonialist clandestine organizations."
This hardly explained or excused the regime's abysmal record in drug control. Since 1988when Khin Nyunt and his clique rose to poweropium production in Burma had more than doubled. This startling increase was largely due to the generous concessions the regime had granted Mongla's ruler Lin and other ethnic druglords.