Having arrived the first time in Mandalay to live and work in 2009, I rarely met westerners who lived there that weren’t teachers, and even then there were very few of them. The several non-teaching expats I met were pretty cool people working at mysterious trades and even one geologist who was trying to figure out a way to smuggle quality gems out of Burma into Thailand. Something that’s actually not hard to do. But generally everyone had a decent idea about their motives, even if some were secretive, for being in Mandalay.
In 2009 it wasn’t as easy to remain long-term in Burma without a good reason and visa sponsorship that was closely scrutinized. Much has changed in the new Myanmar. It’s now pretty easy for wayward types to get visas and school sponsor their teachers without knowing too much about them. There are no such things as background checks and it seems few school check references, as people willing to come to live in Mandalay are in short supply. The willing ones are, in my opinion, worthy of suspect, if nothing more.
Several months ago I returned to Mandalay full time to do some writing and research and work on some special projects for some Myanmar people. While out and about in the bustling motorbike dependent city, laid out in a grid with thousands of intersections without traffic lights, one gets the feeling here that the change that’s occurring in Yangon hasn’t quite caught hold here. While there are more cars and traffic is severely deadly for many people everyday, Mandalay is just different from Yangon. For example, it’s possible to walk around corner of a quiet road into a herd of cows led by a cattle herder moseying on down the road on their way to some grassy nirvana. Or, a step out to a busy road could occasionally put you in the path of a galloping horse with rider cloppeting past the motorbikes, trucks, cars and bicycles. For that matter, you could even accidentally side step a very poisonous snake along side a busy road. That’s happened more than I’d ever imagined I would.
But the real danger to the-crazy-expat adverse people like myself in Mandalay is not the traffic or domestic and wild creatures, but other expats. There’s a whole crop of them living here and thereabouts now for a variety of reasons. Most of them have taken with them to Mandalay a suitcase full of weirdness and western type anxieties and problems. There aren’t any more romantic characters such as the Most Interesting Man (or woman) In the World from the popular Mexican beer commercial. Most of the Mandalay expats are a bizarre assortment of the kinds of people one hopes not to meet – ever. Think of full moon parties and directionless backpackers and vagabonds and that sums up about half the expats in Mandalay.
I’m sure there’re other expats like me who infrequently venture out to mix with their own kind. We prefer to be anonymous to the incestuous and wacky expat life, especially the (so-called) English teachers and NGO workers. Save for a few long time genuine expats who’ve taken in the local culture, maybe married and settled in, most newbies have not and they don’t plan to.
Mainly these new sorts of Mandalay expats are drunks, drug addicts; sex fiends (male), nymphomaniacs (female) and seriously down and out psychologically messed-up people with no skills save for a 30-day certificate for teaching basic English and a few years experience in a Thai government school in some remote region of Thailand. Other teachers were recruited from abroad by some of the international schools, and others just come for the sex and drugs and a place to hide.
Oddly, Myanmar has strict laws against selling narcotics in its numerous pharmacies. One can’t even get diazepam in Myanmar. Yet, scoring Ice (Chrystal Meth) and heroin, even cocaine or unfinished opium is as easy as peeing on a darkened roadside under the stars. Mandalay is a stockpile for heroin and meth and now expat addicts seeking to bliss out on the cheap opium and Ya Ba (Meth) that flows like fog downward from the Golden Triangle.
The crazy stories of expat exploits are infamous to those who care to learn about them.
Take Doug from Baltimore. Dough loves meth. He was recruited by a school called ALBC and brought to Mandalay to teach, though when asked what subject he taught he said “Idioms”. Just asking what textbooks he used opened up a whole 30 minutes worth of discussion amongst the ALBC teachers about their textbooks. Out of the four of them in the room, not one of them knew the name of their textbook or publisher. Fancy that’s some mighty good edumucation going on there. The other three teachers were also American’s. Go figure.
Doug has a fancy for slim girls from the brothels and KTV rooms around the city. He gives them most of his money. No one seems to understand why, or to what end. He’s an obnoxious guy immune from understanding Myanmar culture and customs and he’s been kicked out of KTV Bars (karaoke bars) and attacked by locals for being a bothersome and disrespectful. In the words of someone much wiser than he who’s known Doug over year, “He’s lucky to be alive”.
Doug, by the way, is a primary school teacher.
Then there’s Pasha. Pasha passes himself off as American and once speaking to him, one discovers he obviously wasn’t born in the United States though he has the passport to show he’s American. He’s got a thick Slavic accent and at about 6 feet 5 inches he weighs in well over 225 pounds. Pasha’s passion is driving his dinky little motorbike with accompanying top box up into the mountains to small towns like Hsipaw over 130 miles away, and others, to seek out female treasures of the sort he’s grown bored with in Mandalay.
Pasha’s known to approach complete strangers who run tour and trek outfits and asked them where it is locally where he can find “flesh”. He’s habitually broke due to paying exorbitant prices for impoverished prostitutes in places where westerners probably haven’t been since the British colonial period.
Pasha’s known to often copulate after sundown with the prostitutes in what’s called “The Woods”. It’s a labyrinthine wooded area around Mandalay Hill where sex workers loiter at the roadside. Men, mostly local men, drive up on motorbikes and pair up for a walk into the dark maze where they then rent a small clearing in the grass or bushes, complete with a cardboard mat, for three dollars. A session supposedly costs local men about five dollars. Men like Pasha, who obviously stand out compared to the slightly built and thin Myanmar men, pay about twenty or more dollars depending upon the age of the sex worker. Actually, it’s been told that quite a few western men have accidentally wandered into the woods.
Oh yeah, Pasha is a kindergarten teacher.
Lest the sexploits of expats in Mandalay seem that only sex crazed men inhabit this fine city, rest assured that expat women love sex in Mandalay too. The nice looking 30-something Nana drinks and chain-smokes around the region with Myanmar men for free. She reportedly has kept lots of Myanmar men happy, along with some westerners from the local expat pub. She’s drinks and swears loudly like a demon within earshot of everyone. Her income is derived from bike rentals or tours, or some other such business but to hear her complaining about the “stupid, clueless idiots” who dare bother her to spend their money one has to wonder why she just doesn’t open her own brothel and forget about interacting with pesty tourists.
At the local pub on some nights one can run across drunken school principals, tweaking meth addicts, sullen opium addicts and one fresh new United Nations Development Program officer who’s asked around for some “H”. She said she’d “snorted in Pai”, a Thailand mountain village haven for backpackers, crazy tourists seeking wild times and lost souls from western countries.
One expat has lived in Mandalay for almost a year but has never visited Mandalay Hill or tasted Shan Noodles or curry of any kind. He hates the language and thinks Myanmar people are stupid and lazy. Yes, he’s also American, sorry to say. But at least he drinks a lot and spends most of his time drunk in the bars.
Not to be outdone by individuals, whole institutions have brought a new dimension of strange to Mandalay. A new International School near the Ayerwaddy that was recently built and resembles a small rural college in the U.S. is known for hiring only former Peace Corp volunteers. Their logic is that those types can live easily in hard places like Mandalay. Peace Corp people are notoriously hard partiers and last year the school had so much trouble with these types that there was a fight and stabbing in front of their school. They lost all control of their so-called Peace Corp teachers. This new year they’ve imposed a 10PM curfew for all of their teachers. The teachers all live on campus. By the way, many teachers who hire on at this school quit within a month or two and it seems there are always some vacancies.
Bible thumping Christians are easy to find too. They claim to be English teachers, or they say, “We work with languages”. What they are not keen to say is that they bring bibles to rural villages and feed poor children and people who accept their bullshit. If anyone rejects them, they don’t get fed. Seems fair enough as these kinds of evangelicals are not known for their Christ like ways to anyone who knows anything about Christ. They are devious and sneaky and in some ways they give the teachers mentioned before them a bad name.
I can’t say much about the tourists who wander through. And the expats in Yangon, numerous now, are a little different than the ones in Mandalay in that many are carpetbaggers and NGO workers networking and seeking contracts or hustling some business. At least they have ambition. Go any Friday night to the 50th Street Bar and you’ll encounter a fine selection of aging fat assed UN people and other such younger wastrels of neo-imperialism’s foot soldiers saving Myanmar from the Myanmar people. They aren’t all bad, but the good ones are hard to find because they’re usually working not eating 15-dollar hamburgers and slurping overpriced red wine.
But Mandalay attracts a certain kind of uninteresting crazy person. The good people tend to leave after a few months or a one-year contract knowing that Mandalay is not a comfortable place to live. If one comes seeking a good time, just hang out at the expat pub a few nights and you’ll learn about where to get Meth, heroin, sex in the cheap brothels (this seems to be their main ambition) and even where to find a job teaching English even if you have education or teaching experience. Being a native English speaking Westerner is still qualification enough in Mandalay to get a job teaching English. That’s the equivalent of one calling himself a mathematician because ones’ grandfather was an accountant.
It’s a bit hard to meet decent hardworking western expats in Mandalay. Most of them never spend all night getting wasted, dozed on junk and tweaked out on meth. But if you’re a seriously under qualified junkie English teacher or an NGO’ish type who likes cheap sex or there’s definitely a place for you in Mandalay. You get a decent salary, health insurance and a place to live. Crack pipe not included.
(All the names of people and schools have been changed. And in reality, there’re dozens more stories and wow, they are bizarre.)
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