Going to Burma/Myanmar

I’m thrilled to finally have the chance—tomorrow!—with my pop!—to visit that exotic and bizarre country just to the west of Thailand. Before we get too down and dirty with the details, which I’ll post on hipbelt, holybasil’s sister site, let’s take care of the name issue. Is it Burma, or is it Myanmar?

I’d been inclined toward the former—y’know, stick with what you grew up with and all—until I read recently in a travel book written by a woman who grew up there the following paragraph:

Myanmar has always been our country’s name in our language, but the British called it Burma and thus it was known to the international world… Because the military changed it, the name of Myanmar was unacceptable to many people, mostly those Western countries who insist on continuing to use Burma. My view is, the military government did not get the name out of a hat and that actually it was the British who did so when they used “Burma.” They probably confused it with the name of the majority race, the Burmese.

Her line of reasoning makes some sense to me. I realize that the choice is more political than linguistic—the U.N. has been using Myanmar, while Aung San Suu Kyi’s party prefers Burma. What do most people on the street use? We’ll see when we get there. Very excited!

Let’s Run That by the P.R. Dept First

I ate horse urine eggs for lunch last weekend at a restaurant. They weren’t really what I thought I had ordered. Jip cracked up when she heard about it.

The name comes from an old wives’ tale about how pickled eggs are prepared. They are indeed preserved in a special brine, which admittedly gives the finished delicacy a slight ammonia odor. But horses and urine have nothing to do with the process. You’d think some marketer would’ve come up with a jazzier label by now.

The story of how they ended up on my plate starts with my fondness for Thai salads. People here eat an endless variety of them, all symphonizing the five S’s of Thai cuisine: salty, savory, sour, spicy, and sweet. I never go wrong with these flavors. Whenever I think I’ve tried the last and most delicious combination, along comes a new salad that nobody has mentioned before.

Sometimes in restaurants I just order at random from that section of the menu. Last weekend, though, I had a craving for fried egg salad. At a place where the offerings were written in a stylish-and-hard-to-read Thai font, I scanned the list looking specially for the word “egg.” When I found it, I didn’t see the word for “fried.” Instead, “egg” was followed by what I thought said “pee.” Then there was another word that can mean lots of things—come, horse, chair, dog—depending on its tone marker. I can never remember which is which.

That mishmash of language didn’t make sense, so I asked the waiter about it. He answered too quickly for me to understand everything he said, but I asked for the dish anyway. I guessed that he was describing the egg’s color, or that maybe Thais use the same word for “pee” that they use for “yolk.” Besides, food here is pretty cheap. If it’s really terrible I can always bail and start over.

The salad contained the kind of egg that I’ve always heard called “thousand-year-old.” This gourmet treat—prized throughout Asia—on its own isn’t my favorite food. But it tasted OK when blended with the marvelous five Thai S’s. I ate the whole thing and went home to tell Jip what I’d had for lunch. Actually, I still wasn’t really sure what I’d had.

“Horse piss egg!” she laughed.

Guess it’s time to memorize those tone marks.

Diversionary Tactics at the Border

When Thai and Cambodian politicians have needed a wag-the-dog distraction in recent years, they’ve trotted out an old debate about who owns which parts of the border area that surrounds a 1000-year-old clifftop temple. Sadly, this past week the armies also got involved, trading fire and accusations about who shot first.

The dispute has many layers. Closest to the surface at the moment are the opportunities it offers for embarrassing the Thai prime minister at a time when he is weighing which month to call elections this year. He is accused by all parts of the domestic political spectrum of not being patriotic enough… “homeland security,” and all that nonsense.

Cambodia’s prime minister, meanwhile, has seized the chance to call for U.N. arbitration of the issue. He knows he’ll prevail if the Security Council gets involved. International rulings on this subject have consistently gone Cambodia’s way. In 1962 the International Court of Justice awarded the Angkor-era temple itself to the Khmers; a 2008 Unesco decision made the escarpment a World Heritage site.

All of this tempest in a teapot would be just so much politics as usual if it didn’t force, as it has since Friday, the evacuation of villagers living nearby the temple. Several people are dead as a result of shelling. Tourism revenue in the area has evaporated. There are even reports that one wing of the monument was damaged by gunfire. So needless!