behind the story: Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi

I will be diverting from my usual ruminations about pop culture and write something a bit different and serious… though considering my writing style, will most likely still end up lighthearted.

It started with a call from my boss exactly a week ago. “Do you want to go to Burma?”

It wasn’t really a question on whether I want to go to Burma… but, CAN I go to Burma? I know of journalists whose applications for visa have been rejected so I never bothered to try. Well, on second thoughts, I did try in 2010 to cover the inaugural flight of AirAsia from KL to Rangoon. I was already at the embassy with the airline people only to be told that the coverage was canceled and that Tony Fernandes–AirAsia founder–who was supposed to be on that flight, has decided not to go due to some hassles with immigration.

Funny how two years later, I’d finally get on an AirAsia flight to Rangoon only this time, a charter one with no less than Tony himself on board. But this is getting ahead of the story.

The trip was to cover the Asean Business Club delegation’s visit to Burma. They were going to meet the chamber of commerce, some government officials and… Aung San Suu Kyi. Of course for any journalist, that was the deal-breaker.

I was expecting some hassle given that this is Burma, known for being unfriendly to journalists and tourists in general, but I didn’t realize it would be that stressful preparing for the trip. It was short notice. I confirmed the trip on Friday, the flight to Rangoon was leaving KL on Monday morning. This meant I had to be in KL by Sunday evening.

I booked an AirAsia flight to KL for Sunday afternoon and booked a room at the KLIA-LCCT branch of Tune Hotel for convenience. I am a Tony Fernandes consumer.

I arrived in KL on Sunday and checked in at the hotel, which had a shuttle from the airport. The room is Tony Fernandes’ version of the Japanese capsule hotel. You had to pay for add-ons including AC (12 hours or 24 hours?), towel, wifi. TV was not available of coure. And there was just enough room to walk around the bed to the bathroom, but hey, it’s true, the bed was five-star for a one-star price.

The hotel is quite isolated from any places of interest and gokarting on my own at the Sepang F1 circuit would have been sad so I went to sleep early, or at least tried to. The following morning, I was too early for check-in. And as people on the trip started arriving one by one, my old phobia of strangers started to surface. It didn’t help that majority of the delegates were Malaysians and they all knew one another. I just kept on chanting… Suu Kyi… Suu Kyi… Suu Kyi.

The surprise of the morning was when Tony Fernandes himself strode into the departure lounge and I realised he was part of the business delegation! How cool is that though I was just kind of criticising his hotel the previous night and there he was in the flesh. And so his arrival signaled it was time to board the plane. Burma, here we go.

There were 12 businessmen in the delegation led by Nazir Razak, the CEO of CIMB Group, an investment bank based in Malaysia. Some of them also had their staff with them. Then there were six of us journalists, all the rest were from Malaysian media and they were all senior. My boss should have gone, I thought, and he would have felt right in league with them. The entire group, however, was not even enough to fill even half of the plane that was chartered for the flight. (A nice touch was the Asean logo on the plane).

We were seriously behind schedule and by the time we arrived in Rangoon, it was past lunchtime. By the time we touched down, I have shaken Tony’s hand (do I sound like a fan?), made friends with the media delegation and was starting to leave all the apprehensions behind. Then we got to the queue for visa on arrival. There was a slight commotion as our group sauntered into the airport–which to most everyone’s surprise–looked very new and clean and modern. I managed to appear calm as I stood in front of the immigration officer as she checked my passport on the machine praying all the time that there won’t be a journalist alarm that would be set off somewhere. I heaved a secret sigh of relief when  our guide said “OK” and waved me in. I had officially stepped inside Burma.

But then wait, aren’t they going to give me back my passport? You’ll get it back tomorrow, I was told. At that point, I didn’t know whether I should be relieved I was able to enter or be paranoid that they’re holding my passport. As collateral perhaps?

Before the trip, we were made to understand three very basic media guidelines:

• No photos during flights
• No photos during meals
• Photos only during official coverage

This pretty much meant not much photo opportunity at all. Many times, I was tempted to whip out my camera and take photos and act like a tourist. But much as you want to push the envelope as a journalist, you just wouldn’t do it out of deference to your hosts, in this case, ABC. They took the trouble to bring us in, the least I could do was behave and follow the guidelines and not get them into a compromising situation. (Of course I sneaked in a little here and there but I was very mindful of many people’s warnings that locals can be “spies “.)

So I had to rely on my photographic memory in taking in the city, which looked like a kampung about to sprout into a city. There were commercial billboards we passed along the way, locals in traditional clothing called the longyi (like a sarong) which is worn by both men and women.

After a rather rushed lunch at a seafood restaurant, we were whisked to the first agenda: the meeting with local businessmen. It was a very interesting discussion and there was a mix of opinion from the Burmese side on whether foreign investors should go dive right in now that the economy is opening up, or be cautious and wait and see until the political and economic reforms are in place.

Then it was time for the highlight of the trip: the visit to Aung San Suu Kyi in her house. Just as we were turning towards the gate, we noticed across the street a young man in bright silk basketball jersey taking down the plate numbers of the vehicles going into the compound. And he wasn’t making a secret out of it.

Even before we could get down the press van, we learned that the local staff was strictly prohibiting the media from going inside the house. So we stayed outside in the garden to await our fate. Will we be meeting her? It wasn’t clear at that point anymore.

The wait was hour-long. It was a humid afternoon, the air was dry and the ground was dusty. Out of lack of anything to do (no wifi to keep us connected to the outside world), we had the chance to observe the surroundings including the lake where the American swam that got him into trouble and cost ASSK her freedom that was already in sight that time. There were still barbed wires surrounding the house. The gate was closed at all times. The windows of her two-storey house were also closed and dusty. There was a satellite dish and two AC units. Flowers grew around the garden. There was a chico tree bearing fruits and under which we sought solace from the sun. There was also a flag pole that had the flag of her party.

To kill time, I talked to the local journalists who were there to cover. Two of the girls worked for an English business paper while a young man wrote for a Burmese language newspaper. He covered politics but just like the girls, clammed up when asked about the ongoing campaign for the by-elections. “We cover business,” the girls told me repeatedly as if any politically charged question was a no-no (indeed it must have been). I lost steam talking to them and returned to my perch under the chico tree with the other journalists who were now speculating (our favorite hobby but of course) that maybe we won’t be able to see Suu Kyi after all.

Everytime the front door to the house would open, we’d all stand up expectantly. Finally, one of the local staff came out and waved for us to follow him around the garden, away from the house. What’s happening? Was he going to divert us somewhere? It turned out he led us to the back of the house where there was an open patio leading to the garden. About 10 meters separated it from the lake nearby and I wondered if this place gets flooded during storms or heavy rains.

There was a red cordon that barred us from going further up the patio. It showed how they are used to this kind of protocol. We lined up about two feet away but was told to keep on moving back until we complained that the sun was against us and we won’t be able to take photos and videos properly.

Inside the house, we could hear the delegation erupt into laughter every now and then. Soon, the door was opened but it didn’t reveal much inside. It took a few more minutes before Daw Suu herself stepped out and when she did, there was chaos. Everyone just rushed forward anf my tripod almost got toppled I had no choice but to take the camera out of it and squeeze at the front so I could have a good vantage point for my video.

ASSK was dressed in a lavender longyi with white roses on her hair. She was just like in photos except in person, you get a proper sense of how she is. She moved gracefully but had an air of steel. And then she spoke. She was soft-spoken with a British accent but she had firmness in her tone. She spoke confidently, barely pausing to consider her answers to questions that ranged from the political reforms, the coming by-elections, Asean and AEC (my question), economic sanctions etc; she was articulate and yet, what came out of her was not the usual rhetoric. She was candid and even joked that being behind its Asian neighbors gives Burma the opportunity to profit from everybody’s mistakes.

But what struck me most, considering what she has been through, is how she has maintained that grace and no trace of rancor at all. If it had been a lesser individual, her campaign would have been tinged with revenge and her existence focused on getting power. But it was a general consensus among those present that she was very realistic about Burma’s political situation and was more focused on being the voice of her people.

All the time that the press briefing was happening, some members of the business delegation would stand by her side, smiling for the cameras for a snapshot. I was taking a video and I couldn’t do anything but zoom on ASSK to get them out of the frame. And I had to hold the camera up for almost 20 minutes trying to keep my hands from shaking and thinking my teacher in multimedia journalism would surely scold me for a shaky footage.

A photo session was not on the agenda but the most senior journalist in the group boldly asked if we could have a photo with her. Of course she had to say yes. And when she did, everyone, non-journalists included, surged forward. I barely managed to have my photo with her. And everyone wouldn’t have stopped trying to have photos, get her autograph etc if her staff did not start to usher us out.

ASSK was whisked inside her house soon after and we never saw a glimpse of her again as we left to catch our flight to Nay Pyi Daw, where we were going to spend the night.

On the flight, everyone was either zoned out from the ASSK experience or still on a high raving about it. One businessman described Tony as like a “little boy” in front of The Lady, who he presented with a miniature model of AirAsia (“Sorry I couldn’t bring the real thing” — although it was parked in the airport that moment). And yes, no one remembered to ask her about the movie, The Lady. But I suppose when you’re in front of The Lady herself, you realise that any attempt to put her life into celluloid pales in comparison to the real person. She is indeed The Lady personified.

The flight to Nay Pyi Taw was only 40 minutes. Tony went around serving refreshments. It’s not everyday that you get the founder of the airline serving you those delicious triple chocolate muffins (or autographing AirAsia caps the following day) on the flight. Of course, this was just a bonus to the ASSK experience.

As the pilot announced our descent to Nay Pyi Taw, I looked out of the window and saw a city glowing like gold in the night, thanks to the street lights. There were even laser lights pointing up to the sky. The airport was spanking new and deserted. And huge.

Our passports haven’t been returned yet and out of normal journalistic paranoia, we joked that the van assigned to us was the only different one in color. It was navy blue while the rest were white, easier to spot us. The jokes went on as we traveled along a highway in total darkness for a bloody 30 minutes. There were no houses in sight, no street lights, just total darkness. We thought it was not going to end until the landscape changed after we passed a roundabout with a lighted lotus flower and we started to see big hotels and two malls along the way. Here, the highway was lighted.

We stayed at a place called Aureum Hotel with a European facade. The building looked new but the rooms were poorly maintained. The first thing I looked for was a safe. For all the huge size of the room, there was none. The socket didn’t work and there was a strange smell. Next door, one of the journalists had his door jammed so the alarm went off. The staff gave him an old-fashioned key but didn’t fix the alarm so it was going off the entire night. No one barely slept.

Which was OK because we all had to be up early for the meeting with the government officials. We were looking forward to this too because the businessmen were supposed to meet the industry minister, U Soe Thein, who led Burma’s debut in Davos earlier this month. He did show up but only to greet the delegation and excuse himself to proceed to parliament for budget hearings.

The meeting was not as exciting compared to the local chamber of commerce and of course, nothing in comparison to ASSK. But like what one journalist pointed out, we have to get all sides.

There was a slight diversion in the schedule afterwards and they took us for a drive by the parliament, which looked like a palace in the distance. What was even more impressive or astounding was the 12-lane street that led to it. There was no traffic whatsoever and Tony Fernandes’s plane could have landed there with no problem.

Then they drove us to a golden pagoda that shone under the sun. There was a white elephant and a  baby black elephant across the street that locals were gawking at. We started taking photos like tourists although I was still mindful if I could take photos of the locals. There was a souvenir shop in the area but there was simply no time to check it out.

I left Burma without any of the usual souvenirs like fridge magnets or a plate for my mom and spoon for my aunt. Not even a postcard to send back home as I always do whenever I visit a new place. And no jade either.

But I got these memories written here, and yes, that video of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Oh, and I got my passport back.

That is enough.

And yes, I came back safe and sound to tell my story here, here and here.

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