Day One (21 May 2014)

This is the first time I’m a passenger in a bus to Maesai on my way to Hopeland. And it is comfortable and fast — 3 ½ hours to cover some 250 km. Not bad when I usually make it in 3 hours when driving it myself.

Cover: Show Business

Cover: Hand in Glove

Cover: Shan Drug Watch Issue 1 (2007)

Cover: Shan Drug Watch Issue 2 (2009)

Cover: Shan Drug Watch Issue 3 (2010)

Cover: Shan Drug Watch Issue 4 (2011)

Cover: Shan Drug Watch Issue 5 (2012)

I spend my time working on the long-forsaken Shan Drug Watch report, a summing up on the government’s 15-year master plan on the eradication of poppy cultivation, 1999-2014, which ended last March.

I don’t know how good my report will be. I’m out of funds. My principal data collector passed away 3 years ago, though I still have a lot of friends who are willing to tell me everything they know about the business. But I hope to finish it before 26 June: The International Day Against Drug Abuses. And that’s quite a challenge.

The comforting thing is that the media people are still asking SDW whenever they want second opinions. The latest one was on Sunday, 18 May, by the Voice of America (VOA) English program.

I usually did not have any problems about writing and speaking what I saw or knew. That was until President Thein Sein set the wheels of national reconciliation into motion in 2011.

I’m never an advocate of “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” On the contrary, I’m a follower of The Buddha who said only truths which are beneficial must be uttered whether they are pleasing or unpleasing to the audience.

Of course, whether I would be a good follower riding a fine line between — “truth, beneficial, pleasing or unpleasing” — would be quite something else.

But I’ll know it for myself when the report is finished, even if others are not. After all, you have to live with yourself, not others. So I say to myself as I climb down the bus in Maesai where a friend is waiting to pick me up and drive me to the hotel.