THE SECOND WARLORD
KHUN SA, THE SHAN-STATE
BURMESE DRUG WARLORD
the Wanderling
"(Khun Sa) set out from the hills of northern Shan state with a large contingent of soldiers and a massive 16-ton opium convoy, destined for Ban Khwan, a small Laotian lumber village across the Mekong River from Chiang Saen in Thailand. More traders joined his convoy, and by the time it reached the city of Kengtung in eastern Shan state, its single-file column of 500 men and 300 mules stretched along the ridge for more than a mile."
I met Khun Sa face-to-face in the early-to-mid 1960s under some otherwise trying circumstances as described on this page in Footnote [1]. However, the background and history on Khun Sa that follows, although not totally excluded from my personal experiences, has not been gleaned from some mere happenstance that may have transpired between the warlord and myself years ago, but instead, because of our meeting, has been thoroughly researched and put together and presented here by me from a wide variety of quality and in-depth sources, drawing heavily from the well focused works of Jeffrey Hays.
As for calling Khun Sa the Second Warlord in the title, or the subtitle as the case may be, it has nothing to do with his position relative to any level of his operations or warlord status. Actually, along the way in the normal flow of things I had met the Laotian warlord Vang Pao some months before, making Vang Pao in a sense, for me anyway, the first warlord. For sure, calling Khun Sa the Second Warlord is not intended to diminish him in any fashion. For those who may me so interested, there is a full account of my meeting with Vang Pao further down the page.
the Wanderling
For many years much of the drug trade in the so-called area of Southeast Asia known as the Golden Triangle was controlled by Khun Sa, AKA Sao Mong Kwan or Chang Chi-Fu, sometimes given or spelled Chan Shee Fu, the son of a wealthy Chinese tea trader and an ethic Shan mother. He was born in Loi Maw of Mongyai in eastern Myanmar (Burma) and as an adult dubbed the "Opium King of the Golden Triangle." He was also as an adult the leader of the Shan United Army and the Mong Tai Army. For a while he was based in Thailand. The Thai army attacked his camp and drove him back to Myanmar, where he set up his own private fiefdom in East Shan State living in his well fortified headquarters in Ho Mong village in the East Shan State in Myanmar about nine miles from the Thai border town of Mae Hong Son. (Source: Ron Moreau, Newsweek, and Philip Shenon, the New York Times)
His above mentioned also known as AKA Chiang Chi-fu, was in fact his real name having in later years, adopted the pseudonym Khun Sa, meaning "Prince Prosperous." In his youth he trained with the Kuomintang (KMT), which had fled into the border regions of Burma from Yunnan upon its defeat in the Chinese Civil War. He got involved in the drug trade at an early age by working with Chinese Kuomingtan soldiers that lived in the eastern Shan State. In 1969, when he was 36, he was imprisoned in Mandalay for drug trafficking and stayed there for five years until his friends broke him out. He fled to Thailand and organized a drug network an army. In the 1990s, he controlled an army of 3000 men that watched over 600 tons of opium produced in Myanmar and 60 tons produced in Thailand.
Bert Lintner, who met Khun Sa twice, wrote on Asia Online: "Khun Sa was probably one of the most colorful and controversial figures on the Myanmar drug scene. Despite being indicted on drug trafficking charges by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, New York, in January 1990, he continued to live comfortably at his then headquarters at Homong near the Thai border opposite Mae Hong Son...By then he was officially the most wanted man in the world, indicted by the United States and referred to by then U.S. ambassador to Thailand William Brown as "the worst enemy the world has" (Source: Bert Lintner, Asia Online, November 1, 2007; Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review)
In 1994, it was estimated that Khun Sa and the United Wa State Army controlled 75 percent of the heroin originating in the Golden Triangle. A Panthay Chinese Muslim from Burma, Ma Zhengwen, assisted Khun Sa in selling his heroin in north Thailand. In 1996, Khun Sa retired and the United Wa State Army took over many of the areas he controlled.
According to Wikipedia: "Over the two decades of his unrivalled dominance of the Shan state, from 1974 to 1994, the share of New York street heroin coming from the Golden Triangle, the northern parts of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, rose from 5 percent to 80 percent. It was 90 percent pure, 'the best in the business, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.' And Khun Sa, the DEA thought, had most of that trade."
KHUN SA'S EARLY LIFE
Bert Lintner wrote on Asia Online: Khun Sa was born in 1934 in a small village in Northern Shan State to an ethnic Shan mother and a Chinese father. He grew up as an orphan as his father died when he was only three. His mother remarried the local tax collector of the small town of Mong Tawm, but two years later she died as well. While his three stepbrothers went to missionary schools and were given the Christian names Oscar, Billy and Morgan, the young Khun Sa was raised by his Chinese grandfather amid the poppy fields of Loi Maw mountain in northern Shan state. His only formal education consisted of a few years as a temple boy in a Buddhist monastery. During one of our interviews, I noticed that all his correspondence had to be read to him and that his replies were dictated. (Source: Bert Lintner, Asia Online, November 1, 2007)
At the age of 16, Khun Sa formed his own armed band. He gained his first military experience in skirmishes with the Kuomintang, or nationalist Chinese forces, who had set up bases in Loi Maw in the early 1950s. He eventually went on to form his own army of a few hundred men. In the early 1960s, his small private army was even recognized officially as the "Loi Maw Ka Kwe Ye", a militia and home guard unit under the Myanmar army loyal to Gen Ne Win's Burmese government. Ka Kwe Ye received money, uniforms and weapons from the Burmese government in return for fighting the Shan rebels.[1]
In 1966, Khun Sa was deputzied by the Burmese government as head of a village defense force against the BCP (Burmese Communist Party), which at the time was at full strength and heavily involved in opium cultivation. Khun Sa cleverly used government backing to consolidate his power and beef up the strength of his militia. When Khun Sa had expanded his army to 800 men, he stopped cooperating with the Burmese government, took control of large area in Shan and Wa states and expanded into opium production. Khun Sa's militia eventually grew into the Shan United Army (SUA), also known as the Shan State Army. (Source: Lonely Planet)
KHUN SA TAKES CONTROL OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE DRUG TRADE
In 1967 Khun Sa clashed with the Kuomintang (KMT) remnants in Shan State after the KMT attempted to embargo the SUA opium trade by blocking their jungle smuggling routes. Khun Sa started what became known as the Opium War of 1967, which resulted in his defeat, demoralizing him and his forces. In 1969, the Rangoon government captured him. He was freed in 1973 when his second-in-command abducted two Russian doctors and demanded his release. By 1976 he had returned to opium smuggling, and set up a base inside northern Thailand in the village of Ban Hin Taek. He renamed his group the Shan United Army and began ostensibly fighting for Shan autonomy against the Burmese government. (Source: Lonely Planet)
Bert Lintner wrote on Asia Online: Khun Sa, then 33, decided to challenge the supremacy of much more senior Kuomintang opium warlords. In May 1967, he set out from the hills of northern Shan state with a large contingent of soldiers and a massive 16-ton opium convoy, destined for Ban Khwan, a small Laotian lumber village across the Mekong River from Chiang Saen in Thailand. More traders joined his convoy, and by the time it reached the city of Kengtung in eastern Shan state, its single-file column of 500 men and 300 mules stretched along the ridge for more than a mile re the following quotes from Bert Lintner, Asia Online, November 1, 2007:
"The convoy crossed the Mekong and the Kuomintang rushed to intercept it. Fierce fighting raged for several days, but the outcome of the battle is still somewhat obscure. At that time, General Ouane Rattikone, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Lao Army, ran several heroin refineries in the nearby Ban Houey Sai area, and sent the Lao air force to bomb the battle site. Officially, he cheated both Khun Sa and the Kuomintang, and made off with the opium. Other sources told this correspondent that the opium had already been sold, and Khun Sa subsequently made his first significant investment in Thailand. On attempting to contact the Shan rebels, perhaps to switch sides, in 1969 he was arrested and imprisoned in Mandalay. He was charged with high treason for attempting to contact the rebels, not for drug trafficking, for which at the time he had informal government permission to engage in.
"In April 1973, his men who had gone underground in the jungle kidnapped two Soviet doctors who were working at the hospital in the Shan state capital of Taunggyi. An entire division of Myanmar government troops was mobilized to rescue the doctors. The operation was unsuccessful and it was not until August 1974 that the foreign hostages were supposedly unconditionally released through Thailand. By strange coincidence, Khun Sa was released from prison shortly afterwards. It was later revealed that Thai northern army commander General Kriangsak Chomanan had helped to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Khun Sa later slipped away to northern Thailand."
(source)
In October 1981 a 39-man unit of Thai Rangers and Burmese guerrillas attempted to assassinate Khun Sa at the insistence of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. The attempt failed, however. In January 1982 a Thai Ranger squad from Pak Thong Chai, together with units from the Border Patrol Police and the Royal Thai Army, was used to force Khun Sa to move his headquarters from Ban Hin Taek across the border into Myanmar, where he initially directed his empire from a fortified network of underground tunnels. The Thai raid led to the break up of the opium and heroin production operation in the Mae Salong-Ban Tin Taek area of Thailand.
In 1985, Khun Sa joined forces with the Tai Revolutionary Council of Moh Heng and several other Shan armies to for, the Muang Tai Army (MTA) led by the Shan State Restoration Council. In the early 1990s the MTA reached a peak strength of 25,000 soldiers, by far the largest ethnic armed group in Myanmar. Through that alliance Khun Sa both gained control of the whole Thai-Burma border area from Mae Hong Son to Mae Sai and became one of the principal figures in opium smuggling in the Golden Triangle.
KHUN SA AND HIS DRUG EMPIRE
In 1975 Khun Sa's SUA increased it influence in the Golden Triangle region. As the Burmese government broke the KMT's control over the Golden Triangle opium market the SUA stepped in to fill the void.Kun Sa established a new headquarters at Ban Hin Taek in Chiang Rai province, Thailand. By that time the U.S. had pulled out of Indochina so there was no competition from CIA-backed traffickers. Khun Sa largely severed relationships with intermediaries, buying up opium directly from hill tribe and Shan farmers and transporting it to heroin labs in Myanmar, Laos and Yunnan in China, where the final product was turned over to ethnic Chinese (usually Tae Jiu or Chiao Zhou) syndicates which controlled access to world markets through Thailand, Yunnan and Hong Kong.
Khun Sa controlled his drug empire for over 30 years and reportedly earned billions of dollars in the drug trade. It is believed that he controlled about half of the heroin and opium that came from Myanmar, which in turn counted for about 60 percent of the heroin sold on the streets in the United States.
U.S. drug officials said that Khun Sa organized farmers to grow opium and ran or franchised 15 to 20 heroin refining laboratories along the Thai-Myanmar border. He reportedly made cash payments of $26,000 to Thai border police to make sure his heroin shipments got across the Thai border without being seized. He then distributed the drug using a sophisticated commercial network.
Khun Sa always maintained that he was freedom fighter not a drug dealer. He said he supported his army with revenues earned by taxing opium traders who moved through his territory. Khun Sa reportedly detested addicts. Anyone in his operation that became addicted to drugs was forced detox in his his "drug treatment center" a 10-foot-deep hole where junkies enduring cold turkey and stayed until they had kicked.
Khun Sa controlled a large amount of territory in the Eastern Shan State of eastern Myanmar near the Thai border. After Khun Sa's arrival Ho Mong grew from a sleepy village into a bustling town with satellite dishes at many homes. Much of the money he earned from the drug trade went to maintaining a 10,000-man army and a mini-state with its own education system and hospitals. He even went as far as proclaiming himself president of the Eastern Shan State.
Khun Sa occasionally granted interviews to journalists who trekked eight hours with a mule train from the Thai border to his headquarters. In 1988, Khun Sa was interviewed by Australian journalist Stephen Rice, who had crossed the border from Thailand into Burma illegally. Khun Sa told Rice he was willing to sell his entire heroin crop to the Australian Government for about $40 million a year for the next eight years, a move that would have virtually stopped the heroin trade into both Australia and the United States overnight. The Australian Government rejected the offer, with one Australia senator declaring: "The Australian Government is simply not in the business of paying criminals to refrain from criminal activity." In 1989, Khun Sa was charged by a New York court for trying to import 1,000 tons of heroin. By then he had proposed the U.S. buy his entire opium production.
KHUN SA'S ARMY
Khun Sa commanded a force of 10,000-to-20,000 Shan fighters in the Mong Tai army, a private militia which was regarded as the last major revolutionary army to operate in Myanmar. It possessed modern weapons such as surface-to-air missiles, which even the Myanmar army didn't have. Many of the Mong Tai soldiers were in their teens. Thousands of Burmese soldiers were tied up fighting the Mong Tai army and the conflict depleted the government's supply of weapons.
Bert Lintner wrote on Asia Online: His so-called "Shan United Army", SUA, was supposed to be fighting for Shan independence from Myanmar, but was, in reality, little more than a narco-army escorting opium convoys and protecting heroin refineries. In 1982, the Thai army decided to turn against him, and Khun Sa and the SUA were driven out of Ban Hin Taek. But they soon established a new base, this time inside Myanmar, at Homong, where new refineries were set up to process raw opium into heroin. (Source: Bert Lintner, Asia Online, November 1, 2007)
Most of Khun Sa's key aides were relatives. Important players in Khun Sa's operation included Chang Su-chan (also known as "General Thunder"), Military Operations Chief; Yang Wan-Hsuan, Security and Intelligence Chief; and Chang Ping-Yun, Comptroller General and overseer of the refining operations.
Khun Sa battled Thai forces on the Thai-Burma border and fought the Burmese army in the Shan states. He maintained that he was fighting a war of liberation for the Shan people and drug trafficking was simple a way for him to raise money to buy weapons and pay his soldiers. One Burmese colonel told the New York Times, "We were fighting him for years. We were not gaining much ground because he was well-equipped, well dug-in and the terrain was terrible. We were sacrificing too many casualties."
KHUN SA'S JUNGLE HIDEOUT
Bert Lintner wrote on Asia Online: "By no stretch of the imagination could Homong have been described as a 'jungle hideout' --- a common phrase used by the press in the 1980s and early 1990s. On the contrary, it was - and still is - a bustling town boasting well-stocked shops, spacious market places, a well laid-out grid of roads with street lights. More than 10,000 inhabitants lived in wooden and concrete houses amid fruit trees, manicured hedges and gardens adorned with bougainvillea and marigolds. Huge signs indicated where you could have your travel permits to Thailand across the border issued, re the following by Bert Lintner as found in Asia Online, November 1, 2007:
"There were schools, a Buddhist monastery, a well-equipped hospital with an operating theater and X-ray machines, all maintained by qualified doctors from mainland China, video halls, karaoke bars, two hotels, a disco and even a small park complete with pathways, benches and a Chinese-style pavilion. Overseas calls could be placed from two commercially run telephone booths.
"Local artifacts, historical paintings and photographs were on display in a "cultural museum", and a hydroelectric power station was being constructed, but never fully finished, to replace the diesel-powered generators then providing Homong with electricity. Other unusual construction projects included an 18-hole golf course intended for the many Thai, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Hong Kong, Malaysian, South Korean and Japanese businessmen who were then flocking to buy precious stones at Khun Sa's gem center, also located in Homong. As a young man, Khun Sa was an avid golfer, and over the years he was known to have made several influential friends on golf greens.
"At that time, he was supposed to be the most wanted man in the world, but, in reality, he was pursued by no one. He lived in a one-story concrete building surrounded by a well-tended garden featuring orchids, Norfolk pines and strawberry fields. But his house was also ringed by bunkers housing 50-caliber, anti-aircraft machine-guns and swarms of heavily armed soldiers. 'You never know,' he once told me during an interview. 'I have an army, so I'm free. Look at poor [Myanmar opposition leader] Aung San Suu Kyi. She's got no army so she's under house arrest.'"
(source)
PHYLLIS DAVIS CIRCA 1980
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On a website I have about Phyllis Davis (1940-2013), an actress of extraordinary beauty and true natural talent, who died from terminal cancer, I write that in an attempt to assist her in her desire for a deep spiritual experience in her later years, I accompanied her to Thailand, heading into the jungles of Asia so she could become a frequenter of lonely places in an ever expanding attempt to enhance an oncoming deepening Awareness. After several weeks with me and feeling she was at a place she could be on her own, I bid her goodbye and headed out. Prior to my departure from Thailand, in that I had gone to Thailand before Phyllis caught up with me I had all intentions of going to meet up with Khun Sa's son to offer my condolences and tell him that I never got a chance to thank his dad for basically saving my life as found in Footnote [1]. Although I had all honorable intentions to do just that, in my attempt to do so I ran into a whole series of complications of which I outlined on the Phyllis Davis page. However, not everybody who searches for or reads about Khun Sa find themselves deep into the Phyllis Davis page, hence missing my meeting with Khun Sa's son. To make up for that I present the following from the Davis page:
MONG LA: MOS EISLEY SPACEPORT OR MAYBERRY, R.F.D?
"Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the whole galaxy than Mos Eisley spaceport."
I guess neither of them ever heard of Mong La.(see)
As easy as it may have seemed for Phyllis and I in Chiang Mai, and the graciousness of the help we received with transportation and all for her to reach a meditation spot where she could safely become masterful in Sila, Samadhi, Jhana, Prajna, and a frequenter of lonely places, which she was apparently able to do, it wasn't done without a cost. Nothing is free. Although Phyllis never knew about it nor did I ever have a chance to tell her, for the services rendered there was a price that was to be extracted.
The person I went to see in the Thai restaurant was willing to help in exchange for me providing a service for him. He knew I was a longtime Asian travel hand, sometimes under rather scary or unscrupulous circumstances with a once upon a time uncanny ability to slip through places without raising undue concerns. He also knew I was a trusted commodity, especially if leveraged against the fact that no harm would come to the "woman," i.e., Phyllis. After hearing his request, of which I thought was a little much of an overkill, to do his bidding I asked if when done, he would in turn do an additional small favor for me. Agreeing to do so, we shook hands and the deal was done.
After leaving Phyllis and her encampment, laughable out loud to me and of pure coincidence no doubt, I found that I was within easy striking distance to the Burmese-Thailand border town of Tachileik, the exact same place I was asked to go per the man's request before returning to Chiang Mai. Because of that request, I headed there, crossing the bridge several days later by foot from the Thai city of Mae Sai into Tachileik. In those days the Burmese side took your passport and gave you a temporary travel permit limited to only the Tachileik area and a day or two stay. People running out of visa time in Thailand often made "visa runs," crossing over to Tachileik from Mae Sai, get their passport stamped, then when returning to Thailand, even after a few minutes, could get a new 14 day extension. Me, I had bigger fish to fry. The last thing I wanted was not fulfill my side of the bargain and have Phyllis, completely unsuspecting, harmed because of it.
The first thing I did after crossing into Tachileik was negotiate with a number emaciated-looking cigarette smoking tuk-tuk drivers for a ride at a fair price to the Allure Casino, of which turned out to be what would have been a super easy walk, probably not more that a quarter a mile away. The casino-resort was as plush and clean as almost any Las Vegas or the like high class establishments. As I walked across the floor toward the registration desk after several days through the jungles of Thailand, dried mud on my clothes, unkempt hair, unshaven and unbathed, I could see the woman behind the counter was getting increasingly unnerved. When I reached the counter however, she, looking all the same as she was about to call security or run for her own safety, I slapped down a brand new shiny one ounce Krugerrand gold coin on the counter. With that her whole demeanor changed.
She picked up the Krugerrand, turned and went through a door behind her returning in a few minutes with a man who came around the counter to my side. He handed back the Krugerrand, not actually mine, but a token of introduction provided by my benefactor back in Chiang Mai. He said I must be tired from my journey, most likely wanting to clean up and rest, which was true. Seeing I had no luggage other than my shoulder bag, he requested my waist and shirt size saying we would talk later at dinner. Before I even reached my room, which was quite nice besides having a river view, a man was at the door with a pair of clean and pressed new khaki pants and a white dress shirt.
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I went into the bathroom, turned on the hot water full blast until the whole room was steamed up, covering any potential camera with condensation. In the fog I removed one of the cover plates from one of the bathroom electrical plug-in outlets and slipped a SIM card given me back in Chiang Mai in behind the wires. Then, reducing the water to a more comfortable level I duly took a shower, shaved, put on all my new clothes and laid down on the bed taking a nap. Later I was waiting in the dining area when the same man from earlier stepped up to the table apologizing for not be able to join me that evening, saying however, I should be ready to leave the hotel by 10:00 in the morning the next day as I would be going to a nearby office across town. When I got back from dinner and some time in the casino my whole room had been carefully gone over, including my private stuff. My cell phone, which I had left on charge, was also gone over. What wasn't was the electrical outlet, the hidden SIM card left untouched.
The "office" was a whole makeshift kind of a dump, part office, part warehouse, part storage yard, nominally identified on the outside as the Greenland Group. After I got there I was told the man I was looking for wasn't there, but in a place called Mong La about 85 miles north up along the Chinese border. I thought, "FUCK!" Then the man told me they make transportation runs up and back to and from there on a regular basis and there should be one leaving anytime if I wanted to tag along. In that I had everything with me, having left-left the hotel and safely secreting the Chiang Mai SIM card inside my own phone, I told him I would wait.
Soon I was brought out on the loading dock, introduced to a man I was told would by the driver by a man who said he was the dispatcher, then I climbed up into the cab, the truck being of one of those snub-nosed jobs with the cab sitting high up over the top of the front wheels. Neither the driver nor I could speak or understand each other's languages, so I thought to open up a friendship of sorts, thinking he was most likely Buddhist, I showed him the medallion on my necklace. He jumped back holding his arms in front of his face, elbows and forearms facing me as though he had been confronted by an about ready to strike cobra. He threw the door open falling to the ground, all the while yelling and pushing himself away backwards on his butt with his heels as fast as he could. Everybody came running. He continued yelling and pointing at me. By then I was out of the truck, the dispatcher asking what had happened. Not understanding he went inside and came out with a very beautiful Asian woman, most likely of Chinese descent, dressed in a dark navy blue or black business suit, high heels, and long back hair all coifed up looking all the same as a flight attendant.
She talked to the driver, apparently receiving some sort of an explanation, then turning to me and in perfect English requested to look at the medallion, asking how it was I came into possession of such an item. I told her it was given to me many, many years before. She said the driver accused me of being a high priest sent by the Buddha to do him harm for not adhering strongly to the scriptures. I said I was just a wanderling, a traveler along the path with no special powers or abilities. Playing hard and loose with the facts, making it up as she went along, in calming the man, the woman told him that the necklace was a gift, that it was easy for him, the man, as a native born Buddhist to be considered a Buddhist, but for me, not only a foreigner but a Caucasian as well, it was hard to convey the fact, so I needed such accruements to demonstrate to others. After a little hesitation the man bought the story and we were soon on our way.
In the Star Wars film, when Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he would never find a more "wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley Spaceport," there was no clarification. However, it thrived in being so mostly because of being located so far from the galaxy's political epicenter, and rarely if ever policed. So it is with Mong La.
As far a Mong La itself is concerned, being compared with Mos Eisley, or perhaps even the cities as seen in Bladerunner or the early scenes of the Fifth Element, movies all, they are some writers thought up view of what someplace like what they are trying to depict would be like. In real life I don't think any writer, producer, director or actor would step foot in Mong La alone without a whole lot of a protective entourage. Without any knowledge of how things work a person can and will sometimes, just disappear.(see)
Of course, when I arrived in Mong La the man I was looking for wasn't there either. Powers that be told me he was supposedly at a place called Panghsang, 70 miles further northwest. More specifically at his private fortess-like mansion west of the main section of town directly edging up to the Myanamar China river border but still in Myanamar, called Wan Nalawt. I was also told I would be taken there the next day and in the meantime just hang out.
Taking the powers that be man at his word besides having as well a car and driver provided by the same man I decided to look over the town, eat on the streets, visit some of the casinos, and cross over into China via motorbike on hidden trails and the river.(see) Mong La is crawling with casinos. However, six or seven years before, in 2003, as told by my driver, in nothing less than a sovereign invasion, China sent heavily armed Peoples Liberation Army troops cross-border into Mong La an effort to shut down the Casinos. Word had it that high-ranking Chinese government officials had lost billions of yuan in the town's casinos. One report said the daughter of a senior Chinese official had lost more than the equivalent of $1.6 million U.S. dollars using nothing but government funds. Sai Leun, the warlord who runs what is officially known as Special Region No. 4 wherein the city of Mong La is located, responded to the Chinese incursion by moving the casinos to a jungle area I estimate to be about 8 miles east and slightly south out of town. By the time I was in Mong La he had built more than two dozen casinos in an area now known in the vernacular as "casino city." After that most of central Mong La became a ghost town, although at the time I was there you could see a recovery was going on albeit never loosing a step as to its disreputable reputation.
"While the abandoned casinos are left to crumble in the center of Mong La, the glitzy new casino area is a truly incredible sight --- huge columned palaces with names like Royal Casino and Casino Lisboa rise up in bizarre contrast with the villages and rice paddies that surround them. Armies of young casino workers in waistcoats mill around outside, and inside they robotically flip cards and spin wheels for the crowds of Chinese men and women squeezed around the tables."
MONG LA: MYANMAR'S SIN CITY, Charlotte Rose, Myanmar Times
No sooner had I returned to the hotel and closed the door than there was a knock. Opening the door, standing in the hallway just in front of me was a man from the lobby area that I recognized. Accompanying him was an Asian girl with heavy eye and face make-up, super long straight black hair, six or seven inch stiletto heels, and a yellow over the shoulder drop-down dress so short it barely covered her business. Also, if she was any age much older than 14 it would be a miracle of nature. In so many words the lobby man told me she was "mine" for the night to do whatever I wanted with her. Then he said if I would rather have a boy that could be arranged too. I told the man I would appreciated it if the two of them just left, I didn't want anybody that night of either sex. He said he couldn't because if he did there would be big trouble for both him and the girl. I told him I wanted to see the Madame. Soon a short little round woman who looked more like she sold noodles on the street than running a string of hookers was at the door. I explained everything through the man as an interpreter and she basically said whatever, she just wanted her money ... and if the girl didn't stay the night she wouldn't get paid. We eventually worked everything out and all of them left including the 14 year old girl. After that nobody bothered me for the rest of the night.
However, the next morning when I left to go downstairs hoping to get a western-style breakfast, just to the right of the door on the floor against the wall, curled up in a rather tight fetal position, was the 14 year old girl, fast asleep. To get paid the Madame must have made her stay the night, even if it was outside the door. I got her to join me going downstairs, with me being able to order what I wanted for breakfast and her shoving what looked like 300 pounds of food down her throat in a highly uncouth manner as everybody in the room watched. Otherwise the time was spent with her positioning herself in every possible manner she could find in order to expose as clear as possible and as far up and down as possible her not-old-enough to have pubic hair vagina to me.
Just on time and in time the driver was at the table to take me north, eating whatever scraps off the plates he could find, even some off empty adjoining tables, all the while making a series of "you dog" side glances toward me and the girl. They talked between themselves for a few minutes with me thinking at first he was hoping to get in on a little 14 year old action himself, but I think what they talked about was what really happened as he seemed to change his demeanor towards me in a more positive manner. He said the girl wanted to come with us, but I said no and soon the driver and I were on the road.
Not long after that we were in Panghsang with me introducing myself to Wei Hsueh-kang. He ask if I had the "item." I opened my phone and handed him the SIM card. He praised me for a job well done, saying everything he heard about me was true. Then he asked how it was I knew Khun Sa. I quickly explained to him the whole story saying I felt he was instrumental in saving my life. I did what I did regarding the SIM card for two reasons, the safety of Phyllis Davis and the chance to give my respects to Khun Sa's son regarding his death. Wei Hsueh-kang waved to a man standing across the veranda who handed him a large manila envelope. Wei Hsueh-kang dumped the contents on the table spreading them apart. There were several grainy black and white photographs of Phyllis and I together and one of her taking an outside shower back at the meditation encampment. He said he could see why I was concerned with her overall well being. Also among the items on the table was my passport that I left at immigration when I entered Myanmar. He said everything was arranged for me to meet Khun Sa's son but I would have to go back clear across Thailand to do so. As innocent as it all seemed on the surface it was clear I was being monitored every inch of the way, plus if I would have decided to skit back across the border rather than do what was expected of me I would have found there was no passport in my name waiting for me at the Tachileik crossing and people other than simply just the authorities would have been informed.
A few days later I was crossing into Mae Sai from Tachileik headed toward Chiang Mai and beyond to catch up with Khun Sa's son. I stopped by to see the man in the Thai restaurant telling him all was in order, that Wei Hsueh-kang sends his best and now I was on my way to see Khun Sa's son. With that he handed me an envelope and said as far as he knew all was in order with my part of it as well. The only thing in the envelope except a business card, was where I had to go, that being a place called Myawaddy located along the Moei River that delineates the border between Myanmar and Thailand on the western side of the country across from Mae Sot, about 150 miles south and somewhat west from Chiang Mai. On the back of the business card, as a sort of a letter of introduction, was some handwritten Asian script I couldn't read. A little background to set the scene:
"In 1996 the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), made a deal with Khun Sa. The warlord had been indicted by the US Justice Department in 1990, but the SLORC announced that he would neither be sent to the US nor brought up on any charges in his own country. Instead, he was given the Burma-to-Thailand taxi concession and a 44-acre site where his son has plans to build a gambling and shopping complex."
BURMANET NEWS: Weekend of February 19-20, 2000, Issue #1466
That gambling and shopping complex so mentioned turned out to be the 140-million-baht Casino Club operating under the flagship of the Myawaddy Riverside Resort Complex, located on the Myanmar side about two miles from the Friendship Bridge, the official crossing spot between the countries of Thailand and Burma in those parts. Htoo Than Kyaw, a onetime close aide to Khun Sa, is the major shareholder with other co-investors being Thai and Taiwanese businessmen. It is there I met Khun Sa's son.
CROSSING THE MOEI RIVER FROM THAILAND TO BURMA WITHOUT BENEFIT OF PASSPORT CONTROL
Khun Sa was known to have at least six offspring although some say as high as 30 from a variety of liaisons. The son I met was the one most high ranking and heir as far as Khun Sa was concerned and I was told of such by those who were regarded to be in the know. Me, I took him at his and their word. His reactions and response to me and the gratification he seemed to receive from my being there just to pay homage to his dad seemed to underline the truth of the matter as being so. Although he had never heard the story from his father he was quite pleased that I gave Khun Sa credit for ensuring my escape and eventual return to the U.S. unharmed. The fact that I, a white male Caucasian, embarked on such a pilgrimage so many years after fact just to give thanks and offer condolences was something he would have ever expected, especially in relation to his dad. When we were done he said to stay as long as I like but I would have to cover all of my gambling losses. Then as a joke, with a slight jab to my shoulder accompanied by a little laugh he said of course any winnings would have to be split 50-50. A couple of days later I crossed back over the Moei River and headed back to Chiang Mai.
If you haven't done so as of yet, please be sure and visit Footnote [1]
VANG PAO: THE FIRST WARLORD
NAM YU: CIA LIMA SITE 118-A
MEETING WARLORDS, ET AL
GENERAL NGUYEN CAO KY
TANGO SQUADRON AIR MUSEUM, CHIANG MAI
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN
Their Life and Times Together
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
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