Can´t remember when i felt so tired. Browsing around in Dawei and Myeik, downtown or on the countryside or on the way from downtown to the countryside or on the way back, i was more an attraction to the locals as the opposite. Everyone whispering coy, saying, yelling “Hello, my friend!”. Joining in a chorus of friendshipping. Conquering another world, exploring the west. There is no way out of, powered by the fact that i was the only foreigner in town. Tried to escape in restaurants or bars. They called their neighbours, by mobile or just hailed them from the streest. Adapting me, touchy, being so amazed by my beard, how tall i am and my feeds, and mainly freaking out on my tattoos. That interest is neither about age nor social status. I am a traveling circus, or a symbol, a march of victory about the political change (by the fact that the military is still acting random, legislating or cancel rights and rules, like, massage is not allowed in Myeik, because a general didn´t felt treated very well, that´s maybe more a rumor, but still a pointing collage). Waving greeds, smiling, again and again, smiling, my face felt like carved in stone. Would be interesting how my appearance would be like without my tattoos and beard. My head is full of eyes, the brain attacked by gazes, a real-life psychodelic dream of boiling in an eyeball soup.
Avoiding nightlife. Don´t wanna sit circled by locals spending me whiskey and communicate with hands and arms. The dialog mostly ends with “my friend”, missing vocabulary, lately by responding “Fine. And how are you?”. Burmese is a tough language to learn, the tonality is deafen my tongue, i didn´t manage until today to pronounce Dawei in an understandable way. On the street after a couple of blocks always felt dizzy by turning my head from the right to the left, upside down and backwards. Hiding behind the camera was the only exit and one way to get a picture of daily life and culture.
On my last day down South it has stopped nailing, it´s a sunny afternoon, i am sitting in the lobby of the guesthouse, trying to relax, have a date in two hours at a primary school, teacher asked to visit, because he thinks it´s good for the students talking to foreigners. And, yes of course it is! But where are the other foreigners! Plural!!! Burn in hell!!! Just for a second and then beam them to Myeik, please, to this audience of wide opened hungry eyeballs.
I need a nap.
… to be continued