The Greatest Lie Part 16

I tried to keep my voice optimistic as I finished with: "Keep safe until we call for you. We need you to tell this story in America." Then Nancee and I went to the chaos of Somphet Market.

It was nearing closing time when we arrived. The local merchants had been starved of tourists by the triple curses of terrorism, recession and the panic over SARS. All around us, the remaining desperate merchants were aggressively hawking their unsold wares. The more resigned among them had already closed for the day. We spent most of our soon-to-be-useless baht on as much food as we could carry and then tried to look as inconspicuous as we could while we waited for Eddie to show up.

Eddie appeared dressed in a longyi and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt accompanied by a couple of dangerous-looking ethnic Shan. He addressed them sharply in front of us and then translated: "I told them to take you to the Shan State Army's base in Shan State of Myanmar. I told them if you didn't arrive safely, and untouched by their filthy bodies, they and their families would be ying ting.

"I'll meet up with you there after I've found Tran and figured out how to get her up there." As he finished speaking, Eddie pointed towards the Thanon Thongchai Range that loomed above Chiang Mai to the northwest. Then he helped us up onto the covered bed of an old Mitsubishi diesel truck. We spread one of our tarps on a dirty sleeping pad we found in the back, and tried to make ourselves comfortable as our Shan drivers tied the curtains at the rear of the canvas awning. As soon as we were hidden from view, they got into the cab and started off.

We discovered that the rear window of the cab had been removed to improve the ventilation in the cab; although our drivers only spoke a rather rough approximation of Thai, Nancee could understand them. We could peer through the cab at the road ahead, at least until the driver warned we were nearing a checkpoint.

Nancee and I cowered under the tarp as we passed through the first checkpoint that the Third Army had established around the outskirts of Chiang Mai.