Published on June 21, 2005

Welcome to Burmese Town, where migrant workers have transplanted a whole way of life so they have less to miss so far from home.

As we visit, we watch Mon monks pray at the wedding of a Burmese couple, who are clad in sarong-like longyi as they pay homage to their elders. The groom is wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and the bride a pink traditional blouse. An old wedding song wafts above the chatter as the guests taking turns offering best wishes.

Newlyweds Min Tun Thein, 22, and Mi Thuzar Tun, 20, are watching a videotape of the ceremony in their small apartment by the Shrimp Market. It took place a few days ago just outside, where the “welcome” sign in Burmese still hangs.

The couple is among an estimated 200,000 Burmese migrant workers living in Mahachai, a port city in Samut Sakhon province.

Dubbed Burmese Town as a result, Mahachai has one of Thailand’s biggest populations of migrant labourers. Some 5,000 toil at the Shrimp Market alone, says Sompong Srakaew, coordinator of the Raks Thai Foundation that looks after them.

“The workers living here follow the same way of life they had in Burma,” he says.

Not quite the same for Min Tun Thein and Mi Thuzar Tun, though. They would have preferred a grander wedding, like the ones they’d attended back home.

“They try to make these ceremonies less complicated here,” says one of the guests, Sein Htay, 31. “Because of the small space, the wedding party couldn’t be as big as the couple wanted.”

The four-storey block of flats where they live houses some 1,000 Burmese, Sompong says, most of whom work in the seafood industry.

It’s like a beehive, everyone clambering among tiny spaces. Each floor has a waste bin, but there are bits of food and plastic bags scattered about, and flies everywhere. The shared hallway is reddened by betel-stained spit.

A 30-year-old neighbour named Aung says each three-by-five-metre, single-toilet apartment can accommodate five to 12 people. The monthly rent is Bt2,700 to Bt3,000, depending on electricity and water use.

But no one is complaining.

“I’m happy to be here,” says Aung, who works at a meatball factory and has been in Thailand for nine years. “I earn a living, but in Burma it’s hard to find a job. I still have no plans to go back.”

Mother of two Wai, who’s 32, agrees that Thailand is the better option.

“I don’t want to go back – I’ll return when I have Bt1 million,” she says with sparkling eyes. But there’s one thing she’s worried about.

“I think of my children back home all the time,” she says, breaking into tears. “The best I can do is to call them occasionally.”

Most migrants here begin work at 6pm and don’t finish until 8am, Sein Htay says. In their limited free time, they’ll sleep or relax in front of the TV, listen to music or play snooker for Bt10 a game. Many can be found socialising in the local coffee shops.

Everyone wears a longyi at home, and many enjoy the mild stimulation that comes with chewing betel nuts, though their teeth are stained. Women smear yellow thanaka paste on their cheeks as a sun block and a preservative for the skin.

These items and many more reminders of home can be bought in the nearby market. Vendors charge Bt1 for a chewable roll-up of lime, tobacco leaves and betel nut, and elsewhere you can buy pieces of thanaka wood and the rock slates you need to rub the bark into a powder.

There are also Burmese-language books, novels and magazines.

At the front door of another block of flats near the market on this Saturday afternoon, four Burmese women lounge on a table in their longyis. They aren’t working today because there are no shrimp to peel, and it’s the lean season for shrimp anyway, so there’s little income.

They’re doing what they normally do in their free time – staying home and chatting with each other.

Today they’re taking care of a four-month baby whose parents are at work, though they don’t know the infant’s name.

According to 35-year-old Shat, the child’s parents met here in Samut Sakhon, but Sompong says that, as the child of migrant workers, the baby has neither Burmese nor Thai citizenship.

Shat says she earns only Bt150 per day when the shrimp are limited, but in the rainy season she can make Bt400 or Bt500. She manages to send the equivalent of US$1,000 home to Burma every year.

“Working here is better than in Burma,” she insists, adding that she and her friends have no reason to fret since they all have work permits.

Tanita Saenkhum

The Nation

Samut Sakhon

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