We had a wonderful time in San Lou Yong with a myriad of little surprises.

Take for example the Lahu War veteran who owned San Lou Yong’s biggest convenience store. The veteran had lost his left leg fighting for the Wa and limped as he walked on his fake leg.

One day, this shopkeeper silently followed me and Win Maung after we left his shop. He was carrying a cassette recorder and a book in his hand, but since he did not speak Burmese, we did not ask him anything, and assumed he was just on his way somewhere.

We were wrong. The shopkeeper followed us right to the school and into the room as we sat down. Puzzled, we looked at him but Win Maung was able to welcome him by gesturing him to sit down. Then the shopkeeper placed the book and recorder on the table and spoke in a language that we did not understand. I looked at the book. It was an English Bible. We tried to speak to him in Burmese, to no avail.

After a few minutes of non-conversation and gestures, it slowly dawned on us that he wanted us to record the Bible into his cassette recorder. He must have heard from someone that we were teachers and that we knew English.

Win Maung suggested that I help him. So I did, reading the chapter from the Bible that the Lahu veteran showed me. He sat opposite us and listened to the recording. His satisfaction was written all over his face. We were happy too because we did a little thing that made him happy.

Whenever we visited his shop after that, he adamantly refused to take money from us for the things we wanted. We felt bad about that; what we had done was a small, simple task and we had not expected any favors in return. So after that, we tried to avoid going to his shop as much as possible.

Another surprise was a bit of a mystery.

There were two mule routes to the Camp Secretary’s living quarters—one that passed the mess hall and the other, little used, that passed right in front of our sleeping rooms in the school.

One day, though, the Wa mule driver led three mules down the path right in front of our room, many times over the course of a day. He appeared to be coming back and forth with loads coming from Thailand, just one or two kilometers away, or a place unknown.

At around 3 p.m., after watching him make at least several trips back and forth, I could not contain my curiosity and finally asked him what he had been transporting all day long using the little-used road.

“Silver coins,” he said, pausing for a brief moment before moving on with the mules. I was initially surprised. But then I recalled how some Wa hold told us that in certain Wa villages, local people did not take any paper money, and would only accept colonial-era coins with the imprint of King George. So it made sense to me that our hosts might accumulate such coins so they could buy supplies such as food from the villagers.

Now when I look back I realize they were probably not silver coins; more likely, they were gold bars or heroin. At least that's what I suspected, although I will never know for sure.

Yet the biggest and not-so-pleasant surprise came from a radio conversation that I overheard through walkie-talkies among the enemy forces.

We were often invited by Wa officers who had gone to the Mon area to study radio communication and interception to listen to their conversations with Khun Sa's officers.

Such chatting among enemies was not unusual among Burma’s ethnic rivals. In Manerplaw and other places where there was fighting, radio interception or conversation via short-wave walkie-talkies was very common among the opposing forces.

The frontline outposts were very close. Sometimes, one could shout abuses or challenges to the enemy positions on the mountain. And each side knew through radio interception or intelligence reports who the enemy commander was, his military position, his mother unit and even his habits. But they never met each other in person.

Since the soldiers from opposing armies had to stay in one place for a long period of time they came to know each other—or at least their code names—through radio interceptions.  

The conversations could be varied. Sometimes soldiers just bragged to their enemies about what they’d had for dinner, with one side boasting about a delicious meal of chicken curry or something else better than the other side had just eaten. Sometimes there would even be requests for popular songs.

Often these exchanges were pure propaganda. There were instances in which one side read the whole page of a political declaration over the radio.  

The soldiers from both sides tried to intercept the conversations or the other or talked to each other all the time. Sometimes, if the line was not clear, one side would say “Let’s go for a ride on the airplane”— meaning that he would switch his frequency to 747, referring to the jumbo jet, and ask his counterpart from the enemy side to follow suit or use a similar quote to change the channel.

Radio reports from the frontline to the headquarters were made on an hourly basis, providing details on the fighting, intelligence gathering or simply the current status of the outposts. However, leisurely conversations between the enemies took place after dinner or in the early evening, usually around 6 p.m.

The Wa and Khun Sa’s soldiers had done this many times and so knew the code names of their counterparts. Languages used also varied, from local languages to Burmese. Burmese was often used to disguise one’s true identity or because it was the lingua franca.

One day, a Mon-trained Wa officer was speaking to his counterpart in the rival Shan army. He told us that the two had spoken to each other a few times before. As usual, we listened to the conversation.

First, they talked about politics and fighting but quickly got bored because it was often the subject of discussion and knew that it was waste of time debating over unwinnable arguments. The casual conversation quickly took over and they started chatting about life in Shan state. 

The Wa officer said, “Where did you come from?” “Mong Hsu,” came the reply.

“Really? I'm from Mong Hsu, too,” said the Wa officer in a surprised and suspicious voice. “Then tell me about the school there.”

The conversation went on for a while—about the school, the names of some of the teachers, the location of the teashop where young men liked to meet and hang out, and other people and places in the town.

We listened attentively, feeling as if the conversation was nearing a climax. We sort of knew where it was heading, but we were in store for a complete surprise. 

The Wa officer and his counterpart in Khun Sa’s army were friends from the same neighborhood, went to the same school and studied under the same teacher. They had gone their separate ways after high school but the war had reconnected them—across the mountain as enemies.

As soon as the two men realized who they were speaking to, there was a silence. Suddenly we were engulfed in sadness. The Wa officer could not speak anymore. He held the walkie-talkie without saying a word. Then he looked up and saw us looking at him, equally sad and speechless.

A moment later, he turned his radio off and walked away without saying goodbye to all of us. It was a poignant moment. In my heart, I felt the silence of the radio in the trench across the ridge.

The war had come to many towns and villages of Shan State. It had drawn young men and women from multifarious ethnic groups into it with its many tentacles. They were not only fighting the Burmese government—they were also fighting among themselves.

The Wa officer and his Shan counterpart were not alone in fighting each other. There were others—brothers, family members from various ethnic groups in Shan State, and, as we learned later, those who were recruited, either willingly or unwillingly, into the war to fight for different groups. And it had claimed many lives and devastated many others.

For the first time, I realized that one could confront the follies, atrocities, irrationalities and realities of a war even while drinking tea or whiskey with friends in the comfort of a hut on a mountain a good safe distance away from the actual fighting.

Indeed, the war in Shan State had often been among friends, siblings and family members. That seemed irrational, but how could an ordinary high-school graduate or a simple farmer from the mountains resist when the forces of war were larger and far more powerful than himself?