"Please come" ---- The Burmese people

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About a month ago in Luang Prabang I was chatting to a middle-aged Australian couple about my impending trip to Burma. She was keen to go but he said he didn't want to go to a place where the army periodically shot homeless people in the street to send the fear of God into the rest. I was a bit sceptical about his claims but my first day or so in Rangoon it seemed that there was some evidence. As I wandered around getting my bearings I noticed faded blood-stains on the pavement where someone seemed to have staggered along bleeding profusely, and further along a wall was splattered in faded burgundy like the crime-scene of the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Then I twigged. Most of the older and quite a few of the younger men had what we would describe as a disgusting habit, that of spitting betel juice. They shove green betel leaves into their gobs and masticate with the intensity of Alex Ferguson at a penalty shoot-out which converts them into a swilling mouthful of scarlet saliva which they then unleash on the general public.

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