It is just after 8am on a sunny Saturday morning and the Muse border post is buzzing. The line of Burmese waiting for permits to cross under the towering faux pagoda and into China for work is already dozens deep. Guards in olive green uniforms check the paperwork of a woman pushing a cart stacked high with boxes in the other direction. A long-haired Burmese hipster in a leather jacket passes through unmolested on a shiny new red Honda with low-rider handlebars. Then a pretty young Chinese woman, upright on a pink electric scooter with a blue parasol, glides through straight on to the ragged verge, narrowly avoiding the oncoming trucks which, stacked high with boxes of Chinese-made TVs and washing machines, kick up swirls of dust as they buck down the thoroughfare.
Watching it all is a clutch of Chinese tourists, eagerly taking pictures of the wild western frontier before them. And watching me watch them is Zaw Min Latt, a 42-year-old driver waiting for Ch