The trip begins with the long-awaited but unexpected good news from Rangoon where the armed resistance movements’ Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) and the government’s Union Peacemaking Work Committee (UPWC) made an announcement on Friday, 15 August, the first day of their latest formal meeting that Naypyitaw had accepted the country should be a federal state. “With the agreement on Federalism, the main obstacle has gone,” one NCCT member was reported as saying. “The rest will be just technical details.”

It is, without doubt, a historic breakthrough considering the fact that the country has gone through 52 years of hell, beginning 1962 when the armed forces staged a coup citing federalism (equated with secession) to justify it.

I’m, by nature, always in my element when things go wrong, because I tend to confidently look for the silver lining in the clouds. But when things look bright and promising, I become uneasy and try to look for a catch in them.

So when I was invited to attend the tripartite meeting—government, armed resistance movements and political parties—which is to be held tomorrow, I knew I had to go at least to see, hear and get the feel of things.

My plane is a new one, Mann Yadanarpon Airlines (MYA). Departure time is 16:30 (Burma Standard Time), half an hour later than Thailand’s. Check-in time is 14:30, So I find myself plenty of time to kill when I get there.

Fortunately, I have brought three books:

By the time we arrive at Mingaladon airport, it is already 20:00, because the plane, as most airlines are in Burma, does not fly directly to Rangoon but had stopped by at Mandalay before continuing to Mingaladon. 

 It takes another hour to pick up our bags, hire a taxi and arrive at the hotel, Summer Palace, near the Myanmar Peace Center (MPC) where the meeting is going to take place tomorrow.

I go white when the reception tells me it will cost me 55,000 kyat (1,800 baht/$60) per night. But my friend who had booked the room and noticed the funny look on my face gently advises me, “This is not Chiang Mai and you should count yourself lucky and thankful to get it.”

The upshot of it is that I pay my rent for two nights and meekly let myself led to my room in the 6^th floor by a hotel porter.

As I the elevator climbs up, I notice that it has a ground floor (instead of 1^st floor) but no 4^th floor.

So each of us is a freak in his/her own way after all.