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clams for food. Using traps, nets and spears they catch an amazing number of species. Typically, these houseboaters have no concept of rent or "meet you in three days." They have no reason to make (or keep) appointments. Like their mythical kin, the sea turtles, often existing between water and land in tidal flats, the animistic Moken appease the water spirits with ceremonial flags, spirit poles, and ancestral effigies. Exploring Mergui by trimaran, my friend Peter and I stop often YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE SEA UNTIL YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON THE SHORE I'm sitting in a kayak in a hidden cove somewhere in the Mergui Archipelago in the Andaman Sea. The archipelago's 800 islands extend 200 miles along Burma's southwestern coast-it's approximately 10,000 square miles of island Eden; an area the size of Vermont, without barns. Only 2 percent of the islands are inhabited, by seasonal fishermen. Occasionally a military boat cruises by. Closed to foreign visitors for 50 years, this former pirate sanctuary has been an explorable destination only since 1997. Since time immemorial, Mergui's waters, along with the western shores of Thailand and Malaysia, have been home to floating nomad families, the Moken, who live most of the year on kabangs, houseboats made from big hollowed-out trees. Monsoon season, from June to October, directs the lives of this self-determining people; that's when they build temporary bamboo-and-grass huts on remote beaches. It's a time to build and repair boats. The Moken belong to no country, they carry no identification pap'ers, and they speak their own language. In the 1990s, the Burmese and Thai governments started an effort to permanently "resettle" these wayfarers on solid ground, so they can be present and accounted for, so children can attend school. With no official count, locals estimate that 1 ,000 Moken live a traditional life on Burmese waters. During their seven-month stretch at sea, the gypsies drift in groups of at least six boats, each vessel housing one family, usually of three generations. They wed young, and the community builds couples a boat, wherein the newlyweds can start their own family. Women cook over an on-board fire, even when moored near a beach. The sea is the children's playground. Babysitting isn't an issue. The floating villages migrate between temporary moorings alongside beaches, in lagoons, and near the leeward edges of islands, where the Moken hunt sea turtles and collect sand worms, shellfish, and to kayak, entering caves, gliding through mangroves, and looking for the Moken. It has taken us days to find these elusive people who are born, live and die at sea. On land, when we approached them, the invitation to exchange confidences evaporated, but approaching our first seagoing Moken in a kayak seemed to lend us a bit of credibility. My friend and I paddle up to a band of families musing in dugout canoes. Sitting with paddles across their knees, they wait for the tide to go out. A Moken woman, impossibly beautiful with broad cheeks and shiny long black hair and sitting alone in a small boat, smiles to reveal teeth stained dark red with betel nut. "How's the fishing?" I ask the woman. Our guide, Tham (pronounced "Tom"), translates my question into Burmese, and an elderly man then translates that into Moken. "Fish scared away-now over there," nods the woman, paddling in place. I turn to my friend to jest about their seabound life being one way to avoid paying rent. When Tham inordinately translates the quip, the grandfather glances our way, winces with gentle, searching eyes, and speaks. Tham says something lost or found in translation: "Don't rent space in your head to just anyone." PADDLING BACK IN TIME Once ashore in Burma, rewind a century. To get to the Mergui Archipelago, you hire one of the many water taxis bobbing at the busy Thai port town of Ranong to take you across the Pakchan channel to Kawthaung in Burma. These long, narrow wooden boats, powered by engines that outroar even the baddest-ass modified Harley-Davidson pipes. Try to sit up front. . From Kawthaung, we motor slowly and quietly for 10 hours, through the night, to Lampi, an island the size of Phuket. Under the moon, we glide by boats lit like carnival floats with strings of lightbulbs to attract squid. Random vessels bob above and below the undulating horizon. The high road to the world's end. In the morning I see that these canoelike net-fishing boats are dark, 12-feet long, and carry up to four 34

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