There he was again. His bright red Adidas baseball cap giving him away. It was a regrettable choice in attire for the third-rate spy.
Trailing two slow moving cyclists must grow tiresome. Specially when said cyclists stop frequently to snap photos, dash behind a tree for attending nature's call or simply achieve tubing the road to have an after lunch siesta. Duty for a Myanmar tourist spy certainly involved none of the thrills and intrigue of the James Bond adventure.
For your pursued i.e. us, being followed, even if it had been by way of a benign gentleman with a motorbike, became only a bother. Being watched is actually uncomfortable. It feels invasive to obtain your every move scrutinized. Plus it's difficult to stifle the desire to rush up and prevent wasting the spy's time. Poor people guy was probably counting across the kilometers till we pedaled away from his district so various other hapless agent could take over.
Setting up with a few minor hassles was part and parcel of cycling Myanmar. It was not like there we were being trailed 24/7. Question we'd trigger about the backroads west of Irrawaddy, these suspicious men on motorbikes were materializing progressively more often. Some were bold, buzzing by and announcing, “We're Myanmar police. Follow me.” Most were friendly, smiling and waving when greeted. Some were borderline nasty, such as officer who caught us camping and whipped out a copy of Myanmar's laws relating to foreign visitors and threatened us with expulsion if you didn't go forward quickly. Naturally, we complied. Double fast.
