Sex drops and whiskey packets: The bizarre market built around a barbed wire fence

Mae Sot, Thailand: It is a most peculiar market. Here vendors sell “sex drops” and whiskey in squeeze packets. Vapes, illegal now in Thailand, are plentiful. Hard liquor costs a few bucks – and not just the obscure, bootlegged stuff, but the name brands too. So say the labels, at least.

The most unusual thing about this 150-metre row of stalls on the edge of the dry riverbank, though, is the thigh-high barbed wire fence separating seller from customer.

A man tends his market stall on a sandbar in the middle of the Moei River on the Thai- Myanmar border between Mae Sot and Myawaddy, Myanmar.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Why would a market adorn itself in such a way?

The wire, in fact, is the border.

On one side is the Thai town of Mae Sot, a six- or seven-hour drive north-west of Bangkok and one of the main crossing points to and from Myanmar. On the other side, where the vendors are working, is ... nowhere, technically.

“It is No Man’s Land,” one stallholder says, rows of Myanmar smokes stacked behind her. “There are still arguments between Thailand and Myanmar about who takes responsibility for this land.”

You can see Myanmar through the gaps in the wooden stalls on the other side of the Moei River, about 50 metres away. That’s where the vendors live, in the town of Myawaddy, mostly.

Even when fighting ripped through Myawaddy last year – resistance groups fighting the military junta temporarily controlled the town – these vendors still came to work to flog their knock-off booze, tobacco and aphrodisiacs (the sex drops).

“No bosses here,” one man says. “We are the boss.”

The reason they sell here is that the Thai Baht delivers a better profit, maybe THB300 ($14) a day, he says. “Some days we make a profit, some days we make a loss. The life here is very good.”

In the middle of No Man’s Land – on the Moei riverbank – are ramshackle structures. They are temporary homes. None of the ethnic Karen residents who live there seem to be stallholders, a privilege somewhat controversially now almost exclusively enjoyed by Muslims.

And the residents don’t wish to speak on the record because apparently they are not supposed to live in No Man’s Land, not that anyone of official authority can really tell them otherwise. Every year, however, the rising river washes the buildings away, forcing them elsewhere until the dry returns, they say.

We meet an off-duty Thai police officer and, trying to wrap our heads around how it all works, ask him what happens if there is a murder in No Man’s Land. Who comes to help?

“Thailand can’t do anything,” he says. “Here is the barbed wire, and beyond that is not Thailand.”

This is why the stallholders can sell whatever they please to Thais over the barbed wire: Thailand’s laws do not apply, and neither do Myanmar’s.

The fence is neither high, nor is it rigidly patrolled. Vendors hop back and forth from No Man’s Land to Thailand in the course of their duties, covering sections of the sharp wire with cardboard to make it a little easier.

But they can’t stay long or stray too far. If they wish to do so, they must ask permission from the Thai police. This appears to be the only hard-and-fast rule.

During our visit, one woman tries to test the rule. She is not a stallholder but one of the residents in the middle. Angry shouting ensues: if people break the rules, who’s to say the Thai authorities won’t find a way to shut them all down, border be damned, one of the shouters explains.

Thai police quickly descend on the woman and whisk her around the corner to someplace unknown. It is a most peculiar market.

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