Getting higher

STANDING sentinel over one of Myanmar’s main border crossings to China, in the town of Mongla, is a lurid pink building, the Drug Eradication Museum. The sleazy frontier post, Chinese in all but name, is at the heart of the Golden Triangle, where the three South-East Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos adjoin their giant northern neighbour. It is an area that has long been synonymous with one thing: drugs.

At the museum the authorities have chosen to portray how the cultivation of opium poppies and the production of heroin and other drugs shrivelled in the face of a determined eradication programme. Dog-eared black-and-white photos record all the diplomats and foreign journalists coming to witness the triumphant destruction of thousands of hectares of poppy fields. Here and there among the exhibits Myanmar’s then military dictator, Than Shwe, descends by helicopter to survey the good work. But the chronicle of relentless success ends in 2006. Beyond the museum walls since then, and particularly recently, it has been a different story.