She’s scrubbing dishes at a busy restaurant, not quite off the books, but close. But she is focused enough to want to stick to her plan, ands wary enough to decline Guo’s help and almost rebuff his advances. Guo ( Kai Ko) has made his interest in Lianqing obvious. “But don’t wear a (Burmese) sarong,” in Burmese with English subtitles). Sure, learn the language, ride the bus, hit the markets, take any job that will hire you (most won’t). Helpful colleagues and roommates guide her, but a couple of acquaintances embittered and frustrated by the barriers to getting by here are just as instructive. She is 23, innocent to the point of naive. A police raid/roundup of all of Lianqing’s friends and relatives, sharing an apartment? Fixed with another. Those in the know - Chinese expat business folk and locals - have mastered the way to get by - bribery.Ī checkpoint inspection of the mule’s pickup? Fixed with a bribe. This Taiwanese/Thai co-production carefully observes a working underworld in a country where fake work permits are expensive to come by, and useless - and real ones impossible to get. Maybe things will work out well enough here, as she tries to work and raise the money to move on. But she has a support system in Thailand. Lianqing (stoically played by Ke-Xi Wu) hopes to make it to Taiwan. “The Road to Mandalay” is a quietly understated and cautionary migration drama, two people cross a border on their way to better lives. Little do they realize that they’ve just finished the easy part. She declines, but accepts his phone number and his gallantry, and gives him hers.Īfter all, they’re both from the same city in Myanmar. One will ride in front, others have to hide, lying flat, in the false bed in the truck’s back to avoid detection.Įven though Guo has paid the higher priced fare to the mule, he will swap places with Lianqing.Īt the end of their harrowing journey of checkpoints and bribes, he urges her to take a ride into Bangkok with his sister. Both are to pile into a pickup truck that will smuggle them deep into Thailand.
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