The Burmese soldiers were wearing flip-flops. This was the first thing I noticed when Renee and I reached the other side of the bridge from Thailand. The men with automatic assault rifles and the ability to throw us in a maximum-security gulag for the pro-democracy pamphlets we were carrying in our backpacks were wearing flip-flops.

It was then that I started to get very nervous. The lack of prescription to uniform was indicative of a poorly run, localized military. A poorly run, localized military meant a lack of concern for Geneva protocol in the treatment of prisoners and American "spies." Neither Renee nor I wanted to go to a Burmese prison, especially not because of these guards. We each put $20 in our passports, handed them forward and stayed quiet.

The paperwork was taking a very long time, and I started to squirm on my cheap plastic stool at the customs booth. The sun was white and hot. A guard was tapping his flip-flop in the silence. Our $20 bills, our passports, our ID and every bit of paperwork that tied us to the outside world was on the counter, out of reach. I was beginning to think we had made a very bad mistake.

"What is the purpose of your visit?" asked a stern-looking officer.

"We're just traveling around," I said, playing up the stupid American backpacker stereotype to which the Burmese government, desperate for cash, catered at these border crossings. "We heard Myanmar is very beautiful. Thought we'd make a day trip."

I smiled.

The officers stared back blankly.

Was I too nervous? I showed my well-worn copy of Lonely Planet: Thailand to prove I was a carefree, ignorant Western traveler. They get a lot of those in Thailand and Burma. How would the Burmese know we were hanging out with a pro-democracy insurgency organization?

The officers smiled.

"You leave tonight?"

"Yes."

"Very sorry to hear that." If we stayed longer, they could ask for more bribe money. Forty dollars is two weeks wages. The guard stamped our passports, handed them back, and pointed us down the crowded dirt road.

"No pictures. Only pictures at the wat and the market. You have a camera?"

I nodded yes. They had already seen it.

"No pictures."

An intelligence officer jogged up to escort us around for the afternoon, making sure we obeyed. I noticed exposed rolls of film in the gutter. I desperately wanted to take a picture of them, but I sensed somehow that that would not be well-received.

It was later, when we witnessed civilians, including 4 year olds, working under the supervision of the military in construction sites with barbed wire fencing them in, did we understand. They had every reason to prevent us from taking pictures.

The story of Burma is an overwhelming one. There are few places in the world where the repression of free speech is so brutal yet the shouts for peace and democracy are so loud. The United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations all have detailed a long series of abuses by the military junta against the civilian populace. These abuses have increased in recent years, and include murder, torture, rape, detention without trial, forced labor, and a general repression of internationally recognized human rights.

My summer was spent in neighboring Thailand, traveling with the Free Burma Coalition, recording some of these cases and wondering if I really could change anything.

In 1988, the military government was faced with calls for democracy after several students were killed while protesting against the government. Thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate, and the government responded. On Aug. 8, 1988, less than one year before the famous Tiananmen Square massacre in nearby China, the military received orders to open fire on the peaceful demonstrators in Rangoon, the nation's capital. More than 10,000 people, citizens who had gathered for peace, were gunned down in the streets.

When news reached the international community, the military government attempted to compensate for its actions by allowing for the first democratic election in 28 years. The National League for Democracy, led by "The Lady," Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, won over 80 percent of the vote. Most of the remainder of the vote went to different anti-military organizations, representing various minority ethnic groups. The military won less than 2 percent of the vote.

Faced with these stunning losses, the military backtracked and called off the election, arrested the leaders of the National League for Democracy and their close supporters, and tightened its grip on the power structure. International human rights organizations estimate that more than 1,500 political prisoners are still in prison. The military is still in place. Today, the military government calls the country "Myanmar" to distance it from the bloody past of Burma. The people see this as an insult added to grievous injury.

"The people are angry at the military," explains Bo Kyi as we eat noodles at a little food stand on the street in Chiang Mai, Thailand. "It is like a fire covered up with ash. When the time is right, the wind will blow, and the fire will come back."

He makes a motion with his hands suggesting an explosion. Then he is quiet, and stares out at the passing cars and motorcycles. I don't know what to say.

Kyi was a 21-year-old engineering student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology when the protesting in 1988 reached a head in the streets outside of his apartment. He mentions, in passing, that his friends were killed standing next to him. He was my age. He is now 32 and has a wife and three children living in one of the border refugee camps. He works in Thailand illegally, bribing local police through "special arrangements" so that he can translate for the humanitarian media organization, Images Asia, and send the money back to his family. He sees them once every few months.

Sometimes, when the Thai police want more money, they arrest him, threaten to deport him, and demand double his normal bribe. His friends normally come through with the money, but they all worry if there will be a day when circumstances will conspire against him, they can't get the money to him in time, and he would land in a Burmese prison. They have killed other Burmese resistance workers in prison, and Kyi is no different.

Kyi talks briefly about his 10 years in the jungle on the Thai-Burmese border, learning how to find the difficult-to-detect, plastic baby bottle landmines set by the Burmese soldiers. He now uses this knowledge when he sneaks back into Burma to film the force slave labor policies of the military. He laughs at the idea that he once taunted soldiers by walking through a minefield, encouraging them to follow.

When he stops laughing, he looks very old. Some Thai school children run by, in blue uniforms, laughing and shouting, oblivious to our conversation. I pay for the meal and we leave.