Some Myanmar singles are marrying even if they've only met online
YANGON -- Esther Ngun Nei Mawi just had the kind of wedding she dreamed of as a young girl. There was a table stacked with gifts, a banquet, hundreds of her friends and family members in attendance and a bridal gown of handwoven fabric unique to her community in western Myanmar.
There was, however, one vital thing missing: the groom.
While Esther,19, was eating cake and dancing, her 25-year-old fiancé, Van Bawi Piang, was more than 1,400 miles away in Malaysia.
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Bawi Pi, as he's also known, has lived abroad for the three years since he migrated from his village near Esther’s town of Falam. But thanks to some crude digital editing, that didn’t stop him from being in the wedding photo.
In the picture, taken in advance of the ceremony, Bawi Pi’s face has been superimposed above the shoulders of another man -- his cousin -- who stood in for the groom while wearing a nuptial suit.
That's why the couple’s pose appears slightly awkward: the so-called groom's legs are askew ,as if he's uncomfortable hugging his bride from behind.
Esther and Bawi Pi have in fact never hugged, kissed or even held hands. Their entire relationship has taken shape on Facebook, Viber and over the phone.
Their entire relationship has taken place on Facebook, Viber and over the phone.
That’s an impressive feat considering mountainous, remote Falam has terrible internet reception and an unreliable power supply.
The couple did briefly meet in 2012, when Bawi Pi visited Esther’s town for a week, but she hardly remembers it. And when he added her on Facebook two years ago, he had to remind her who he was.
So Esther was shocked when Bawi Pi, who slowly became her sort-of online boyfriend, proposed over the phone in April. It wasn’t until his parents showed up to her house to try and convince her to say yes that she took him seriously.
“I thought he was joking,” she said as she sat on a low plastic stool in a teashop in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial hub. She was there waiting for her Malaysian visa before jetting off to live with her new husband just outside of Kuala Lumpur.
She will stay with him there for up to two years before they return to Myanmar to set up a small business. Shortly after her arrival in Kuala Lumpur there will be a second, smaller wedding ceremony. that will make the union legally binding.
It’s all very exciting for Esther, who has only left her country once. But if she’s being honest with herself, it’s not yet shaping up to be a fairytale ending.
“Even now I don’t love him that much,” she said, laughing. “He told me, ‘When you come to Malaysia I’m sure you will love me.’”
In socially conservative Myanmar, where poverty is rife and the family unit is considered essential, pragmatism often trumps true love.
In Chin state, the nation's poorest and least developed region, large numbers of young people have been forced to move abroad for work to support their families. Yet social media has enabled some of them to continue looking for a spouse in their home country.
Another couple married and divorced without ever setting foot in the same country.
At least two other women in Falam have had weddings with absent grooms, Esther said. In one case, the bride and her new husband split up while she was in Yangon waiting for her visa to go and see him. In other words, the couple married and divorced without ever setting foot in the same country.
The first time Esther spoke face-to-face with her new husband was via Facebook’s video call function. “I was so shy at first that I had to hang up,” she said.
Being hundreds of miles away from each other hasn’t stopped the couple from suffering many familiar relationship pitfalls. It’s just that their problems have played out on timelines and over messaging apps, instead of in person.
“If he sees me in a photo standing next to a male friend he gets upset and asks me to take it down,” she said.
“Sometimes, if I don’t chat with him or message him all day he calls me and says, ‘Why aren’t you talking to me? Do you have a new boyfriend?’ He says that if I’m not online he’s scared I’m with another man,” she said as her phoned bleeped.
It was Bawi Pi ringing via Facebook messenger, but she ignored it. He called again several times, and Esther kept glancing down at her screen to message him between each missed call to explain that she was being interviewed. “Why aren’t you answering? Are you angry with me?” he wrote.
Esther's keyboard background is the doctored wedding photo featuring the face of a man she hardly knows.
“Even if I don’t end up loving him,” she said, clutching her smartphone, “I’ve decided I will stay with him until I die.”
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Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
