China is an easier place to live in, Burmese migrants say.

While the morning routines of Nilar and Htun Shwe, both Burmese, sound similar in Thailand and China, their situations are quite different.

Both head for the market in the mornings; both sell Burmese-style curry. Both left their hometowns in Burma to make more money. Yet both lead quite different lives in societies that are host to a sizable number of Burmese migrants.

Nilar left her small village in Tenasserim Division, Burma six years ago. These days, she carries the fresh curry she cooks everyday in a big basket on her head, peddling them at lunch time to Burmese migrant workers. Some 100,000 many of them work in the fishing industry here.

She earns about 100 baht a day (2.5 U.S. dollars), to support her and her four children. The job does not seem particularly dangerous, but for Nilar the daily trip to the market became risky after five run-ins with a Thai gang on her way there.

Four years ago, five gang members on two motorbikes harassed her, stripped her and stole the 507 baht (13 dollars) she was to use to buy that day's curry ingredients.

She now dreads going to the market, but must do so because she is the main breadwinner in her family.

So, she has devised a way to keep her money safe. "When they (the gang members) see me, they search my body," says Nilar. Now, to fool the gang, "I tie the money with a rubber band at the edge of my sarong to hide it."

Nilar says she knows that Thai authorities advise migrant workers in the border town not to go out between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. But how can she make money if she cannot go out in the early mornings?

In Ruili in south-western China, meantime, it is quite a different picture for Htun Shwe, a former teacher in Burma who runs his own restaurant along a narrow street near the famous Ruili gems market, an area busy with Burmese migrants.

After returning from the market each morning, he and his four children begin cooking curry so that they are ready for the lunch-hour rush of customers and before the dinner clientele.

At midday, Htun Shwe's shop can have some 100 customers daily. He makes a profit of about 70 yuan (350 baht or 9 dollars) everyday.

Rushing to and from tables of customers at lunchtime, his face bathed in sweat, Htun Shwe says, "Here, things are well." In China, he says he can earn as much as he is willing to work, and the currency is stable.