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First came the tear gas. The crowd began running — and then came the bullets.

"I didn't know where to run," says Vida, a 48-year-old monk. "I was running for my life."

For a quarter of an hour, as he hid in a side street, he listened to the terrifying sound of gunfire. Myanmar's police and soldiers were shooting into the crowd of monks and protesters.

"We were told that one young student was shot in the head, and his brains were splattered on the ground," Vida remembers. "We didn't dare to go back to the crowd."

Vida, one of the first monks to escape from Myanmar, told his extraordinary story to The Globe and Mail at a safe house in Thailand yesterday, just across the border from Myanmar.

Vida and two other monks survived the military assault on their peaceful protest march in Rangoon last week, then managed to hide in the homes of supporters to evade the police. They made a tortuous four-day journey across Myanmar, taking shelter in the homes of sympathizers, finally reaching Thailand this week.

Myanmar's military regime may have crushed the protests temporarily, but Vida is convinced that the monks will win in the end. Within a few weeks, they will begin planning a new strategy to defeat the regime, he says.

"This is just a pause in our fight," he said, speaking slowly and calmly as he sat in the home of student supporters in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. "This is not the end.

"We have already decided to go to the end. The people are waiting for us. Even if we have to pay with our lives, we will pay."

Sitting cross-legged on mats in a second-floor bedroom of the student headquarters, the monks talked solemnly about the events of the previous two weeks, with Vida doing most of the speaking. A second monk, an older man, was suffering from a medical ailment and hoping for treatment.

Vida's story began on Sept. 17, when the 30 monks at his small monastery in Rangoon decided unanimously to join the protest movement.

Vida, a former taxi driver and television repairman, became a monk seven years ago. He has watched his country falling deeper and deeper into economic misery. When fuel prices were tripled in August, it was the spark that ignited a peaceful revolt.

"We've seen how the majority of people are suffering, and we are very sad about it," he said. "Some people are trying to survive on rice water … prices keep rising and rising, but incomes are fixed. People just cannot bear it any more."

In the past, the monks had avoided politics. But when the street protests grew bigger last month, and when a letter arrived at his monastery to ask the monks to join the marches, Vida had no hesitation.

"We saw how people were getting poorer and poorer, and their troubles were getting bigger and bigger. We felt that the protests were a good thing and we should join them."

At first, the monks took turns at the street protests in a rotation system. Vida collected alms to support those who marched. But at the beginning of last week, all of the monks were called to join the protests, and soon 100,000 people were on the streets of Rangoon, defying the military.

"We felt very happy," Vida recalls. "We felt we were doing the right thing for the people. We were determined to keep doing whatever we had to do. We were praying for peace and asking for lower prices and the release of the political prisoners. When we marched, people were surrounding us, cheering us and protecting us."

They didn't expect the bloodshed that followed. "We were shocked and saddened. …We expected a peaceful ending, but instead they crushed us violently."

After fleeing the hail of bullets, Vida and the other monks wandered the streets, not knowing what to do. They did not dare to go to their monastery, knowing that it had been raided by paramilitary thugs who beat and arrested anyone they could find.

That night, they stayed at the homes of ordinary people who supported them. But they knew the secret police were combing the streets, searching for the protest leaders, and they realized it was becoming too dangerous for people to shelter them. They decided to escape from Rangoon.

They were helped by countless people. Sympathizers gave them small sums of money. The owner of a mini-bus donated the tickets for their fare to the next province. A restaurant owner allowed them to eat for free. They briefly found a haven at one monastery, but the next night they were told that the police had warned the monastery not to accept any visitors. And finally, after four days of evading the police, they reached a bridge and crossed the border to Thailand.

"Many monks are still hiding, at the homes of people, or on the top floors of apartment buildings," Vida said.

"It's dangerous for anyone who goes out. We are worried about our friends, especially those who have been arrested or have disappeared. We saw that the military is very brutal, and we think a lot of people must have been tortured or killed. We plead with the international community to support us in any way you can."

The military may have 400,000 soldiers and a fearsome array of security agencies, but Vida has no doubt that the monks will prevail. "The regime will not last much longer. As Buddhists, we have the power of love."

The three monks have changed from their crimson robes into the saffron robes that are more widespread in Thailand.

They face an uncertain fate in Thailand, where refugees from Myanmar are grudgingly tolerated but sometimes deported back to their homeland. For the foreseeable future, they will remain in hiding. Very few exiles from Myanmar are granted legal registration papers in Thailand, and the three monks have already overstayed their one-day pass from Myanmar, so they could easily be deported if they are caught by Thai police.

Vida said he will certainly return to Myanmar to continue the fight, no matter how long it takes. "The army knows that what it did was wrong. Next time they will support the people. The army can be divided, but the unity of the monks will never be divided."

He knows that Buddhist monks should refrain from anger, and love everyone. Yet he admits that he feels nothing but hatred for the soldiers who shot. "This was so brutal, and it affected everyone. Those who shot us will go to the bottom of hell."