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That is a good question. https://starlink.com/map shows neither Myanmar, Thailand or Laos having coverage.

Perhaps they were using the "roam" version (https://starlink.com/roam), which seems to work pretty much anywhere.

I manage a maritime starlink installation. The geofence rules are very odd. Starlink is not licensed in either Cambodia or Thailand. When my ship was in Cambodia starlink automatically disconnected, but when we sailed into Thailand it came back online - despite both countries not having starlink available.

SpaceX acknowledged the use that has apparently moved to cut service for some scam camps: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2e5541d1o

My assumption is that either the terminals don't check, or the organized criminals paid a guy to hack the terminals to think they're in (insert licensed East Asian country here); and SpaceX specifically didn't adjust their constellation orbits to avoid Myanmar so that you can get a signal with a terminal that doesn't care about radio emissions law.