Everyone you talk to from this country's Rohingya minority knows someone who attempted the dangerous and illegal journey by sea: a relative, neighbor or friend.

In recent weeks, the United Nations says there has been a surge of boat people, hundreds of Rohingya cramming into small boats and leaving on a daily basis. They surrender themselves to human traffickers waiting in cargo ships at sea, who then charge extortionate prices with the promise to smuggle passengers to Malaysia.

At a little fishing port outside the provincial capital of Sittwe, carpenters building wooden boats explained how the system works.

"Fifty to 60 people fit into a boat like this," said Mahmud Yacoub, who squatted barefoot clutching a hammer in the skeleton of new wooden vessel about 20 feet long. "The travelers are mixed: men, women and children. It is dangerous and very expensive."

Desperate to escape

The United Nations estimates more than 100,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar this way since ethnic and sectarian violence erupted in the country's western Rakhine state in the summer of 2012. Hundreds died making the seaborne journey.

The 2012 clashes between the state's Rakhine Buddhist community and Rohingya Muslims, a long-oppressed linguistic and ethnic minority in this majority Buddhist country, left hundreds dead and more than 140,000 people homeless.

More than two years after the violence, the government has forcibly segregated Rohingya from the rest of the population in Rakhine state. They live confined in enclaves -- rural ghettos, in effect -- from which they are not allowed to leave. In Sittwe, a town where Rohingya once lived side by side with Rakhines, it is now impossible to find a Rohingya walking down the street.

One of the main mosques is still in ruins after it was torched in June 2012. Another mosque appears to be occupied by Myanmar police.

(CNN)