Hey there...
The first
Plum Rain of the season arrived in town this Wednesday. About time cause it's been so hot recently that the moisture has been building around my plums.
It is way late and seems like forever ago, but am gonna hammer through our Myanmar trip. It took forever cause I needed to go through Betty's photos first and while the quality was good, the quantity was overwhelming...nearly 1800 over 6 days. What is that? There are a mess of good ones and am gonna attach a load of them with a running guide of what we did and where, but first am gonna give an overall impression of the place.
Stated that I wasn't eager to go to Myanmar but Betty had it on her list and you do what ya gotta do. My reasons for not wanting to go were that it is always hot and in looking at the itinerary, there were a lot of Buddhist temples and I have long been a believer of the adage if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all. And we did the latter. I thought I knew a decent amount about the place but was sadly mistaken. Here is my 10 cent recap of their history. Kind of a backwater even in terms of SE Asian cultures, they had their heyday about 1000AD. Between then and the British arriving in the 1800's, it was an amalgamation of loosely related tribes...there are 37 of them in the country today.
When the British do their colonial thing in Burma, it is towards the end of their run and they used it to exploit natural resources (natch), but weren't there long enough, or gave much of a shit, to put much of the good stuff, like infrastructure, in so it was kind of the forgotten outpost. WWII was all about the gentle touch of the Japanese occupation (The Bridge on the River Kwai?) They gained their independence in 1948 and after several attempts at democracy, with some notable world politicians like U Thant, the military took over in 1962 and ruled with the typical corrupt and harsh hand that you would expect until 2011.
No one really gave this military government much thought all that time cause we weren't at war with the Commies there and why mess up a good thing? What sealed the military's fate was Cyclone Nargis in 2008 when an estimated 200,000 people died. It is estimated cause there was no real census before or after, areas were totally wiped out and the government refused any aid to enter the country. The democratic government elected in 2011 with Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Khi is hamstrung by the military, which naturally still wields ultimate power. Continued sectarian strife and civil wars, which have been going on since 1948, but you hear about them now as there is a modest amount of freedom, abound in all parts.
Think it is safe to say that I am fairly well traveled albeit more of the
Grand Tour kind than that of visiting the poorer areas of the planet. Of all the places I have spent time, Myanmar gave me a feeling of hopelessness not felt anywhere else. I've never been to India and experienced that nation's poverty on epic scale, but
whenever I read stuff or listen to folks that go, there is always a kernel of hope or areas of the economy doing well or having potential. I felt zero hope in the folks we encountered here. Other than scratching a living out in some service or agricultural endeavor, there are only two avenues to make it out of that existence. The military controls all the levers of industry, so you can do that, or you can devote your life to Buddhism. There was an English language newspaper that I got my hands on daily, and there would be multiple horrific stories about what goes on. One day was an article about drug addiction...Myanmar back in the day was a corner of the Golden Triangle heroin trade, but in recent years, technology has made it easy to eradicate the crop, so the savvy drug lords moved their trade indoors and now make meth. The meth is so cheap that the rate of addiction and all the associated horror that goes on with that controls huge areas of the countryside. Another day was a story of a Burmese maid that was sent home from Singapore in a brain dead coma. Myanmar does not allow its people to work outside of the country, like Indonesia and the Philippines do, for whatever reason, but the people are so desperate that they go anyway. These folks aren't trained or protected (like Indonesians and Filipinos), so their employers get unhappy with their work and beat the shit out of them.
The story that hit me the hardest was about the Burmese "brides". China didn't like having girls for a few decades and they are experiencing a shortage of them now. The solution is to bring in women from other countries, with Burma being the easiest target, to become brides. This is sometimes done legally but more often, the women are trafficked. There are no glamour wedding in store for these girls however. The story commented how these women are kept prisoner in the homes of these men, impregnated, and when they give birth are sent back to Myanmar without their child. Some of these women do it voluntaril just to get a few bucks or food.
I never once felt unsafe there, which is obviously a result of a fear of the authorities. I also never once felt any spontaneous or real looks or emotions of joy. Wherever we'd stop there were the usual folks selling their trinkets and they barely even tried to entice us. The hawkers in each town would have a line in English to say, "Maybe later" or "You promise" for example, but they said it like a character would in 1984...saying their lines with no enthusiasm or real belief. People took us around the sights, or fed us or took our tickets at airports, but just never felt anything other than resignation. I know that there has to be joy and we missed it of course, but it felt really weird and sad. I always feel lucky and understand that it is because of where and when I was born, but if I was born there in 1965...
Want to hear the most messed up thing about the place? We all know it used to be called Burma and was renamed Myanmar...officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. I thought that Burma was a name given by colonial Britain but research shows that wasn't the case and that it was the military that thought the sound of 'Republic of the Union' empowered them somehow. Their language used to be called Burmese but with the new name, is called something else. I asked some people what it was called now and they were at a loss, calling it the language of Myanmar and such. Obviously, the new language has to be called Mayonnaise.
Not the funniest but that was the best joke I came up with on the trip and while it was lost on the natives, I enjoyed it and have worked it into the rotation. OK...onto the travelogue. Many photos and a few comments so feel free to peel off as you see fit.
A good thing about going to Myanmar from Taiwan is that there is a direct flight to Yangon (5hr) so do not have to spend an entire day in transit like many SE Asian destinations, so had some time this afternoon to check out the capital of 3.4 million souls. The Yangon airports are quite nice and modern too. We met our driver and guide and headed into town but of course had to stop on the way to see the big Buddha. It is big and he's chilling out, but him being made of plastic kind of made it lose its luster for me.
After a quick refreshment at the hotel, we headed down to the colonial/governmental core. Our guide told us not to pay this lady for the chance to free a bird for good luck. Paying to set something free seems to be a theme
The central park was filled with locals and they seemed to be having a good time...
A couple of the old buildings are still functioning and in decent shape
But the majority are crumbling under decades of mold and inattention, and are filled with squatters
One that isn't is the old post office turned into a jail. Still in need of a good scrubbing however
And in a bizzare scene, outside in the van are the folks pending movement into the jail where friends and family get to talk to them and bring them snacks
We then walked around the open air street market to look at all the produce and meat.
As a westerner with a penchant for meats being kept refrigerated and free of mass amounts of flies making babies on it, I can never get past the nausea seeing all cuts of meat and fish sitting on the ground in 100 degree heat.
We immediately saw all people with this white stuff on their faces and learned it is called
thanaka, Here it is and will go into it a bit more later
Last stop of the day was at dusk for the Shwedagon Pagoda which is the center of the religion in the country and every person we would later speak to asked if we had seen it. We saw a lot of temples/pagodas/monasteries and this will be the last time I name them cause it started to bleed together quick
This is a common refrain in all parts of the globe.
You get a glimpse of the Mayonaise language in the above photo which has been described as looking like butts...lots and lots of butts.
Photo op by the sacred bodhi tree
Big and gold with hundreds of smaller shrines around it.
A feature of many shrines is the addition of LED halos around the Buddhas. Felt cheap and disrespectful, but hey...it's your thing
Next AM (early...all of our departure times were ungodly early) we took a short flight to the historic capital of Bagan. Myanmar has 5 different regional airlines and we took them all for some reason. You could drive, but a 25 minute prop plane flight would take 8 - 20 hours by car.
Bagan was at its peak in the 11 century and there are aver 3,800 hundred temples there and it felt from the start that our guide was gonna show us them all. "This one has plaster!" or . "This Buddhas eyes follow you around the temple." We went to a few this day and were told stories, none of which I wrote down. This was the goldest one.
Effin' adorable future monks
Get it on...
Making donations/offerings to the Buddha is di rigeur. Small bills, food and one had cigarettes.
So this thanaka stuff is tree bark ground into a paste and the folks put it on their face and then form into designs. We're told it also has sunscreen properties but seemed to be more of a make-up thing.
Every guide we talked to had the obligatory rant against the Chinese tourists. Myanmar's issues with them are the same as everywhere...they come in hordes, don't buy anything local, make messes, etc. Since the Rohinga crises, tourism from western countries is said to be down 40% so in order to make up for the shortfall, they gave the Chinese an exemption and made their entry into the country visa fee free, which seems to have helped increase tourism as the place was filled. We had no interest, but in the Chinese tourism books as a thing to do is to take a horse cart around the old Bagan. As it was one of the few things the Chinese would spend money on in the local economy, the horse cart drivers doubled their rates. Good for them.
Mayonnaise lacquerware has a long tradition and we were taken to a shop to view the operation and it was fascinating. This step by step wheel of the process gave good insight as to the process. The craftmanship is laborious and extraordinary. We bought a lovely tray.
Adorable kid in the shop playing with bubblewrap.
Last stop of the day was to a small rise that was built for people to congregate and watch the sunrise/sunset. The place is incredibly flat, so from a short perch, you can see as far as the pollution will allow.
Which isn't far. You can sort of get the gist as to how many temples there are in this region in that shot. I mentioned it was hot, but the "haziness' we were met with from arrival to departure was unrelenting. It is not industrial pollution but rather a combination of stifling humidity and mass burning of leaves and garbage that coats the air. I asked in each town if there is ever a time when the sky turns blue. "No" was the answer every time. . The people watching here was pretty good. There was some Thai influencer there live streaming his time in Bagan.
Every stop we would get the folks running up to us trying to sell their souvenirs and they were not terribly interesting, but here was a bunch of kids that used crayons to draw pictures of the sites and then sell them. Thought that was really cool and wanted to talk to these kids about it, but they were devoid of passion, which is when I noticed the lack of that in this crowd.
Had to get one of their renderings of course.
Next day was number two in Bagan and we had the thing that is rated number one activity in Myanmar...a balloon ride over Bagan. Gotta go early for rides to catch the right air currents. The buses w were picked up in were old Japanese troop transports. You can feel the ghosts.
Must say that I was nervous going in as had not been wowed by the local attention to safety and infrastructure, but the balloon companies are all owned by Brits with the pilots coming from the Commonwealth. Can't see it too well in this photo, but these balloons carry 16 passengers and the baskets are separated into 4 compartments. They put the other Chinese lady flying solo in our wedge, and the rest of the balloon was filled with Germans. All of the white tourists we encountered this trip were Germans and it became a running gag when we would stumble across them being their German selves, we would say "Germans" in the way Seinfeld used to say "Newman".. A story we were told yesterday at the temple with the fading mosaics was that half of them were gone as they were stolen by a German industrialist who cut them off the wall. Not the first time we've heard about this penchant of theirs. Germans...
A smooth ride and pretty I suppose, but the barren landscape and it being all brown from ground to sky , I was ready to land. Betty and I did a balloon ride in Napa a few years ago, and the sky was crystal clear so am obviously jaded. A colleague from school travelled there this week and we did a bunch of the same stuff. This balloon ride was a bucket list thing for her and she loved it and it was hard for me to bite my tongue and not say that it was disappointing.
We landed on the banks of the Ayeyarwaddy River, which originates in the Himalayas and is the main artery and life blood of the country, and saw these folks drying their chilis. Think this was my favorite moment in Bagan.
We were done early and our guide picked us up at 10ish to go to some city an hour away to see a depressing open air market, and more monestaries/temples/monestary temples. But first, Betty decided to try her hand at thanaka
Power move would have been to tell the guy we'd prefer to bag it and hang poolside cause we had all seen enough and it was roasting hot. Going to this guys monastery and him showing us the sacred texts, and writing in his book as cool, but still.
Last activity of the day as a boat ride on the Ayeyarwaddy for sunset, which was nice cause it was cooler.
Day 4 had us on another prop puddle jumper to the city of Mandalay. That name evokes thoughts of a golden city and Crosby/Hope buddy films. We get in the car and the place is a dump. The highlight of the morning was going to (another) monastery and watching the monks line up to eat.
Then it was onto the hillside for more temples and views of the brownness.
We then went to a part of town where we took a "ferry" across this river to an island that held the old fortresses and such.
The idea was to eat lunch and then take a two hour horse cart ride around the place that had more temples that were all advertised to be crumbling. We felt bad for the horses.
This is where we learned our lesson from yesterday and made the call to tell the guy that we were done and wanted to pass on the horse cart and call it a day. You can see the look of satisfaction on our faces knowing there were no more temples in store.
Those hats look goofy, but let me tell you how great they are. Our guide had one and we saw him take it out of his bag in folded form and strap it on. Folded, it is the thickness of a Pee-chee folder and half the size, and in the shape of a pagoda.
Absolutely perfect to chuck in your bag for anytime perfect sun protection. At 75 cents apiece, bought a half dozen of them for future use.
Before he took us to the hotel, asked him to stop at the U Bein Bridge as it was featured highly in the books I read beforehand. Spanning over a kilometer over the main lake in town, it is the longest bridge made of teak in the world and is full of locals passing the time and is supposedly crammed at sunset. We liked it OK, but the thing we were fascinated by were the dudes in the water harvesting the vegetation
Our day over early, the hotel we stayed that night was quite good...Babydoll and I took a dip, the girls went for massages while I napped, then we had dinner in the bar and they served very tapas of good quality. We were feeling pretty good.
As I blab this out, get the feeling that I am being negative on the place but you know you get the straight shit from me as I have not been wowed to this point. We had a couple days to go and we left early the next morning for our flight to our final stop, which was the Inle Lake area. Without question, this place was great and totally turned my head around on Myanmar.
The lake is about an hour ride from the airport and we had the obligatory monastery stop on the way. Even the monastery here was interesting with thousands of shrines placed in cubbies throughout.
Watching the young students doing their homework and fighting over the pencil was enjoyable.
It was still early morning so the plan was to drop our bags and hit the lake. We climbed into the standard boat on the lake, a long skinny teak thing, and took off for the hour ride across to the north side. This place is interesting in that the people that live and make their livelihood there don't just use the lake as a resource, but they live their entire existence on it. As we cruised its length, we saw how.
There were a mess of these boats harvesting the vegetation that grows at the bottom and they sell it to farmers to use as soil and fertilizer for the farms that grow veggies in floating gardens.
Stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the lake and sampled the fresh produce and fish from the area and had the best meal of the week.
We found the tomatoes and avocados to be particularly delish. Note the thanaka on Betty's face.
We spent the afternoon visiting the industries of the area. First was the cigar factory that makes flavored stogies called cherut. I passed cause I don't need another bad habit
A couple of shots of the buildings that are on the lake. They are all on stilts and you can see that they are about 10 feet above the water. In a couple of months when the rains hit, the water level will reach the floor
I was curious as to how they dealt with their waste as there is no plumbing. Our guide said each one has a room offset from the main building (you can see it with the blue tarp underneath in the below), and they use that seaweed from before as a filtration device as it cleanses their excrement. I suppose it works cause they've been doing this for centuries and you don't see a lot of garbage or floating dookies
, cholera is not an issue and we didn't get sick once, but still.
Next shop was the one that makes the teak long boats that are the only kind we saw on the lake. Did not see a single fiberglass speedboat or any other kind but these handcrafted type. I bought a new teak cooking spoon
Silver factory. Was interested by the chemistry that goes into separating the silver from the rest of the ore
And the weaving/textile factory. One of the few that extracts lotus fibers to use in textiles, which Betty had never seen, and she has seen a lot of factories.
Some great visuals
On the way back to the town, we drove through some of the floating farms. They lay down logs and start putting soil and vegetation on top to create the bed. Ingenious and can attest that the stuff they grow was quite good.
The fires of locals burning whatever dotted the shores and hills.
All of the places we stayed in Myanmar were nice, but the place here was one of my all time favorites. Also on stilts on the lake,the rooms were well appointed but subtle, strong WiFi for me to catch up on opening weekend of Aussie Rules Football, and tons of cute touches like a floating swimming pool, a month old puppy named Rambo that dominated everyone's attention, and a sunken rickshaw where ducks live called Duckingham Palace.
I had read that there were a couple of wineries nearby and entertained going to check them out, but decided to hang and relax at this cool place instead. Their restaurant served super fresh and yummy local meals and we enjoyed a bottle of the local Rose that was refreshing.
Our flight out the next day was late so we had one more day on the lake. As we headed onto the lake this morning, got the good photos of the traditional one legged fishermen. This crew positioned themselves to be models of the fishing style as to get some tips, but this is how they really fish.
Our guide took us to the massive 5 Day Market where the people from the lake and surrounding countryside come to sell their stuff. Smells and colors galore.
Traffic jam getting into the place.
Kept trying to convince Babydoll these were made of human teeth. Was more fun when she was younger and more gullible
Bundles of bamboo sticks for farmers to use to tie up their tomato plants.
Mentioned that there are 37 different tribes in Myanmar and as this is a meeting ground for the region, many of them are represented. You can tell the difference of some by their headwear.
Of course this spot had a temple. I may be wary of your religion, but I can at least be decent towards it.
Hard to see in the photo but the attraction at this temple are the 5 Buddha statues that are covered so thoroughly with gold leaf that they are now lava lamp looking blobs.
That's no lady, that's my wife.
Last activity of the day was a 45 minute sprint up one of the streams that feed the lake to a place for lunch and yet another temple. These boat rides are so hypnotic and the people in the villages a few miles off the lake are filled with different tribes.
Enough with the sad temples.
There are 8 animals in the religion and you are the one from the day you were born. There are 8 cause it is a luck number and they split Wednesday into two to make it an even number. I am a Saturday/Dragon (the best of course), while the girls are
Garudas. They are mythical too but also pretty slick
Local fun in the water
There were Karen littered throughout the region. One of the people we were talking to about the Karen said they put the metal rings around their necks and ankles to protect them from tigers that go for those weak spots when they attack. That was a new one as I previously heard/read they were simultaneously used to make them more beautiful to attract men, or ugly to keep them from becoming victims in war.
Betty thought she'd buy a a local scarf and was enveloped by the local zombies chanting 'Your promise" Freaked me out a bit.
A long boat ride back, then an hour to the airport, long delay there and then late into Yangon for our early flight home the next day. We had been with a lady that guided us around the last two days and she was a 40-something woman with twelve toes. Very polite but as with all the folks we encountered, there was something in the background that felt sad. On the drive to the airport, we were talking about life and such and she shared her dreams of starting a small business but has been thwarted as the money she makes has been going to pay for her father's chemotherapy as there is no medical insurance. She told this in a way that was sad of course, but not in a way where she was looking for sympathy or angry that life was against her, it just was. A fitting way to go out.
