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.
This is a common refrain in all parts of the globe.
Photo op by the sacred bodhi tree
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mayonnaise, really?
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