Burma - Our Final Thoughts

This is our final night in Myanmar and it is tinged with regret. We have made friends with some of our guides and their memory will stay with us for many years. We could travel the world and never come across another character like Paris. We would enjoy having a boy named Sue as a friend and it was a privilege to meet Rosa.

The Burmese people are delightful, the country beautiful and some of the antiquities are breathtaking. But an underlying feeling of sadness and anger has been with us through the entire trip. We have never seen so much needless suffering. There are millions of people in Africa who are probably worse off, but often the reason for that is the total lack of resources, food and water. But here the country is rich in all of those things, but the Junta controls everything, and the generals are the only people allowed to benefit. Even if the status quo wasn’t changed, the people could be benefiting from the wealth that a popular tourist destination could bring them. The country could easily be as popular a destination as Thailand , Vietnam or Cambodia . But the Junta is hostile to the prying eyes of outside countries, and many tourists who suffer our doubts about patronizing the country decide to stay away.

The Junta controls the people, holding them back, and holding them down, denying them education, denying them the benefits of a rich country, denying them the spoils of tourism, and basically denying them a comfortable life. It is hard to really enjoy a vacation in this wonderful country, when this is the undercurrent. But so many of the people thanked us for coming, and asked us to come back, that we are happy that we went, and determined to return.

Yangon - Our Last Night

We return to Mandalay and take our last flight on Bagan Air to Yangon . Once again we are met by Paris at the airport. This time he is wearing a PINK Longyi. This is quite shocking, as Burmese men only wear dark coloured longyi. He has paired it with a crisp white shirt, and a necklace worn outside the shirt. As we enter the arrivals lounge he is standing there with both arms outstretched, like a diva acknowledging applause. He takes our hands in his and walks us out of the airport. We feel like the Supremes flanking Diana Ross. People stop and gawp. Paris revels in it.

We are just there for the night and we tell Paris that we have heard of a restaurant called Le Planteur, which has been voted best restaurant in Myanmar for the last three years. We ask if he would take us to see it so that we can decide if we want to eat there. Paris is beside himself with excitement as he has never been there. When we arrive at the restaurant, we are ushered out of the car by two doormen and escorted to the desk where we pause to ask the Maitre'D if we can see the menu. Paris sweeps by us, chin held high, self esteem held even higher, longyi flowing behind him, and walks into the middle of the restaurant to survey the scene. Looking at his poise and his pose, no one would ever guess that he didn’t belong here. Paris lets us know that this is an entirely appropriate place for us, and for him.

We return later that evening, sadly without Paris, to have dinner. It is the most fabulous place. The building is a beautiful old home with a huge manicured lawn full of very old trees and a large assortment of fowl. There are geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl and other birds that we do not recognize wandering the grounds. There are immense fabric lanterns on the lawn lighting the way, and tiny twinkling lights hanging from the trees. The tables are all set out on the lawn. It is a magical setting. We find ourselves dining next to Lord and Lady Laxby, at least that is how they are referred to by the staff. Paris would be in heaven.


Their credentials as eccentric English aristocracy are proved when they continue to feed the birds throughout their dinner, causing the assortment of fowl to gather round their table like begging dogs. They even manage to coax a turkey to jump up onto their table. We find it most disturbing, but they are enjoying it. We wonder what Paris would make of it.

In an extraordinary show of what money can do, even in a country like Burma, the chef produces a seven course tasting menu that includes foie gras, scallops lobster and lamb chops, and we wash it down with French champagne. There is even a Burmese Brie, which is delicious. The cost of all of this is many times the cost of any other meal we have had in Myanmar , but would be considered inexpensive anywhere else in the world.

The Akhu Tribe

The next morning we are off again. This time we visit the village of Vansai , home to the Akhu tribe. Here the women all smoke pipes made from bamboo. They have a sort of turban on their head, and they carry their pipes, tobacco and matches in the folds of this turban. Their faces show the effect that tobacco smoke can have on the skin, as many of them have deeply etched wrinkles around the mouth and cheeks, but despite this we meet a woman of 92 with her great granddaughter slung on her back.




Inexplicably, women in all these tribes live to be much older than men. We have met several women in their 80’s as well as this lady in her 90’s, but few men seem to live beyond 60. It is hard to understand why this is, as the women work every bit as hard as the men, and in this village the women smoke constantly while the men do not.
In this village we also meet several men who are at home looking after the children while the women are in the jungle looking for firewood, or tending to the animals.


The Akhu is definitely more advanced than the Enn village but not as well organized as the Akha village. This is a Baptist village that has been guided by a pastor. Not to get involved in any sort of religious conflict, but it has to be said that the Catholic missionary did a much better job with his tribe.

Tea With The Akha Tribe

Again we distribute cookies and medicine. We meet two young girls with red paint all over their face. It turns out these girls had been fascinated by the red lips of a previous tourist, and she had kindly given the girls her lipstick. They had not had an occasion to wear it since, as there had been no visitors for months. But now we had arrived, they thought it appropriate to put it on. One of the girls had obviously forgotten that it was supposed to go on the lips, and had instead made red dots all over her face. The older girl had remembered where it was to go, but her skills of application were limited. She had a huge red gash from ear to ear. However both young women thought they looked beautiful, and as men have learned all over the world, it is always wise to offer no opposition to these feelings that women have.


Here we are invited to have tea in one of the houses. We feel we cannot turn this down, but we would much rather not drink out of any of the rather dirty looking glasses we are offered. However our guide says that they do wash their utensils in the river water. We follow the example of our guide who pours tea into his glass, swills it round and then tips it out, before pouring in more which he drinks. We are also offered deep fried peanuts straight from the pan, which are delicious, together with some bananas collected from the jungle. We are pleasantly surprised to find that we do not get sick the next day.
When we return to Kyaingtong in the late afternoon, we are both exhausted and promptly fall asleep.
This is not a town famous for its restaurants. There are a few local eating places, none of them catering to tourists. However that evening we find a Chinese restaurant that deep fries a whole fish caught that day in the river. It costs $3 and is delicious.

The Village of Nowohen

We walk down into a valley and up the other side to reach the village of Nowohen where the Akha tribe lives. They also wear black clothing, but this time the women have magnificent silver headdresses, rows of beaded necklaces and beaded belts and bags. The headdresses are made of real silver and have been handed down from mother to daughter. However many of the younger women have given up wearing them because they are so uncomfortable. This, combined with the fact that tourists will pay $500 for one headdress, means that within a few years it may no longer be possible to see this tribe in their original clothing.





This village is quite clearly far more prosperous than the last one, with the 26 houses laid out along two dirt streets, and small corrals with goats, chickens and pigs.


The homes are larger, and better constructed, although still just made of bamboo and matting. We are grateful to see that everyone looks clean, at least when compared to the last village. It turns out that the success of this village is almost entirely due to the fact that a missionary came here 14 years ago, and has taught the village basic principals of hygiene, village planning and husbandry. The entire village has converted to Catholicism. This originally caused some problems as prior to the Missionary’s arrival a tribesman was allowed two wives if he could afford them. In an example of true wisdom seldom seen in the church, the Missionary has told the people that this is fine, and that the arrangement can continue as long as the two wives were acquired before they became Christian.
In this village the wife has a separate bedroom from the husband, and if the husband desires sex, he must knock on her bedroom door first and be invited in. We might be centuries ahead of them in many ways, but we still could learn something from this tribe!

Banglu - Village

We are scheduled to do “light trekking” to visit some more tribes that are completely inaccessible by road. I know you will find the concept of me trekking as hard to believe as I did but I was persuaded by my desire to see these tribes and by the term “light”. Suffice it to say that I would not describe over 6 hours of walking up and down a small mountain as “light trekking”. However the day was riveting.

After a couple of hours walking straight up the mountain we come to the village of Banglu where the Enn tribe live. This is a collection of 24 huts each housing a large family. Each hut is made of bamboo and rush matting, which offers very little protection from the cold and it gets cold here as we are now quite high up. The homes are just a jumble of shacks in a dirt clearing in the jungle. The homes are built on stilts to protect them from the rainy season and to allow a place for their animal, if they are lucky enough to have one.


The tribes people wear black clothing decorated with brightly coloured ribbon and tiny beads of silver. But their clothing is ragged and dirty. There is no form of record keeping in this village, so no one knows how old they are. The Enn tribe is famous for its women who have black teeth and lips from their constant chewing of the betel nut. They never brush their teeth.


I had said earlier that the fishing tribe that we visited on Lake Inle were the poorest people we had ever met. Not any longer. This tribe is not only the poorest, but without doubt it is the dirtiest. They wear no shoes and their hands and feet are filthy, which presents a problem as the men all want to shake our hands. The details of their personal hygiene, or total lack of it, may offend the more delicate of you, so if this is the case you might want to skip to the next paragraph. There is no running water or plumbing, although they do have a series of horizontal bamboo pipes bringing water from the stream to the centre of the village.


They very rarely wash, but when they do, the women keep all their clothes on, presumably from a sense of modesty and because the water is so cold. The men never wash below their waist or above their thighs. That doesn’t bear thinking about. But it gets worse. There are many dogs in the village. When the people go to the toilet, they call the dogs over to lick the relevant body part of their body clean, and to clean up what they have deposited on the ground. But wait, I haven’t finished yet. Each family has acquired a few tin plates from which they eat. They never wash the plates, instead the dogs are called over after their meal to lick them clean. Try not to think about that, either.

The Paloung tribe of Northern Myanmar

Our guide for this adventure was also a little more rough and ready than we were used to. This was not Paris or A Boy named Sue. Actually we don’t know who it was, as his English was such that we never quite understood what his name was. He did manage to get across that we were his first tourists for two and a half months, but strangely enough he didn’t seem to be aware of why this was. He never mentioned politics or the generals and we felt that none of this had any relevance to his life. All he knew was that there were no tourists.

The first afternoon he took us to Wan Pao Village , home of the Paloung Tribe. This village is the only village we see that is accessible by car, albeit over an hours drive along a mud path. The village is a cluster of ramshackle huts randomly scattered over a muddy field. The tribe is known for two things. Firstly they are one of the few tribes that have huts made of mud. They make a bamboo frame and fill it with packed mud. This is great insulation against the cold, but unfortunately the ox and pigs find the mud walls appealing and tend to rub their sides on them, causing the walls to become thinner and thinner until they collapse.


The second point of interest is that all the women wear what looks like half a dozen small Hula Hoops around their waist made of silver and bamboo. They are completely inflexible and seem to be more of an annoyance than anything else. This particular village is also famous for its blacksmith, a man of 82 who is working when we get there, making shock absorbers for the local cars.


Apparently shock absorbers and springs for the old Toyotas are impossible to get hold off, and this man has learned how to make them despite the fact that there is not one car in the village, and he has never learned to drive.

Mandalay to Kyaingtong

We are flying to Kyaingtong to see the different tribes of Northern Mynamar that remain unaffected and virtually untouched by the outside world. We arrive in a very different Myanmar . The airport at Kyaingtong is little more than a couple of huts next to an airstrip. But security is the tightest we have seen. We are deep in the heart of the Golden Triangle and close to the Chinese border. This was the notorious heroin capital of the world, but the Junta claims to have completely wiped out all the poppy plantations over the last few years. Tourists have only been allowed back in over the last four years. Consequently there are none of the luxuries we have been enjoying. The hotel we are staying in is known to be the best in town, but would not qualify for one star. We were well aware of this when planning our trip and were rather anxious about what we would find. It was maybe even more basic than we expected, but we were happy to find that it was comparatively clean, and the staff very welcoming and friendly. However all the laundry was done by hand with no hot water, so the sheets and towels were grey, which was a little disturbing. We were on the third floor (no elevator of course). At the end of our corridor there was a door marked “emergency exit”. For a moment we were reassured, but then we discovered it was just a door opening on to a three storey drop into the middle of the neighbour’s pigsty. No stairs, no balcony. Nothing.

We are in the high country and the temperatures have plummeted. But there is no heating in the hotel and some of the windows have fixed open slatted glass. It is colder in the hotel than outside and Gordon, who feels the cold, is miserable. He sleeps with all his clothes on underneath a huge pile of blankets.

Mandalay Airport

Mandalay has an international airport that can rival any of the major Asian airports. Glass and steel everywhere, restaurants, cafes, escalators and jetways. The only difference between Mandalay and other well known International airports is passengers! Mandalay has none. There are maybe a dozen other passengers in the entire airport. One café is open, all the restaurants are closed. But even more strange is the fact that none of the escalators is working. Nor are the luggage conveyor belts. Nor are the jetways. We have to walk down some stairs and across the tarmac to our plane. The reason, of course, is that this is one of the days when there is no electricity in Mandalay. The airport is vast and very modern. It puts Yangon airport to shame. And yet Yangon is the city that has all the international flights. It is almost impossible to find an international flight that goes to Mandalay, there are only internal flights. This impressive airport was built two years ago, but no one knows why. It is built in the middle of nowhere, a good hours drive from town. The old airport was much more convenient but the Junta announced it could no longer be used.
We have an hour to wait for our plane, and go to the only café that is open. It goes by the name of Swan Pizza, and their logo is remarkably similar, if not identical to, Pizza Hut. However they do not sell pizza. Even more incongruous is that they have large black plastic napkin dispensers on each table which have “ Las Vegas ” emblazoned in gold on all sides. Our sandwich is served on white plates that match the coffee cups. All of them have “J.C. Penny. Basic White” printed on the underside.

Touring Ava

The only way round the island is by horse and buggy and there are over 150 of them waiting at the ferry stop. It is all very orderly, and the drivers take customers in strict rotation. If this was a normal day in the high season, they would each have one customer a day, and sometimes two. But things are not normal in Myanmar , and our driver has been waiting three days for his turn. Sadder still is the fact that for his services he is paid the princely sum of $3. The buggy is small and he asks me to ride up front with him. This has obviously got more to do with placing my bulk in the easiest place for the horse, than for our comfort. The horse is tiny and we are introduced to her. Her name is Jasmine. I am sitting directly behind her rear quarters, next to the driver. The only thing between her backside and me is an open basket designed to catch any of her droppings. I had no idea that a small horse could produce quite so much manure in such a short time, while trotting round an island. Nor was I aware of just how pungent it could be. Jasmine, bless her, had eaten way too much earlier in the day and we were now reaping the benefits.

There is little remaining on the Island to show that it was such an important place, other than the crumbling walls that used to surround the Royal Palace . But the Island is lovely with long “roads” or tracks arched with trees on either side, giving it the feel of rural France . The only other traffic is heavy carts, full of produce, being pulled by white oxen. The villages are also quite appealing, with the usual bamboo and rush buildings, with an occasional magnificent house made of teak. Many of the people stop and wave as we go round. The tour takes about three hours, the highlight of which is a beautiful teak monastery built in 1820. There are huge teak columns inside stretching up 30 feet to support the roof. The doors, windows and railings are all beautifully carved and still in excellent condition. It is quite stunning.

From there we go to the Ubein Bridge further up the river. This is known as the longest teak bridge in the world. In fact it is more like a jetty which spans the river. It is just under a mile long. This is the first tourist sight we have been to that is busy, but what is nice is that it is busy with locals who love the bridge. They all go for their evening walk across it, or take a picnic during the day. We are there for the sunset, which is quite incredible. We walk across mingling with the locals and a large number of monks, all enjoying this beautiful place. There are water buffalo below us swimming in the river. It is a truly exotic way to end a lovely day.

Ava - A Restaurant

In the afternoon we got to see Ava, which was the capital of Myanmar from 1418 to 1839. It is an island in the middle of the river. We catch what passes for a ferry across to the island, but is in fact little more than a few pieces of wood strung together with a small motor at the back. It seems that our water transport gets worse as our trip goes on. But this journey is only a few hundred yards. The island itself is a revelation, a beautiful serene place with no vehicles. There is a restaurant where the ferry stops and we have lunch. It is incredibly basic with tables and chairs set out on the dirt underneath a huge spreading tree. Dogs and flies fight for our attention, while chickens scratch in the dirt all around. There is even a huge black pig fast asleep between two of the tables. The waiter does his best to keep the flies away from our food with a fan which he periodically waves over our table, as if it was the most natural thing for a waiter to be doing. Despite this we are served a delicious lunch of fresh fish and fried rice, and it all seems very romantic.

Afterward our guide suggests that we take the fish head that we hadn’t touched and the remains of the fried rice to give to one of the begging children. We ask what they do with the fish head. They will apparently beat it all to a pulp, and then press it through a sieve that will allow any flesh to pass through and retain the bones. The flesh they collect will last a family a couple of days, when served with soup, rice and vegetables. Outside the restaurant is a young boy trying to sell us trinkets. I offer him the leftovers and his face lights up into the biggest smile you have ever seen. He is obviously thrilled and thanks us warmly. The guide tells us that his family will rarely have eaten anything as exotic as this. We feel terribly extravagant and wasteful.

Crossing the Irrawaddy to Mingun

In the morning we take a boat across the Irrawaddy to Mingun. This might be the scariest boat we have been on in all our travels. It is large enough to hold thirty or 40 passengers, but it is just for us. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them, all identical, and all in various states of disrepair, tied up to the river bank. They are 6 deep against the bank, so you have to cross from one to another until you come to the outside one. They have an open upper deck and enclosed lower deck, but the lower deck is only 5ft tall, and it is through these that we have to travel to get to our personal boat. All the boats are moving in the current and it is quite treacherous going from one to the other. Finally we reach ours. I was assuming that we would have one of the ones that were in a better state of repair, but this was not to be. It was a complete wreck, and how we ever got across the river without it sinking is beyond me. As with so much else in the country, all the boats were built in the 1940’s when the British were here. Ours appears to have been untouched since then, which might be interesting in any other vehicle, but in a boat it is truly scary. The entire vessel seemed to sag in the middle, until the water almost came in over the sides. We are shown to the upper deck, which in fact is just the roof of the lower deck. It curves down to the edges, so that you feel you will slide off it. All there is to prevent us from doing so, is an extremely thin and rickety wooden railing held in place by a few spindly uprights attached to the floor by a couple of screws. The wooden floor is rotten in places and you can see straight through to the deck below. There are three extremely old and uncomfortable rattan chairs for us to sit on. Most of the rattan is broken and sticks into my body, tearing little holes in my shirt. There is also an extremely decrepit dining table. One of the crew (there are only 2) comes and lays a filthy old table cloth on it with a great flourish. The only thing dirtier than the table cloth is the young man putting it there. For one dreadful moment, we think food is going to be served, but in fact he is setting up a stall on which he lays a motley assortment of merchandise. There is nothing we would be remotely interested in buying, but considering we are half way across the huge Irrawaddy river, and completely at his mercy, we decide we better at least take a look.

We are told that there is a toilet downstairs but we are too afraid to venture down. However necessity, caused by a chilly wind, prevails. Added to the back of the boat is a small platform enclosed by a 4ft wall made of rush matting. You open a small door and step off the deck onto this small platform which appears to have no visible means of support. Standing on the platform was the toilet. It was not attached to the floor, or to any plumbing. It merely stood over a hole in the floor. The low height of the surrounding wall meant that all the passing ships were left in no doubt as to what you were doing there. Where is the Raffles Hotel when we need it.

We are suffering the indignities of this particularly unseaworthy vessel in order to see yet another largest bell in the world. This one is in a town called Mingun. We have already seen two other largest bells in the world in our travels, the most recent of which we saw in Russia . However our guide proudly tells us that the Russian one has a crack in it and so it doesn’t count. Myanmar ’s bell is perfect. However it is hung just a few inches off the ground in a crumbling building, completely uncared for and covered in cobwebs and large spiders. Adjacent to it is another crumbling building. This one is a home for aged monks. Our guide wants to show us round, but we are not interested, just grateful that this will not be our retirement home. For this we have just risked our lives crossing the Irrawaddy, and now we have to go back.

Life In Mandalay

Mandalay is a much more attractive city than Yangon. Many of the streets are lined with trees, and bustle with people who seem happier and a little more prosperous than in Yangon . Large portions of the city have good middle class houses. Downtown is more like a downtown as we know it, with many streets full of shops, and a few selling named brands that are definitely high end. There is even a small shopping mall and a few neon signs, although the latter seems rather superfluous because of the lack of power to turn them on.

There are many motorbikes and thousands of bicycles that appear to take no notice of the rules of the road.


Road junctions and cross roads often have a policeman in the middle directing traffic, but no one pays them any attention. Cross roads are quite terrifying, and we sit white knuckled in our car, clinging to the back of the seat in front of us. I try closing my eyes, but it is impossible to keep them closed with all the noise around us.

This is the first place we have seen taxis, but they are not geared to the tourists. They are Mazda pick up trucks built in the 1940’s. They are amazingly small, looking like children’s toy cars. The passengers sit in the back of the pick up truck. You could perhaps squeeze two Americans in the back, but they would be very unhappy. But up to 10 Burmese somehow manage to ride this way.


We are pleased to see that there are many more monks here than anywhere we have been so far. The Mayor of Mandalay refused the Generals orders to kill monks and so Mandalay escaped much of the crackdown. But once the uprising was crushed the Mayor was fired from his job. There are also many nuns, who wear pink robes, and, like the monks go out in the morning to collect food from the people. However nuns can only go out twice a week and can only accept rice and vegetables.

We visit several craft houses, all of them working without lighting. We watch as women stoop over their embroidery doing the most intricate work in semi darkness. Three men noisily beat gold into gold leaf. They will be deaf by the end of their worklife.


Like the rest of the country, electricity is limited. Here they receive power for three days, and then just for 6 to 12 hours on the other four days. Water too is problematical. Each household has to pay $200 for the connection, a large amount of money to most families. On top of this they pay a monthly fee based on usage, but during the dry season there will often be no water available. Few have hot water, and sometimes the mornings are too cold for them to take a shower. If they live in houses and apartments that are more than two stories high, very often the water will not pump up to the higher floors.

Mandalay

Our first stop is the old Royal Palace built in the 1860’s. It is a huge square compound, surrounded on all four sides by a wall and a moat The wall is two kilometres long on each of the four sides.


The entire place was bombed in the war, and virtually destroyed. The government, recognizing a tourist attraction when they see one, decided to rebuild it in the 1990’s. However, where there were once huge wooden columns there are now huge cement columns, and where there was gold leaf covering everything there is now gold paint. It all looks so tacky, and very few people go there. To make matters worse the huge grounds that were so beautiful, are now full of unsightly cheap housing used solely to house army soldiers. Min, our guide, is making her opening political statement by taking us here first.


However a block or so away is one of the original buildings. It is in this building that the King died, and his son wanted to preserve it as a special and separate monument, so moved it away from the palace, thus unwittingly insuring its survival during the bombings. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, built entirely of teak and covered in intricate carvings. Both inside and out were originally covered in gold, but very little remains on the outside because of the weather. But the inside still gleams, the many tall golden pillars supporting the roof look like a shining forest, It is an amazing sight, that dazzles the eye.


From here we go to lunch in a local restaurant where we have to listen to a CD of Christmas Carols sung in English by a Burmese singer who obviously learned parrot fashion from listening to the original, and has no idea what he is saying. We recognize the song “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but instead of singing “If Daddy had only seen” He sang” If Veddy Veddy on the scene”, and “He thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom fast asleep” became “he thawed a ice water up in my bedroom vast and leap".

Mandalay - The First Sights

A magical morning as we sail into Mandalay. We sail under two iron bridges with hills on either side, full of golden stuppas that glisten in the early morning sun.


Small fishing boats with one solid bright coloured sail, emerge slowly out of the mists and smoke that rise off the land and drift across the wide river. Ships carrying huge piles of rice chug along the river and are laden to the point where it seems that they would sink if you loaded one more sack on board. The ships are as old and dilapidated as the buses from the 1940’s, and their crews aren’t much better. They are all in dirty white T shirts and ragged longyis, and they wave as we go by.


It is exactly as we imagined it as kids in school, reading Rudyard Kipling and learning about the glory days of the British Empire.

Once ashore we are met by our new guide, Min, a woman of about 40 suffering from a severe case of flu. It seems that half the country is in the grips of flu.. A Boy named Sue had it, but not badly, his driver had it, the two other passengers on the ship had it, two of the crew had it, and it is obvious that many people we see have it. But no one has seemed as sick as Min, who we are sure will not make it through the day. She is dressed for winter, with a rather strange hand knitted pink wool hat pulled down to her eyebrows, and a matching scarf wrapped twice round her neck and mouth. She has a huge padded coat which she holds tightly around her body, boots and a pair of gloves. The only part of her body exposed to the elements is her eyes. Where she found this clothing is a mystery, Mandalay is always hot and we never saw a shop selling anything like these clothes. She had to blow her nose constantly, which unfortunately she did directly into her hand, and then wiped her hand with a piece of toilet paper. This was not appealing.

Both she and her husband are tour guides, and have two children. Because of the lack of tourists they were in dire straits and she has to work, no matter how sick she feels. She is only able to talk in a whisper because of her sore throat, and has to stop often to cough. We are reluctant to deprive her of the little income we are bringing her, so we control our impulse to tell her to go home.

Burma - More Things We Have Learned

As we continue to quietly sail down the Irrawaddy River we pick up more information about Burma.
1. The Irrawaddy River rises 50 feet in the rainy season. In the delta region it can rise 200 feet.

2. Many villagers on the banks of the river have to move their homes, their belongings and their livestock every 6 months. Then they return a few months later when the rain stops.


3. 60% of the population of Bagan works in the tourist industry.

4. The tourist industry is down by 80% this year, and some say it is down by up to 90%. The people of Bagan are really hurting, as is the rest of the country.

5. On our one hour drive back from Poppa to Bagan, we saw exactly three other cars.

6. We have been traveling for 9 days now and have seen very few monks.

7. Many workers who we talk to in the tourist industry, tell us directly that they hate their government.

8. There is a pension for people over 65, but it consists of a few dollars a month, and no one can live on it. Consequently yet another burden is placed on the workers – they have to support their parents in their old age.

9. A phone line, believe it or not, costs $5,500 to install. A cell phone costs over $2000 and can only be bought on the black market, which in this case means buying one from a government employee.

10. Electricity is cheap, but who cares, if you can hardly ever get it.

11. Men and women of all ages wear a skin cream made from the bark of the Dhanakhar tree. It protects from the sun, and helps against acne and wrinkles. It is a yellow color and the women and children paint it on to their faces every day.


When boys get old enough to feel self conscious, they stop wearing it in the day time. But most everyone, including the men, put it on at night. We have been commenting that the Burmese have wonderful skin, and if this is the reason for it, we have to get some! But maybe it’s too late!

Thoughts on Burma as we Cruise down the Irrawaddy

The rest of the day is spent gently cruising down the river. While we are sitting idly on the sun deck watching the world go by, albeit it very slowly, we are left to ponder some of the things we have seen and learned so far in Burma:

1. A huge majority of the people are dressed in clothes which are falling apart, but are always comparatively clean.

2. Children have to wear a school uniform of a green longyi with a white shirt for both girls and boys. They also have to buy all their books, paper and pencils. Consequently many parents can’t afford to send their children to school.

3. Women do not wear wedding rings. Instead they wear their long shiny black hair pinned up if they are married, or hanging down their back if they are single. Presumably it is fairly easy to let your hair fall down accidentally.

4. Many towns away from the river have no water supply. Water is piped to a central collection point. The local villagers then have to collect it and take it to their villages. They use barrels placed on a cart and pulled by oxen to do this.

5. The landscape that is not farmed is full of bushes and trees that are all young and small. Trees taller than about 20 feet are a rarity, with the exception of palm trees. This is a direct result of the deforestation, especially of the teak trees. It is one of the worst countries in the world for deforestation.

6. At around 5 or 6 each evening the sky becomes full of smoke, sometimes becoming so thick that it makes you choke. This is because everyone burns their rubbish each evening.

7. Burma makes one of the best beers in the world – Myanmar Beer. It is really inexpensive, and on this ship it is free just like the soft drinks.

8. Burma also has a wine industry with a few vineyards. It is a young industry with a lot to learn. But when 90% of the population is Buddhists, and good Buddhists don’t drink, one has to wonder why they are bothering.

Yandabo on The Road to Mandalay

At 9:30am the next morning, our ship, the Pandaw 2, pulls into the river bank next to Yandabo a village famous for making clay pots. Here the population is 1,100, and apart from a few children playing truant, all the kids are in school. The adults are all busy making the pots, so we are greeted by just a few children and some of the older inhabitants who no longer work.


The school has been built with donations from previous passengers on this ship, helped by the shipping company. We visit the school, which is a comparatively modern brick building housing 5 classrooms packed with children.


They all learn English. The class of 5 year olds are working on the alphabet and we can see from the blackboard that they have got as far as “U for Umbrella” They are all excited to see us, and when we start taking photos they swarm round us wanting to see their pictures. At the end of our visit, the teachers gather them together and they sing two songs for us. We are told they are singing in English, but while we recognize the tunes, we can’t understand any of the words they are singing! But their huge excited smiles say it all.


The rest of the village is busy making the pots for which they are famous. We watch as one woman throws pots on a turntable operated by another woman pedaling a belt to operate it. Amazingly, this one woman can make 60 pots a day. We each have a turn at doing the pedaling, and it is so hard that none of us last more than a few minutes. This woman does it from dusk to dawn.


The pots are basic clay pots for cooking and for carrying and holding water. Some are plain and some are decorated.


When they have made enough, they arrange hundreds of pots in a field on a bed of straw, around a huge pile of firewood.


Then they cover everything with more straw and wood and set the whole thing alight. The pots are finally covered with ash and it operates as a kiln. The fire is kept going for three days and they use everything they can find as fuel, even down to the shells from peanuts that are a basic part of their diet. We arrive just as they are starting to make the fire. There are over three thousand pots waiting to be fired. It’s amazing that one small village with no tools or machinery can produce this much. The pots are large, unsophisticated but very attractive. They sell them for $2.50 each.

It is a bustling village, and seems quite prosperous.


The people are warm and welcoming, as they are in all these villages. I could spend hours watching and interacting with them but we have to move on. We have learned that the boat we are on also does a 12 day cruise that ventures into the north of Myanmar where there are no roads, and where you visit many more of these riverside villages. We are extremely interested in taking this cruise next year, and so are Derek and Helga. Much to our surprise, they want to make sure we are going before they book.

Back to the Pandaw 2

When we return to the ship, we are offered a complimentary cocktail of the day. Today it is Gin Fizz , and Gordon manages to down three of them in no time flat. This is a lifestyle we could definitely get used to.

The other couple on board are an Englishman and his German wife who now live in Australia . Their names are Derek and Helga. I am desperate for them to be wonderful company, or eccentric, or even better, dreadfully awful, so that I will have something entertaining to write about. But sadly they are none of these things. They are just ordinary people, notable for very little other than his appalling “English teeth”. They both have the flu, neither of them drink, and they like to be in bed by 9pm. Suffice it to say, that if we were able to choose our travel companions, Derek and Helga would not be our first choice
When we arrive at the dining room for dinner, the staff have set two tables for two and one table for four, giving us the option of dining together or separately. Derek and Helga arrive first and we see that they have chosen to dine separately. Only the English would find themselves alone on a boat and chose not to dine together!


The restaurant is on the lower deck and has double doors that open onto the “promenade deck” , which itself is just a foot or two above the water. We have a table right by the open doors and it feels as if we are on a low platform floating down the river. There are no lights to be seen anywhere and we can just make out the river bank with the help of the moonlight. The sky is full of stars, and the river flows by our table. The food is mediocre but the evening is magical

Ohn Ne Choung

The village is a 45 minute walk to the nearest road, and so the most convenient transport they have is boats, and any outside life they see is brought to them by whatever boats stop at their river bank. Consequently the arrival of the Pandaw 2 is cause for great excitement and the entire village has turned out to welcome us. Actually it is almost entirely children who are waiting on the river bank, waving and smiling as we arrive.


The village has a population of 1800, and 1000 of them are children. This is the result of a village with very little electricity and only one television.
There must be over a hundred children greeting us and they are delightful. They get an enormous amount of pleasure from having their photo taken and then seeing it reproduced on the screen on the back of the camera.


Most of them are under 10 and obviously have not seen themselves very often, and some don’t recognize themselves. The other kids tell them that it is them they are looking at and there is a huge amount of giggling. There is one boy of about 10 who has a tattered New York Yankees cap, which he is wearing sideways.


Street fashion has reached a village in Burma , that has no streets
We are told not to offer the kids any money. Instead, we are asked to give any candy or money that we have to the school teacher who will distribute it later.


This way they do not learn to beg and so we have a delightful time without any of the begging that we are besieged with in the larger towns. They follow us everywhere and some even hold our hands. We do give the school teacher some money, but it disappears into his pocket and we have a sneaking suspicion that it will stay there and not reach the kids.