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.

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!

The Chief makes Us Welcome

All the men in the village of Banglu are busy building a new and comparatively grand home for the village chief. He is instantly recognizable as the chief, not because of anything he is wearing, but because of his bearing and demeanour. He is a most imposing man of about forty with great presence, and a huge smile.


He comes over and shakes our hand and thanks us for bringing the medicine. He invites us to see his home, which, besides having the usual dead rats hanging from the ceiling, also has a haunch of a pig hanging from the wall.


It still looks quite fresh. It will last the chiefs family many days and will go off after a few days, and smell terrible, but they will still eat it. The chief invites us to stay for lunch and promises us that we will get some meat, which is a great honour. However, there is no way either of us wants to eat anything here. We ask the guide if we can decline the offer without causing any offence, by saying we have already eaten. He explains this to the Chief, who fortunately understands.

We leave the village with the children waving goodbye and running after us. The people have been wonderfully warm and friendly, but our flesh is crawling and we want nothing more than hot water and soap. Unfortunately neither is available. We do come to a stream, where we stop and wash our hands. We have brought with us a picnic of fried rice which we sit and eat by the stream. We discover a group sharing their lunch nearby.


It is a beautiful spot, miles from the nearest road. There are huge brightly coloured butterflies all round us, and the only sounds come from the myriad of birds singing in the tropical trees, and three young children from a neighbouring village playing downstream.


Trekking is not my forte, but this is quite magical. We gather up the plastic bags, water bottles and containers that we carried our picnic up in, and give them to some passing tribes people who are thrilled. They can put them to good use in their homes. This is a true example of recycling.

Enn - Tribe

The people of Banglu have very little food, other than rice and a few vegetables. They catch whatever they can in the surrounding jungle, which is usually limited to the occasional rat. They skin the rats and leave them hanging in their homes to dry. Two or three rats will feed the entire village when added to a thin vegetable soup with rice and chilies. We visit a home where there is a collection of small animal skulls and skeletons hanging from the ceiling, the purpose of which is not made clear. A small fire is burning in the middle of the floor and a cooking pot with soup simmers on top.


The smell is not pleasant. A rattan basket holds a large amount of cooked rice which sits there for days, and the people just take what they need for each meal. Home sweet home to them, but about as far away from it as we can imagine.

On the advice of our guide we went to the local market before we left Kyaingtong and bought a huge amount of cookies for the children and an assortment of basic medicines and shampoo for the people. Word spreads quickly that tourists have arrived in the village, and the children are gathered around us within minutes. They are all filthy but full of smiles which win our hearts.


It is customary for these tribes people never to ask for anything, so although these children are hungry, have nothing, and know that we have treats that they would never normally get, they don’t beg. But when we produce the cookies they all get in a line to be given the treats, and thank us, as their turn comes for the cookies. If that doesn’t melt your heart, nothing will.

After that we all sit down in one of the huts, and the women who have health problems quietly line up to tell our guide what ails them. The guide dispenses the relevant medicine. Several of the women have diarrhea which is hardly surprising, but sadly we have not brought up any medicine for that. We are not too sure that the guide acting as a dispensing chemist is the answer to the tribe’s problems, but it is certainly better than nothing. They have not seen a tourist for three months and this is the only way they ever get medicine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pindaya - The Caves

After much political discussion, and a three hour journey, through beautiful countryside, we finally reach the caves of Pindaya. The caves are half way up a hillside and there are 8,090 Buddhas inside them.


The first one was put there over 200 years ago and it became popular to put a Buddha in there to celebrate your life. The difference with these Buddhas is that the face of each Buddha has been crafted to the likeness of the person donating it. So, each one is different. We also learn to tell the difference between Indian Buddhas, Chinese Buddhas, Thai Buddhas and Myanmar Buddhas.

The town of Pindaya is charming and we have lunch by the small lake in the centre of town. It is a beautifully decorated restaurant with a big deck right out over the water. We have a table on the deck, and are served the best meal we have had so far in Myanmar. It costs $12 for the two of us including two beers and a cappuccino. But it is accompanied by a performance that doesn’t quite fit the surroundings. A local man, of about forty, walks along the edge of the lake and stops directly below us. He proceeds to take off his shirt and wash it in the lake. Then he takes of his longyi and washes that. He is now standing directly in front of us in nothing but his “tighty whities”, or in this case “tighty brownies”, doing his laundry. He then proceeds to bathe himself covering his body in a soapy foam and then splashing about in the lake to wash it off. Finally he washes his hair. When all this is finished, he climbs out of the lake and proceeds to do a vigorous work out routine in nothing but his underwear. If he had been 20 years younger and twenty pounds lighter it might have been entertaining. As it was, it just impeded our digestion. It was like watching a train wreck. You really didn’t want to see it, but you couldn’t help but watch.

People washing themselves and their clothes in the lakes and rivers is a common sight in Myanmar, but this is the first time we have seen it elevated to performance art.

After this “dinner show” we drive to the nearest airport and catch a flight to Began where we will spend the next three nights.



We say goodbye to Rosa, who has been a riveting travel companion, completely open and honest in our discussions about her country, and we have come away wiser and sadder.