2013 Myanmar (Burma)

Myanmar (Burma)- January 22 – February 4, 2013

Pictures posted at http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8KZt3Ddu0ZCc
Door to door, it was 40 hours travel time. That includes a 14 hour flight Atlanta to Seoul, a 6 hour flight Seoul to Bangkok, 11 hour layover in Bangkok and a one hour flight to Mandalay, Myanmar. With only catnaps along the way, surprisingly, I did not feel jet-lagged after arrival. The Seoul stop was unexpected. Delta had a maintenance issue and re-routed us on Korean Airlines then, Asiana Airlines. The Seoul airport was very modern and hectic. The funniest recollection was the two-piece piano and harp playing a lively rendition of “You are my Sunshine” while we were rushing through the concourse. Arriving in Bangkok at 10:30 p.m. and feeling frisky, we decided to take a train to downtown Bangkok to find some entertainment. Not much was happening so we found a British Pub, had dinner, surfed the internet then flagged a taxi to the other Bangkok airport to find a chair to sleep since our next flight is 9:30 a.m. I say “we” meaning Paul & I. He is joining me for the two week Myanmar segment of the trip. It’s great having my “partner in crime” join me for a portion of this year’s adventure.
In recent history, Myanmar is famous both Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and U Thant, former Secretary General of the United Nations. After fifty years of living under the brutal dictatorship of General Ne Win, Myanmar finally changed its direction in 2010-2011. Aung San Suu Kyi led nearly thirty years of non-violent struggles against the General Ne Win and his SLORC party. Her father, General Aung San was killed in 1947 under General Ne Win’s coup when she was two years old.  General Ne Win, head of the army and friend of the drug lords, launched a second coup in 1962, gunning down hundreds of student protestors. After growing up, living internationally and marrying a professor in England, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar in 1988 to care for her dying mother. While home, she began leading a peaceful struggle to bring democracy to her country which was being led by one of the most brutal and treacherous dictatorships in Asia. Rather than killing her, as the army did to thousands, they placed Aung San under house arrest July 1989 for over twenty years. While confined, she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 which was accepted in Norway by one of her sons. While confined, her husband died and her two sons grew up in the U.K. In 2012 the movie, The Lady, was released about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi. She now has a seat in Parliament under her party The National League for Democracy (NLD).

Until 2011, tourism was discouraged in Myanmar since the government owned most of the transportation, hotels and facilities. Spending money as a tourist only meant the dictator government would grow wealthier. Once government sanctions began to ease and Aung San Suu Kyi was released, Myanmar opened its doors again with the advice of which facilities were owned by government cronies and were to be avoided. U.S. secretary of state, Hilary Clinton made a visit in 2011, the first U.S. diplomatic visit in 15 years. She was followed by President Obama in November 2012. Obama’s picture, with Aung San Suu Kyi, is posted throughout the country. All citizens seem to know and love Obama.  Likewise, Americans are very well accepted. The people are very warm and friendly, especially outside of the city of Yangon (previously known as Rangoon). They welcome you into their homes. At one roadside stand, the mother brought out a wedding photo album to share with us. Happily, we did not see any military presence during our entire visit.

Myanmar was on my wish-list last year but the Visa application was more onerous than I had time to complete. So this year, I thought I was prepared after requesting my Visa a month in advance and bringing all cash since this country does not accept credit cards. The only ATMs in the country are in Yangon, my last stop. Yes, the tour book did state “fresh, crisp $100 bills with no markings. I brought what I thought was acceptable $100 bills to convert to their local currency. Had I paid closer attention, I would have read they must be 2006 or newer plus in perfect condition. Fortunately between the two of us, we pooled enough good bills to convert a couple days later after making a friend with connections at a local bank. Until then, we were living on the “austerity plan”.

Myanmar still has a long ways to go to catch up with the modern world. Outside of Yangon, the roads are bone-jarring, when paved. Sidewalks are seldom seen. Internet, when found, is like dial-up. Electrical outages are a daily occurrence. If you’re fortunate, your guesthouse will have a generator. Their time is 12 ½ hours ahead of us. Why a half hour? I have no idea. The rural areas (majority) are still poor agricultural or fishing. The typical farmer plows with a water buffalo or hauls with an ox (two oxen if lucky). The country is a huge source of cheap manual labor for western countries to seize for building future factories. In the mountains and border areas are numerous indigenous groups, still fighting with each other and the government. While there, a tourist advisory was issued to disallow travel in the northern areas due to recent uprisings. Women work long days in the fields and on the roads. Their road construction consists of women carrying baskets of rocks from a huge pile then dropping and hand placing the rocks in an orderly fashion. Men sit and watch while waiting to pour on the hot tar (being heated in an open fire in 50 gallon drums) then rolling with a small piece of equipment. Women carry everything on their heads. The most amazing to me was the stack of bricks on the head.

Women often are seen leading a herd of goats down the road. Cattle are scrawny and fewer. In dry season, food is scarce and it’s not uncommon to see cattle rummaging through huge piles of trash seeking morsels of scrap. Speaking of scrawny, Myanmar has the skinniest men I have ever seen. In the rural areas, the men are like stick figures in a skirt. Yes, the common form of attire is a “longyi” (sarong) for men and women. Throughout the day, men are untying and re-wrapping their skirts, a bit similar to men “scratching” in other parts of the world. A most disgusting habit by men (and many women) is the chewing of “betel juice”. It’s similar to chewing snuff but nastier. Its chunks of a betel nut wrapped in a leaf with a clove, some tobacco juice and other condiments. Apparently it gives quite a “happy feeling” with the huge wad in the mouth and red juice dripping out of the mouth. Teeth are various shades of brown with chunks of residue between the teeth and red lips followed by red piles of betel juice spat on the ground. On many street corners you can find a vendor rolling and selling the condiment.

The local Myanmar food seems to come with many curries and often includes tomatoes and onions. My stomach limited me to mostly Chinese food of which there was plenty due to the large Chinese population. It’s simple to order stir fried veggies with a meat and rice. The common breakfast was an egg (fried or scrambled) with tea and toast. The coffee is some of the worst in the world. The typical cup is often an instant “3-in-1” which is a single serving packet of coffee, creamer and sugar. Just add hot water.

Even though down-trodden for 50 years, the Burmese people are some of the friendliest in the world. Wherever we went (outside the large city of Yangon) people would yell out from near or far a healthy “Hello” in English or “Ming-guh-la-bah” in Burmese. Myanmar is largely Buddhist so monks (and nuns) are prevalent. The young ones we called “monk-etts” since they are such young boys dressed in monk clothing. Apparently, a fortunate son in a family gets sent to a monastery to live and learn. We observed the evening chants with the young boys bowing on the floors, obviously bored with the nightly chants which seem to last hours. After a couple of days, we realized the light pink attire were nuns, not monks. With the shaved heads, it is difficult to discern a female from a male. Another common sight was yellow make-up (Thanaka) on the face of many women and some men.  It’s often a rectangular design on both cheeks although it could be a swirling design or, could cover the entire face.   

Another oddity is their driving style. The steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle but they still drive on the right side of the road, like us. Imagine driving your car from the passenger side. Wouldn’t that make a left-hand turn exciting?

Mandalay, Myanmar - Day 3 - 4, Thursday – Friday, January 24 – 25

Mandalay is a busy, dusty city with lots of traffic. Being a third world country, much of the traffic is bicycles, scooters and ancient vehicles. Cars are usually the basic white, often Toyotas. Winter is dry season meaning the high temps only get to the 80’s. Low temps in the 50’s were unexpected, bundling up in the mornings. But to the locals, this is winter and even though it’s in the 80’s many wear coats, sweaters, vests, even triple layers.  The region is as flat as a pancake and no real interesting foliage. With all the dust, much of the foliage is brown. Sidewalks, if any, are often too treacherous to use so we walk on the edge of the street or, over the edge in the deep piles of dirt. In rainy season, that will be thick mud.

Since Myanmar has become a hot tourist destination after the lifting of many government sanctions last year, a hotel shortage has occurred. My 2012 Lonely Planet book is already out of date in January 2013. Hotel prices have doubled but are still reasonable. Count yourself lucky when you find a hotel room. I tried to reserve a room in advance for Mandalay but upon arrival the owner said they don’t really get emails. Our first afternoon was spent booking airfares, boats and hotels for the next two weeks. We found a helpful travel agent and realized we really needed to be here in person to book. The walk-up airfares outlined in out book no longer exist. But booking in advance from home was not an option because the web sites would crash before completing the reservation.

We shortened our stay in Mandalay to two days and had a wonderful second day on bicycles. Mixing it up on a bicycle in crazy traffic was an adventure in itself. Stoplights are rare so you play a cat-and-mouse game getting through the intersections. We ventured south to a suburb of Amarapura, home of U Bein’s Bridge, the world’s longest teak footbridge in the world (1300 yards). It crosses over a lake with views of the daily life of the locals. A boy herds oxen into the lake. Men are in skinny fishing boats searching for dinner. Other men are wading waist deep with a net. A duck farm exists on the banks and we see the farmer herding hundreds of ducks back to the farm using a floating fence in the water. Ladies are squatted in the fields either picking something or, removing bugs from the crop. Monks travel across the bridge to get to the monastery on the opposite side housing several thousand young monks.

The trip en-route was equally fascinating. Women seem to carry everything on their heads with great balance. A group of women were working on laying rock by hand to build a road. They even carry a stack of bricks on their heads! Another woman was herding goats along a country road carrying a wild assortment of foliage on her head. A man was herding six cows along the road stopping for the cows to eat in the huge piles of trash stashed along the road, much of it plastic. We passed one village and heard lots of click-clacking. Stopping to explore, it was a silk village with weaving machines scattered among the wood & bamboo houses.

OSHA would have a hey-day in this country. We stopped at the marble-carving shop and viewed men hand carving marble Buddha’s using a hand saw with no mask or goggles. Marble dust was flying everywhere; their faces were white with dust. Heck, all the trees were covered in white marble dust. Inside a building were stalls of carvers doing the more intricate designs on jade, sandalwood, bone and teak. One man showed us a bone he spent 10 days carving elephants into a stick of bone 6” by 1”. It’s extremely intricate work.

At a major temple along our route we saw a “coming of age” celebration of children. Colorfully robed children come out with their families and a procession begins with the families fancifully dressed and departing in the beds of their pick-up trucks while sitting in plastic chairs.

Bagan, Myanmar - Day 5 - 7, Saturday –Tuesday, January 26 – 29

Ten hours was spent on a boat to travel slowly down river to Bagan on the Irrawaddy River. Bagan is home of 4,000 stupas (small temples with Buddha inside) spread among the dry, flat, dusty landscape. Once the infrastructure is built, I can see this area becoming as congested as tourists viewing the Angkor Wat temples in Siem Riep, Cambodia. For now, horse drawn carts carry tourists down the dusty paths. For three days we pedal the dusty roads with one-speed rental bikes, passing the ox carts and horse drawn carts. We arrived on the day of the first full moon in February, apparently their largest celebration of the year. That evening, scooters were flying wildly down the streets spurred on by their local beer, Myanmar Beer. I spoke to some 18 year olds and learned 18 is the legal drinking age. I gathered that information as they were climbing on their scooters, beers in hand. Not long after that, a local man had a treacherous encounter with a car, hearing the loud thud. We had a quiet dinner, skipped the wild partying and found a back dirt-road back to our guesthouse.

At breakfast, we met Steve, a tourist from San Francisco that has made his home at our guesthouse for four months. He came last year for three months and loved the friendly people so much that he’s staying a month longer this year. Steve has taken a local 14 year boy, Mao Chit, under his wing attempting to instill an entrepreneurship attitude in him. Thanks to Steve, Mao Chit now has two bicycles to rent to tourists. Additionally, Steve bought a teak fishing boat (<$300) with an outboard motor to take up to four tourists on a sunset cruise on the Irrawaddy River. For $12, we hire Mao Chit for a four hour cruise. Actually, it’s Steve’s boat but to stay in favor of the locals, he tells everyone the boat belongs to Mao Chit. Steve takes us down a river inlet and we visit a local farming village. The locals are not accustomed to seeing tourists strolling through their village. Even though they didn’t speak English, they welcomed us into their temple, their monastery and a home for a bowl of tofu rice. The elderly monk showed us his home which is unusual for a woman to be allowed inside. By the time we returned to our boat, we had collected a group of children whom we were trying to teach numbers and colors. Later, we had our pictures printed and laminated to be delivered by Steve so each child (and monk) could have a keepsake. After exploring by boat the various activities on the riverbanks we settled on a sandbar with our deckchairs and drinks to view the gorgeous sunset. Later, slowly trolling down river at night, we had a nearly full moon to light our path.

Definition of a Stupa - a usually dome-shaped structure (as a mound) serving as a Buddhist shrine.

On bicycles, for three days we explored a few of the 4,000 stupas along with daily life in villages. Yes, the rulers went on a building rampage many years ago with all the temples. Inside each are usually one (or more) statues of Buddha. He is quite the “rock star”. It was fascinating to view lives so different from ours. In one village we stumbled across a family of Long-Necks. The Long-Necks are an indigenous tribe where brass rings are placed around women’s necks to make them appear less desirable to other tribes. It’s an ancient custom and one that should be banned since it re-arranges the bone structure of women by pushing their shoulders down from their head. The neck length does not change, their shoulders drop. The tradition starts at age eight by placing permanent brass rings around the neck and below the knees. New rings are added every three years. After 18 years there is maximum of 24 rings. This family had a 72 year old grandmother (full set of rings) and a 16 year old granddaughter plus, two other women nearby. Most Long-Neck tribes live in northern Myanmar so it was quite unusual to stumble across this family.

On a street corner in New Bagan was an office for the National League for Democracy (NLD) plastered with pictures of Obama and Aung Sang Suu Kyi. They were collecting voter registrations and advertising their party. After 50 years of dictatorship, it was wonderful to see the positive change.

Inle Lake, Myanmar - Day 8 -11, Wednesday –Saturday, January 31 –Feb 2

The option for traveling to Inle Lake was a 12 hour over-night bus trip or, a 30 minute flight. It was well worth the $50 extra cost to fly versus bus. Inle Lake is the mountain destination to get away from the heat. At lake level we were at 2,900’ with 5,000’ mountain peaks surrounding us. It was nice to get away from the dust and heat of the plains. It was actually chilly (50’s) at night then high-70’s during the afternoons.  Inle Lake covers an area of 15 miles long by 2 miles wide. It’s a very shallow lake with a depth of 17” during rainy season and 12” in dry season. The lake size has decreased a third in the past 50 years due to the addition of aqua-culture farming introduced in the 1960’s.

The typical tourist attraction is to rent a boat and driver for a day on the lake. For $20, we found Chu-Chu and his long skinny boat complete with blankets and umbrella. The umbrella worked great for wind protection on a cold morning while bundled in nearly every item of clothing I packed. We had a fascinating day of exploring life on the lake. Their floating rows of gardens were made by dredging dirt into huge mounds. Entire villages live on the lake on stilt houses. I was especially interested in picking out the “out-house” at each home. It was usually a bamboo stilt hut in front of the home with a squat toilet direct into the lake. Chu-Chu let us out at a local village market where we tried to discern their wares. We returned with a fried banana, peanut brittle, rice cake and sticky rice for our snack. One home on the lake was the Burmese Cat House. Over the years, the lineage of the pure-bred Burmese cat disappeared from Burma. They were able to find some pure-bred cats in the U.K. to return to Burma. They now have a cat house of 100+ pure bred cats. We were allowed in the cat house and with the sniff of a little food, the cats were swarming us.

The next two days were spent on our rental bikes exploring life along the lake. Myanmar has two wineries. We rode our bikes to Red Mountain Winery which had several varieties of reds and whites. For $3 we got four tastings and even liked a couple. The facility looked nearly new and of course it was run by a French-man. The next day destination was their natural mineral water out-door spa. The warm water felt great but do you think it really cures all the ailments the signage promised? Shooting pool is a popular past-time. Even in rural areas we see straw shacks that serve as pool halls for the men to gather.

During our bicycle amblings around Bagan and Inle Lake we encountered three high-priced cycle touring companies (Back Roads, Butterworth, Spice Roads) with their pampered cycling guests. I guess we were in the right place if we’re bumping noses with tourists paying $5,000 for their tours while we tool along on our $2.00/day rentals. They did have nicer lodging since we also checked out the resorts where they stayed. Their infinity pool was nice but, the resorts were isolated far from town and local activity. We were happy with our rusty bikes and hall bathrooms in exchange for the authentic experience.  In total (two in country flights, boat, lodging, food, entertainment and souveners) we spent $750 each for 12 days ($62.50/day). At their price for eight days the cost is $625.00/day, ten times as much! At my savings, I can do ten more trips JMeanwhile, back at our comfy guesthouse at Inle Lake (with our private bath) we arranged for a couples massage at our room for the total price of $12.00. We liked that so much that the next evening we went to the local massage house to check out their authentic Burmese massage. Their massage style is more of quick presses into the muscles.

Yangon, Myanmar - Day 12 -13, Sunday –Monday, February 3 – 4

Our last stop in Myanmar is a one hour flight to Yangon, the largest city. No motor scooters are allowed here due to the busier traffic.  The largest and most revered temple is in Yangon, Schwedagon Pagoda; a large complex of gold gilded temples, Buddha’s and worshipers.  Yangon has a large population of Chinese and Muslims (many from India). Our guesthouse is in the Muslim section where many women are wearing the head covering. People have gained weight here too. We see much less of the really skinny men.

For two days, we strolled around, hopped into taxis while taking in the hectic markets, street merchants, Muslim Mosques, Chinatown, tea rooms and authentic Myanmar food. My favorite drink from a street vendor was an Avocado drink made with really ripe avocados and condensed milk. I’ll test that recipe when I return home. The city still has some wonderful old Colonial Buildings left from the years of British rule. In the evening, to escape from the heat, fumes and frenetic activity we had cocktails at the high-priced International Hotel nearby. Here the World Health Organization and many similar groups were in town for conferences. Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok where I’ll catch a flight to Penang, Malaysia. Paul returns home and I continue solo for three weeks Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok where I’ll catch a flight to Penang, Malaysia. Paul returns home and I continue solo for three weeks to Malaysia (including Borneo), Ko Lipe Island in southern Thailand then ending in Singapore