Arrived 5/12/19
Yangon
My plane landed at 7.00 pm, an hour later than advertised; it was only later that I realised Myanmar is 30 minutes behind the rest of SE Asia and the plane was only 30 minutes late. The formalities at the airport were straightforward and my luggage was swiftly on the belt`. I usually take it on-board but having read reviews of Vietjet Air where carry-on bags were weighed at check in and again at the gate I had taken the precaution of buying a checked-in luggage allowance as I knew my case would exceed the strict 7 kg carry-on limit.
After a little hunting I found the bus and checked with the driver it was going to the right place. He did not ask for the fare so I assumed a conductor would collect it; however, there was no such person and after a while I noticed an honesty box by the entrance into which some passengers, but by no means all, were inserting their fare. As there appeared to be no way of receiving change (never mind a ticket), and the sum required was 500 kyats (about 25p) while I only had 10,000 kyat notes from the airport ATM, I did not pay but resolved to put in double when I returned to the airport.
The hotels in Yangon are expensive compared to Vietnam. In order to get a room that was not a tiny windowless box on a 7th floor without a lift I had to pay £80 for 3 nights compared to £50 for a much better room in Hanoi. And that is not the only difference; Myanmar ‘feels’ different to the other SE Asian countries I have visited. The proximity to India is apparent both in the features and dress of the people, many of whom, although not all, seem a little down-at-mouth compared to the smiling faces I encountered elsewhere. The streets were strange too; it took a little while to figure out why: there were lots of cars but hardly any motor bikes. Very odd indeed.
I was close to running out of clean clothes but the hotel charged by the item and I was not going to pay upwards of $20 for a small load of washing so I set off in search of a laundry where I expected to pay a couple of dollars. Google maps showed several but actually finding one proved a lot harder than expected. After exhaustive searches of the busy area of small shops where the first one should be I gave up and tried to find another; it too was not where it was supposed to be. Helpful people directed me across the road, more helpful people sent me into a market and yet more directions within the market told me there wasn’t one there. Fortunately I was not in a hurry and the search was interesting in itself, taking me through little streets thronged with shops, street stalls and pedestrians – but no motor bikes. Very, very odd.
I broke off my search to try the local Shan noodles for lunch and decided I could do a lot worse for £1. Mind you, the coffee was £1.25. Back on the laundry hunt again I finally found one! However, it was nearly as expensive as the hotel so I moved on and soon found another, but this one had stopped trading. Around the corner the map marked yet another but it was nowhere to be found. I decided to try just one more and found it as specified; sadly, it too was exorbitantly priced. I have detergent, a washing line and pegs but my hotel bathroom was too tiny to be suitable for a large wash, so I resolved to wash a couple of items to keep me going until my next destination, where hopefully I will find reasonably priced services or at least a room suitable for hanging wet clothes.
It was time for a little sightseeing. Not far from my hotel was the Sule Pagoda, a glittering golden stupa rather than what I think of as a typical pagoda.
Across the road was a park with Myanmar’s answer to Cleopatra’s needle, while nearby were handsome colonial era buildings.
I thought a walk along the waterfront would be pleasant but all I got was a very busy road with large sheds and shipping containers on the far side. Eventually I came to a Chinese temple that was a welcome place of beauty amid the drab buildings and noisy traffic. I turned away from the river (which I never actually saw) to explore Chinatown, but it was hard to tell any difference from any other streets since the temple was the only Chinese thing I came across.
On the way back to the hotel I found the Junction City shopping mall, a very modern 5-levelled collection of smart shops including many western names such as L’Occitane and Boss; a huge contrast to the street life around the corner and in most of the central area. Chatting to a waitress at a restaurant there that I was considering for dinner later, I discovered that motor bikes are banned from the centre of Yangon but are numerous elsewhere. I also found that the yellow ‘paint’ I had seen on many faces was supposed to be good for the skin and was considered beautiful; it takes all sorts I suppose. And finally I asked her why when I could buy lunch for 2000 kyats it cost 30,000 to do my laundry. She answered that most people do their own so only rich people used a laundry, which to my mind just turned the issue around; if the service was reasonably priced, as it is elsewhere in SE Asia, lots of people would use it. Laundry entrepreneurs take note!
The biggest attraction in Yangon is the Shwedagon Pagoda. There has been a pagoda (or, again, more what I would call a stupa) on this site for nearly 2,600 years, ever since some merchants brought 8 strands of Gautama Buddha’s hair back from India. King Okkalapa enshrined the hair, together with the relics of three previous Buddhas in a 66 felt high ceti. (Now that surprised me because I was under the impression that Gautama Buddha (Prince Siddhartha) was the first Buddha. How little I know.) The monument was increased to 302 feet in height in 1453 and finally to 326 feet in 1774. It is covered in gold plate and gold leaf. There are literally tons of gold and tens of thousands of precious stones adorning this holy shrine, which is surrounded by dozens of smaller shrines containing scores of Buddha statues. Amazing it is, but you can have too much of a good thing and I found it all a bit overwhelming – not at all spiritual – so did not stay too long.
I tried my luck next at the Chauk Htat Kyi Pagoda. This one isn’t even a stupa, just a very large and rather posh shed, but it does contain something remarkable: an 80 yard long reclining Buddha. Not far away is another big shed; this one is the Ngar Htat Gyi Pagoda, containing another huge Buddha, this one sitting down. I was on my way out of the pagoda grounds when I was accosted by a monk who wanted to show me around. He was joined very quickly by an elderly man in civilian clothes who spoke rather more English. They showed me around the monastery buildings, which were mostly just rather drab apartment blocks. In truth there wasn’t much to see but I knew what was coming: a strong suggestion at the end that I should pay for the ‘service’. I coughed up without complaint, and although I gave him less than the rather excessive amount he asked for the old chap seemed pleased, even when I told him he had to share it with the monk.
My way back led through the Kantawgyi Park with its lake of the same name. I stopped to rest my legs and drink a coffee at a café overlooking a swimming pool where it appeared necessary to accompany the few bathers with the loudest possible music. Thus fortified, I made it back to my hotel.
Lake inle
The bus to my next destination, Lake Inle, was scheduled to take 14 hours and rumoured to be super cold on board. I mulled this over and decided I had had enough of long bus rides for the time being so coughed up the extra money to fly to the nearest airport at Heho where I was met by a car sent by my hotel in Nyaung Shwe, the gateway town to the lake. Arriving early afternoon the sun was warm but I soon found it got distinctly chilly in the evening and through the night. As I had experienced on the Ha Giang loop, it seems dwellings are constructed for the hot summers and no thought given to the colder months. In theory the air conditioner in my room could be set to ‘Heat’, but in practice it made no impact at all. After the first night I asked for an extra covering and when I wasn’t actually in bed I was under the blanket. All the restaurants in town seem to be open to the air so I wore multiple layers to dinner and made sure I was well wrapped for my boat trip in the morning.
I thought the 25,000 kyats (£12.50) the hotel charged for the excursion was a little high; what I did not realise until I was picked up and taken to my boat was that this bought me a private boat, just the boatman and me for 8 hours; quite a bargain after all. Despite the warm clothing and the thin blanket supplied, it was cold as the long, narrow boat sped down the wide channel and then across the open lake, the bows high out of the water and a plume of spray behind us.
We slowed to watch the local fishermen perform acrobatics, standing on one leg at the very end of their little, and inherently unstable, boats while they rowed with their other leg and held aloft a conical basket. It looked very dodgy to me but fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how much entertainment you wanted, no-one fell into the lake.
Our first stop set the tone for much of the day: a commercial enterprise where demonstrations of the manufacturing process led to a showroom. For all that it was very interesting and there was no great pressure to buy. All were on stilts set into the water; whole villages and even small towns were built like this with access only by boat. This one was a silversmiths where everything was done by hand from smelting and refining the silver to making delicate and intricate jewellery.
Not far away we stopped again to see the ‘long necked’ women with their copper rings around their necks. They wear them all the time and it looked very uncomfortable to me but I was assured that they felt fine. I stuck my neck out and asked why they wore them and was just told it was tradition. When the ladies were not sitting around displaying their elongated necks they were busy weaving using a very basic technique.
We reached dry land for our next visit at Shwe In Dein Pagoda. Here there was a 20 minute covered walk lined with stalls selling souvenirs and clothing; no-one appeared to be doing much business. Outside hundreds of crumbling stupas were being reclaimed by the jungle; as the pagoda itself came nearer the forest of stupas become progressively better maintained and glitzy.
It was back to commerce next at a cigarette ‘factory’ – a house on stilts where 3 women sat on little stools rolling tobacco. Cigarettes and cigars were displayed in presentation boxes but I wasn’t tempted and quickly moved on to lunch in the restaurant next door.
Another high speed cruise took us to a weaving enterprise spread out over several large stilt houses. Here were dozens of looms where skilled women were rapidly producing cloths of silk, cotton and lotus. It takes 8,000 lotus stems to produce enough yarn to make a scarf; this is reflected in the price: $80 for a rather drab looking beige-grey lotus scarf. Why anyone would want to pay that for such an unattractive item I don’t know.
Back on the boat we passed through a farming area where rows of tomatoes and other crops grow between aisles of water. Quite how the crops are planted, tended and harvested is a mystery; it looks as though it would all have to be done from a boat.
Our final stop of the day was at Nga Hpe Chaung Monastery, also known as the Jumping Cat Monastery because apparently at one time the monks trained cats to jump through hoops. Now that would have been something because the most highly trained cat I’ve ever seen could barely use a litter tray, and that only sometimes. Unfortunately, the current generation of moggies prefers to loaf around in the sunshine rather than entertain tourists.
As the air began to cool once more we sped back to Nyaung Shwe. Despite flailing fishermen failing to fall, and despite recalcitrant cats, it had been a good day. A long and rather tiring day but a good one.
I resolved to have a quieter time the following morning and after a very trying time wrestling with a painfully slow internet and a weirdly behaving WordPress as I attempted and failed to update my blog, I borrowed a bicycle and set off for a short ride. Unfortunately I got rather carried away, cycling a loop that took me over 21 miles, further than I have ridden for years, and on my return could no longer bend my legs. It wasn’t even a very interesting ride. Ah well, I’m sure it was good for me.
Bagan
A short plane ride from Lake Inle took me to the old Burmese capital of Bagan, home to 2,230 pagodas and stupas spread out across a wide plain – and according to ancient chronicles that is just half of the original number. Mostly built in the 10th to 14th centuries, these Buddhist shrines reflect the power and affluence of the old kingdom of Pagan, which was the first to unify the area now known as Myanmar. Today the country has 135 different ethnic groups, so unified (sort of) it may be, but homogeneous the population certainly isn’t. There are those who have features similar to much of the rest of SE Asia; there are others with darker skin who look distinctly Indian, and there are those with the slender features of Aung San Suu Kyi. While I was visiting Burmese temples she was defending her government against charges of genocide of the Rohingya people. Clearly a sensitive subject here, I did try to discuss it when I found an appropriate moment with someone whose English was good enough; he merely referred to ‘troubles’ that were difficult to explain to an outsider and expressed the hope that their leader would be able to exonerate them. Seems like a tough ask to me.
The best way to get around the widely spaced temples is on an E-bike. I expected a bicycle with power assistance, but here the term means an electric motorbike or scooter. The machine handled like other scooters I have driven but was, of course, silent and the roads were quiet so it was a fun way to explore. I visited maybe a dozen stupas and pagodas and one palace on my first day; all were impressive, but a couple of places stood out. The first was Ananda Temple; here there was a very peaceful feeling in front of the tall standing Buddhas: there are four of them, one for each point of the compass, but my favourite was the northern one.
I also particularly liked the Bagan Golden Palace, even though it is a reconstruction of what the original one may have looked like and is just a few years old.
I was heading for a vantage point from which to view the sunset when I stopped for refreshment and a rest at a café. Finishing my drink, I was about to set off when I was invited to visit ‘the village’. This proved very interesting; they only got electricity 4 years ago and traditional methods for most tasks are still employed, including grinding peanuts to obtain oil and weaving cotton on hand looms. I bought a man’s scarf, probably overpaying somewhat but I enjoyed the visit so much I didn’t mind: it was still only £5. I was also given the local cosmetic treatment, the yellow paste thanaka, freshly ground from tree bark. As well as giving what is considered to be a beautiful appearance, it is also supposed to be cooling and a guard against sunburn, as well as to prevent acne, promote smooth skin and be an anti-fungal. Wonderful stuff obviously. By the time I was beautified and left the village sunset was over.
On my second day I had a quiet morning and then stayed a little closer to the hotel, just using a push bike to visit (yet another) golden pagoda at Shwezigon before this time successfully viewing sunset from the top of the Bagan Viewing Tower.
The road to mandalay
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China crosst the bay!
So wrote Rudyard Kipling of the watery road that is the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River. Travel on it demands an early start: I was up at 4.30 am, on the boat by 5.00, and away from the jetty by 5.15 in the pitch dark. Tough for me as this was, for I am not normally an early riser, unlike Corriene, it did mean I enjoyed a marvellous sunrise over the river.
The boat had seating below decks for 70 people but with only 12 passengers we were able to spread out and there were ample comfortable chairs on the open top deck as well. I stayed there enjoying the view and gradually shedding layers of clothing as the early morning chill wore off until the sun became too fierce after midday when I retreated to the air conditioning below decks. We were served a small breakfast, a good lunch and an afternoon snack; all very civilised, even the loos. After the excitement of the camera-snapping sunrise there wasn’t a great deal to see for most of the day. The river, never less than 300 yards wide, meanders gently across a vast flat plain with hardly a hill even in the far distance. Sometimes we passed large, heavily loaded barges pushed along by tug boats; other times there were little fishing boats drifting along. Our boat, and indeed all the larger boats, carried a long striped pole at the bows which was used to test the depth in dodgy stretches of the river. Clearly, navigation here was not as simple as it appeared at first glance. Meanwhile the day slipped serenely by.
It was not until sunset that the view became more interesting again, both because of the sinking sun and because we passed near to hills dotted with shining pagodas. Eventually, back in the darkness and after 13 hours on the river, we reached Mandalay, where I shared a tuk-tuk to the town centre and my (rather poky) hotel room. The constant throbbing of the boat engine had meant that it was not entirely peaceful on the ‘road’ to Mandalay, but it was a whole lot noisier on the actual roads of Mandalay where the usual Asian city motorcycle mayhem ruled.
Like their neighbours in SE Asia, the Burmese have had a custom of spending enormous amounts of their national wealth building new capital cities from time to time. However, here the habit was taken to extremes, the capital moving 34 times between 22 cities over the centuries. I had already visited Yangon, capital from 1948 to 2006, and Bagan, 849 to 1297. The current capital, whose name will no doubt be familiar to you (if your geography is rather better than mine), is Nay Pyi Taw, built in 2006 and covering over 2,723 square miles with a population of just 925,000. Mandalay, now the country’s second most populous city, was built in 1857 by King Mindon and served as the capital until 1885.
This was no king to do things by halves: like the old Vietnamese capital of Hue, his palace bears comparison for size, if not for splendour, with the Forbidden City in Beijing. A huge moat, 2 km in length, surrounds a high wall enclosing the palace grounds. Sadly, the original buildings suffered near total destruction in World War 2, but today replica constructions provide an impressive display. Given the size of the site and the moat I was determined to avoid the mistake I made in Hanoi, where I did not check on the entrance to the citadel and ended up walking miles out of my way. I took directions from Google maps to locate the entrance and walked straight there, only to find a notice which announced in large letters that foreigners were not permitted at that entrance. Doh! Foiled again! The entrance I needed was, of course, on the far side, 4 km away. Luckily, there was a man on a motorbike at hand to offer ‘taxi’ services for just 2,000 kyats (£1) so all was not lost and I was soon inside the grounds.
Not far away from the palace is Mandalay Hill where 1000 steps lead from the base via a series of covered walkways and temples to the summit, from where it was rumoured good views could be enjoyed. I left my sandals at the bottom as required, followed the paths and climbed the steps, eventually arriving at the top, only to be disappointed because most of the view was obscured by trees. Nevertheless, I settled down to wait for sunset. After 45 minutes I took a stroll around the temple quadrangle and fell into conversation with a young monk who asked whether I was not going to go to the top. It turned out to be another 10 minutes climb away, but with his help I found my way there in time to see uninterrupted views across the city and countryside as the sun went down. Clearly this was not my best day for navigation and with this in mind together with the fact that there were several routes down on different sides of the hill, I left the summit immediately after sunset to find my way down before it got dark. After 40 minutes and a couple of indecisive moments at junctions I made it back in time to retrieve my footwear before the place was locked up for the night.
Rob's Roads 