December in Canada is so damn cold that dogs need to be chiseled off the fire hydrants, and though many countries can offer a climatic cure to stop this sexagenarian from shaking like a hypothermic Chihuahua, this year’s choice is the less trodden roads of mysterious Myanmar.
Clearly suffering from five decades of catastrophic mismanagement and iron-handed rule by a military dictatorship, Burma is beginning to emerge from years on the blacklists of travelers. We choose to still refer to the country as Burma rather than Myanmar out of our disdain for a morally-bankrupt military junta.
The country’s redeeming factor is it’s said to be lost in a time warp where the adventure travel of old lives on. Beginning in the ancient city of Rangoon, now called Yangon, we exchange a few C-notes for local ‘kyat’ currency and transform into ‘mathletes’ trying to get our head around all the zeroes. With Burma ranking 172 out of 176 countries in the world for corruption we triple check a stack of funny money so sizable it almost requires a wheelbarrow to haul it away.
Outside the muddled airport we jump into a primitive taxi looking better suited to Fred Flintstone. The only air-con is courtesy of floorboard cavities revealing the road’s center line blurring by beneath. Bumping over the tortuous pothole-plagued roads we are puzzled by the plethora of perplexing road signage created using a squiggly alphabet resembling the aftermath of dance competition involving ink-dipped earthworms!
In this land that time forgot a culture exists where holy men are more celebrated than rock stars and golden Buddha are bathed every day at first light. Men dress in long cloth skirts called a ‘longyi’, and women look tribal with faces smeared in a white tree bark mixture for protection against the searing sun. Tooth- challenged elders have their lips, gums, and any remaining ivory vandalized from habitually chawing betel nut, and wads of red spittle leave the streets looking as if they’re infected with a bad case of measles.
Mugged by time, many of the city’s former grand colonial buildings are now on life support, and as Christine stops to take a photo, we are loudly scolded by a sullen-looking policeman carrying a slingshot in his back pocket as his woeful weapon of choice. Now while a slingshot and pebble may provide a slight degree of angst for a naughty acorn-stealing squirrel, I think it most unlikely to deter any serious badass! I briefly contemplate asking the copper if he carries a set of elastic bands as backup!
The sacred 2500 year old Shewdagon Pagoda is insanely adorned with 27 tons of gold leaf and set with 5,448 diamonds, 2,317 rubies, and other gemstones including topaz and sapphire. At the very top of the 326’ stupa is its crowning jewel; a single 76 carat diamond winking in the sun.
Always up for a compelling activity, we board a battered train that looks like it’s been around since man got up off of his knuckles. We are the only foreigners aboard. Seated on kidney-crunching wood seats next to windows that long ago lost their glass the train ambles along at the speed of a constipated camel. Any signs of city tourism quickly give way to the ramshackle shelters and heartbreaking poverty in the countryside.
Women struggle aboard the old iron horse with massive loads of veggies, and quickly sandwich us amid their towering stacks of greenery. With no apparent room left in the car a plump old woman somehow squeezes in with a little portable kitchen slung around her neck, trying to sell her captive audience a hot cooked meal. The bedlam is wondrously chaotic as the train trundles down the tracks!
Returning three hours later it’s near noon and none too soon to find a greasy spoon in old Rangoon. After a quick snack we stretch our legs by strolling across Kandawgyi Lake on a wobbly wooden boardwalk that we share with monks beneath umbrellas shielding their shaved domes from the sun. The prow of the floating concrete Karaweik Royal Barge is built in the shape of a bird of Burmese mythology, and completely gilded in gold it dazzles in the sun with its golden upside-down twin painted on the lake’s calm surface.
Reaching the township of Dalah requires a brief crossing of Yangon River on a congested ferry in dire need of cosmetic surgery, and to sit down means renting a 12 inch plastic stool better suited to a four year old. Jostling with the exodus of bodies stampeding off the rusted relic we then hire two of the least aggressive rickshaw drivers. In the outlying villages Christine receives huge hugs from a few most appreciative ladies after gifting them with prized tubes of lipstick.
I must admit we did not fully understand the term ‘terminal illness’ until discovering the unmined vein of stupidity in the soul-numbing Yangon airport. Nobody speaks English and there are no flight boards; only a little brown man, just slightly taller than the seats, scurrying about waving a numbered wooden stick. We have to keep an eye on mini-man and his precious little twigs so as not to miss our plane!
Bagan feels like we’ve wandered into the wrong century, and villagers go about their daily lives oblivious to the fact they live in one of the most bewildering religious sites on the planet. Though no single structure can compare to the magnificence of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, the appeal of Bagan is the quantity. Scattered across the plains within a 42 sq km area there are a mind-boggling 2,700 old pagodas and temples.
Introducing our sandals to town’s dusty streets I joyously discover a shop selling one of Burma’s greatest natural resources; a twelve year old Special Edition Myanmar Rum. The absurd price tag of $3.50 spawns a smile so huge it leaves me tasting earwax!
Random cycling is a great way to get under the skin of the country, and after a rooftop breakfast overlooking a time capsule of Bagan’s sacred pagodas, we cycle through the beguiling surrounds to the village of Nayung U. Broken roads often morph into sandy paths and make it a bit of a challenge to remain upright on the bikes, but at least it’s mainly four-footed rather than four wheeled traffic to worry about. Ox carts own the trails and the roads are the domain of horse drawn buggies.
With adventure the rum in our eggnog we find Bagan a gem with vacationists still a bit of a novelty. In the pitch black of morning we head out into the countryside to watch the sun crawl up over the ageless landscape, and climbing the dust-clogged stone stairs of an ancient temple in darkness we almost stumble when spooked by a large rat skittering past at eye-level in our flashlight beam.
Bathed in quiet, we sit atop the temple with dawn’s gradual awakening brushing the sky with a shrimp- colored hue. As the sun gently pulls itself up and floats free of the horizon the light is soft, the heat gentle, and the scenery exquisite. A magical Myanmar morning indeed.
Cycling past temples speckling the thirsty plains, the quiet villages have goats outnumbering people meaning Bagan’s ‘rush hour’ is not exactly an hour of rush. It is simply fat-tired bicycles being ridden home from school by youngsters who befittingly refer to English speaking travelers as the ‘Hello People’.
Stopping in at a café for a chew and chat we find ourselves joined by a long Oriental Whip Snake that slithers across the ginger-colored dirt in front of our bike tires and into a thicket of bamboo. Just to beon the safe side we find a table with no bushes around it.
For today’s countryside jaunt our ‘Burmese Limousine’ is a pimped-out horse cart numbered 54. Having been around since before they put fins on cars, I birth a smile as I remember an early sixties sitcom called ‘Car 54 Where Are You’ with two goofy NY cops named Toody and Muldoon.
We feel like Mennonites clip-clopping along in our rudimentary one horse powered cart, but we know we are in good hands with driver Min and his gentle mannered horse named Susu. They are in perfect tune together just like an old married couple, and laying a bamboo stick on the wooden spokes of our chariot, Min turns to us with a contagious grin on his grill and remarks “Burma horn”.
Min stops for a cup of tea at a crude shack, and as we sip we’re fascinated watching elders blowing smoke at the sky from preposterously proportioned stogies wrapped in corn husks. To prevent the village going up in smoke, half a coconut shell or a pot is held beneath colossal combustibles large enough to provide shade for a small child!
Being locked away in the time warp of Bagan has been a blast, but with temple-fatigue setting in it’s time to migrate north and escape the torrid heat. A domestic flight deposits us in the Kalaw Township of Heho, where we arrange for transport to Inle Lake’s scruffy town of Nyuangshwe to spend the next 5 days.
Inle Lake covers roughly 45 square miles in a remote area of the Shan State, and rugged mountains tumble down towards a lakeshore hosting villages and monasteries perched on stilts. Coming as a shock after the furnace heat of Bagan, the early morning temperatures here struggle to get above zero, and with no heat in our hotel the nights are colder than polar bears toenails.
Christine and I hire a long-tailed boat driver for a day to explore the surrounding areas. And just to clarify, it’s the boat that has a long tail, not the driver! Walking to the river before morning has broken (thanks Cat) locals are huddled around little fires burning on the street, so we stop and join them to warm our hands before continuing to the boat.
Then, with a pull of the cord, the engine sounds like an angry lawnmower as the boat sputters off into the shrouding mist. Even bundled up in several layers of clothes and a thick blanket it still feels as if we’re in the middle of Siberia! Reaching Inle Lake with a cataract of morning mist dissipating, we are hoping that the first kiss of morning sun will provide enough warmth to soothe our body tremors.
The lake immediately gifts us with stunning visuals. Intha fishermen have already begun their day and appear to be doing awkward calisthenics while standing precariously on their low riding dugout canoes.
Posing one-legged, with the other sinewy limb wrapped around the paddle, they bring torsos nearly horizontal before kicking the leg backwards to propel the boat forward. The one-legged rowing leaves hands free to work their conical bamboo fish nets.
The photographic bouquet before us is superb, and seeing one of the fishing boats with a little boy in it, I forage in my pack to see what small gifts I have left. The answer is a flashy pair of purple sunglasses, and obviously tickled pink by his present, the lad births a huge grin and splays his little fingers in the John Lennon peace sign while blowing us kisses.
With the average income here a meagre dollar a day, many eke out an existence by farming floating gardens. Fertile muck scooped from the lake bottom is floated on beds of woven weeds and grass, and the gardens anchored by bamboo poles hammered through them into the bottom of the lake. The constant moisture is super productive for growing a wide variety of flowers and vegetables, and as an extra bonus, if owners want to relocate they simply pull up the securing poles and move the ingenious gardens elsewhere.
Seriously off the ‘eaten track’ in the pandemonium of a weekly market we start to feel a little puckish; that is until we’re offered barbequed skewers of lopped off chicken heads! Acting on information gained over 60 years of self-preservation, our stomachs send to our brain frenzied messages of the ‘do not put this anywhere near the mouth’ variety! Trying to maintain control over stomachs trying to escape through throats we vehemently pass on the crunchy KFC cast-offs and hoof it back to the boat.
Winding through 8 km of twisting canals from the lake, our boat snouts up on shore near the village of Indein. A bamboo-bordered trail leads to a mega set of stairs for a view of hundreds of jungle stupas bejeweled with tinkling umbrella shaped bells. Regrettably nature and neglect have left them suffering from architectural leprosy, but boating back to Nyuangshwe we are of like mind that today has truly been a gem in the tiara of our travels!
Exploring outside of Nyuangshwe by bicycle we unexpectedly come to Red Mountain Winery and feel it our duty to dismount for a tasting. Our favorite is a smooth Shiraz Tempranillo with a sommelier-confusing label reading: ”First nose on the oaky range like vanilla and black chocolate. Candied Morello cherry. Spicy and animal notes.” Now, don’t y’all just love a good wine with ‘animal notes’?
After a full day’s cycling some erroneous thinking has us believing a Burmese massage would be a great idea. Regrettably it is not! Burmese practitioners rub us the wrong way by using only their callused feet instead of their hands during the one hour ‘tromp and stomp’. The excessive masseuse abuse from the macabre massage leaves Christine bruised like a week old pear, and I’m concerned that tonight’s Happy Hour may result in Unhappy Hour due to potential spillage from my quivering appendages!
Stopping at Shwe Yan Pyay Monastery on our last day affords a unique Kodak moment. The glassless oval-shape windows of the monastery serve as eye-catching frames for the young monks often appearing to gaze outside. Just as in Laos there is no shortage of monks with about half a million having taken the vows; roughly the same number as soldiers.
Burma appears to be a country trapped in the past but reaching for the future, and after 50 years of nightmares the country is collectively holding its breath as it struggles to emerge from isolation. Fingers crossed their next election will be a fair one so it can finally rid itself of its ‘electile dysfunction’. This is a country deserving of so much better!
Few are the travelers who add Burma to their Asian itinerary, but for those that do the rewards are truly awesome. Though this country may be one of Asia’s poorest, in many ways it can be argued that it’s also one of the richest. It is difficult not to fall under its spell with a genuinely friendly people and spectacular visuals at virtually every turn, and for those with an adventurous palate, Burma is one enchanting country that can truly tick all your boxes!
Mark Colegrave January 2013