December 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 Canadian 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 still refer to the country as Burma rather than Myanmar, out of our disdain for a morally-bankrupt military junta who are a lot like sperm, with only one in a million turning out to be an actual human being!
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 172nd 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, with the only air-con courtesy of floorboard cavities revealing the road’s center line blurring by beneath. Bumping over the tortuous pothole-plagued roads we’re puzzled by the plethora of perplexing road signage created with 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 used as protection from the searing sun. Tooth-challenged elders have lips, gums, and any remaining ivory vandalized from habitually chawing betel nut whose spat out wads of red spittle leave 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 of one 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 stunningly 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 or the 326’ stupa sits its crowning jewel; a single 76 carat diamond winking in the sun. Valued at about three billion dollars, it is the most expensive pagoda in the world.
Always up for a compelling activity, we board a battered train that looks as if it’s been around since man got up off of his knuckles. We are the only foreigners aboard as it ambles along at the speed of a constipated camel. Seated on kidney-crunching wooden seats beside windows that long ago lost their glass, any signs of tourism quickly vanish as the city gives way to the clusters of ramshackle shelters and the heartbreaking poverty in the countryside.
Women struggle to climb 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 ridiculous 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 snack we stretch our legs with a stroll across Kandawgyi Lake sharing the wobbly wooden boardwalk with monks beneath umbrellas protecting their shaved domes from the sun. The floating concrete Karaweik Royal Barge has a prow built in the shape of a bird from 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.
The township of Dalah requires a brief crossing of Yangon River on a congested ferry in dire need of cosmetic surgery, and sitting 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’re swarmed by local money piranhas chomping at the bit to take a bite out of our cash. We hire a pair of the least aggressive rickshaw drivers to pedal us to outlying villages, where Christine gets huge hugs from appreciative ladies when gifting them with prized tubes of lipsticks.
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 slightly taller than the seats who scurries about and 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!
In Bagan it feels like we’ve wandered into the wrong century. Villagers go about their daily lives oblivious to the fact they live in one of the most bewildering religious sites on the planet, and 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 2,700 pagodas, mind-bogglingly still held together with a centuries-old concoction of clay, honey, lime, cotton, molasses, and glue made from buffalo skins.
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. I can’t wait to take this baby for a test drive tonight, and its redonculous price tag of $3.50 spawns a smile so huge it leaves me tasting earwax!
After a rooftop breakfast overlooking the sacred pagodas we cycle to the tiny village of Nyuang U over broken roads often morphing into sandy paths. It’s a bit of a challenge to remain upright on the bikes but at least it’s mainly four-footed rather than four wheeled traffic we need worry about. Ox carts own the trails and roads are the domain of horse drawn buggies. Random cycling is a great way to get under the skin of the country, and Bagan’s beguiling surrounds offer us a continuum of splendid eye-gasms.
With adventure being the rum in our eggnog, we find Bagan a gem, thanks to vacationists still being a bit of a novelty. In the pitch black of morning we head into the countryside to watch the sun crawl up over the ageless landscape. Entering one of the ancient temples we climb the dust-clogged stone stairs in darkness and almost stumble when spooked by a large rat skittering past in our flashlight beam at eye-level.
Bathed in quiet, we sit atop the temple as dawn’s gradual awakening finally brushes the sky with a shrimp-colored hue. As the sun gently pulls itself up floating free of the horizon the light is soft, the heat gentle, and the scenery exquisite. Both majestic and magical; one might even say our Myanmar morning ‘majestical’!
Cycling through quiet villages, where goats outnumber people, Bagan’s ‘rush hour’ is not exactly an hour of rush, it’s simply fat-tired bicycles being ridden home from school by youngsters who befittingly refer to English speaking travelers as the ‘Hello People’.
As we stop at a café for a chew and chat, a long Oriental Whip Snake writhes across the ginger-colored dirt in front of our bikes. The slender snake’s bright green scales shimmer in the sunlight, and as it slithers off into a thicket of bamboo, we play it safe by parking our butts at a table a safe distance away.
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 remembering an early sixties sitcom called ‘Car 54 Where Are You’ with two goofy NY cops named Toody and Muldoon.
Clip-clopping along in our rudimentary one horse powered cart past temples speckled across the thirsty plains we feel like Mennonites. However we are in good hands, with driver Min and his gentle mannered horse named Susu in perfect tune together just like an old married couple. Laying a bamboo stick on the wooden spokes of our chariot Min turns to us with a contagious grin and remarks “Burma horn”.
Stopping for a slurp of tea at a crude shack, elders with preposterously proportioned stogies wrapped in corn husks are blowing smoke at the sky. To prevent the village going up in smoke an astray of either half a coconut or a pot is kept 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 and 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, where rugged mountains tumble down towards a lake with villages and monasteries perching on stilts. Coming as a bit of 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 nights are colder than polar bears toenails.
Christine and I hire a long-tailed boat driver for a day of exploring the surrounding areas; and just to clarify, it is the boat that has a long tail, not the driver! Walking to the river before morning has broken (thanks Cat) we pass locals huddled around little fires burning on the street and stop to warm our hands.
With a pull of the cord a lawnmower-like roar of the engine sends the boat sputtering off into the shrouding mist. Even though we’re insulated by three sets of clothes and a thick blanket it still feels as if we’re in Siberia! Reaching Inle Lake just as a cataract of morning mist is dissipating we hope 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. This one-legged rowing leaves hands free to work their conical bamboo fish nets. The photographic bouquet before us is superb.
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 and come up with a flashy pair of purple sunglasses. Wearing a huge grin the lad splays his little fingers flashing the John Lennon peace sign while blowing us kisses; obviously tickled pink by his present.
With the average income in the region a meagre dollar a day many here 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 down through them into the bottom of the lake. The constant source of 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 peckish; 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 bodily functions threatening to go rogue we vehemently pass on the crunchy KFC cast-offs and hoof it back to the boat.
After winding through 8 km of twisting canals from the lake our boat snouts up on shore near the village of Indein. We follow a bamboo-bordered trail, and at the top of a mega set of stairs, are treated to a view of hundreds of jungle stupas bejeweled with tinkling umbrella shaped bells. Regrettably, nature and neglect have taken their toll and left them suffering from architectural leprosy. Puttering along the lake back to Nyuangshwe, we are of like mind that this fine day has truly been a gem in the tiara of our travels!
Exploring outside of Nyuangshwe our on bicycle we unexpectedly come to Red Mountain Winery, and feel it our duty to dismount for a tasting. Our favorite wine 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’?
Burma’s countryside includes a variety of odd transport including bowling shoe ugly Chinese contraptions older than dinosaur dung. With open diesel engines over the front wheels, and storage at the back, the antiquated machines look much like an enormous mutated rototiller.
After a full day’s pedaling, erroneous thinking has us believing that a Burmese massage would be a great idea. It most certainly is not! Regrettably the practitioners rub us the wrong way, by using only their callused feet during the one hour ‘tromp and stomp’. The macabre massage’s excessive masseuse abuse 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 with glassless oval-shape windows serveing as eye-catching frames to young monks often appearing at them 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, enabling it to finally rid itself of its ‘electile dysfunction’ – as 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 awesome, with so much more than just monks, monasteries, and militia. Though it may be one of Asia’s poorest countries, in many ways it can be argued it is also one of the richest.
It is difficult not to fall under its spell with genuinely friendly people and spectacular visuals at virtually every turn. And although I’m not quite ready to don the saffron robes just yet, if you have an appetite for adventure, Burma is one enchanting country that can truly tick all your boxes!
Mark Colegrave January 2013