Burma tales -part 2

On the evening of day 5 we flew into Bagan, getting a decent view of the area from the sky, before checking into our hotel and finding an incredible view from our 2nd floor balcony and from the swimming pool. The view is important because, well, the view is incredible. Around a thousand years ago Bagan was the capital of a country that stretched to much of South-east Asia for over 200 years before Ghengis Khan and his Mongols arrived. During that time, in addition to the trade, living and government buildings that were constructed out of wood and have now disappeared, 4,400 temples, pagodas and the like were built. 2,200 still stand today in an area around 4 miles by 4 miles.

It is incredible. There is no other appropriate word. The Plain is just full of temples, over 100 of which are worth stopping and looking at, many of them have impressive interiors of murals in addition to their amazing structures. In between locals continue farming as they have done for centuries and trees dot the landscape. The Irawaddy river that is the heart of the country runs around 2 sides of the area adding to the backdrop. Even the persistent hawkers trying to sell their paintings and artefacts at most of the well-known sights are unable to distract from the experience.

Cycling around the Plain and exploring the temples along tiny tracks, climbing up to the top of many of the temples to see extraordinary views, taking photos of the incredible view; it was one hell of a few days, and one well worth seeing. Our fantastic (and cheap) hotel, the Kumudara, with balcony and pool views directly over the temples added to the atmosphere. The only dampeners so far was the rain on the first night, the clouds that suddenly appeared on the second and third nights to ruin our sunset views, and several flat tyres!

For two mornings we went for a run over the fields, along tracks and past the temples (and often rather startled farmers). Each day we climbed up several temples to take in the amazing views. We sweated a lot in the heat, drank a lot, and visited lots of temples. On the last night we even went for an evening swim under the stars -as I have noted before I only seem to see the stars every 6 months or so which is quite sad. On the whole Bagan was up there, close to Angkor Wat (though different) as one of the highlights of Asia.

The Burmese seem to be halfway to being Indian, but are certainly not Indian. Their simple food of meet curry and rice is often eaten with cutlery and they don't seem to care much about their political situation, somewhat resigned to fate (elections this year, the first for 20 years since the military junta lost but refused to give up power, will just cement their position behind a pretence of being elected since the opposition leader is barred from running and her party highly restricted) after the failed uprisings last year. The Indians of course eat with their hands and often eat Nan bread with their meal; they also always have lively opinions on politics. Everything here was fairly clean, even the streets of Yangon, and certainly there were few cows to be seen-just lots of dogs. The Burmese tend to give more direct confirmations in response to questions than the Indians, although like the Indians they do love to provide stories or answers without any point. I tried to find out why none of the trees at Bagan seemed more than a few decades old and, ten minutes of discussion later, think maybe it is because the farmers cut them all down to use as wood and to make space for farming - once the area became protected in 1990 maybe some trees were planted along fields or roads or just grew naturally.

After leaving Bagan we flew (the roads are so bad even a car would take ten hours) to Heho which required flying two sides of a triangle, one about 20 min (my shortest flights ever I believe), the other 35 min, and just a short wait on the plane in the middle as some passengers got of and others got on. A great deal quicker than a bus! From the plane it was clear how sparsely inhabited the country is and how rare tarmac is!

Burma tales part 1

Leaving Beijing early in the morning meant I arrived at our very
fancy, but very cheap hotel, in Yangon (Myanmar's former capital but
still the economic centre) in time to make the most of the beautiful
swimming pool which overlooks the lake.

On the way into town from the airport I noticed four things, the first
being that all the car license plates were in Burmese rather than
English numbers which may be the first country I've been to where this
is the case, the second being that there were no adverts for, or any
evidence of, western company's products since most western governments
(and/or most western campaign groups) do not allow their companies to
do business here due to the oppressive military dictatorship, so the
Koreans and Japanese seem to be the main foreign branded products
available here. However we did find many western products had been
imported via Thailand (the packaging was all in Thai), especially Coke
etc. The third thing that intrigued me was that they drove on the
right even though they were a British colony like India. Apparently
the government switched it in 1970 to distance themselves from British
times. Most cars are right hand drive, probably because they are from
Thailand or made for the Thailand market and in Thailand they drive on
the left. However a few cars are left hand drive.

The fourth thing was the traffic cop who stopped us looking for bribe
of ten US$ but my taxi guy actually had a legitimate and current
license so he got nothing from us. Later on we would pay many tolls to
travel around and pass several military checkpoints, though they were
very low-key.

Our hotel in Yangon was stunning, and only 75 US$ a night for a
wonderful room. It overlooked a lake and had a view to the stunning
stupa with so much gold and glass flashing that is the major sight and
that, after enjoying the pool in the beautiful gardens, we visited at
sunset. The Shwedagon Stupa (or Paya in Burmese) was incredible. Its
size, brightness, decorations and aura certainly made it stand out
from the many others we saw on our trip.

We walked around town quite a bit which was bustling and marvelled at
the different food options from street vendors as well as how small a
quantity of vegetables some women were selling. In the centre of the
town was another old pagoda serving as a roundabout and a central
point for beggars though there are not that many really. Even the
street sellers did not hassle us much -the kids (and occasionally
adults) being the exception outside of tourist sites with their
jewellery and postcards. We were more afraid of the pavements which
were a real mess around the markets and downtown!

On Thursday we went into the countryside for some nice views and a
couple more pagodas at Kyauktan and Thanlyin; one of which was on an
island in a river. That afternoon we rode a rickety old train without
glass that goes very slowly and stops at 'stations' every mile. Us
foreigners had to sit in the last carriage, identical to all the
others except that there was a man with a safe collecting the ticket
money from each station's staff as we passed each station.

After a wonderful run on a raised walkway through the park next to our
hotel I went hunting for sandals in my size and made an old book
seller's day buying a book I may never read. We walked around seeing
the old colonial buildings and fancy hotels that were just one block
from streets where locals were sifting through rubbish - though on the
whole Yangon does not have much extreme poverty visible (at least it
actually seemed better than some other cities like Manila). We also
splashed out 35 US$ for the two of us to have a wonderful 2 course
meal with several drinks (a bargain really) in a beautiful old
townhouse. One of the best I have ever been to, including the
incredible service.

Other meals we had were more basic, a dollar or two each for some rice
with meat curry and strange condiments. Nothing fantastic, but good
enough, although breakfast options were more interesting.

On Friday we went to the decrepit national museum to see an impressive
throne, got wet while enjoying the pool (and accompanying wi-fi!), and
dashed through traffic to a strange village of buses where we
fortunately found ours, had settled down for a surprisingly
comfortable overnight bus trip watching a dvd on dad's dvd player in
order to drown out the noise from the tv on the bus. The main road
from Yangon to Mandalay was surprisingly good compared to those around
town and the countryside from the previous days and the service
station we stopped at was nice with an army of kids as waiters even at
11pm.

On Saturday morning, after getting off the bus, we climbed 2 hills
(Mandalay and Saigang), so we could see the huge space of Mandalay
palace (now mostly just trees), lots of temples in the surrounding
area and the large Irawaddy river dotted with tree- studded islands
making the views pretty impressive. We also passed many more buddhas
and the like but are already bored of them!

We then took a tiny motorboat across to the island of Inwa which was
the capital of Myanmar for the better part of 400 years until 1841
years. Left behind are a few hundred basic houses and almost as many
stupas. Without any cars on the island we were driven around by horse
and cart; the sun was shining (for the first time after a few days of
intermittent rain and cloud); the only sound was a few other tourists
rattling by in their carts and some girls selling jewellery and
postcards. The island was almost deserted with just a few shacks amid
the paddy fields and lakes. The 50 or more remaining stupas, temples
or other remains stood alone and untouched, slowly decaying in the
peace. It was remarkable. Though the remains cannot touch the truly
unique and breathtaking ones at Angkor Wat, the atmosphere, experience
and beauty were comparable.

Afterwards in Amarapura (capital for 100 years a few centuries ago) we
visited a remarkable footbridge that is made of 1000 teak posts and is
almost a mile long across a lake and has existed for over 200 years.
Made out of teak wood it is impressive enough; then add in the beauty
of the lake, the life and colour of all the locals using the bridge,
and top it off with a cold beer by the lake and the decent sunset view
(the cloud returned ruining it somewhat) and there was no doubt the
afternoon was the highlight of the trip so far.

In the evening we went to see the famous Moustache Brothers who
perform a traditional cabaret with dancing and comedy. They became
famous due to their satire criticising the government and landing 2 of
them in jail for several years. Now they are out of jail but they are
only allowed to continue the show in English (the third one speaks
good English) and to foreigners, 20 of whom crowd around the stage in
their living room each night.

As impressive as their history and principles are, and as cool as it
was to see the 3 of them, they have whacked up their prices, the show
was pretty boring and it was dominated by dancing rather than satire.
Still they did crack a few jokes about the government and tried to
raise awareness of their plight- it was one of the few places where
photos were encouraged without requiring an extra fee!

An early start this morning took us into the hills of Mandalay to Pyin
Oo Lwin which has a lively market and nice old British mansions now
serving as hotels; the latter originally hosted the British government
during the summers when Myanmar was a colony as it was cooler up here.
We followed three kids on a wonderful 45 minute hike down to the very
impressive Anisakan waterfalls where, unsurprisingly we saw no-one bar
a local living there selling food and drink. The hike back up broke a
sweat which we planned to get rid of in the swimming pall of the
National Kandawgyi Gardens. However the gardens were so beautiful, and
our time limited, we never made it to the pool, instead enjoying the
Orchids, Swamp walkway, Aviary, elevated walkways and wonderful
flowers and trees that were originally planted in 1915 (and are well
looked after today) by a botanist from Kew Gardens. The gardens were
very popular with the locals and there is an abundance of nature
surrounding, and in, the lake and forests (some natural, some
planted). The afternoon of day 5 ended with a ridiculous 25 mile drive
out of Mandalay to get to the airport and a flight to Bagan.