Adventures in Myanmar

Myanmar is a country that seems to have been suspended in time. Once one of the richest country in South East Asia during the British colonial period, it has been on a steep decline since. Governed by a repressive military regime infamous for human rights abuses and oppression, it has been cut off from most of the world by sanctions and bans, except for a handful of nearby countries. The infrastructure in the country is terrible to say the least. Power outages are a norm here, censorship is a way of life (there are only 2 government channels on tv and many internet sites are blocked including gmail, yahoo and hotmail), and the cars/buses are 30-40 years old (still hot commodities at that age since there are so few of them). The roads are a nightmare making flying around the country somewhat of a necessity as a visitor (it's a 25 minute plane ride to get from Bagan to Mandalay, but a 4+ hour bus ride). Horse carts, oxen carts and covered pickup trucks packed with people both inside and on top and hanging off the back are just a few other modes of transportation in this country. Tourism is still a nascent industry, making this a fascinating place to visit.

We arrived in Yangon (Rangoon), the former capital of the country on August 3rd. The international terminal was new and modern, but practically deserted since it was much larger than necessary for the number of visitors they currently got (only a few hundred thousand a year). We exchanged dollars for kyats through a money changer (this is illegal but no other way to get kyats) and visited a pagoda before dashing off to Bagan later that afternoon. The domestic terminal was old, dirty and extremely ghetto - a truly night and day difference from the international terminal, which was probably built using forced labor. When we got to Bagan, there was no baggage carousel. 4 men, each carrying one of our bags, met us and gave us our bag. After paying the $10 entrance fee to Bagan (fees we had hoped to avoid paying since it went to the government and we were trying to be responsible tourists), we got settled into our hotel in New Bagan (in 1990, the government gave the people one week to move from Old Bagan to New Bagan where they had to build new homes, etc. and then eliminated any trace of a village in Old Bagan, which now houses the upscale resorts and hotels) and had dinner at the Green Elephant Riverview Restaurant at sunset. The views of the mountains, the Ayeyarwady River and one of the pagodas by the river was beautiful as the setting sun changed the sky from blue to shades of pink, orange and yellow.

We randomly met a local university student as we were walking back to the hotel who offered to be our tour guide the next day. We arranged for a horse carriage to take us around Bagan to the many temples that are there. Prior to a big earthquake in the 80s or 90s, there were over 5,000 temples in Bagan, which is a tiny little town. Now, there are 2,217. That number continues to grow as the wealthy people commission temples to be built. We visited 15 of the largest and most magnificent ones, including the Ananda and the Shwedigon Pagodas. Oftentimes, we were the only tourists at the temples. Since you can't wear shoes or socks into the pagodas, it felt like we were barefoot half the time. We even climbed up a few of the temples - the views from the tops of those temples were amazing. It didn't matter which direction you looked, you can see hundreds of temples all around you.

The next day we drove to Mt. Popa, where the statues of the 37 nats (holy spirits that the Burmese people worshipped) were located and where a pagoda was perched at the top of the mountain. On the way there, we stopped by villager's home to see his family collect palm sap, grind peanuts (using an oxen) to make peanut oil, boil the palm sap to make candy, alcohol and sugar. At Mt. Popa, there were hundreds of monkeys and local children selling monkey food (something wrapped in paper). To get to the temple at the top, we had to walk up hundreds of steps under a covered walkway. The monkeys follow you up, in the hopes of getting food. They jump on people and tug at your pant legs. Unfortunately for me, one of them decided to bite me on the shoulder as my back was turned towards it. Although we continued our trip as planned and went up to see the pagoda and the views, this unexpected incident created complications. It was difficult to find information and quality health care in Myanmar.

After Mt. Popa, we went back to Bagan and moved to Nyaung Oo where most of the backpackers stay. There was a small restaurant row where we had lunch and then we rented bikes and biked around the town, passing by the bus station (just a bench by a tree with people and a bus) and the fire department. We looked for the market but never found it. Instead, a random local woman invited us into her home, introduced us to her family, served us tea and some candy, taught us how to apply tanaka (this paste the women apply daily on themselves and the children made from the bark of some tree) on our faces, and sold us longyis (local sarongs that both the men and women wear). They showed us how to tie our longyis and we decided to wear them the next day in Mandalay. When we left her home, we biked to find the section of the main road that has been flooded by recent heavy rains. What we found there was hysterical. People seemed unconcerned that homes were in danger of being flooded. Instead, they turned it into the local swimming pool where little children played in tubes and people swam around. Entrepreneurial people even started water taxi services to get you to the other side. Some people even turned it into a car wash - they brought their cars to the edge of the water and washed their cars. It was crazy.

It was these local interactions and funny local experiences that made the trip to Myanmar really different from the other places. The people of Myanmar has shown surprising upbeat and resilience in the face of poverty and political suppression. Most were friendly and eager to share their culture, and some even invited us to visit their homes. It was a wonderful experience.

After using the slow dial-up internet service at a local internet cafe to look for information about rabies, we decided that I should seek medical care in Mandalay where we were heading the next day. I emailed my sister and enlisted Lisa's help in getting through to the embassy in Yangon to figure out where to find a doctor.

Mandalay, one of the old royal capital cities, was a huge sprawling city. When we arrived, we hired a taxi for the day to take us around the city. Unfortunately, the car broke down when we arrived in Mandalay (the cars there are so old and really not all that safe or roadworthy), and we were forced to switch cars. We went up to Mandalay Hill where we could see the entire city from the temple at the top (you can drive up and then take an escalator or walk up a covered walkway like the one in Mt. Popa). We stopped by the Kuthodaw Paya, located at the bottom of Mandalay Hill, where the world's largest book is housed in white stupas. Even in our longyis, we could not get pass the fee so we ended up walking around the outside where the stupas were located and did not go in. We went to the monk district where we visited Shwe In Bin Kyaung, a monastery built in the late 1800s of teak. The intricate carvings in the wood were amazing. The monks there were nice and allowed us to walk around. It was a beautiful, quiet and relaxing place.

Afterwards, we checked into a hotel and went in search of an internet cafe to get information on the hospitals. Internet was completely down at the first but we found working internet on our second try. We got information on doctors from the embassy and called the embassy doctor from a phone (a person sitting at a desk on a street corner with a phone - they don't really have public phones)). We had our cab driver take us to a hospital. The first one was a local hospital that was old and run down so we got the address to the private city hospital, which was much nicer. However, when we first arrived at the hospital, we thought it was completely deserted and abandoned. The main lobby was like a ghost town. Finally we found a man who lead us to another area and soon I had a doctor looking at my shoulder. She advised that I wait till I get to Bangkok to receive the rabies vaccinations and gave me some antibiotics. That made me feel a bit better about the bite.

After our hospital adventures, we visited the Maha Myat Muni Paya - a beautiful pagoda considered to be the second most holy site in Myanmar. It housed a huge gold buddha. Men (women were not allowed) could go up to the buddha and apply gold flakes to it. There were hundreds of local worshippers in addition to foreign visitors. We managed to get around paying the fee here, bypassing the whole $10 fee required for visiting the major sites in Mandalay.

After that we had our driver take us to Amarapura, another one of the old ancient capitals, where there is a famous teak bridge, the U Bein bridge. It is the world's longest teak bridge at over 1 km long and is made of over 1,000 teak wood boards and posts. The water levels in the lake was so high that some of the rest stops were flooded. Amarapura is a huge center for monastic studies in Myanmar, and we saw hundreds of monks in bright red and burgundy robes walking around. Some even turned the lake into a swimming pool. Local people and monks were jumped in, swimming and tubing in the water. I guess even monks need to have fun. When we got to the other end of the bridge, we wanted to visited the town there but the road was completely flooded so we ended up taking a boat and slowly drifted back to the other side of the lake while watching the people crossing the bridge as the sun slowly set.

For dinner, we ate chapatis and biryani at a local chapati stand on the street. Our waiter was a little boy who was adorable - he could not have been more than 7 or 8 but he was really efficient and professional, even at such a young age. He remembered everyone's orders without writing it down and ran around to serve everyone at the many tables he was covering. Myanmar food is not fabulous so we got around it by eating Shan, Chinese and Indian food which is also readily available in the country. We ended the evening by going to see a performance by the Moustach Brothers, 3 comedians who had been arrested in the 90s and imprisoned for making social commentary against the regime. Now, they're only allowed to perform for Westerners, in English. We took trishaws back to the hotel - bikes with big tricycle wheels attached to a seat that could hold a person facing forward and another facing backwards. Like I mentioned, cars are in short supply.

We flew to Heho the next morning where we took a cab to Kalaw, a town in the mountains. After grabbing a quick lunch at a Nepali restaurant, we went on a 17 km trek in the mountains to visit a couple of villages and see the beautiful verdant mountains and the countryside. The mountains were covered by trees, vegetation, and neat rows of vegetables in every shade of green imaginable. The villages were pretty much deserted, except for children playing, since the adults were all off working in the fields during the day. The children were adorable, but dirty from the mud and dressed in dirty, old and ripped clothing. We gave them cookies, which was probably a big treat for them. The poverty faced by the villagers was visible everywhere. Homes were essentially one large, dark room shared by many people. Cooking was done in the center of the room using fire from burning wood or charcoal. Small generators provide them with light for a few hours at night. Each family were allocated only approximately 40 watts of electricity, not even enough to light a light bulb in the U.S. We bought some handicrafts from one family, just so we could give them some money.

We took a very short speed boat trip in motorized canoes around Inle Lake the next day (2 hours is really not enough). Even though we got on the 6:30am bus, we did not make it to the Lake until almost 9am. The lake is surrounded by mountains on both sides. There were people fishing, collecting seaweed and vegetables on the lake. They balanced on the very tip of the boat with one leg and paddled the oar with their other foot. It was incredible to watch - almost like a delicate dance. We made 2 quick stops, once at a major pagoda where a monk was chanting over loudspeakers, and once at a monastery nicknamed "Jumping Cat Monastery." The monks there have trained their pet cats (15 in all) to jump through hoops on command. When we arrived, one of the monks had a kid show us the cats as they jumped through hoops. It was fun to watch. If we had had more time, we could have visited the villages around the lake where the villagers specialize in various crafts.

After we made it back on land, we raced to the airport and left for Yangon. We stayed in the Central Downtown area near the Sule Paya (a temple in the middle of the street) and the old British colonial buildings. We walked to the Sule Paya and saw the Independence Monument, which looked a lot like the Washington Monument in D.C. The colonial buildings have been abandoned for the most part and already, plantlife has slowly start to take them over. The government left Yangon suddenly a few years ago and has move the capital to some mountain fortress. The deterioration in the buildings is tragic since they were once beautiful and majestic. The rainy and dreary skies made it appear all the more desolate. Streets were squalid and dirty but there were tons of local street food shops set up on the street and people were out and about. We didn't try any of it since it didn't look sanitary. Stores with brand new electronic equipment could also be found. It was such an interesting contrast. We even found the British Council Library located in the UK Embassy. It's a local lending library with only English books and magazines. Children can even take English classes.

That night, we changed again into our longyis and headed to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest temple in Myanmar. Even the local people try to come here at least once in their life. We had been templed out at this point, but even this one blew us away. The massive complex was covered with gold stupas and buddha statues. We managed to look like locals and avoided the entrance fee.

We left Myanmar the next morning. It felt weird to be back in Bangkok, in a developed city.