sorry for the poor formatting. myanmar internet is poor, so i'm posting via a friend on skype.
The end of this post (section; “The ride home”) isn’t good for kids. You may want to stop there if you’re more interested in the lighter side of my travels.
Please note; the people of Myanmar are referred to as ‘Burmese’ as the country was previously known as Burma.
New Year’s Eve, Chiang Mai, Thailand;
New Year’s Eve in Chiang Mai probably wasn’t much different than many large cities, save for the fact that everybody has access to large fireworks and the entire sky is filled with thousands of lanterns. It was a good town to ring in the New Year. The thing that most surprised me here were the burning lanterns that people launched. I’d never seen one of these things. It’s a four feet tall white paper bag with a burning element attached by wires at the opening. You open it up, light the element and then stand there holding it open end down waiting for the air inside to heat up. After about 1 minute, off it goes and goes and goes. There were thousands of these things filling the sky above Chiang Mai.
I won’t go into my NYE night in much detail. I did meet some good people from Thailand and around the globe. I’d been fighting a mild cold for a few days and took care not to make it worse. Chiang Mai was nice, but I’ve discovered I much prefer the less developed areas. I did some sightseeing and met some nice locals, but my mind was on Myanmar which was my next stop.
Myanmar;
I flew to Yangon, Myanmar from the Bangkok airport with 15 one-hundred dollar bills hidden in a copy of Stephen Kelman’s ‘Pigeon English’ which was stuffed in my backpack. This sort of behavior isn’t encouraged when traveling abroad or anywhere else. The exception to the rule is Myanmar. There are no ATMs in Myanmar and nobody will accept a credit card. Even domestic air travel is paid for in cash. You need to carry every penny you’ll need for the entire trip into the country with you. When you arrive in Yangon, you then change your money at an unofficial money changer (black market). I quickly found out that everything in Myanmar is different than what I’m used to. Cars have their steering wheel on the right, but also drive on the right side of the street. Men wear “longi” skirts and western tops. Most of the men and many of the women constantly chew a substance called “Bettle Nut” that stains their lips and teeth blood red. These are things I noticed before leaving the airport.
The country seems like a place built by a previous civilization and then abandon, and, subsequently, taken over by the current inhabitants. It’s a dark place at night as lights are used sparingly. Everything here is crumbling and patched together. The buildings, the vehicles, the sidewalks, the roads, everything.
In any 5 minute period here, I see enough alien things to create a pretty large blog post. I’ll start by telling you about where I’m at right now and how I got here. I’m currently at a little café in an off-the-radar town called Taunggok. Foreigners don’t typically come here, but my current travel partner and I decided to take a non-typical route to a remote mountain tribe in the north so that we could see some places that aren’t on the tourist trail.
Taunggok, Myanmar (on the road, and sea, to Mrauk U);
My friend Jenna and I are currently on day 3 of our 5 day journey to Mrauk U. We started in Bagan, bused to Magwe, bused to Pyay, and then bused to our current location in Taunggok. People here seem surprised at our existence. We have to wait one day to get a boat to Sittwe (which is the last stop before the mountain tribe town of Mrauk U). Each stop on the journey has had fewer and fewer westerners. Here, we are completely alone. We walked past a primary school today and every window was filled with waving hands. I cannot stress enough how friendly and curious the locals are. My friend is particularly popular among the men here (and I often seemingly invisible when in her company). Another thing we encounter less of each day is English speaking Burmese, so we’ve gotten really good and charades and at using the few words of Burmese we can find at the back of our Lonely Planet guides.
It wasn’t easy to get here. We made it to a town called Pyay only to find out that the military was particular about foreigners on the road to Taunggok. The only way we could get to here, we were told, was to “wait on the bridge at 8:30 tonight”. As in many previous occasions, locals came to our assistance (for a very minor fee) and helped us through the process. They explained that there are a number of military check points on the road to Taunggok and that we needed a bus driver that had at least a little knowledge of the English language. The only English speaking bus drivers were the ones that originated out of Yangon. So we were essentially hitching a ride with a passing bus with the help of some locals.
Once I was on the bus, I thought I would be in for a high-speed, loud, and extremely bumpy ride on worn out cement and dirt roads for the next 8 hours (as per the norm here). What I didn’t realize was how very mountainous the area between Pyay and Taunggok was. We weaved the tightest single lane mountain road I’ve ever seen in person or on TV. It consisted of winding switch backs with hairpin curves and insanely steep inclines and declines. We passed a few very small villages on the way, but, otherwise, it was nothing but a single lane dirt twister for over 100 miles. The fullish moon was both a blessing and curse. The scenery was beautiful, but much of the drive had sheer cliff on one side and mountain side on the other. No guardrails, no room for error. It was hair-raising. We did this in a greyhound sized bus. In the states, this road would be dynamited off the side of the mountain for everybody’s safety. We had to exit the bus one time during the trip for a check point. A large sign above the military station stated “Everybody must be examined”. I was not examined, thankfully.
This place leaves you constantly scratching your head. For some reason, at about 1AM on two of my bus rides, they began blasting this sort of Buddhist chant music followed by a selection I will call “echo, screams, and feedback in D minor”. Nobody seemed at all surprised by this. The music stayed on, in both cases, for the remainder of the ride. I think the purpose was to keep the driver awake who, based on the empty energy drink bottles, I believe works very long hours.
Prior to my current journey to Mrauk U, I was in Bagan (Myanmar);
I won’t write much about my visit to the temples of Bagan. It would take me days to put words to the beauty of the place. 42sq kilometers filled with over 4400 temples, all of which were constructed over 800 years ago. It’s difficult to believe the place exists at all. From the top of one of the central temples, you can see hundreds of temple peaks in every direction. The place is particularly beautiful at sunrise and sunset, which leave the atmosphere dusty clay red in the evening and a foggy blue in the morning. One morning, well before sunrise, I was wrapped in my jacket high atop one of the better temples for viewing the sunrise. I’d gotten here on a horse drawn carriage driven by a chubby local with blood red teeth and a happy personality named Tilo. There wasn’t yet a hint of light on the horizon, but the largest temple, Ananda (about 2 miles away), was lit and playing Buddhist morning music. Once the sun began to rise, about 8 hot air balloons lifted off in the distance and started to float across the skyline in a long precession of dark silhouettes. The temples and trees poked up above a low heavy mist. This place is a photographer’s dream come true (hint to M+B).
Later that day, my friend and I were told of a festival taking place that evening near the Old Bagan gate. We decided to rent bikes and check it out. We rode out of town for about 20 minutes on a dark dusty road lit only by the headlights of cars and motos. We passed droves of walkers. The festival area was quite big and attended by thousands of Burmese. We saw four other tourists near the gate, but none other for the rest of the evening. The festival was essentially a huge night market. The main part of it was a patch work of connected tents that spread out for what seemed like a few city blocks. The further we weaved back the darker it got. Finally, we emerged on the other side of the tent city in a field where we found a crowed yelling and surrounding a small arena. We could see that they were playing cane-ball (think hacky sack with a wicker ball the size of a cantaloupe) which is very popular here. When we approached, a few folks in the crowd quickly grabbed us and pushed us to the front for a better look. It’s a sport unlike anything I’ve ever seen, which, in Myanmar, is and experience I’m beginning to get used to.
We then waded back into the tent city in search of a concert we’d heard rumors of. It was getting late and I was noticing more than a few drunken locals. One accidentally ran into the back of me, spun, and crashed to the ground in front of me. He jumped up and looked at me, his lip packed with blood red bettle, and seemed to have difficulty processing what he was looking at. I’m sure he didn’t mean me any harm, but his friends quickly grabbed him and pulled him deeper into the market. I began to wonder how many of these kids would be driving motos home tonight. I’d seen 4 moto accidents since I started traveling and one car accident. All were minor. I’d already seen one moto accident that day and I would see two more before the day was over.
Jenna and I found the concert area and were, as per norm here, greeted warmly by the crowd. We pushed our way toward the right front stage area to get some good photos, but found ourselves among the ruffian drunk teenager crowd. A fight broke out and we decided the family area toward the back was more our speed. We settled in and watch the show for about an hour. There was dancing and music and it was all quite entertaining and alien to me.
The ride home (it gets very unpleasant here to put it lightly, so please skip the next two paragraphs if you’re so inclined);
We abandon the concert and headed back to our bikes, passing a human propelled wooden Ferris wheel and human propelled merry go round. We were happy to find our bikes untouched and started to ride back. I had some worries about drunk drivers, but Jenna and I stuck close to the side of the road and were as careful as we could be. It only took about a minute before we witnessed the first accident. It was minor. Three teenagers on a moto, clearly drunk, dumped their bike in the middle of the road. They were all fine. We rode on for another 5 minutes until we saw a small crowd standing at the side of the road. It was dark and dusty and, at first, it appeared to me as if a large potted tree had been dumped off a truck. As we approached the outline of a moto on its side emerged. It was hard to make out the body that was still half mounted on it, as it was twisted in unnatural angles. The man had hit a jeep head on, crushing the quarter panel and headlight. He lay in a pool of broken glass and blood. He was completely still as was everybody in the crowd. The jeep owner (presumably) stood over the man. Nobody spoke.
I wanted to help, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I considered pulling the bike off his leg, but that would have meant moving his whole body which I knew I shouldn’t do. If he could speak English, I would have tried to talk to him. But very few people here spoke any at all. I was afraid that if he were conscious, seeing and hearing an American would only scare and confuse him. It was a horrible, violent scene. In the states, everybody in the crowd would have their cell phones out and you would hear sirens in the distance. Before long, multiple ambulances, fire trucks, and police would be on the scene. And, shortly after that, you might hear a helicopter approaching. Not here. Cell phones are rare and I’ve never seen an ambulance or heard a siren. I had no idea how they dealt with this sort of thing, but I was sure that they dealt with this sort of thing plenty. Jenna was shaken by the sight and wanted to go. I knew there was nothing we could do and we were just contributing to the growing crowd. An official looking truck with two men in uniform arrived at the scene and we left quickly after.
So, that’s my post. I’m sorry for the downer ending, but you see a lot of things in a land like this. In two days’ time I will be in Mrauk U. There, the hill tribe women decorate their faces with spider web tattoos to make themselves look less attractive to marauding kings. It should be an interesting few days. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year.
