The Chief makes Us Welcome

All the men in the village of Banglu are busy building a new and comparatively grand home for the village chief. He is instantly recognizable as the chief, not because of anything he is wearing, but because of his bearing and demeanour. He is a most imposing man of about forty with great presence, and a huge smile.


He comes over and shakes our hand and thanks us for bringing the medicine. He invites us to see his home, which, besides having the usual dead rats hanging from the ceiling, also has a haunch of a pig hanging from the wall.


It still looks quite fresh. It will last the chiefs family many days and will go off after a few days, and smell terrible, but they will still eat it. The chief invites us to stay for lunch and promises us that we will get some meat, which is a great honour. However, there is no way either of us wants to eat anything here. We ask the guide if we can decline the offer without causing any offence, by saying we have already eaten. He explains this to the Chief, who fortunately understands.

We leave the village with the children waving goodbye and running after us. The people have been wonderfully warm and friendly, but our flesh is crawling and we want nothing more than hot water and soap. Unfortunately neither is available. We do come to a stream, where we stop and wash our hands. We have brought with us a picnic of fried rice which we sit and eat by the stream. We discover a group sharing their lunch nearby.


It is a beautiful spot, miles from the nearest road. There are huge brightly coloured butterflies all round us, and the only sounds come from the myriad of birds singing in the tropical trees, and three young children from a neighbouring village playing downstream.


Trekking is not my forte, but this is quite magical. We gather up the plastic bags, water bottles and containers that we carried our picnic up in, and give them to some passing tribes people who are thrilled. They can put them to good use in their homes. This is a true example of recycling.

Enn - Tribe

The people of Banglu have very little food, other than rice and a few vegetables. They catch whatever they can in the surrounding jungle, which is usually limited to the occasional rat. They skin the rats and leave them hanging in their homes to dry. Two or three rats will feed the entire village when added to a thin vegetable soup with rice and chilies. We visit a home where there is a collection of small animal skulls and skeletons hanging from the ceiling, the purpose of which is not made clear. A small fire is burning in the middle of the floor and a cooking pot with soup simmers on top.


The smell is not pleasant. A rattan basket holds a large amount of cooked rice which sits there for days, and the people just take what they need for each meal. Home sweet home to them, but about as far away from it as we can imagine.

On the advice of our guide we went to the local market before we left Kyaingtong and bought a huge amount of cookies for the children and an assortment of basic medicines and shampoo for the people. Word spreads quickly that tourists have arrived in the village, and the children are gathered around us within minutes. They are all filthy but full of smiles which win our hearts.


It is customary for these tribes people never to ask for anything, so although these children are hungry, have nothing, and know that we have treats that they would never normally get, they don’t beg. But when we produce the cookies they all get in a line to be given the treats, and thank us, as their turn comes for the cookies. If that doesn’t melt your heart, nothing will.

After that we all sit down in one of the huts, and the women who have health problems quietly line up to tell our guide what ails them. The guide dispenses the relevant medicine. Several of the women have diarrhea which is hardly surprising, but sadly we have not brought up any medicine for that. We are not too sure that the guide acting as a dispensing chemist is the answer to the tribe’s problems, but it is certainly better than nothing. They have not seen a tourist for three months and this is the only way they ever get medicine.

Banglu - Village

We are scheduled to do “light trekking” to visit some more tribes that are completely inaccessible by road. I know you will find the concept of me trekking as hard to believe as I did but I was persuaded by my desire to see these tribes and by the term “light”. Suffice it to say that I would not describe over 6 hours of walking up and down a small mountain as “light trekking”. However the day was riveting.

After a couple of hours walking straight up the mountain we come to the village of Banglu where the Enn tribe live. This is a collection of 24 huts each housing a large family. Each hut is made of bamboo and rush matting, which offers very little protection from the cold and it gets cold here as we are now quite high up. The homes are just a jumble of shacks in a dirt clearing in the jungle. The homes are built on stilts to protect them from the rainy season and to allow a place for their animal, if they are lucky enough to have one.


The tribes people wear black clothing decorated with brightly coloured ribbon and tiny beads of silver. But their clothing is ragged and dirty. There is no form of record keeping in this village, so no one knows how old they are. The Enn tribe is famous for its women who have black teeth and lips from their constant chewing of the betel nut. They never brush their teeth.


I had said earlier that the fishing tribe that we visited on Lake Inle were the poorest people we had ever met. Not any longer. This tribe is not only the poorest, but without doubt it is the dirtiest. They wear no shoes and their hands and feet are filthy, which presents a problem as the men all want to shake our hands. The details of their personal hygiene, or total lack of it, may offend the more delicate of you, so if this is the case you might want to skip to the next paragraph. There is no running water or plumbing, although they do have a series of horizontal bamboo pipes bringing water from the stream to the centre of the village.


They very rarely wash, but when they do, the women keep all their clothes on, presumably from a sense of modesty and because the water is so cold. The men never wash below their waist or above their thighs. That doesn’t bear thinking about. But it gets worse. There are many dogs in the village. When the people go to the toilet, they call the dogs over to lick the relevant body part of their body clean, and to clean up what they have deposited on the ground. But wait, I haven’t finished yet. Each family has acquired a few tin plates from which they eat. They never wash the plates, instead the dogs are called over after their meal to lick them clean. Try not to think about that, either.

The Paloung tribe of Northern Myanmar

Our guide for this adventure was also a little more rough and ready than we were used to. This was not Paris or A Boy named Sue. Actually we don’t know who it was, as his English was such that we never quite understood what his name was. He did manage to get across that we were his first tourists for two and a half months, but strangely enough he didn’t seem to be aware of why this was. He never mentioned politics or the generals and we felt that none of this had any relevance to his life. All he knew was that there were no tourists.

The first afternoon he took us to Wan Pao Village , home of the Paloung Tribe. This village is the only village we see that is accessible by car, albeit over an hours drive along a mud path. The village is a cluster of ramshackle huts randomly scattered over a muddy field. The tribe is known for two things. Firstly they are one of the few tribes that have huts made of mud. They make a bamboo frame and fill it with packed mud. This is great insulation against the cold, but unfortunately the ox and pigs find the mud walls appealing and tend to rub their sides on them, causing the walls to become thinner and thinner until they collapse.


The second point of interest is that all the women wear what looks like half a dozen small Hula Hoops around their waist made of silver and bamboo. They are completely inflexible and seem to be more of an annoyance than anything else. This particular village is also famous for its blacksmith, a man of 82 who is working when we get there, making shock absorbers for the local cars.


Apparently shock absorbers and springs for the old Toyotas are impossible to get hold off, and this man has learned how to make them despite the fact that there is not one car in the village, and he has never learned to drive.

Mandalay to Kyaingtong

We are flying to Kyaingtong to see the different tribes of Northern Mynamar that remain unaffected and virtually untouched by the outside world. We arrive in a very different Myanmar . The airport at Kyaingtong is little more than a couple of huts next to an airstrip. But security is the tightest we have seen. We are deep in the heart of the Golden Triangle and close to the Chinese border. This was the notorious heroin capital of the world, but the Junta claims to have completely wiped out all the poppy plantations over the last few years. Tourists have only been allowed back in over the last four years. Consequently there are none of the luxuries we have been enjoying. The hotel we are staying in is known to be the best in town, but would not qualify for one star. We were well aware of this when planning our trip and were rather anxious about what we would find. It was maybe even more basic than we expected, but we were happy to find that it was comparatively clean, and the staff very welcoming and friendly. However all the laundry was done by hand with no hot water, so the sheets and towels were grey, which was a little disturbing. We were on the third floor (no elevator of course). At the end of our corridor there was a door marked “emergency exit”. For a moment we were reassured, but then we discovered it was just a door opening on to a three storey drop into the middle of the neighbour’s pigsty. No stairs, no balcony. Nothing.

We are in the high country and the temperatures have plummeted. But there is no heating in the hotel and some of the windows have fixed open slatted glass. It is colder in the hotel than outside and Gordon, who feels the cold, is miserable. He sleeps with all his clothes on underneath a huge pile of blankets.

Mandalay Airport

Mandalay has an international airport that can rival any of the major Asian airports. Glass and steel everywhere, restaurants, cafes, escalators and jetways. The only difference between Mandalay and other well known International airports is passengers! Mandalay has none. There are maybe a dozen other passengers in the entire airport. One café is open, all the restaurants are closed. But even more strange is the fact that none of the escalators is working. Nor are the luggage conveyor belts. Nor are the jetways. We have to walk down some stairs and across the tarmac to our plane. The reason, of course, is that this is one of the days when there is no electricity in Mandalay. The airport is vast and very modern. It puts Yangon airport to shame. And yet Yangon is the city that has all the international flights. It is almost impossible to find an international flight that goes to Mandalay, there are only internal flights. This impressive airport was built two years ago, but no one knows why. It is built in the middle of nowhere, a good hours drive from town. The old airport was much more convenient but the Junta announced it could no longer be used.
We have an hour to wait for our plane, and go to the only café that is open. It goes by the name of Swan Pizza, and their logo is remarkably similar, if not identical to, Pizza Hut. However they do not sell pizza. Even more incongruous is that they have large black plastic napkin dispensers on each table which have “ Las Vegas ” emblazoned in gold on all sides. Our sandwich is served on white plates that match the coffee cups. All of them have “J.C. Penny. Basic White” printed on the underside.

Touring Ava

The only way round the island is by horse and buggy and there are over 150 of them waiting at the ferry stop. It is all very orderly, and the drivers take customers in strict rotation. If this was a normal day in the high season, they would each have one customer a day, and sometimes two. But things are not normal in Myanmar , and our driver has been waiting three days for his turn. Sadder still is the fact that for his services he is paid the princely sum of $3. The buggy is small and he asks me to ride up front with him. This has obviously got more to do with placing my bulk in the easiest place for the horse, than for our comfort. The horse is tiny and we are introduced to her. Her name is Jasmine. I am sitting directly behind her rear quarters, next to the driver. The only thing between her backside and me is an open basket designed to catch any of her droppings. I had no idea that a small horse could produce quite so much manure in such a short time, while trotting round an island. Nor was I aware of just how pungent it could be. Jasmine, bless her, had eaten way too much earlier in the day and we were now reaping the benefits.

There is little remaining on the Island to show that it was such an important place, other than the crumbling walls that used to surround the Royal Palace . But the Island is lovely with long “roads” or tracks arched with trees on either side, giving it the feel of rural France . The only other traffic is heavy carts, full of produce, being pulled by white oxen. The villages are also quite appealing, with the usual bamboo and rush buildings, with an occasional magnificent house made of teak. Many of the people stop and wave as we go round. The tour takes about three hours, the highlight of which is a beautiful teak monastery built in 1820. There are huge teak columns inside stretching up 30 feet to support the roof. The doors, windows and railings are all beautifully carved and still in excellent condition. It is quite stunning.

From there we go to the Ubein Bridge further up the river. This is known as the longest teak bridge in the world. In fact it is more like a jetty which spans the river. It is just under a mile long. This is the first tourist sight we have been to that is busy, but what is nice is that it is busy with locals who love the bridge. They all go for their evening walk across it, or take a picnic during the day. We are there for the sunset, which is quite incredible. We walk across mingling with the locals and a large number of monks, all enjoying this beautiful place. There are water buffalo below us swimming in the river. It is a truly exotic way to end a lovely day.

Ava - A Restaurant

In the afternoon we got to see Ava, which was the capital of Myanmar from 1418 to 1839. It is an island in the middle of the river. We catch what passes for a ferry across to the island, but is in fact little more than a few pieces of wood strung together with a small motor at the back. It seems that our water transport gets worse as our trip goes on. But this journey is only a few hundred yards. The island itself is a revelation, a beautiful serene place with no vehicles. There is a restaurant where the ferry stops and we have lunch. It is incredibly basic with tables and chairs set out on the dirt underneath a huge spreading tree. Dogs and flies fight for our attention, while chickens scratch in the dirt all around. There is even a huge black pig fast asleep between two of the tables. The waiter does his best to keep the flies away from our food with a fan which he periodically waves over our table, as if it was the most natural thing for a waiter to be doing. Despite this we are served a delicious lunch of fresh fish and fried rice, and it all seems very romantic.

Afterward our guide suggests that we take the fish head that we hadn’t touched and the remains of the fried rice to give to one of the begging children. We ask what they do with the fish head. They will apparently beat it all to a pulp, and then press it through a sieve that will allow any flesh to pass through and retain the bones. The flesh they collect will last a family a couple of days, when served with soup, rice and vegetables. Outside the restaurant is a young boy trying to sell us trinkets. I offer him the leftovers and his face lights up into the biggest smile you have ever seen. He is obviously thrilled and thanks us warmly. The guide tells us that his family will rarely have eaten anything as exotic as this. We feel terribly extravagant and wasteful.

Crossing the Irrawaddy to Mingun

In the morning we take a boat across the Irrawaddy to Mingun. This might be the scariest boat we have been on in all our travels. It is large enough to hold thirty or 40 passengers, but it is just for us. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them, all identical, and all in various states of disrepair, tied up to the river bank. They are 6 deep against the bank, so you have to cross from one to another until you come to the outside one. They have an open upper deck and enclosed lower deck, but the lower deck is only 5ft tall, and it is through these that we have to travel to get to our personal boat. All the boats are moving in the current and it is quite treacherous going from one to the other. Finally we reach ours. I was assuming that we would have one of the ones that were in a better state of repair, but this was not to be. It was a complete wreck, and how we ever got across the river without it sinking is beyond me. As with so much else in the country, all the boats were built in the 1940’s when the British were here. Ours appears to have been untouched since then, which might be interesting in any other vehicle, but in a boat it is truly scary. The entire vessel seemed to sag in the middle, until the water almost came in over the sides. We are shown to the upper deck, which in fact is just the roof of the lower deck. It curves down to the edges, so that you feel you will slide off it. All there is to prevent us from doing so, is an extremely thin and rickety wooden railing held in place by a few spindly uprights attached to the floor by a couple of screws. The wooden floor is rotten in places and you can see straight through to the deck below. There are three extremely old and uncomfortable rattan chairs for us to sit on. Most of the rattan is broken and sticks into my body, tearing little holes in my shirt. There is also an extremely decrepit dining table. One of the crew (there are only 2) comes and lays a filthy old table cloth on it with a great flourish. The only thing dirtier than the table cloth is the young man putting it there. For one dreadful moment, we think food is going to be served, but in fact he is setting up a stall on which he lays a motley assortment of merchandise. There is nothing we would be remotely interested in buying, but considering we are half way across the huge Irrawaddy river, and completely at his mercy, we decide we better at least take a look.

We are told that there is a toilet downstairs but we are too afraid to venture down. However necessity, caused by a chilly wind, prevails. Added to the back of the boat is a small platform enclosed by a 4ft wall made of rush matting. You open a small door and step off the deck onto this small platform which appears to have no visible means of support. Standing on the platform was the toilet. It was not attached to the floor, or to any plumbing. It merely stood over a hole in the floor. The low height of the surrounding wall meant that all the passing ships were left in no doubt as to what you were doing there. Where is the Raffles Hotel when we need it.

We are suffering the indignities of this particularly unseaworthy vessel in order to see yet another largest bell in the world. This one is in a town called Mingun. We have already seen two other largest bells in the world in our travels, the most recent of which we saw in Russia . However our guide proudly tells us that the Russian one has a crack in it and so it doesn’t count. Myanmar ’s bell is perfect. However it is hung just a few inches off the ground in a crumbling building, completely uncared for and covered in cobwebs and large spiders. Adjacent to it is another crumbling building. This one is a home for aged monks. Our guide wants to show us round, but we are not interested, just grateful that this will not be our retirement home. For this we have just risked our lives crossing the Irrawaddy, and now we have to go back.

Life In Mandalay

Mandalay is a much more attractive city than Yangon. Many of the streets are lined with trees, and bustle with people who seem happier and a little more prosperous than in Yangon . Large portions of the city have good middle class houses. Downtown is more like a downtown as we know it, with many streets full of shops, and a few selling named brands that are definitely high end. There is even a small shopping mall and a few neon signs, although the latter seems rather superfluous because of the lack of power to turn them on.

There are many motorbikes and thousands of bicycles that appear to take no notice of the rules of the road.


Road junctions and cross roads often have a policeman in the middle directing traffic, but no one pays them any attention. Cross roads are quite terrifying, and we sit white knuckled in our car, clinging to the back of the seat in front of us. I try closing my eyes, but it is impossible to keep them closed with all the noise around us.

This is the first place we have seen taxis, but they are not geared to the tourists. They are Mazda pick up trucks built in the 1940’s. They are amazingly small, looking like children’s toy cars. The passengers sit in the back of the pick up truck. You could perhaps squeeze two Americans in the back, but they would be very unhappy. But up to 10 Burmese somehow manage to ride this way.


We are pleased to see that there are many more monks here than anywhere we have been so far. The Mayor of Mandalay refused the Generals orders to kill monks and so Mandalay escaped much of the crackdown. But once the uprising was crushed the Mayor was fired from his job. There are also many nuns, who wear pink robes, and, like the monks go out in the morning to collect food from the people. However nuns can only go out twice a week and can only accept rice and vegetables.

We visit several craft houses, all of them working without lighting. We watch as women stoop over their embroidery doing the most intricate work in semi darkness. Three men noisily beat gold into gold leaf. They will be deaf by the end of their worklife.


Like the rest of the country, electricity is limited. Here they receive power for three days, and then just for 6 to 12 hours on the other four days. Water too is problematical. Each household has to pay $200 for the connection, a large amount of money to most families. On top of this they pay a monthly fee based on usage, but during the dry season there will often be no water available. Few have hot water, and sometimes the mornings are too cold for them to take a shower. If they live in houses and apartments that are more than two stories high, very often the water will not pump up to the higher floors.

Mandalay

Our first stop is the old Royal Palace built in the 1860’s. It is a huge square compound, surrounded on all four sides by a wall and a moat The wall is two kilometres long on each of the four sides.


The entire place was bombed in the war, and virtually destroyed. The government, recognizing a tourist attraction when they see one, decided to rebuild it in the 1990’s. However, where there were once huge wooden columns there are now huge cement columns, and where there was gold leaf covering everything there is now gold paint. It all looks so tacky, and very few people go there. To make matters worse the huge grounds that were so beautiful, are now full of unsightly cheap housing used solely to house army soldiers. Min, our guide, is making her opening political statement by taking us here first.


However a block or so away is one of the original buildings. It is in this building that the King died, and his son wanted to preserve it as a special and separate monument, so moved it away from the palace, thus unwittingly insuring its survival during the bombings. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, built entirely of teak and covered in intricate carvings. Both inside and out were originally covered in gold, but very little remains on the outside because of the weather. But the inside still gleams, the many tall golden pillars supporting the roof look like a shining forest, It is an amazing sight, that dazzles the eye.


From here we go to lunch in a local restaurant where we have to listen to a CD of Christmas Carols sung in English by a Burmese singer who obviously learned parrot fashion from listening to the original, and has no idea what he is saying. We recognize the song “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but instead of singing “If Daddy had only seen” He sang” If Veddy Veddy on the scene”, and “He thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom fast asleep” became “he thawed a ice water up in my bedroom vast and leap".

Mandalay - The First Sights

A magical morning as we sail into Mandalay. We sail under two iron bridges with hills on either side, full of golden stuppas that glisten in the early morning sun.


Small fishing boats with one solid bright coloured sail, emerge slowly out of the mists and smoke that rise off the land and drift across the wide river. Ships carrying huge piles of rice chug along the river and are laden to the point where it seems that they would sink if you loaded one more sack on board. The ships are as old and dilapidated as the buses from the 1940’s, and their crews aren’t much better. They are all in dirty white T shirts and ragged longyis, and they wave as we go by.


It is exactly as we imagined it as kids in school, reading Rudyard Kipling and learning about the glory days of the British Empire.

Once ashore we are met by our new guide, Min, a woman of about 40 suffering from a severe case of flu. It seems that half the country is in the grips of flu.. A Boy named Sue had it, but not badly, his driver had it, the two other passengers on the ship had it, two of the crew had it, and it is obvious that many people we see have it. But no one has seemed as sick as Min, who we are sure will not make it through the day. She is dressed for winter, with a rather strange hand knitted pink wool hat pulled down to her eyebrows, and a matching scarf wrapped twice round her neck and mouth. She has a huge padded coat which she holds tightly around her body, boots and a pair of gloves. The only part of her body exposed to the elements is her eyes. Where she found this clothing is a mystery, Mandalay is always hot and we never saw a shop selling anything like these clothes. She had to blow her nose constantly, which unfortunately she did directly into her hand, and then wiped her hand with a piece of toilet paper. This was not appealing.

Both she and her husband are tour guides, and have two children. Because of the lack of tourists they were in dire straits and she has to work, no matter how sick she feels. She is only able to talk in a whisper because of her sore throat, and has to stop often to cough. We are reluctant to deprive her of the little income we are bringing her, so we control our impulse to tell her to go home.

Burma - More Things We Have Learned

As we continue to quietly sail down the Irrawaddy River we pick up more information about Burma.
1. The Irrawaddy River rises 50 feet in the rainy season. In the delta region it can rise 200 feet.

2. Many villagers on the banks of the river have to move their homes, their belongings and their livestock every 6 months. Then they return a few months later when the rain stops.


3. 60% of the population of Bagan works in the tourist industry.

4. The tourist industry is down by 80% this year, and some say it is down by up to 90%. The people of Bagan are really hurting, as is the rest of the country.

5. On our one hour drive back from Poppa to Bagan, we saw exactly three other cars.

6. We have been traveling for 9 days now and have seen very few monks.

7. Many workers who we talk to in the tourist industry, tell us directly that they hate their government.

8. There is a pension for people over 65, but it consists of a few dollars a month, and no one can live on it. Consequently yet another burden is placed on the workers – they have to support their parents in their old age.

9. A phone line, believe it or not, costs $5,500 to install. A cell phone costs over $2000 and can only be bought on the black market, which in this case means buying one from a government employee.

10. Electricity is cheap, but who cares, if you can hardly ever get it.

11. Men and women of all ages wear a skin cream made from the bark of the Dhanakhar tree. It protects from the sun, and helps against acne and wrinkles. It is a yellow color and the women and children paint it on to their faces every day.


When boys get old enough to feel self conscious, they stop wearing it in the day time. But most everyone, including the men, put it on at night. We have been commenting that the Burmese have wonderful skin, and if this is the reason for it, we have to get some! But maybe it’s too late!

Thoughts on Burma as we Cruise down the Irrawaddy

The rest of the day is spent gently cruising down the river. While we are sitting idly on the sun deck watching the world go by, albeit it very slowly, we are left to ponder some of the things we have seen and learned so far in Burma:

1. A huge majority of the people are dressed in clothes which are falling apart, but are always comparatively clean.

2. Children have to wear a school uniform of a green longyi with a white shirt for both girls and boys. They also have to buy all their books, paper and pencils. Consequently many parents can’t afford to send their children to school.

3. Women do not wear wedding rings. Instead they wear their long shiny black hair pinned up if they are married, or hanging down their back if they are single. Presumably it is fairly easy to let your hair fall down accidentally.

4. Many towns away from the river have no water supply. Water is piped to a central collection point. The local villagers then have to collect it and take it to their villages. They use barrels placed on a cart and pulled by oxen to do this.

5. The landscape that is not farmed is full of bushes and trees that are all young and small. Trees taller than about 20 feet are a rarity, with the exception of palm trees. This is a direct result of the deforestation, especially of the teak trees. It is one of the worst countries in the world for deforestation.

6. At around 5 or 6 each evening the sky becomes full of smoke, sometimes becoming so thick that it makes you choke. This is because everyone burns their rubbish each evening.

7. Burma makes one of the best beers in the world – Myanmar Beer. It is really inexpensive, and on this ship it is free just like the soft drinks.

8. Burma also has a wine industry with a few vineyards. It is a young industry with a lot to learn. But when 90% of the population is Buddhists, and good Buddhists don’t drink, one has to wonder why they are bothering.