Inle Lake - Our Guide's Further Thoughts

Indien, with its 1090 stuppas, is a wonderful place with a spiritual peacefulness that makes it feel quite special. The views of the surrounding countryside are lovely, and yet we are the only tourists there all afternoon. This leads to another long and frank discussion with our guide about the state of Myanmar. She explains how the poor people in Myanmar are not concerned with politics. Buddhists believe that what happens to them in this life is a direct result of what they did in their past life. If times are extremely hard in this life, they accept it. They do not blame the current regime for their misfortune. Our guide tells us that when the crackdown occurred she was actually traveling in the country, and she asked a woman she met, if she knew of what was happening in Yangon. The woman didn’t. And when the guide started to tell her that monks had been shot, the woman said “Don’t talk to me about politics, it doesn’t concern me”. It is only the educated who come to recognize the repercussions of the current regime’s behaviour. The regime therefore makes sure that the schools are poor, and education past elementary is expensive, thus insuring that the people remain uneducated, uncomplaining and uninterested. This is why most uprisings start with the educated.

She also tells us a fact that the Government does not want outsiders to know. The electricity for the country comes from one Hydro Electric Dam built at the end of Lake Inle by the Japanese in the early 60s. Over the years the level of the lake has dropped as village construction increases and silt builds up against the dam. This has severely impacted the output of the dam turbines. The entire country now only gets full power for 3 days a week, and for 6 hours a day on the other four days. All the major hotels and tourist restaurants have generators.

Another points she tells us is that the average Myanmar citizen, no matter how poor, donates around 40% of their earnings to the temples, thus showing how important religion is to them.


She also discusses the influence of the Chinese on her country. There are many Chinese in Myanmar , and particularly in this area, because of the closeness of the border. Rosa explains that the Chinese are very smart business people, and that all the businesses are owned by Chinese, while all the work is done by the Burmese. All the guides we have throughout our stay in Myanmar, are united in their dislike of the Chinese. Not only does China plunder the resources of Myanmar without a thought for the people, but a large proportion of the 300,000 tourists Burma gets each year are Chinese, and the guides say that the Chinese are rude and pushy tourists unwilling to pay much money for anything.

Inle Lake - We Take Tea

The house fills up rapidly with people, some family, some neighbours, all come to meet the foreigners. There is an eighty year old woman who lives next door, and several toddlers. They all sit in a big circle round us on the floor. Tea is made and offered. They are all charming and entertaining and interested in us, with a lively sense of humour. They want to know where our families are, and when we say we do not have families, they invite us to join theirs. Now, as I am sure you appreciate, there is absolutely no way on God’s Earth that this is going to happen, but I manage a gracious smile, and say that I would love to, as long as they didn’t expect me to row with one leg. There is much laughter. After a while one of the daughters disappears into the kitchen and returns some time later with the most delicious potato crisps we ever tasted. She has just made them over the open fire in their tiny kitchen. Considering the place is made of wood and reeds, the open fire seems a little dangerous and we ask if their houses ever catch fire. This is cause for a lot more laughter, even though the answer is yes.


We stay well over an hour and feel very comfortable. They are genuinely welcoming and we are touched by the whole experience, particularly when we leave and the father turns to me and says that he hopes we will be brothers in our next life. They are the poorest people we are ever likely to meet, but their quality of life appears rich indeed.


After further visits to a floating farm and a weaving business, we return to our hotel for dinner. There is a card on the table advertising tonight’s special appetizer, which is mussels cooked in butter and garlic. We point to that assuming the waiters must know about it. We do get them, but unfortunately they arrive about 30 minutes after the main course. There are a total of six mussels on a plate and are served with profuse apologies from the head waiter and little else.

Inle Lake - We Visit A Home

The next village we visit on Inle Lake is a fishing village, and actually in the lake, rather than along the waters edge like the last two. The streets of this village are waterways with rows of stilt houses on either side.


Some have little floating gardens, and hedges, others have pots with plants in them on a platform. All have small landing jetties for their boats. It is from one of these jetties that we are greeted by a mother and young daughter. They wave as we go by, and the driver takes the boat over to them and we start to speak to them through our guide. We are invited into their house and we readily accept. We go up the steps from the jetty into the usual two room affair with no furniture other than two old wicker chairs kept for important guests, which in this case turns out to be us. Everyone else sleeps, sits and eats on the floor. Is this why everyone takes their shoes off when entering a house, because basically you are walking on their dining table?

We learn that the parents have 14 children, presumably a result of living in the middle of a lake where there is little in the way of evening entertainment.


The parents sleep in one room and all the children sleep in the other, which is their main living room. No one leaves home until they get married. There is a small kitchen off the back, and a bamboo bridge to a separate “privy”. The privy has a modern style toilet, but no plumbing. It just sits over a hole in the floor and empties into the lake. There are 16 people living in this house, using this toilet, and it is just one of hundreds of similar houses. Suddenly we are not so hungry for fresh fish from the lake.

Inle Lake - Transportation

We are to spend the next two days on Inle Lake exploring all the villages and the life of the locals. The lake is about 15 miles long and anything from a few hundred yards to a mile or so wide. 125,000 people inhabit its shores, mainly living in small villages built on stilts above the water.


The houses are simple two room affairs built of bamboo and reeds. They last ten years before they fall apart, and then the entire village gets together to build a replacement. The people either fish or farm, and their method of doing both is part of the reason we have come here.

Our hotel has a jetty leading out to a small inlet and it is here we find our transport for the next two days. The boat is shaped like a dugout canoe, only much longer. It must be twenty five feet long and little more than 2ft 6 wide. It has an extremely shallow draught, because the lake itself is often a little more than a couple of feet deep. The front rises up out of the water, and the back end has what looks like an old lawn mower engine sitting on a platform with an eight foot metal rod running directly from it to a small propeller. In this way the driver can make sure the propeller just skims the surface of the water and doesn’t hit the bottom or get caught in weeds.
There are three wooden arm chairs for the tourists. Each chair comes with a rather worn cushion, and an umbrella. We are told the boat is extremely unstable because of its shallow draft, so we must step directly into the middle of the boat, and not on to the sides.


Once we take our seats, the driver starts the engine which coughs and sputters a few times and then lets out a high pitch wine. The boat shoots forward like a bat out of hell. The smallest turn causes it to lean to one side in the most alarming fashion. Conversation with the person behind you is almost impossible because of, one, the noise of the engine, and two, the act of turning round causes the boat to wobble. Strangely enough, just as an ocean going liner attracts a flock of seagulls following it, so does this small rocket boat.

Inle Lake - A Guide's View of The Regime

Rosa, our guide, tells us that the hotels around Inle Lake have all gathered together and collected enough money to improve the road themselves, but the regime will not let them. It is hard to think of any reason for this, other than the fact that the government does not want the people to meet more tourists or increase their income.

This leads to a discussion of the state of tourism. In 1996 when Burma had only 100,000 tourists a year, the Generals decide to promote Burmese tourism. Unfortunately for the people of Burma, this had exactly the opposite effect as the rest of the world acted negatively to the Government’s promotion, and tourism dropped drastically. Since then it has been slowly recovering to the extent that Burma received 300,000 tourists in 2006. This compares to 30,000,000 that visited Thailand last year. But in 2007 Myanmar will have less than 100,000 tourists. In September and October, because of the uprising, they had almost no tourists. It is now December, their busiest month of the year and there are but a handful of tourists. She explains how this is a disaster for the poor people of Myanmar, many of whom earn their living by selling souvenirs, driving cars, or working in the hotels and restaurants. The last two months have been a terrible hardship for them, and she thanks us sincerely for coming to her country.

Rosa is scathing in her condemnation of the current regime, telling us how all the money that is collected goes directly to them, and very little gets to the people. Schools are few and far between and only primary school is free. If parents do make the sacrifice to send their children on to secondary schools, there are no jobs for them when they get out. So, particularly in the countryside, children leave school and start work at an early age. Rosa herself went to University and got a degree in Chemistry only to discover that there are no jobs for Chemical Engineers in Myanmar . She is convinced that the government does not want to educate its citizens for fear of the consequences. Poor uneducated people are much easier to control.

She goes on to say that Myanmar is a country rich in natural resources. It has oil, diamonds, rubies, and minerals, but none of the technology to exploit them. Instead the government plunders everything, selling the rights mainly to China , India and Russia , and keeping all the proceeds to themselves. Nothing filters down to the people.

The Army has 400,000 soldiers but the country has no enemies. Rosa is convinced that the figure of 400,000 soldiers that the Government admits to is vastly underestimated. There is no mandatory service for the people. Instead they keep such a large force by paying them about double what any other entry level job in the government pays, and then they throw in free housing and health care.

Finally she tells us that the daughter of one of the ruling Generals got married earlier this year and the wedding cost $5,000,000, an unheard of amount of money to almost everyone in Myanmar, and an amount that would have done an enormous amount of good if it had been spent on the people.

It is an amazingly open discussion with a Myanmar national (she prefers to call it Myanmar ) who readily admits that she loves her country and is proud of her people, but hates her Government. We arrive at our hotel feeling older, wiser and sadder.

Touring Yangon

Paris takes us to Shwedagon Temple , Myanmar ’s most famous temple with its many surrounding stuppas.


It has become even more famous over the last couple of months, as the gathering point for the monks during the recent uprising, the start of most of their marches, and the scene of many arrests. It is somewhat over the top, to say the least, and even overshadows Paris, with its many gold Stuppas and the enormous gold temple, topped with a 76 carat diamond and many precious stones. It can be seen from almost everywhere in the city.


It is obvious why it is the focal point for the Burmese, and why the Myanmar people are so proud of it. But could the money have been put to better use? It is a pointed question that probably cannot be answered.

“Where are all the monks?” is another pointed question that we do ask Paris. We have spent two hours wandering around this magnificent temple and can count on both hands the number of monks we have seen? “They have all been sent back to their home villages” he tells us.

In fact, Yangon is no longer the capital. The government has built a new capital hundreds of miles to the north, in the middle of the jungle, cut off from the rest of the nation. All personnel and offices have been moved. The existing government buildings in Yangon have simply been shuttered and surrounded by barbed wire.

Everyone we speak to is horrified at this move and the costs involved.

Similarly the University Campus in the heart of the City of Yangon, set in the middle of wonderful grounds and spreading across many acres, has been closed and surrounded by barbed wire. A brand new concrete jungle of a campus has been built outside the city, an hour’s bus journey for most of the students. Paris explains that the Government announced that they wanted to enlarge the University and that this Campus was no longer viable. But he also readily admits that it would appear that the regime wanted to make sure that the students could be monitored more easily and kept well away from the City centre.

When we say to Paris that it is a terrible waste to see these buildings all empty, and suggest that they could be turned into apartments for the people, he explains that this would cost a lot of money that the government doesn’t have. Unclear on the concept only goes so far, until you are forced to say “DUH!”.

The city will have a hard time reinventing itself after the loss of the Government Buildings and the University. Interestingly, to date none of the embassies is willing to move to the new capital, despite repeated requests from the regime.

All of this, Paris feels free to discuss with us fairly openly, albeit in English which few people around us will understand. But it is a different matter when it comes to the American Embassy. We are forewarned that we are approaching it and under no circumstances are we to take photos. We get no closer to it than the nearest corner where we are told to take a furtive look and then leave. This seems particularly strange for an American tourist, but Paris clearly wants to stay well away from the Embassy.

Yangon - Our Fabulous Guide

We have a guide to meet us at Yangon airport and show us around the city. We have arranged for him through a company we found on the Internet. The company is run by an Englishman who has lived in Asia and Burma for forty years, and who advertises his company as gay friendly. Perhaps this should have prepared us for our guide.

The International airport is only a year old and a sleek modern building, but it is almost deserted. Our guide is there with a sign with our names on it. He makes a dashing figure at 27 years old, tall, slim and remarkably handsome in a full length green longyi (similar to a sarong) and a white silk jacket. We catch his attention from across the arrival lounge and he immediately throws a beautifully manicured hand above his head and waves at us. He flows across the lounge, flashing a well practiced smile, and puts his arms around us both, as if we are long lost friends. He gushes profusely about his delight in being able to meet us. The few people in the airport all stop and stare. One passenger actually comes up to us later and asks who we are, and if we are famous, which I presume is a nice way of asking why we are being met by a flamboyant queen.

He tells us that his name is Paris. It has been his life’s ambition to be a tour guide, because it makes him feel like a movie star. Honestly, I am not making this up. We soon come to know that his entire life is built on this fantasy, but when we see how the majority of his countrymen live we can understand why he might feel this way. He gets to travel, go to fancy hotels and restaurants and rub shoulders with well to do people from all over the world. Who are we to say that this is not like being a movie star. He tells us that he can sing well and dance. He tells us all of this within minutes of meeting him and we are getting a terrible feeling that he has named himself after Paris Hilton. But he goes on to say that when he was in University he played the part of Count Paris in Romeo and Juliet, and that he was so good in the part everyone has called him Paris ever since. We are thoughtful enough not to point out Paris is a rather small part of an aged suitor for Juliet. He was certainly not suffering from being typecast. His hands are in constant motion while he talks. He has the ability to bend his fingers backwards, at exotic angles, the way Asian women are trained to do in their dances. We ask him how he learned to do that and he replies that he was taught to do those dances in school. When we ask if all the boys are taught those dances, he smiles at us and replies somewhat coyly, “well, no, just a special few”.

Unfortunately, his talent for being a tour guide is overshadowed by his love of the Hollywood life style. He tells us little of the city and instead talks endlessly of J Lo, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and frequently breaks into one of their songs. But he most decidedly does not like Brittany! He also knows all of Marlon Brando’s early movies, and of James Dean. But he gets most excited when he talks of his all time favourite, Oprah!! We ask if they get her show on TV. He says they don’t, but he once saw a one hour tape of it and he just can’t forget her. We are surprised at how universal gay icons are!

Yangon - a Café Society

The centre of Yangon is busy with commerce, most of it done on the sidewalk.


It makes no difference whether it is clothing, books or fruit and vegetable, vendors merely lay their merchandise out on the streets, and set up shop. Stores as we know them are almost non existent, and there are no malls. What there are, are little more than holes in the wall, with no windows or doors, just metal grids that can be drawn across them at night for security, although why security is needed is unclear, as there is nothing worth stealing. Only the grandest of them have lights, and when they do it is usually just a bare bulb.

Our guide describes the city as a café society, or in this case a tea shop society. In Yangon, everyone gathers and meets at the innumerable street food establishments. Furniture, a rather grand name for an odd assortment of plastic chairs and tables, is all miniature, the type that WalMart sells (not that I have ever been in WalMart) for our kids to play with in the garden or on the beach. There are two problems with this arrangement: one, my knees won’t allow me to sit that low, and two my bum could not possibly fit into one of those tiny chairs. However the Burmese sit like this for hours, which only proves how awful their homes are, if they would rather meet here.


And if the furniture doesn’t dissuade you from frequenting these places, the service will. There are no knives and forks, and no chopsticks. In fact, no utensils of any kind. All eating is done with the fingers of your right hand. Likewise all the food is served to you by the fingers of the chef. Most Burmese still eat with their fingers in their homes. The use of knives and forks only occurs in the nicer tourist restaurants and hotels.

Yangon - the British Legacy

Yangon was a very British City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the British left in 1948, and they took with them their grandiose dreams of a great city. Their legacy is in ruins. The boulevards they laid out are now full of potholes, and crumbling sidewalks. The few street lights that still work are dark because there is not enough power to operate them. The magnificent automobiles of the thirties and forties have been replaced by dilapidated Toyotas from the 70’s and early 80’s. There are no new, or even vaguely new, cars. As a final insult to the British, the fine British tradition of driving on the left was revoked in 1972, when the Burmese government announced that the entire country had 7 days to learn to drive on the right. But no one thought to tell Toyota, so all the cars still have the steering wheels on the right.

In a strange twist on Asian transport, there are no motorbikes. The government banned them because of the number of accidents. But they are only banned in Yangon . Presumably it is acceptable to die on a motorbike anywhere else in Myanmar. Because there are no motorbikes, everyone travels by bus. There are hundreds of buses, but they are even older than the cars, many of them strange little toy like vehicles imported from England in the 1940’s.



They are small, dirty, without air conditioning, and crammed full of people, just like in Britain, but more so. This however is the luxury form of transport. They also have small Toyota pick up trucks from the 70’s that serve as buses. They have a shell roof on the back without sides, and narrow seats running the length of the truck bed on either side. About 12 people can cram themselves onto the seats. Another 10 can sit on the roof, and half a dozen hang perilously off the back. The price is no cheaper for the pick up truck than for the buses, but they have no sides so they are cooler and often more popular. The cheapest form of transport is the train, but no one uses it unless they have to, as they are unbelievably slow and notoriously unreliable. Some British traditions couldn’t be shaken.

Mynmar (formerly Burma) - Our First Day

We fly to Yangon, until very recently the capital city of Myanmar.

OK, first and foremost, let’s get to the bottom of whether we call it Myanmar or Burma. We asked many people during our 16 days there, and basically the answer is that the people don’t care too much one way or the other, but lean towards the name Myanmar. Myanmar is the original name for the country and it means “Land of the Strong”. The name got changed to Burma by either the Portuguese or the British (some confusion over this) because they found Myanmar hard to pronounce. The Generals then changed it back to Myanmar because they didn’t want to be reminded of their colonial history. The people like the name Myanmar because of its origins, but they are used to calling it Burma . The older people find it hard to change and still call it Burma . The younger people are more inclined to call it Myanmar . But no one seems to see it as a political question, just one of preference and usage. In the interest of fairness I shall refer to it as both.


So here we are in Yangon, or Rangoon as it was called by the British, the old capital of Burma . And as English citizens we grew up knowing it as an exotic far away part of the British Empire , made mysterious by Rudyard Kipling, who back then was a favourite author of many English children.

As such we envisioned it as a wonderful, colonial city, full of romance and wicker furniture. Well, things have changed. The wicker furniture has been replaced with cheap plastic, the romance is tawdry, and the city desperately poor, depressingly dirty, and deplorably dilapidated. The once fabulous Edwardian and Colonial buildings are now derelict.



A few are still in use, but they have broken windows and black mold growing on the walls. Many are surrounded by barbed wire. Some had wonderful gardens in their heyday, but they are now all overgrown and neglected. Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham it is not. In those famous words of Bette Davis “What a dump”.

Introduction

Two gay men traveling the world and noting their impressions; Is that how I want to introduce this blog? Well it certainly is what the blog is all about. Does the fact that we are gay matter? Well only in the sense that some of the adventures you will hear about may not happen to other travelers. Does the fact that we are English, but have lived in California for the last 30 years, matter. Well I think it makes for an interesting dichotomy in our outlook. It means we can travel on either passport, but at the time of writing they may be looked on as two of the most unpopular passports in the world. We have the reserve of the English, but with a patina of the California laid-back style. We love to take Cruises but often do not enjoy our fellow shipmates. Whenever possible we refuse to take the scheduled day trips on organized buses to prearranged destinations. Instead we make our own day trips, sometimes driving ourselves in countries where we cannot read the road signs, which can be a lot more entertaining, and often means we have no idea where we are. We love to travel in style and comfort as much as our situation allows, but we also love to travel to out-of-the-way-places where style and comfort are not available. We love to meet people from all over the world and hear their stories and learn how they live.

If you stay with us on our journeys, you will read about the places we visit, and learn about the people we meet. You will also come to know a little about me. You will see that I enjoy the small moments of our travels, particularly if they have a sense of the absurd about them. You will also realize that I delight in the observation of the people around me, and may not always describe them in the most flattering light. But in all cases the names are changed so as not to cause offense.

I hope my stories will make you laugh, and occasionally make you cry. But most of all I hope the stories make you care. Care about the world we live in, care about the people we meet, from the hill tribes of Burma to the Maoris of New Zealand, and care enough to maybe make some journeys of your own.

I will start with Burma. We took this trip a little over a year ago, in November and December of 2007. We were to fly to Burma just 2 months after the uprisings and suppression of the monks took place. We couldn’t decide whether to go or not. We felt that by going we would be supporting the Junta, but we heard that the people of Burma desperately wanted the tourists to return. Without the tourists so many people had no income. So in the end we decide to go and tomorrow I will begin to tell you of our travels, the people we met and our impressions.