:: Sunday, October 27, 2002 ::

Union of Myanmar (Burma)

Yangon (Rangoon)

Let's kick off with an excerpt from Myanmar's daily English-language "news" paper The New Light of Myanmar. The following little gem is printed in big, bold letters in every single issue (as well as being plastered on bilingual billboards across the country):


People's Desires

• Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges or holding negative views


• Oppose those trying to jeopardise the stability of the State and the progress of the Nation


• Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State


• Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy

The rest of the paper is peppered with helpful and concise hints such as 'Give blood' and 'Don't smoke'. Front-page headlines cover the main international news items of the day such as Secretary number 1 of the State Peace and Development Council [aka the despotic military junta running Burma into the ground for the last 40 years] inspects factory/receives credentials of new Iraqi Ambassador etc. In actual fact, the only hint at the existence of an outside world comes in the form of international soccer news and vague stories about EU fisheries policy. And even this is unavailable to most Burmese, as it's written in English. Burmese TV was even more hilarious. Broadcasts last until around 2pm and include subtitled interviews with Shan women, declaring that no Burmese soldiers have ever raped their daughters, and au contraire, they feel protected and cared for by their military government. This is followed by a couple of hours of soulless, grainy, officially-approved Burmese karaoke (more of that later) and the National Anthem. Then the transmitters go dead. What fun!


The politics of this country are too unimaginably awful to dwell on, but, as is often the case in these kinds of places, the people are charming and friendly, to say nothing of stunningly beautiful. We managed a few political discussions with locals, but only ever in confined spaces where there was no chance of being overheard. For example Mr Chan, our guide around Mandalay, told us he was a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. He was wearing part of the Party member's uniform - which consists of a tartan longyi (traditional Burmese sarong), a collarless shirt and tartan jacket. However, the jacket was kept at home, as the punishment for wearing the whole outfit together would have been arrest and imprisonment. As we drove along, Mr Chang pointed out a military prison, but as the car window was open, and he could theoretically be overheard, he stopped the conversation short until we were back on the main road. This was very reminiscent of Cuba - Oh, the wonders of Democracy!


As a tourist in Myanmar, the government limits you to 4 main areas: Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Mandalay, Bagan (formerly Pagan) and Inle Lake in Shan State. We flew into Yangon from Bangkok. At the airport all tourists are obliged to change $200 per head into Foreign Exchange Certificates (or, more amusingly, FECs). These are exchanged at the rate of one dollar to one FEC - minus 'administration' charges of course - and cannot be exchanged back into dollars on the way out. Hence, they can only be spent in Myanmar. However, when changed into the local currency ('Kyat'), the exchange rate is lower for FECs than US dollars. This means that your hapless explorers end up losing money at every stage. And to add insult to injury, most places refuse to accept FECs, wanting good old-fashioned greenbacks instead. However, if the dollar bill is stained or damaged they won't accept it, so you have to change it into FECs, of which they want more, etc etc. Confused? Try being there... When faced with the mandatory FEC-exchange, we opted to change less than the obligaotry $400, by paying the counter clerk a 'present' (read: bribe). This is a normal part of everyday tourism in Myanmar. Nevertheless, the ever-righteous Claire took it upon herself to demand an explanation from the clerk, asking how on Earth they get away with it and so on. Although the sweet-faced girl never lost the smile from her face, her repeated explanation of 'I am helping you here. You must give me a present' became rapidly more menacing, to say nothing of the burly bomber-jacketed security guard who came over to find out what the fuss was all about. In the end we paid up and passed through smoothly. Together with a taxi driver who was stopped and fined a day's wages ($1) for not having a license to carry foreigners, this was thankfully our only run-in with the Burmese authorities.



After exhaustively shlepping round most of the central Yangon guesthouses with 15Kg bags on we opted for a Chinese-run place called May Shan. It was located bang in the middle of the city, next to Sule Paya, a roundabout topped with a shimmering golden pagoda where locals (the 'natives' as we pseudo-colonialists like to call them) go to pray, sleep and, well, sleep. This was also one of numerous places in South-East Asia where visitors are offered the chance to 'set free' one of many birds packed like sardines into a tiny pancake-shaped cage. For a small fee, the owner lets one fly off, only for it to fly back seconds later to be subjected to more of the same. This was yet another spending opportunity we managed to resist. The main historical site in Yangon is Shwedagon Paya. This is situated on a hill near the zoo (God knows what conditions were like there), and is another giant bell-shaped golden pagoda with hundreds of smaller temples surrounding it. Entry is free to locals, but FITs (Foreign Independent Travellers - nearly as cool as MIBs but not quite) are 'invited' to pay five dollars into the government's coffers to get in. When we eventually upload them, our photos will do the pagoda more justice than we can here. At nighttime the city was virtually dead, but we entertained ourselves with pathetic attempts at joining in games of keepy-uppy (using a 'traditional' bamboo football) with the infinitely more talented locals. We also sampled some Burmese 'fast food', although the only positive thing to come out of that was the opportunity to say that we actually got the 'Rangoon Runnies' in Rangoon...


Next stop was the Northern capital of Mandalay. The intervening journey was by "bus". However, the roads and vehicles were in such shoddy shape that it made Vietnam look like highway heaven. The journey lasted 20 hours and was broken up at hourly intervals by planned meal stops and unplanned blow-outs. The good thing about the meal stops was that the food was, to all intents and purposes, free (20 US cents for a main course, including rice). On one of the unplanned stops, Barney searched in vain for his shoes. After half an hour shivering barefoot outside the bus, Claire spotted the shoes on the feet of the Burmese chap sitting in front of us. He was proudly admiring them, and showing them off to his pals. As soon as he saw us he knew he was rumbled, but he decided to finish his fag off and go and relieve himself before strolling over, taking them off, belching and getting back on the bus. Another cramped and sweltering bus journey lasted 25 and a half hours instead of the advertised 18-21hrs to cover a piddling 726km. On this now-legendary bus, we were treated to an all-night cacophony of scoffing, coughing, gobbing, belching, farting and puking from the 'natives'. Our companion, the right honourable Padraig McCarthy (nationality still unestablished) had blood-red betel nut juice hoiked unceremoniously up the side of his leg at one of the few scheduled stops. At another stop (4am) we were all woken up to have breakfast (it was 4am for Chrissakes!) at a night market on a muddy, pitch-black road. One of the vendors was selling a total of 4 boiled eggs. I mean, I'm not one to pick on the poor people of the world, but is it really worth getting up at three in the morning to sell four boiled eggs? At three separate points in the journey, the suspension collapsed and hand-repairs were effected on the edge of a precipice with the bus jacked up on bits of wood, and some people left dozing in their seats. Worryingly, one of the 'mechanics' had only two fingers on one hand. Still, they just about got us going, and the bus eventually made it to within 100km of our destination before they finally let a few of us jump on another passing bus. The rest of the people (who must have been Zen Buddhists of the most patient kind) were left to rot on the original clapped out bus. The piece de resistance on this particular journey was the couple sitting behind us. The mother was sitting in a fold-out chair in the aisle, as is customary when the normal seats are full, and her tiny baby child was sat on her knee. Eschewing nappies in favour of the au naturel approach to baby care, she twice let her baby piss all down the aisle and onto the many people/bags which happened to be in the way. Needless to say no one batted an eyelid, least of all the excessively flatulent mother of another child who had kept Padraig awake all night with her belching antics.

Mandalay

In Mandalay, we visited 3 'Ancient Cities' around the town. These were collections of temples scattered over the landscape, as well as other attractions such as a 200-year old kilometre-long teak bridge over a lake. One of the cities was an island only traversible by horse and cart. Local kids hung onto the back of the cart (running at full-speed for well over a kilometre) and tried to sell us various items of locally-produced tat. We were then treated to a panoramic sunset viewed from a Pisa-style leaning temple, before returning to Mandalay. The following day we climbed the few hundred steps up Mandalay Hill and explored the silver-and-glass mosaic-effect temple at the top before seeing a slightly less impressive sunset. Five minutes prior to sunset, busloads of American, Israeli and Italian tour groups arrived, took a lift to the top and then took a lift back down again the moment the sun disappeared. We smugly climbed back down the steps, reflecting sweatily on how we were 'keeping it real'. This impression was only confirmed as we saw the same braindead, flatlining tour groups disgorging from buses in other parts of the country. Gosh, aren't we self-righteous after four months away?

Bagan

Our next stop was Bagan. We took the scenic 8-hour ferry ride along the Ayeyarwaddy (formerly Irrawaddy) River, and were rewarded for our early start by stunning views as we approached Bagan itself. It is billed as one of the seven man-made wonders of the world, and it certainly lived up to that. Although each individual temple is not as impressive as its counterparts at Angkor Wat, the overall effect given by the 360 degree temple-studded panoramas is truly breathtaking. The sunsets here were absolutely magical too (see pics, which we will upload asap). We hired bicycles to tour the sites, and checked out a few of the thousands of temples individually. Most were Buddhist, but there are a few Hindu shrines too, all built between the 10th-12th Centuries. (Coincidentally, much of the population of Myanmar is of Indian/Bangladeshi descent, as their forefathers were brought in to work as civil servants by the British imperial regime.) Some of the impromptu guides who showed us round the temples told us that the temples were knocked down by an 'Asquith' in 1975. They have subsequently been rebuilt or restored. We were nevertheless confused (British rule ended in 1948) until we discovered that the Asquith in question was in fact an Earthquake. Bagan was also the site of an impressive bamboo monastery complete with bamboo Buddha (donations welcome) and an eccentric monk who waited for a silent moment before letting off an impressively powerful guff and then giggling about it until we left.

Mount Popa

Following a run-in with the highly irritating and uncooperative owner of the only bus company to travel to Inle Lake, we eventually teamed up with young Mr McCarthy (Welsh perhaps?) and caught a taxi for the 10-hr journey to Inle Lake. This would obviously be unthinkable in Europe, but the whole thing came to less than $20 each, including as many stopovers as we wanted. The best stop was at Mount Popa, a monastery on a 250m hill which juts out of the surrounding landscape apparently at random. Again, pictures speak louder than words (is that the right expression?). Worth mentioning here were the mischievous (I hesitate to say 'cheeky') monkeys which plague the walkways up the side of the hill. For 45 sweaty minutes we were treated to the cacophony of this menacing gang of primates, and as we stepped out to admire the views (yet another sunset) a couple of them even started to get a little over-friendly right in front of us. That certainly spiced up the evening...

Inle Lake

We got to Inle Lake at 3.30am, and were turned away from a few guesthouses before settling on one which seemed to offer good rooms at cheap prices. We were shown around a double room, and Padraig then asked if they had a single room for him. The owner nodded enthusiastically, but didn't make any attempt to show us the room. When prompted, he said of course he would show us the room. After a long hesitation, he picked a room at the end of the corridor, opened up the door and switched the light on, to reveal a young backpacker lying restlessly in the bed. When Padraig pointed out the presence of this hapless paying guest, the owner shrugged and assured us it didn't matter. 'He will be gone in a few hours'. Needless to say we moved on...


The Lake itself was very nice, if a little overcast, and the town had a friendly village atmosphere, but not much to do. The annual water festival began on the morning we arrived, although we cunningly managed to sleep through the dawn procession of leg-rowers (see pics) on the Royal Barge, as well as the arrival by helicopter of the infamous Secretary-1 of the State Peace and Development Council. We chartered a long-tail boat for a one-day tour of the lake, but the most impressive thing we saw (except for a knife-making factory) was a monastery where the bored monks had trained cats to jump through a hoop about 3-feet in the air. Alas, the hoops were not flaming, although our burning rings more than made up for that.


We returned to Yangon with our bellies empty and our camera full, and flew back to Bangkok. At this point we discovered the terrible news about the bomb in Bali, and reflected that, had we not changed our flights in Ho Chi Minh City, we were due to have been there. Two days before we had met Padraig, he had been in the very bar in Kuta where the bomb went off. This sobering experience brought us back to Earth with a bump (thankfully the Myanmar Airways International plane was a little smoother). After a few days in Bangkok, where we were joined by Padraig's dart-loving entrepreneurial mate Kevin 'Dr Evil' Batcheler, we all headed down to Ko Pha Ngan in time for the Full Moon Party. Needless to say, we managed to sleep through the entire once-a-month Party, but we more than made up for it a few nights later with a 'full moon' of our own.


All of us subsequently enrolled for a three day diving course, and we are now FULLY QUALIFIED PADI-CERTIFIED OPEN WATER DIVERS. We sat five written exams and everything! Our deepest scuba-dive with our instructor was 17 metres, but we are now entitled to dive to 18 metres unsupervised, but only in a 'buddy' pair. Watch out Great Barrier Reef. Here we come! Parents please note that our qualification packs and ID-cards will be arriving through the post in the next fortnight. Do not throw them away!


We are on Ko Pha Ngan for the next few days, then we'll be off to the rock-climbing town of Krabi (Maybe more qualifications to come?) We have read the news about bomb scares in Phuket, so we will be staying well clear of that area.
:: Barney 9:30 AM [+] ::
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Sihanoukville (Cambodia) and Ko Chang (Thailand)

Dear Lyn,

As our most vocal, and perhaps most dedicated, reader we dedicate this write up to you...

Well, well, well. What have we been up to since our last enthralling, rollercoaster diary entry? First of all we ended our trip to Cambodia in the quiet seaside resort of Sihanoukville, named in honour of King Sihanouk. Like most seaside resorts it has plenty of sun, sea, sand and decadence, but with a distinctly Cambodian flavour. As usual, money is everything, so in any crime or accident involving tourists, the richest man (for this read the foreigner) wins. It works the other way too. Every foreign-owned bar or guesthouse has to pay more for their supplies than the locals and therefore has to charge the punters more. The worst thing about the town is the community of grey-pony-tailed sex-pats who come in search of poverty-stricken children to have their wicked way with. We had a great time kayaking out to desert islands and relaxing over a cup of tea with a mad Scottish bloke who was building Cambodia's first ever caravan. Needless to say he was also planning to launch Cambodia's first ever caravan park to keep it in. His other boast was that his bar was the only one in the world to sell nitrous oxide (laughing gas) by the balloon-full. However, following a spot of over-enthusiastic indulgence on his part he had ended up dropping the 50Kg canister onto his hand, crushing four fingers and abruptly ending his guitar-playing (and caravan-building?) career. [Note to parents: we had no trouble resisting the urge to try the laughing gas. Barney has enough of his own to go around.]


From Sihanoukville, we took a speedboat up to the Thai border, and thence to the island of Ko Chang. (Does anyone say 'thence'? Is there any need to be so pompous? Well, yes, frankly, there is.) On the boat we were treated to our final dose of Khmer sit-coms. These are all identical in that they are filmed with one, static camera, and involve 3 people standing in a line and screeching loudly at each other. One of them is a policeman, but the woman (usually standing to his left) is louder than him, and possibly richer, so whatever he is accusing her of she seems to get away with. Then everyone turns and laughs at her because she is fat. In short, Khmer TV has all the qualitites of a Carry-On film except for the humour and suggestiveness.


Our stay on Ko Chang involved a small bamboo beach hut lit only by oil-lamp, and outdoor bathroom facilities. Using the squat-toilet was fraught with dangers such as dodging bum-biting mozzies. Returning to the hut at night was also a hairy experience, as the entrance was guarded by a pack of slavering wolverines bent on keeping you out at any cost. One night when Barney was somewhat sub-compos mentis, it was only Claire's controlled eye-wobbling and 'Crocodile Dundee'-esque murmurings at the dogs which permitted us to tame the beasts and reclaim our rightful beach hut. It was here that we met a long-haired Dutch self-declared 'beauty' whose response to the question: 'What did you do before you came travelling?' was 'Nothing, man. This is my life.' It transpired that this free-spirited 20-year-old Earth-Mother occasionally popped home to her parents for just enough time to squeeze more cash out of them before naffing off again to blow their hard-earneds in sunnier climes. But at the very least she liked to travel intelligently. When she saw Barney reading How Pol Pot came to power she said 'Ooh. That sounds deep. What's Pol Pot?' This was a girl whose wordly-wisdom simply shone through.
:: Barney 6:28 AM [+] ::
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Battambang

After Angkor Wat, we hopped on a speedboat to the western provincial capital of Battambang. Despite being in the top three biggest cities in Cambodia, it is miniscule and nothing happens there except gambling and prostitution. However, we had no interest in the town itself, so this was no big deal. Our interest lay in the 'killing caves' located about 40km away.

We hired a couple of motorbike drivers from the hotel, one of whom was called 'Mr T'. Mr T had coincidentally been recommended to us by an overly-serious lone traveller who we had met in Dalat, Viet Nam. Now, although no sucker has ever managed to get Mr T on a plane (fool), he was only too happy to jump on a bike and show us round. The killing caves are located on top of a hill, next to a wat, which was used as a provincial torture centre by the Khmer Rouge. We were shown pillars against which 4 or 5 prisoners had been tied and tortured for days on end, then to a hole in the wall used to drain out victims' blood. Then we moved to the caves proper. In one alcove was a naturally-occurring hook, about seven feet up, which was used to string up live 'criminals' whilst the KR slit them open and cut out their livers for later consumption. Next stop was the 30-foot deep cave with a hole at the top, where prsioners were thrown to their deaths. At the bottom of the cave are a number of skulls and bones, together with blood-stained clothing. The other sight in the area was a gigantic dam, built entirely by hand over a period of 18 months, at the cost of over 20,000 human lives. The dam was part of a KR project to recreate the elaborate dyke-irrigation system which Cambodia enjoyed under the Angkor Kings. He also told us about Poipet, a border-town 50kms further up the same road, where former KR leaders live a life of gambling, gem-selling and prostitution (all activities they had previously declared as imperialist and evil) with apparent impunity. Nobody in the current government has the will to arrest them and dredge up the past, so there they still are, walking the streets as if nothing had ever happened.

As deeply moving as all these sights were (all the more for the fact that we were the only visitors at the time), the most moving thing of all was the personal history of Mr T, which he openly and frankly told us about, not without a tear or two himself. He was 11 when the Khmer Rouge removed him, his parents, two brothers and two sisters from their comfortable Phnom Penh home to separate forced-labour camps. He worked from 5am to 11pm in the rice fields, and digging earth for the construction of dykes. He sang along with revolutionary KR songs, ignorant of the lyrical content, and tried to survive as best he could. His only possessions were the standard-issue bowl, spoon and cup. When it was cold at night, he had only dried-out banana skins for warmth. He was forced to take part in 'punishment' beatings of comrades who had done or said something wrong, and even watched friends executing their own parents on pain of death. After three years of this, he heard 'over the grapevine' that his parents and four siblings had all perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. When Vietnamese soldiers liberated the country, the KR soldiers fled his children's camp with nothing more than a 'go and find your parents, if they are still alive'.

He then embarked on a month-long barefoot walk to Phnom Penh, where Vietnamese soldiers had taken over all the housing and refused to let ex-inhabitants back in for weeks on end. When he finally got back in, his family home had been taken over by someone else. As if this were not bad enough, he was then conscripted to the government's army where he spent the next few years watching yet more friends die at the hands of the KR. Remarkably, he managed to survive and escaped in the dead of night to become an AWOL fugitive in the capital. His only happiness now came from his beloved wife and two daughters, who he spoke of with an understandably profound fondness. Meeting someone as strong and kind as Mr T was truly inspiring.

As to getting out of Battambang, there is one train every day to Phnom Penh, but it leaves at 6am and takes a staggering 14 hours to cover the 300km route. We left less than 24 hours after arriving by another method: the all-too-aptly named 'share taxi', for which one pays $7 per 'seat'. Somewhat more surprisingly, Cambodian taxi drivers have decided that a normal saloon car has not four, but eight seats. This means two in the passenger seat and four in the back (we were crammed in for seven hours with a couple of touchy-feely, but mercifully small be-buttocked Khmer girls). As to the other two seats, well... it seems the driver is only too happy to budge up and allow another cheek or two in next to his own. Thankfully we were spared this horror, and there were only six in our car (the boringly sensible American girl in the passenger seat had sensibly paid double for the privilege of a whole seat to herself, in order to permit herself to bore us in greater personal comfort).

:: Barney 8:22 AM [+] ::
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Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor Wat

What can we say about Siem Reap? For one thing, it is Cambodia's busiest and most upmarket tourist resort (to say nothing of being the most expensive). However, upmarket is relative. People own cars there, which is a change from most of Cambodia. There are hotels which cost hundreds of dollars per night, chock-full of jet-in, jet-out tourists from Germany and Japan. Then there are the usual $5 per night hovels, where we comfortably settled in before you could say Jayavarman VII. In the end, the $5 hovel turned out to be a little gem, with free (yes free) laundry, and an impromptu Mongolian fondue on the last night. The ex-government-army (as opposed to Khmer Rouge) owner was only too happy to invite us for free, as long as we signed his guestbook for the benefit of future guests. Despite his insistance that we be brutally honest about the service, whether good or bad, the yak meat and cabbage leaves melting and slipping down our throats was the only incentive we needed to heap praise on the place. In any case, it was distinctly preferable to the 'Cripsy Chinese Sheets' on offer in another restaurant, apparently of iller-repute than appearances would have suggested.

Perhaps the greatest mystery in Siem Reap were the snoring cows. Each night, as we returned to the guesthouse through the quiet backstreets, we were greeted by a rhythmical and incessant chorus of grunting sounds. One of the guesthouse workers was only too happy to go along with our assumption that these were cows snoring. However, after a couple of nights, even we worked out that not every garden and field could possibly have had cows in it, and with our cast combined knowledge of 'The Countryside'(TM) we realised that cows just don't snore. Only minutes before leaving did we discover the truth behind the mystery, and I swear if I catch another bullfrog making that racket again, it'll be toast...

We hired a driver called Mr Johnny (what else?) who 'belonged' to the guesthouse. He spoke excellent English, and seemed to know lots about the temples of Angkor in the surrounding 500-square km area. We bought a 3-day pass at the hugely inflated price of $40 each (the most expensive entry fee in all of South East Asia, and most of it goes straight to an oil company's coffers) and got up bright and early to begin our tour. When Mr Johnny turned up, he announced that he couldn't possibly take us out as he had to attend his nephew's 1st birthday bash along with another 700 relatives. So he passed us over to his somewhat quieter and less knowledgable brother, whose improbable name we couldn't discern despite frequent repetition. 'Oh well, it's only for one day' - we thought - 'and anyway, we don't want someone who natters all day'. We were certainly right on this point. Mr Johnny assured us that his bro Mr Silent was also a 'very safe driver'. One thing is certain: he was also categorically the slowest driver in the world. Ever. Not once did the needle leave its rest on the speedo. This is fine when you're driving past stunning 10th-century Khmer temples, but not so great on an empty highway when all you want is to get home to bed. Day two at the temples, Mr Johnny turned up as planned, and announced that he was far too hungover to possibly take us out. So it was back with Mr Silent and another day of living life in the hearse lane.

The temples themselves were stunning for the most part. Many of them had been attacked or destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, but restoration efforts by teams from Germany, the USA and France among others are bringing them back to their former glory. There are some exceptions: Ta Phrom, one of the most breathtaking temples, has not been touched since it was first discovered by French archaeologists in the late 19th Century. It is amazing because tree roots have become entwined in the brick work, sometimes splitting it open, sometimes knocking a wall down, but in every case adding to the beauty of the place. Angkor Wat itself is impressive in its sheer size, and the quality of the bas reliefs surviving intact on the interior walls. Amusingly enough, the reliefs of topless Apsara dancers all have shiny chests where generations of naughty schoolchildren have been overcome by the 'hilarious' urge to gigglingly rub the bosoms. It goes without saying that we maturely resisted this urge. In the case of Angkor Wat, the temple buildings and even the surrounding moat are mostly undamaged. If you want an idea of what these seminal works of architecture look like, check out the new selection of photos in the Cambodia picture gallery.
:: Barney 8:08 AM [+] ::
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