From Burma to Myanmar Read online

  Wakefield Press

  Lydia Laube never says no to adventure, whether that means galloping a horse across the Mongolian plains or hopping on a cargo ship to Madagascar. Born into the farming community of Caltowie in the mid-north of South Australia, Lydia trained as a nurse in Adelaide, then set off to see the world. Her debut book, Behind the Veil: An Australian nurse in Saudi Arabia, was an instant bestseller, and she has become one of Australia’s favourite travel writers. From Burma to Myanmar is Lydia’s ninth travel yarn.

  Between winter escapes to the sun, Lydia Laube shares a small house in Adelaide with a large cat with attitude.

  Wakefield Press

  16 Rose Street

  Mile End

  South Australia 5031

  www.wakefieldpress.com.au

  First published 2015

  This edition published 2015

  Copyright © Lydia Laube, 2015

  All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

  Cover designed by Dean Lahn, Lahn Stafford Design

  Ebook conversion by Clinton Ellicott, Wakefield Press

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Laube, Lydia, 1948– , author.

  Title: From Burma to Myanmar: on the road to Mandalay / Lydia Laube.

  ISBN: 978 1 74305 139 9 (ebook: epub).

  Subjects:

  Laube, Lydia, 1948– ,—Travel.

  Myanmar—Description and travel.

  Mandalay (Burma)—Description and travel.

  Dewey Number: 910.4

  Contents

  Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling

  1 Temple bells are calling

  2 Mother Love

  3 The wind is in the palm trees

  4 Looking eastward to the sea

  5 The dawn comes up like thunder

  6 By the old Moulmein pagoda

  7 The mist is on the rice fields

  8 Snake in a monastery

  9 Malaysian detour

  10 All at sea again

  11 Singapore to Bangkok rail ride

  12 Pyay

  13 Madonna and me

  14 On the road to Mandalay

  15 Where the flying fishes play

  16 City of dreamers

  17 Jumping cats

  18 The final farewell

  19 Home on the Buxstar

  Mandalay

  Rudyard Kipling

  By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,

  There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;

  For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:

  ‘Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!’

  Come you back to Mandalay,

  Where the old Flotilla lay:

  Can’t you ’ear their paddles clunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?

  On the road to Mandalay,

  Where the flyin’-fishes play,

  An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!

  ’Er petticoat was yaller an’ ’er little cap was green,

  An’ ’er name was Supi-yaw-lat—jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen,

  An’ I seed her first a-smoking of a whackin’ white cheroot,

  An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ’eathen idol’s foot:

  Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud—

  Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd—

  Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ’er where she stud!

  On the road to Mandalay …

  When the mist was on the rice-fields an’ the sun was droppin’ slow,

  She’d git ’er little banjo an’ she’d sing ‘Kulla-lo-lo’

  With ’er arm upon my shoulder an’ ’er check agin’ my cheek

  We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis pilin’ teak.

  Elephints a-pilin’ teak

  In the sludgy, squdgy creek,

  Where the silence ’ung that ’eavy you was ’arf afraid to speak!

  On the road to Mandalay …

  But that’s all shove be’ind me—long ago an’ fur away,

  An’ there ain’t no ’busses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay;

  An’ I’m learnin’ ’ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:

  ‘If you’ve ’eard the East a-callin’, you won’t never ’eed naught else.’

  No! you won’t ’eed nothin’ else

  But them spicy garlic smells,

  An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells;

  On the road to Mandalay …

  I am sick o’ wastin’ leather on these gritty pavin’-stones,

  An’ the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;

  Tho’ I walks with fifty ’ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

  An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand?

  Beefy face an’ grubby ’and—

  Law! wot do they understand?

  I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!

  On the road to Mandalay …

  Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,

  Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst;

  For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be—

  By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;

  On the road to Mandalay,

  Where the old Flotilla lay,

  With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!

  On the road to Mandalay,

  Where the flyin’-fishes play,

  An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!

  1 Temple bells are calling

  ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’

  Famous first line of Daphne du Maurier’s book, Rebecca.

  I, too, dreamed of going back to Mandalay, but it was Burma’s Mandalay, not Daphne’s ‘Manderley’ I dreamed of.

  So why was I now on my way back to Burma for the fifth time? It wasn’t even Burma any more. Now it was Myanmar. Still, something about this country attracted me—unfinished business maybe. Or the appeal of the forbidden. Burma has in the past been enticingly coy about letting me in.

  The first time I travelled to Burma, over twenty years ago, I was accompanied by my sister. We zoomed around the country at the speed of light. There was no time to stop and smell the flowers as tourists were allowed to stay only one week—an improvement, however, on the twenty-four hours permitted after General Ne Win’s 1962 coup. The government he established—the world’s longest running military dictatorship—installed an isolationist policy that virtually closed the country to outsiders.

  They might have kicked you out after a week but the powers that ruled Burma with an iron, if incomprehensible, fist didn’t mind how many times you flew in and out. That first brief visit had been enough to show us that Burma was a beautiful country of charming people so we decided to fly out and return again almost immediately.

  We started from Bangkok, the best and closest place to get a Burmese visa. Arriving on a stopover deal with Thai International, we spent two nights at the wonderful Royal Orchid Hotel on the riverfront of the Chao Phraya River in central Bangkok, indulging in sumptuous breakfasts and, between bursts of temples and markets, watching the busy river traffic from our tenth-floor room.

  Then, visa in hand, we flew on to Rangoon with Thai International, the only permitted way to enter Burma. All ot
her points were and still are off-limits, even though Burma shares borders with India, China, Bangladesh, Laos and Thailand and has an 1199-mile coastline on the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

  Immediately on arrival we began to play the universal game of Beat the Government Currency Racket. Burmese money was tightly controlled and tourists were supposed to use the much-inflated government rates of the kyat, which you had to buy with US dollars. All exchanges and purchases had to be recorded on a form that was checked when you left the country to prove you had used government sanctioned cash. The only hotels allowed to accept tourists were government owned and their bills had to be paid in dollars. This draconian system presented a challenge not to be ignored by those of us who did not want to give our money to a less than nice government. We fiddled the forms to make it look as though we had changed more money than we had, and paid wherever possible with kyat, which we obtained on the black market, a thriving industry that gave you ten times the official rate. Sometimes we were able to stay (illegally) at small hotels who allowed us (illegally) to pay in kyats that we had obtained (illegally again) on the black market. Another lurk travellers used to obtain a wad of unofficial kyat was to buy bottles of Black Label Johnny Walker whisky and cartons of American cigarettes—both prized and unobtainable in Burma—in the duty free shop and then sell them to one of the buyers waiting immediately outside the airport terminal. We did this and it provided a handsome profit in a wad of local money. We were off to a grand start in our life of crime. I found the wheeling and dealing and intrigue to outwit the government great fun, and I was very successful at it too. Did you know that 10 can easily be made into 100 if you find a black pen that looks the same as the one used to record your original amount exchanged?

  Black market dealers were everywhere. The most reliable were the taxi drivers who hung about outside the Grand Hotel in Rangoon. They would either drive you around the corner to make the deal or take you to someone who would. We dealt whenever possible with the same man we came to trust. We learnt very quickly that only the government cheated you in Burma.

  The Grand was where we spent our first night. It sat facing the Yangon River on Strand Road among a row of other once impressive colonial piles. Formerly wonderful but now faded and shabby, a double room in this old British hotel cost ten dollars. Now, since the government has tarted it up, you can hardly get a drink there for that, and rooms start at around four hundred.

  Faded or not, I loved The Grand’s ambience. Entering the hotel from the street, climbing its unswept grimy steps, we found ourselves in a foyer redolent of the Raj, dominated by a great polished wooden bar surrounded by old leather armchairs. Our ballroom-sized room came with an enormous bathroom containing ancient fixtures, a cavernous bath and understandably faulty plumbing.

  It would be a dash to get in and out of Burma—a fairly large country, a bit bigger than France—in one week, so we left Rangoon the next night on the train to Mandalay.

  Burma has never had a quiet life. For hundreds of years, until 1885 when Britain took control, it contained many small warring kingdoms. Rebellion was still rife among ethnic minority groups and Karen insurgents would demonstrate their displeasure with the government by coming down from the hills every now and then to blow up the Mandalay train. While I sympathised with their grudge against the government, I didn’t want to be sent heavenwards by one of their bombs. I spent the night anticipating a loud bang and clung tightly to my top bunk, not only because it was a very rocky ride. The explosion failed to materialise and we arrived safely in Mandalay the next morning.

  Mandalay was all I had expected. With its old royal palace and mountain-top temples, it felt far more Burmese than Rangoon had. We climbed the hundreds of steps that led up to the temple on the top of Mandalay Hill, in order to achieve good karma as well as to look down on the town from a great height.

  After two days we found a share taxi and travelled up into the mountains north-east of Mandalay to Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin), a former hill station of the British. Parts of Burma are mountainous; further north the Kachin Hills lead into the Himalayas. Up there in Maymyo, among pine forests and green hills that climb to the Shan Plateau, it was wonderfully cool after the heat of the plains. We stayed in another place you’d not get into today, the Candacraig Hotel. Surrounded by large trees and green lawns, it looked like a wooden chalet transposed from somewhere in Europe. At night we sat in front of open log fires drinking hot mandarin juice laced with local gin and by day we rode around in quaint horse-drawn buggies.

  After this delightful interlude it was back by train for another night at the Strand and a taxi to the airport. Our driver had a few mishaps on the way and we just managed to make it onto the end of the long queue at the checkin counter by Thai International’s required time. The queue moved painfully slowly in this laid back and basic airport. Just as we reached the counter, the Thai pilot came out and said, ‘No more! Check in time is finished.’

  Appalled, we protested that our visas were about to expire and that it was straight to goal for overstaying. To no avail. We were outcast. The kind airport staff tried to help us and ­eventually found us seats on a flight leaving in a couple of hours with Air Bangladesh. It was the only other flight that day so we took it.

  Next time I would choose the Go Straight To Gaol option! It was the worst flight of my life. The plane was old, grubby and much worn. We were the only women aboard not in purdah. The hostesses therefore ignored us as worthless. A male passenger, seeing everyone but us served orange juice, demanded that the hostess give us some. To cap it all off, we almost crashed.

  Coming down to land at Bangkok, our plane must have been approaching the wrong landing strip because suddenly the pilot pulled a fast U-turn and took the plane up again. Everything fell about the cabin as it almost turned over. Women screamed and cried. Eventually we made it down to land, but I was much shaken. Never again, that’s it for me with Third World airlines, I swore.

  In Bangkok we went straight to the agent who had arranged our visas, flights and insurance and got refunds for our unused Thai International tickets, booked more flights and applied for new visas. I think what really happened was that the plane had been overbooked and was full by the time we fronted the counter. I prefer that to the thought that the pilot hadn’t liked the look of us.

  Three days later we were on our way back to Rangoon. We spent a night at the President Hotel, now the Thamada and also much tarted up. Again we took the Mandalay train north, this time getting off at Thazi—a connecting place for transport en route to Inle Lake. We stayed in Nyaungshwe, the closest village to the lake, and went puttering around this large body of placid water in a motorised canoe. The lake is known for its leg rowers who stand at the back of their canoes and row with one leg wrapped around a single oar.

  We saw Pagan’s famous temples and took the train back to Rangoon where we stayed at the Kandaggi Hotel—formerly the British Rowing Club, transformed into a guesthouse—on Lake Kandawgyi. Another charmingly ramshackle, rambling old place, delightfully full of character, it looked over the lake to the golden splendour of the Shwedagon Pagoda. It has also gone up in the world and is now the super swish Kandawgyi Palace.

  Leaving the country this time, having learned from our previous experience, we arrived at the airport ridiculously early.

  The third time I visited Burma, a year later, I was travelling alone. Still allowed only a week’s visa, I fitted it in on my way to a month in Nepal. After a night at the Strand I took a ferry across the Yangon River to Syriam, now called Thanlyin. Once a major seaport, it was an interesting place to wander about in.

  Then it was a sleeper on the train to Thazi to collect a bus to Kalaw, another former British hill station. Most travellers go to Kalaw because it is a base for treks into the surrounding mountains, but I just investigated the town and its markets where traders come down from hill villages to sell their goods.

  One day I went by local transport to a village market some miles a
way and had to wait a long time at a wayside stop to return, standing under a bamboo shelter with a group of women. A young American man arrived and after a short while began agitating about the delay, and being a bit of a pain. When the bemo arrived, I spoke for the first time and he said in surprise, ‘Oh, I thought you were Burmese, you were so quiet.’ I was dressed much the same as the local women in a long skirt and over blouse so I suppose this was a reasonable assumption. I climbed into the back of the small covered truck with the women and we sat facing each other in two rows. The boy got up on the roof with a couple of men. Before long we were stopped by soldiers at a road block. I realised then that I should have had a permit to travel into these hills and I began to worry. But when the soldiers looked into the back of the truck, all the women gently swayed forward just a little, like a breeze passing over a wheat field, enough to hide me. Then everyone pointed to the roof. The last I saw of the American boy he was standing in the road yelling at the soldiers.

  From Kalaw it wasn’t hard to find a couple of travellers to share a taxi back to Rangoon and the Strand for my last night and more drama at the airport. This time it involved an antique tapestry (a kalaga) I had bought. Unlike the casual formalities of checking baggage I had seen on my previous visits, this time it looked as though my bag was about to be searched. Suddenly I remembered the kalaga—it was forbidden to take antiques out of Burma. Visions of the Go to Gaol clause assailed me and I did some fast thinking. Looking up at the large sign on the wall that stated that no kyat were to be taken out of the country, I feigned surprise and opened my purse to exhibit a wad of it (worth all of five dollars). I said to the customs officer, ‘Oh dear. What shall I do with this?’ Graciously he said that he would relieve me of it, then he shut my bags and waved me through. I still have that kalaga on my wall at home.

  For years I was unable to return to Burma. Soon after my last visit in 1988, following non-violent protests in which three thousand people were killed by the military, a coup occurred. The ensuing government established a corrupt and harsh regime that was boycotted by travellers on the advice of Burmese democratic leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi.