From Burma to Myanmar Read online

  The ticket I had bought was for a night bus. I had sworn I would never take one of these horrors, but there was no other way to get from here to Inle Lake. In anticipation of this event, I bought another pillow in the supermarket. I had given the one I had bought for the train to the receptionist of the Royal City in Mandalay.

  Then I returned to my very comfortable hotel room and settled in, vowing not to move until it was bus time. It was simply too hard to get around and there was nothing much to see except those immense freeways and wide empty spaces.

  After checking out of the hotel at twelve the next day—and paying for the glass I broke!—I sat in the foyer until five when it was time to go to the bus station. The staff put on the TV for me and a young and very beautiful male receptionist came to talk to me. He said his family were in Yangon and that all the staff lived in the hostel. I had noticed this less than posh building at the back of the hotel, separated from the paying guests by a big fence covered with green shade cloth. Where else could they live? The hotel zone was utterly isolated.

  I had expected a grand new bus station, but the government apparently is not interested in bus travellers. They want cashed-up flyers. There was nowhere under shade to sit except up some steps in a daggy little office. My bag was left down in the street beside a stall selling packets of munchies. You wouldn’t do this in Thailand or many other countries. When the bus arrived it was not as good as the last two I had taken. The seats were tiny and rock hard and they did not recline. If I stretched out my legs I had only half my bottom on it. Thank goodness for my pillow. Though each seat was provided with a green-frilled baby pillow, they weren’t much use except to help insulate you from the sharp arm rests. We left the bus station on the dot of six, but it was half past seven before we got away from Nay Pyi Taw.

  17 Jumping cats

  There were three bus stations, all miles apart, in Nay Pyi Taw. We called at them all collecting passengers, as well as a village on the outskirts of the city where there was a market and some normal-looking Burmese houses.

  Outside my bus window an almost full moon was rising and I fell asleep watching it. Despite my fears of spending a sleepless night on a bus, I was snoring long before half-past eight. I woke up then because the bus had stopped for our first feeding and toileting session—a whole hour had elapsed since our last pick-up stop. This is going to be a long trip, I thought.

  Everyone had to get off and we were locked out of the bus until the driver returned. The next stop was at eleven-thirty and the same procedure followed—more food, more toilets. Then the old bus began labouring up steep winding roads into the mountains. Halfway to the top we pulled off the road at a place where several buses and trucks stood in mud and puddles while their drivers hosed down their tyres, cooling them in preparation for the rest of the ordeal.

  Continuing on with cool tyres, grinding and bumping in an ever-winding ascent, we arrived at the top. I slept again and woke when we had our last stop for refreshments at half-past one. An hour later we seemed to have arrived somewhere. People had been getting off along the way by calling out to the driver to stop, but this place looked like a major halt. Wherever it was, everyone got off, so I did too.

  I showed someone the ticket that had on it my destination, Nyaungshwe, the closest town to Inle Lake, and received the unwelcome news that I had come too far. The bus driver had not realised that I had no idea where I was and that the road signs I had seen, being in Burmese script, had told me nothing. The driver’s assistant, who had been told by the ticket seller in Nay Pyi Taw to put me off at the Nyaungshwe turn off, had disappeared somewhere along the way. A man who spoke English was found to talk to me. He said I could take a taxi back to Nyaungshwe, and a vehicle was promptly found. It was a long way back. The taxi, a decrepit old heap on its last legs, bucked, jolted, creaked and groaned over the bumpy road, innocent of windows, which was handy for the spitting. Not me, the driver, who was chewing betel and seemed to be having trouble with his eyes. He slowed to a crawl when cars or trucks with lights approached.

  Now and then we passed people walking along the roadsides, even though it was almost four o’clock in the morning. I had noticed that people were always out and about at all hours of the night. I suppose this explains the ludicrous train and bus times.

  From the turn off on the main road, another long road led to Nyaungshwe. Arriving there and asking directions, the driver got me to Teakwood Guesthouse where I had booked a room. Despite the hour, a woman soon opened the gate. In the semi-open office area two young people lay sleeping on old grey blankets on the cold tiled floor. ‘My staff’, she said to my enquiring look. Poor kids. Apparently a tough employer, she was a brittle woman, not at all like other Burmese women I had met who were soft and gentle and kind. I did not take to her. However, right then all I wanted was a bed. Desperately.

  From a monastery across the road a very loud chanting bellowed out nonstop. I asked for a room at the back further away from the racket and was told that this would cost more. Upstairs was even dearer. And yet, value wise by Burmese standards, this was a twenty dollar hotel! They didn’t even supply a bottle of water or a glass if you had brought your own. Thank goodness I had the bottle the bus company had given me; a miss-spent youth drinking beer from bottles serves me well in times like this.

  I slept until after eleven and got up, bleary eyed, for lunch. It was hard to believe the difference between the wonderful Tungapuri hotel I had just left, that had cost only two dollars more, and this place. The ‘nice garden’ of the Teakwood’s blurb was for me a fine outlook onto a couple of clothes-drying racks laden with crumpled washing. And as for that chanting! The same phrase shouted with the aid of an amplifier over and over very loudly. It did not stop all day as this was now a special time of Buddhist lent. I am not adverse to a bit of chanting, but I began to fantasise about marching over there with a big pair of scissors and cutting the cord of that amplifier, or at least pulling the plug.

  Unfortunately I had been pressured into paying up front for three days when I arrived, otherwise I would have moved.

  Towards evening I ventured out. I was told that it was only a five minute walk to the main street of this small town and surprisingly it turned out to be true. It isn’t always. The street contained small cafes, shops and boat tour offices. I arranged a boat trip on Inle Lake, an obligatory exercise when visiting this area, with a friendly man whose smile displayed betel-destroyed teeth and blood-red gums. Nearby was a bank with a money change office, but it was not open until morning. Outside it stood a brand-new ATM, the first I had seen in Burma.

  Nyaungshwe is situated at the end of Inle Lake, connected to it by a canal, and is the commercial hub for the villages dotted around the lake’s edge. I ate at an outdoor cafe but moved as soon as I could to escape the increasingly persistent and ardent attention of the local mosquitoes. In the street I stopped to talk to a Belgian family with two small blond children. Their mother said that the children were fussed over wherever they went and everyone wanted to touch the smallest one, a little boy, which naturally he hated. In a tiny bar I bought water to make up for the Teakwood’s inadequacy. It would not have cost them much to provide it; a one litre bottle was less than thirty cents.

  Despite the chanting, which continued all night, I slept. Ear plugs and exhaustion helped. In the morning I changed money at the sparkling bank, the only posh building in the town. It took three uniformed guards and three tellers to do so. The rate I received was the best yet, 983 kyats to the US dollar.

  I presented myself for the boat trip and was introduced to a young man, Kyaw, whom I was told wanted to be my guide. I didn’t want a guide. They mostly mean well but have so little English or such a peculiar accent that they are usually incomprehensible and serve no useful purpose. I was told, ‘You don’t have to pay him, just tip him if you like him’. Terrific. I was in no win situation. But everyone in this country needs employment, so I agreed that he could come with me. I had no idea what a tip shoul
d be but I had learned that, unbelievably, the average daily wage is one thousand kyats.

  We set off—walking. I was not amused. It was already hot and it was a long way to the canal. ‘I thought there was a boat involved in this deal,’ I bleated, trotting to keep up with him. But then, there it sat on the canal, a long, skinny, blue-painted wooden canoe. It had no covering but there were two chairs low down in its bottom where Kyaw and I sat in single file. The driver perched up in the rear with his outboard engine, I popped up my umbrella, and we were off.

  It took half an hour to zoom down the long canal that connects Nyaungshwe to Inle Lake. The first part of the canal is lined with houses, guesthouses and shops, all wooden. Then we were on the lake where the breeze was delightfully cool. Mountains ring the lake all around, green and devoid of anything but their folds. Villages cling to the shores, their wooded, bamboo and woven rattan houses on stilts high out of the water; the level of the lake was low at this time as the wet season increase had not yet arrived.

  Inle is a shallow lake with a surface area of just under fifty square miles, the second biggest in Burma. It took another half hour to cross to the Phaung Daw Oo Paya, the holiest religious site in the south of the Shan state. The boat pulled up to a landing from where reaching the pagoda involved a long trek on wobbly wooden walkways elevated over water and mud. There were loose boards underfoot and wonky bits of loosely applied bamboo for hand rails. I proceeded with caution.

  At the pagoda a huge crowd wandered about. The full moon festival was in progress. This Paya’s holy treasures are five small ancient Buddha statues that have been plastered with gold leaf over such a long time that now they are unrecognisable blobs. Kyaw told me that one has increased in weight by several kilos.

  This day was a time to offer flowers. Kyaw encouraged me to buy some lotus blooms and then he made an offering of them in front of the appropriate statue. Kneeling, he bowed his head to the floor three times with my flowers clasped in his hands. A woman approached Kyaw with two pieces of gold leaf and asked him to apply it for her. Only men can step up onto the dais on which the statues sit to make offerings or put gold leaf on them. A sign beside it said, ‘No ladies allowed’. My mother was finally vindicated. She was always telling me there were things ladies could not do but I never believed her. Mind, you wouldn’t find me buying gold for an idol that thinks it’s too good for me to touch it. Get your own gold, I’d say.

  Moored beside the pagoda in a covered dock was a big, glittering golden boat with a prow in the shape of a hamsa bird’s head. Once a year it is used to ferry the gold Buddas around to all twenty-five lakeside villages to spend a night in each. Originally all five statues went walkabout annually, but in 1965 the boat capsized in a storm and all the Buddhas went to the bottom of the lake. Four were recovered and one was left to be searched for again in the morning. But on returning the four to the pagoda, the fifth was found to be already there, waiting for them. The next year the same thing happened—a storm and a lost Buddha returning of its own accord. Then the people got the message that the fifth Buddha did not like to travel and so now only four go on their little annual holiday of twenty-five one night stands.

  I was surprised when Kyaw told me that he firmly believed this. There was a storm because there are photos to prove it, but as to the rest … Oh well, lots of people believe far more unlikely Christian miracles. But I did like the way Kyaw bowed and prayed at each site we visited. An unbeliever can still take pleasure in someone else’s trusting faith.

  Outside in the grounds we joined a throng of people pushing their way through a packed market. There were Shan and other ethnic people in colourful traditional dress patronising the tea houses and eating places that offered their particular food, along with stalls piled with many kinds of fruit, spices and local produce.

  Back in the boat, we moved on to the fisherman’s village, with me resisting all offers of visits to weavers, silver smiths and any other place where I knew I would be pressured to buy stuff I didn’t want. Like ship’s engines, I have seen enough workshops to satisfy me for the rest of my life. And especially I did not want to see the Paduang, the ‘long necked women’, who have had iron rings placed around their necks until they are deformed. They are on exhibition at one of the villages and are high on the tourist sights list. I believe this is gross. If ­tourists didn’t go to gawk at and photograph them, these atrocities committed on women would die out.

  But I gave in to an entreaty to visit the Jumping Cats Monastery; I would be drummed out of the Cat Lovers’ Society if it got out that I had knocked this back. The Nga Hpe Kyaung Monastery is entirely made of teak and inside it was dark, wonderfully cool and inhabited, not only by a lot of cats, but some impressive ancient statues on ornate mosaic plinths. The cats that used to perform the jumping tricks have grown old now and are way past jumping. I know exactly how they feel. The monk who trained the cats died last year and there has been no one to teach new cats. But a lot of old pensioner cats lie about on a big straw mat and you can get down on the floor and play with them or use the small tea sets placed at intervals on the mat to have a cat tea party. The cats looked like the Blue Burmese breed but were much smaller. You would be too if, a natural carnivore, you were made to be a vegetarian. No meat can enter a Buddhist monastery.

  After lunch at an over-the-water restaurant, I was taken to see the five hundred metre long teak footbridge that connects one village to the shore. When the water level drops in the dry season the people of this village are unable to use boats to go to the mainland so they built a marvellous bridge.

  Every now and then we came upon a fisherman out on the lake using the style of rowing that is unique to Inle—standing in the back of the boat with a leg twined about an oar. This method evolved so that the rower could see over the weed that clogs the lake’s shallow water. Mats of these weeds are used as a base for the floating gardens of the lake. We chugged slowly through them, passing along small lanes between rows of tomatoes and capsicum where egrets and ducks flew up as we disturbed them.

  At four o’clock we returned to Nyaungshwe and I gave Kyaw ten thousand kyats, which judging by his smile must have been okay as a tip.

  The date I needed be back in Yangon for my exit from Burma was approaching. I planned to catch the train to Thazi in Shwengang, the village on the main road near the turn off to Nyaungshwe. From Thazi, a whistle-stop on the Mandalay to Yangon train line, I could get a night train to Yangon. I had checked with the internet train guru, The Man in Seat 61, and had been assured that there were sleeper carriages on these trains.

  The tuk tuk I had arranged to collect me arrived early the next morning and took me to the station. On the way I called into the Golden Kite restaurant. I had eaten dinner there the previous night and left my brolly hanging on the back of my chair. I am beginning to think I need a minder.

  The ride back to the main road junction, me windblown in the little bouncing vehicle, seemed to last even longer than the one arriving in the taxi. But the nice driver dragged my bag over the rough ground of the yard and onto the station platform for me.

  The ticket office was not open yet and I was told to wait until ten. At ten I was told, half an hour more. It was eleven before I was allowed to buy a ticket. Previously I had wondered why tickets were not sold before the train actually arrived. Now I know it is because there is a definite possibility that it may not come at all. They wait until they hear it is on the way.

  The train was almost two hours late, but eventfully we left. As soon as we did it began to rain heavily into the open window beside my seat. A kind man came to help me close it when he saw me wrestling with it. This was when I remembered that I had left the retrieved brolley in the tuk tuk! The minder now becomes even more a reality.

  We left the town and soon there were flame trees and yellow flowering trees like acacias beside the line. My seat was comfortable and I had plenty of room. Later the seats across from me were occupied by a woman and a cute little girl. A couple of
women and a small boy sat in the seats on the ­opposite side of the aisle.

  The train line is a marvel. It snakes along the very edge of high mountains, goes through deep cuttings and tunnels and crosses countless bridges. There was one massively impressive long, high viaduct. Approaching it, the train slowed almost to a stop, then proceeded toward it very cautiously at a walking pace. Once on the viaduct we were reduced to a crawl, literally inching along.

  The scenery was sensational. In cuttings where creepers and vines grew into a dense green wall on both sides, tendrils reached out and brushed the sides of the train as we passed. At times leaves fell in on me and once I got smacked in the face by a small branch. In places enormous patches of rice were terraced down whole valleys ringed by jagged blue mountains. In other valleys large plots of vegetables grew. Sometimes I was looking down on verdant slopes from a great height where a motorbike on a far winding road was the size of an insect. There were patchworks of rice, corn and vegetables, some grown on bamboo trellises where the creepers of the vegetables formed a thick roof overhead. All was green and lush.

  After four hours we arrived at Kalaw’s pretty little railway station that looks like a Swiss chalet. Kalaw, originally another British hill station high in cool mountains, is a popular place from which to trek into the surrounding hills.

  It took fifteen hours to reach Thazi, and we arrived three and a half hours late. We wouldn’t have been so late if it had not been for the interminable stops the train made every few miles. The train ride had developed into a vegetable market. At each of the frequent stops a different vegetable specialty was on offer as well as food for the passengers. Once I was about to buy something in a small bag that looked interesting and edible but discovered that it was cut up carrots. Large amounts of vegetables were sold in commercial-sized bags and loads of them came aboard the train, and were stuffed in behind seats, in the aisle, wherever possible.