From Burma to Myanmar Read online

  All this aside, it was a great trip and I got a terrific view of the country from the open windows (they were seized this way). Passing through the villages and towns, I saw horse-drawn carts and more fabulously decrepit WWII army trucks. In the fields there were sleek water buffalo, goats, cows and horses, beige with dark-brown manes and tails, that were more the size of ponies. We jolted and rattled up one side of the Gulf of Martaban and down the other.

  After turning to come down the other side there was even more greenery and water with canals, rivers and streams galore. But there were not many people and only a few houses among large tracts of rice. It was easy to see why Burma had once been called the rice bowl of Asia.

  The houses were all rattan, thatch and a bit of wood. Most stood with their feet in water. Closer to Moulmein there were villages, one with a mosque with its hammer and sickle moon over the entrance and a Buddhist temple at the other end. Many golden pagodas shone among the greenery.

  We stopped at stations about a dozen times. I used the toilet only once. The door would not latch inside. I checked but the one at the other end of the carriage was the same. I wondered why no one had bothered to fix such a simple thing. It was very difficult to hang onto the door to keep it from flying open, as well as to try to brace oneself over a hole in the floor in the rocking and rolling train. I didn’t try a second time.

  Approaching Moulmein we rattled over an enormously long curving bridge—a pretty amazing piece of work, it was the longest in the country There had been many bridges along the way, crossing areas cut by the countless rivers that ran into the sea. Apart from the Irrawaddy, Burma’s two other major rivers are the Chindwin, which runs from Mandalay to the mountains of the north that continue up to the Himalayas, and the Thanlwin here in the east that flows into the Gulf of Martaban. Even the Mekong has a look in, flowing along Burma’s border with Laos.

  Finally, the journey ended and my bags and I were effortlessly delivered to the Hotel Attran, which is sneered at by backpacker writers as being overpriced. Well, compared to their recommended flop houses maybe it was. I thought it was fabulous. For thirty dollars I got a real hotel. At reception I was presented with a cold towel and a drink, and a plate of grapes followed me to my room.

  The rooms of the Attran are bungalows arranged along the river’s edge. In front of them were manicured lawns, on which hopped sparrows and birds like ravens, that ran down to end at a low wall beside the water. My room was really a suite, with a sitting room that faced the wide river, a bedroom and a first-class bathroom. There was a flat-screen TV and, perfect for someone like me who is always looking for more light, it had seven lights including a bed light that was like a search beacon.

  But I was too pooped even to front for food that night and was in bed by eight o’clock.

  6 By the old Moulmein pagoda

  Breakfast was served on a deck facing the river in front of reception. I was alone except for two men in one corner and a collection of sparrows and other small birds that saw my entry as a prelude to food. After many attempts, I realised that the waitress was asking if I wanted ‘Rice or European’. The ‘European’ was way beyond her. So she brought a helper who said, ‘Eggspotatotoast’. I agreed. I got eggs, a banana (does sound a bit like potato) and virgin toast (toast that has never seen a toaster—white bread naked as the day it was baked). The sparrows were happy to have it. And the coffee was good.

  There were a couple of torrential downpours of rain before and after breakfast but the weather fined up for my exploratory walk.

  I saw mosques, temples and pagodas and found a riverboat landing, but the boats were only for local use and did not take foreigners as passengers. It was not possible to get a permit to travel anywhere further south from here because of the danger from rebel activity. From the train, now and then I had seen elevated bamboo watchtowers containing a guard surrounded by sandbags, so I presumed there was activity even in this area. The Mon people want independence. Who can blame them?

  I thought Moulmein was a much nicer place than Rangoon. I could see why the British had made it their first headquarters in 1827 before making Rangoon their capital in 1885. It was then a major port. Now it has been superseded by Pathein and Yangon, although it still handles a lot of coastal shipping.

  For me Moulmein had romantic history. Kipling wrote the Road to Mandalay here in the few days that he spent in Burma. (And the road to Mandalay he wrote about was the River Irrawaddy. Hence where the flying fishes play.) This was also where George Orwell lived; it was his family’s home for decades.

  Dogs were everywhere in the streets. Most did not look in bad nick and some seemed to have owners, although they roamed free. With all the rubbish piled around, they did okay at scavenging.

  I was about to hire a trishaw until I saw what the rider was doing. Carefully, daintily, he was extracting lice from his hair and dispatching them between his fingernails. I walked on! I know I couldn’t catch lice by sitting behind him in his vehicle, but it put me off. I wandered a long way, passing the extensive frontage of the town markets until I discovered that the next road over ran along the edge of the river. High above the water, shaded by trees, it was a much cooler proposition for strolling.

  Most buildings I saw were scruffy and three-storeys high, their narrow walls stained by mould like sooty teardrops running down them. All except the banks, which were fat and glossy palaces. The most substantial and the best maintained looking building I saw was a very large orphanage and school.

  Vehicular traffic was mostly motorbike or trishaw. Not all, but some riders wore dark shiny metal helmets shaped like the German army ones of WWII.

  Eventually the riverfront road took me back to the Attran after I had passed its next door neighbour, an enormous grand government hotel. I admired its grounds, closely observed by the security guards, but, being a conscientious objector to the government, I could not patronise it.

  That day I felt like many people had told me they felt in Laos after long bus rides—that they needed a day to recover. I could not seem to get going. So, this day being Sunday, I declared it a day of rest. Anyway the market was shut on Sunday and there wasn’t much more to explore in the town.

  I just made it back to my room after lunch before a tremendous downpour swept in. Caught in that, I would have been soaked in seconds. From my windows I could see nothing and even the sound of the TV couldn’t be heard above the din on the roof.

  The next day I took a non lice-catching driver’s trishaw to the Breeze Guest House where I had read bus tickets could be arranged. There I bought a ticket to Bago for four days hence. The bus left at nine am. The train left at an ungodly early hour and anyway I did not think I was up to another train ride just yet. The chirpy old fellow selling me the ticket laughed about the train. ‘Like riding a horse,’ he said. ‘No, an elephant. At a gallop,’ I replied.

  The trishaw rider then took me on to an eating place—at no stretch of the imagination could it be called a restaurant—situated on the riverbank. I was given such a massive pile of food I could not eat it all so I had it boxed up as takeaway.

  Trishaws here were motorbikes with a small—very small—seat attached alongside. They were always an extremely tight fit even for my hips which are generally considered slim. Once a rider had to seize me by both upper arms and haul me out bodily, like extracting a cork from a bottle.

  The market was close to the Attran, just a short walk along the street one back from the riverfront which appeared to be the main business area. Where were the shops though? Apart from a couple of tiny places that looked like delis, I saw none and the street was quiet and devoid of pedestrians. The market was a different proposition altogether. It was monstrous and frantically busy and noisy with countless trucks, tuk tuks and bemos picking up and delivering. It backed onto the riverfront and that side of it was also a frenzy of loading and to-ing and fro-ing.

  In the evening I tried to get into a bemo taxi—a three-wheeled motorbike with an attached ca
bin behind it for goods or passengers. You were meant to clamber into the cabin over a back tailgate, but I was wearing my longii and, short of hitching it up over my thighs, I couldn’t get my leg high enough to get in. I gave up and took a trishaw.

  At the Breeze Rest my bus ticket had materialised. I stayed for a while talking to the manager, a kind gentleman who, when I said I wanted some yoghurt, walked me to a shop that sold it. Unfortunately it was sitting in the open in a huge metal vat and looked putrid. We went elsewhere but with no luck. But he did direct me to a place to eat. Called the Help Grandfather and Grandmother Café, it is a charity that supports old people. It was basic but the food I ate there was about the same as anywhere else.

  As I left it began to pour and there were no trishaws in sight. I walked, getting wetter and wetter, hobbled by my longii, all the way back to the Attran, arriving absolutely soaked. It was dangerous underfoot too. I was likely to slip over on the uneven ground. During the night the rain came down with such noisy ferocity that at times it sounded as though my room would be washed away. The TV had been running constant news of the floods still occurring in Japan and China.

  It was still raining in the morning but not as heavily. My breakfast toast had finally been introduced to a toaster, but so far it was only a platonic relationship—no real consummation of the affair had occurred. I was still rattling around in the huge dining room almost alone. There seemed to be few guests beside me.

  The tuk tuk I had arranged to take me up to visit the mountain-top temples arrived at ten complete with an Indian driver. There are Karan and Indian people here, hence the mosques. And it was now Ramadan.

  We chugged and bounced up high into the hills around the town, and, stopping at the gates of the first temple complex, Mahamuni Paya, I was put off to walk—minus my shoes—along the slippery tiles, albeit undercover walkways. I was alone apart from a temple guardian or two and a couple of well-cared-for ginger cats.

  I came to the shrine of the inner chamber. I had expected this to be small but it was huge with its walls completely covered with little mirrors, while the sides were held up by large mirrored columns. The wall behind the Buddha statue was not only mirrored but set with what were said to be rubies and diamonds. The Buddha was enormous and gilded, partly with real gold. The effect was utterly dazzling.

  I walked, careful of the slidy tiles, around the building outside, umbrella aloft. Then we drove further along the ridge to the next temple, Kyaikthanian Paya. It has the area’s tallest stupa and a lift that took me to the top, but its electrics failed and I had to inch my way back down, still barefoot, skidding on the damp tiled steps. The view from the parapet had been worth it though. Then it was on to yet more pagodas, everything gold and glittering and accompanied by the tinkling of the little bells that hung from the rooftops.

  After a couple of hours we were finished with the Buddhist sites and my driver offered me a church. I could see the cross on its spire in the distance. I declined, opting for lunch instead, and I asked to be taken to the Cinderella Hotel that Mr Anthony from the Breeze Guest House had told me about.

  I ate in their restaurant at a table sporting a sign saying ‘Europeans only’. Segregated for my sake or theirs? Perhaps my table manners would offend the better class of Burmese. Nevertheless the meal was great and the waiter told me I was beautiful. He lied. I was a frazzled wreck.

  7 The mist is on the rice fields

  Back at my room I found I was locked out. The deadbolt on the door had dropped down on the other side and I couldn’t get in. Summoning help, two of the housemaids and I struggled with the recalcitrant lock for a while, then reinforcements in the shape of a workman with a box of tools were called in. We all watched him have no success. Another was summoned and the increasing throng watched him. Two more maids joined us and then the manageress arrived. It was better attended and more entertaining than some stage shows I have been to.

  Half an hour later, after trying to break in through the windows and even the roof, another man arrived and simply unscrewed the bolt from its fixings and I was inside! One thing I knew for sure was that no one was going to sneak up on me unawares in the night when I had that bolt on.

  The rain then recommenced and continued increasing until the downpour was so torrential I had no hope of getting out to a restaurant or even down to the hotel’s dining area. Instead I got out my emergency survival kit and made soup.

  The day for my departure came and I left on the nine am bus. In the first village on our journey a woman boarded and the only spare seat was beside a monk. The bus conductor moved a man there and gave the woman his seat. It was unthinkable for a woman to sit next to a monk.

  Despite the comfortable ride something still managed to go wrong. I did not arrive where I had intended, Bago. I instead was carried on to Yangon. We had passed through a fairly large town that might have been Bago, but the bus didn’t stop and by the time I had thought about it, it was too late. No worries. At the bus station in Yangon I took one of the share taxis that waited there and finally got back to Motherland.

  On the way it started again to pour rain. Visibility was almost nil and the streets were flooded a foot deep in rushing torrents. I got drenched going in to ask for a room. I wasn’t surprised to be ever so kindly rejected. Motherland was a popular place and I didn’t have a booking. I moved on to the Queens Park Hotel where I was received cheerfully even in the drowned rat state I had achieved by then.

  Unpacking, I found that water had leaked into my bag and all my clothes were wet. That was the last straw for me with that bag. I had put up with the drunken behaviour of its wonky, wobbly foot and its handle that wouldn’t retract without a serious battle, but now it had to go. This wasn’t so easy. It refused to leave. After all, it had been with me for years and it wasn’t leaving without a struggle. It kept following me around. Twice I put it by the bin downstairs and twice I found it had boomeranged back into my room before I managed to convince the staff that I really didn’t want it.

  After breakfast the lovely girl at reception rang a bus company for me and arranged a ticket to Taungoo (or two tickets, actually, because I am greedy). They cost eleven dollars. Then I went to the market and bought a suitcase, this time a solid one that wouldn’t leak.

  The deluge of rain last night had been followed by more this morning and now that it had stopped it was very hot and humid. I went to Motherland for lunch and to book a room for when I came back from my trip north. Then it was on to the shopping centre around the corner. Going around the right corner this time, I found it easily.

  On the way back I stopped to admire an enormous tree that stood in the middle of the footpath. It had originally been contained in a massive pot, but had long ago outgrown that and sent its roots out down the sides of the pot and all around it to take over the entire footpath. No one minded this; in fact it had been encouraged to prosper by the addition of two shrines and a spirit house. How could I not love the Burmese? Instead of cutting it back, they worshiped it.

  But I don’t care for their attitude to waste disposal. The towns I had been to were all unspeakably filthy. Rubbish was just dumped anywhere. Where there was a waterway, garbage was thrown over the edging wall to line the bank several feet from the water, and every now and then rain would wash it down into the river.

  Leaving the Queen’s Park it was another hour’s ride in a taxi to the bus station. It was enormous—the size of a small town. We drove up and down lanes, the driver asking directions now and then, before we reached the bus company office, where I sat down to wait with several other passengers.

  I was on my way to Taungoo, north of Yangon on the road that eventually goes to Mandalay, in Burma’s flat central area where large amounts of rice are grown. Bago had been temporarily postponed.

  It was a great bus and the road we travelled was good, but I was told that it became very bad further north. Although Burma now has fifty two million people, the countryside did not look densely populated. There had been a m
ere five million at the time the British achieved control of the country, but they had encouraged large numbers of Indian and Chinese migrants.

  It took four hours to reach Taungoo and when we arrived I had no problem knowing that I was at the right place. Everyone got off the bus with their baggage so I presumed the ride was over.

  As a welcome it immediately began to rain. I hired two trishaws, one for me and one for the bag, and we pedalled off. It then rained some more, and then even more. I got soaked despite my umbrella. The journey felt as though it went on forever—down the long main road that led out of town, off onto a rutted water-logged mud track, and finally along a tiny rustic tree-shaded lane, at the end of which I came to a well-hidden little gem—the Beauty Rest Guesthouse.

  I felt guilty about having made the poor trishaw riders pedal so far and in the rain too, so when they asked for three thousand for the pair of them, I gave them six. This horrified the guesthouse staff who had come out to welcome me. They protested at such profligate behaviour, but I said, ‘No. It was a long way. And in the rain.’ (And three thousand is two dollars fifty!)

  I was shown into a room that looked like paradise. It was dry! A smiling woman brought me a bottle of water and two plates of fruit and I set about drying out. My room was one of two upstairs in a pavilion made entirely of wood. It was big with many windows and a multitude of lights and electric plugs, not all of which worked of course and not until after six in the evening.

  The lights were a real thrill but the wide balcony was the best feature of this accommodation. It encompassed a wonderful, all-green outlook—large expanses of rice fields that stretched to a dense line of dark-green trees. A village hid in there behind those trees from which, across the rice fields in the early morning and late evening, came the chant of the monks in its monastery.