Myanmar and Dubai

Were now safely in Dubai. In our £80 a night 2 bedroomed. 2 bathroom, living room kitchen serviced apartment. It's a mad place here- why live in the desert in air conditioned bubbles. Is that what civilised society aspires too?

So Myanmar?

We both enjoyed it - from a travel snob viewpoint it was great to go when the country has just opened up to tourism and you get to see the 21st century view of the blank canvas.

On the positive side there is huge potential here not just for tourism . The country is large and has all of the ingredients - mountains, rivers, beaches and culture. The people are as ever very friendly and not at all angry about the repressed state they have been living in. And the road infrastructure is pretty good and should allow better travel then in the neighbours of Laos and Cambodia. The hotels are also pretty good although there are nowhere near enough of them. Ang and I kept thinking of the backpackers we saw queuing at the embassy for visas and wondered what on earth they would do here , as there is certainly no 'scene' here.

Three things for my memories that need improving.

Firstly Burmese food is poor- it's supposed to be a Thai Chinese blend but its not. It's very bland uninteresing food with little flavour. All of the group were glad to leave it behind. Menus are the same from place to place , not that there are many restaurants, and everything does taste the same.

The main cultural references are all temples and stuphas . Bit boring after a while. And you do wander around getting annoyed with the amount of money people spend and donate to the temples, the sheer amount of gold they donate and plaster on the ubiquitous statues of Budha. goodness knows how many huge reclining buddhas we saw but too many! they should spend the money on their drains and infrastructure and developing a rubbish collection system.

The poor dogs. Most animals in Burma have a purpose and are well looked after. Huge numbers of chickens, pigs, cows etc all attached to families. They generally look happy and well fed - even if their purpose is clearly defined as being food. But the poor old dogs are everywhere . Pretty much 95% of them all look well fed and they do usually belong to a family and pick up food as everyone is eating and living on the streets. But they obviously don't see vets so they have flees and are not sterilised so they are permanently in pup and the population is way too high. There needs to be less of them. However they do seem very happy and good natured and are well treated by the people. They wander around when you are eating at restaurants but I never saw a single dog pinch food from a table or a market stall - they are extremely good natured and wait for it to be put on the floor. And the interbreeding has created a single Asian mongrel dog wherever you go. Poor things.

Dubai

Back on Thursday, just eating and golfing in Dubai to go.

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Myanmar Photos

Here in Dubai on Monday with normal wifi

A typical kitchen in the local villages. Not a lot of kitchen surfaces to work off and very smokey. Many of the kitchens we saw were separate from the main house or in lean toos on the side

Three photos from Inley Lake. The first is the traditional fishermen. They do dress like this and fish like this - not just for the tourists. Note the giy on the left with the paddle through his leg. The second shows them beating the water to drive fish into their nets.

And the third shows the rows of veggies - these are rows and rows of tomatoes.

 

 

A view from the roof top of the Mandalay hotel over the Irawaddy.

Another Inley Lake shot showing its Venetian qualities

The Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon with its 60 tons of gold - all laid via gold leaf!

And finally from Myanmar this is....

A public phone box. Mobile phones do exist for a few but only on the glove rent network but for most this is it. Our guide said this was how he used to organise the trip , can you imagine how hard that was.

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Hill Tribes and Yangon

We left Inlay at 9:30 am on Monday. This was our first start after 8 am since we started the trip . We had a 1 hour bus trip to Heho airport. It was a small domestic airport and it fitted the description of small. Flying domestic in Myanmar is a bit different its like getting on a taxi, you can carry fluids on board and your bags get carried from the bus to the aircraft by the same porters. It all seems very haphazard but we had 6 flights in all and the bags all stuck together and were delivered quickly.

The flight to Tai Chilik took a couple of hours as we went via another airport to pick up some other passengers - like a taxi. We arrived around 3 in the afternoon to a much more stringent area. We were heading into the former Golden Triangle where Opium used to be heavily grown. The area only opened to tourism 3 years ago and we went through 3 or 4 immigration checkpoints on the 4 hour drive to Kyaing Tong. We needed permission to pass through and had to have a return stamp.

We were staying in a basic guesthouse in town - it was not too bad , clean and a great shower. The main purpose of the 2 days was to trek and visit the various hill tribe villages. In this area village life is pretty medieval and hasn't changed much in centuries. The villagers belong to different tribes and retain their own customs. We all felt as a group that the tribes were doomed - satellite tv had already hit and mobile phones too. Smartphones are on their way to Myanmar soon and you can already see the influence on the village youth.

Tribal villagers in their day to day costumes. One annoying thing was their pushy sales techniques , they were all selling the same tat and kept on popping up throughout the walk

A typical hillside village - the blue building is a Catholic Church as this village was Christian

 

The hill trekking was lovely. It was great to get out and about but it was a long way to go to see. I think it would have been better to do more trekking in Kalaw .

Thursday (10th) we made the journey to Yangon. This involved the same 4 hour drive to Tai Chilik through the checkpoints and then a 4 hour flight - we had to go via 2 other airports stopping on the plane every time so 11 hour day to get back to Yangon.

Friday we went sightseeing around Yangon. We went to see the Lady's house and to visit her political office. The Lady is Ang San Suu Chi but the Burmese call her the Lady. Our guide explained to us that prior to her release from house arrest the Burmese were banned from saying her name - so she called The Lady. We also visited the Shwedagon pagoda which is the most reverred in Myanmar. More gold - lots of it. The main stupha has 60 tons of gilding on it. And this guy belong to a religious order who believe they should pray by staring directly at the sun and praying- mad as a box of frogs!

On and as you've guessed I can load photos again!

 

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Kalaw and Inle Lake

It's now Tuesday 8th. Still no Internet so this will no doubt be late published . So since last Thursday I've succumbed to the first brief bout of s&d - after 8 weeks its not too bad. It brought me down on Sunday afternoon so I had to rest at the hotel for the afternoon and miss the wine tasting trip. Yes they are starting wine production here - climate is pretty good and initial wine verdict from Ang is promising.

Thursday 3rd. We had a long day driving from Mandalay to Kalaw. It's about 180 miles up into the hills. Kalaw is an old British hill town perched in the hills which is pretty enough- but not on the level of the Indian ones. That's something you realise when you travel around , every country has its offerings in each category but you can become a bit blasé with your reviews. So here the Bagan temples were good but not in the Angkor category. The stuphas and monasteries are lovely but I'd always go for Ely cathedral yet Inle Lake (more later) is fabulous and top of its category.

Friday 4th. Being in the hills gave us the chance to walk up to a local village for a few hours. It's the first decent walk we've had and was lovely. Kalaw itself is around 4,800ft up so this village was perched above it. On the way up you could see it was a fertile rich place with plenty of crops. Lots and lots of orange trees, avocados , pumpkins, tomatoes - everywhere. When we got to the village it was evidently quite rich as many of the houses were being rebuilt in brick. Whenever you visit Asian villages you get filled with the community feeling as they all seem to be working together rather than working on their own land. And they are delighted to see you offering cups of tea , which you take a calculated guess as to how clean the water is.

The hotel in Kalaw flattered in appearance. From the outside it was like an English country house but the rooms were a bit tiny and badly designed.

And just above the hotel was a military training camp with its own 9 hole golf course. The army is quite keen on golf so there are a number around - not very good from what I've seen but ... It also shows how much things have changed here in that I can wander around a military camp with no questions asked.

Saturday 5th. We took the 2 hour drive to Inle Lake, which is a 20km lake perched 3,000ft up supporting a wide range of communities. We went onto the Lake in 4 separate boats - it's tourist Mecca here so there were tens close to hundreds of similar boats all making the same trek. You drive for around 30 minutes to get onto the Lake and then pick your tourist activity

• The fishermen who paddle using their leg wrapped around the paddle. Apparently it's easier to steer and fish like this PLUS they can better se where they are going
• The many villages around the lake with their specific skills, weaving, silk making , boat building. Great opportunity to people watch and contemplate your place in the world.
• Dine at the restaurants in the villages. They had wonderful views of the lake and the canals running off it - almost Venetian
• Paddle through the floating gardens. The lake isn't very deep in many area only 4 feet or so in the dry season. The local villagers use the mud and algae from the bottom mixed with floating grasses to float gardens on the lake. Onto this 'soil' they have crops of tomatoes, marrows, beans . And not just 1 or 2 plants - it's commercial gardening on a grand scale. Hopefully will post some photos.

Sunday 6th.

Back onto the lake for more tourism and a stupha visit. S&d just hit me at this point so it went downhill for me. But once I was sitting in the boat I could take in the sights ok.

Ang went wine tasting in the afternoon. She said it was wine tasting and not drinking as it was only a sip of each. But the views over the lake were lovely and some of the wines show promise - keep an eye out in Tesco!

 

Monday was another travelling day - but that's the next post

Friday update - now in Yangon with wifi but my camera adapter is now 'not supported' so no photos -boohoo!

 

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Mandalay part 2

The afternoons pony trek visited a local island across the Irwawaddy. The island has few cars but 100 or so pony carts each owned by the families on the island and for £5 you get a trip around to visit the local sites - read temples, stuphas....

But the real fascination is always to see the local life .in many areas here you get plagued by street sellers. These are usually the young women who try to sell you hats t-shirts bracelets paintings you name it. And there are WAY too many of them for the number of tourists so once they get the sniff of blood they hunt you down.

We got approached by the girl in the photos below when we landed on the island trying to sell us bracelets. She was pleasant but persistent. Phrases such as ' lucky money' 'how much you pay' ' you come back' ' I remember you' . Anyway we smiled and said no thank you. She then preceded to cycle after us around on her bike. Ang felt sorry fo her so we gave her 1500 Kkyets - £1.25 rather than the 3,000 she wanted for the bracelet. AND we didn't take the bracelet as we didn't want it. It didn't make her happy.

They can be a real pain but they do it because they REALLY need the money for food and shelter so it's hard to be to hard faced.

It's now Thursday 3rd 6:50 am and we are now off to Kalaw 2 days, Lake Inle 2 days and hill tribes for 3 days so not much chance of any blogs as we expect no Internet.

Happy New Year from me and Ang!

 

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Mandalay

So NewYears Eve came and went. The BBC reported that Burma joined in the international celebrations for the first time. It was the first time they has open air public celebrations here for 50 years and it was live on Tv. Our NYE was spent in the sky bar of our hotel which had a lovely view if the Ayawaddy river (Irrawaddy in English). But having the schedule we did we were off and out the next day at 8am so no revelling by any of us!

New Years Days early morning excitement included

• A drive up Mandalay hill to survey the surroundings and visit the hilltop temple. Amazed to report it. Was gaudy and golden! It was the scene of a a WWII battle where the allies had to retake the hill to gain control of the local area.
• A trip to see the worlds biggest book at a temple. It wasn't a big book merely 728 inscribed stone slabs each in its own mini temple.
• An afternoon cruise down the Irawaddy to visit an ancient town. The ancient town was a bit 'same same ' with more stuphas and temples . But the cruise was excellent. Lovely top deck views in comfy seats. Nice cold drinks on the way back and watching the people live their lives. The picture is above as we now have slow Internet again. Mandalay seems to have more power cuts than anywhere else so at 6am I'm being woken up by clicking power outages

New years Day evening meal was a trip to a local restaurant . I haven't really commented on the food here as there's not a lot to say really. There are very few restaurants to visit - here in Mandalay with 1 million people there are only 10 or so that we could go to. Lots of local street cafes but as George our guide says ' not recommended'. The food is pain and healthy - lots of vegetables and fish - but uninspiring so nothing to blog home about . Ang isn't doing a cooking course!

 

January 2nds highlights included a visit to an old 1.2km teak bridge and a pony cart ride around an island.

 

The bridge was a lovely experience . The bridge itself was rickety and a health and safety nightmare but there was so much life going on around that I could have stayed there for hours. Lots of local fishermen farmers, rice growing, children, duck farming and cafes to watch the world go by. But no time for us as the next temple beckoned!

 

Anyway I can't get photos loaded so ill post this and quickly try a smaller post

 

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The road to Mandalay

We left Bagan early Saturday for the 2 hour boat trip up the Irawaddy river. As soon as we got off the bus Ang acquired new friends. These kids grabbed her arms and wanted to walk with her. I think they have never seen a blonde pale skin before.

We got on the boat for a very pleasant journey up river in the blazing sun! Amazing we had to keep reminding ourselves it was December 30th. As we pulled in to the jetty the female porters were ready to unload the boat - below. One lady crouched on the bank was still doing her washing and didn't move much when we docked. Mind you the river was very muddy if not a bit dirty too. But if its the best you've got.

It's quite poor here as its not very good for agriculture and it doesn't rain much. The road infrastructure is still pretty good but it doesn't mean much if you're poor.

We went to visit a local village to see how they made incense sticks . It was a dusty place with around 600 houses - pretty much all bamboo or wood. The kids were fascinated by western visitors and followed you round holding your hand. We were lucky that there was a novication ceremony about to take place. This is the ceremony when 6 or 7 young boys join the monastery for a short or long period. It's a big deal to the parents and all the village. The parents of the novices feed the village in a feast. We came across the ladies of the village who were sifting the rice for the feast. As you can see a real community event.

After that we drove another few hours, boat across the river then onto the back of a truck to visit some sandstone caves to see more Buddha statues. I wasn't too impressed as there was too much litter and it looked a bit sham olio . And then back in the dark to our hotel.

Up at 6:30 for the drive to Mandalay only stopping to see some temples and these 2 large Buddhas on the hillside. Honestly they have Buddha OCD - you have never seen so many statues. One temple today had 550,000 Buddha statues in it! How many is enough?

So now here in Mandalay for New Years Eve.

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