Mandalay

A big thing we as tourists are told to do is to climb Mandalay Hill, I didn’t need to be told twice! I hadn’t done any research on what was needed to scale the beast I just arrived at the foot of the hill. Before I was allowed to set foot on the trail I need to remove my sandals, you see it’s not really climbing a hill at all, it’s more of a religious journey, all the way up the hill are shrines to stop and pray at. It was the first time I climbed a hill barefoot but was steps all the way so my poor feet were spared any discomfort. Naturally the views from the top were pretty amazing, you could see out over the city and beyond the river. The tricky part was trying to find which of the many trails led back to where my sandals were lying….

At the foot of the hill is Kuthodaw Paya, apparently known as the world’s biggest book because surrounding the main stupa are 729 smaller stupas, each of which contain a marble slab, on which is written a part of the 15 books of the Tripitaka. Monks regulary visit to study the “book”, apparently it would take a person 450 days of reading 8 hours a day to read the entire book….

Nearby is Sandamani Paya, a much quieter shrine unvisited by tourists and hawkers alike, it too is surrounded by smaller stupas, each containing an inscribed marble slab. These slabs contain commentaries on the Tripitaka and there are 1774 of them, making the whole collection of them far bigger than the world’s biggest book…..

It’s funny what people consider a tourist attraction…
Just outside Mandalay, near the ancient capital of Amarapura there’s a large monastery where at 11am every day the monks sit down together to eat in silence and hoards of tourists turn up to watch them eat…
I of course am above such things, that was the day I went to watch snakes being fed instead….

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You can check out any time you like but you can never leave

There used to be a television show called the Prisoner where every week our dashing hero tried to escape from this strange little town, naturally each time her failed or was captured just as it looked like success was within reach, leaving him back where he started for the start of the next episode. Hsipaw is a bit like that except that I wasn’t trying to escape, I just had this notion that maybe I should leave Hsipaw but not today, maybe tomorrow…

It’s a pretty unremarkable town, not particularly attractive or
exceptionally ugly with no real tourist attractions where not much happens apart from the normal day-today life of the people who live there, yet I found it so hard to leave, it was probably the first time I felt as peace here in Myanmar and I didn’t want to lose that.

Each day is pretty much like the last, I’d wake up and decide that maybe I’d go back to Mandalay the next day. I’d chat with my fellow travellers, meet the new arrivalsm chat with the family who runs the guest house, have a read, potter around and maybe go for a cycle or walk in the countryside.

Being here in Myanmar there have been so many opportunities hop on a bike and go exploring the countryside at a gentle pace.

When you get to Mr Charles’ Guest House – it’s all very formal there, you stay with Mr Charles, eat at Mr Food, chat with Mr Book and have coffee with Ms Maureen, it makes you wonder if they have room for a Mr Dermot – they give you a map of the area which highlights all the places of interest, the Nat Shrine, the Shan Palace, the various factories and temples, fairly normal, yes?

No, it’s more like a treasure hunt, travellers will come back after a day exploring asking each other “Did you find the candle factory?”, “How about the noodle factory?” or “I don’t believe there’s really a cheroot
workshop!”

The discussions and sharing of information about the various places begins and how the enterprising ones that found a factory or two describe the “factory” to those who took the make at it’s word. All the factories and workshops in the area are cottage industries and are run out of a room in someone’s house so telling the difference between a popcorn factory and an ordinary house can be a bit tricky!

The ultimate goal in this treasure hunt is the popcorn factory as its description in the Lonely Planet makes it sound tantalising, I failed dismally in that particular task as I couldn’t even find the road the road to the factory let alone the factory itself!

I did however find my way to the Nat Shrine. A nat is the guardian spirit for a town or area. The nat for Hsipaw is a for king who was unjustly killed by his dastardly uncle and so his spirit in time became the guardian of the town. Each year there is a ceremony at the temple to celebrate the nat and ensure he stays around to take care of the town. While I didn’t quite get there early enough for the ceremony there were plenty of people milling around, I was beckoned into the midst of them to share in their food, have my photo taken and even given a tour of the shrine and told who each of the statues represented, it was a nice morning….

There’s just something magic about the whole town, whether it’s sitting by the calm of the river, watching Korean soaps with the family or basking in the sunset on the roof of the guest house, each day brought the thought “maybe I’ll stay another day”…

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Bagan

Imagine yourself standing in the middle of a plain, in front of you is an old paya, it’s beautiful and when you’re finished admiring it you spin slowly in a circle and there are more payas whereever you look, some are close and some are far, just shapes sticking up against the horizon. This is Bagan.

No-one knows exactly how many payas there are in Bagon but estimates range from between 2000 and 4000 depending on what you count as a paya. Paya seems to cover most religious buildings and can be stupas, pagodas or temples.

I spent two days cycling around the Bagan plain stopping off here and there to have a closer look at a paya. It’s pretty much a case of just selecting whatever catches your eye and cycling up the path to investigate further, if you wanted to see each and every one then you would need days and possibly even weeks to do the job properly. After two days I had paya overload and so that was more than enough….

You could always guage how important paya was by counting the number of souvenir stalls outside it, there were only a few that merited souvenir stalls so that left plenty of empty payas to explore, though occasionally there were artists with a roll of paintings they wanted to show you and the paintings were all the same, the same 10 or 12 images, it got a bit repetitive after a while!

As always you get the stallholders trying to get you to buy everything under the sun, I had one woman who had managed to sell me nothing but hadn’t given up the fight, only to be stymied by her brother who started chatting with me, sharing his food and taking me to a room behind the stall where he spent the next hours playing temple music on a set of 20 metalic drums….
When it was time to leave Bagan I boarded a ferry for a lovely slow boat trip upriver to Mandalay….

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May the Force be with you

I had mixed feelings about going to see Mandalayု Palace, I’d spent the morning rambling through the streets of Mandalay and found myself at the corner of the palace walls and started to walk along them….

The area enclosed by the palace walls is huge, each side of the square is 2km long and it takes up a large part of the city centre. Of course when I started my little stroll I wasn’t aware of how long the walls were and I’d also had the idea that the entrance was a lot nearer.

One and a half sides and some time later I arrived at the entrance and had an amusing discussion with the government employee at the gate who wanted me to pay only in dollars. The discussion mainly consisted of me trying to pay in local currency while at the same time trying to get him admit that the government currency was worthless which was why the government wanted only dollars! I didn’t quite succeed but I reckon I nearly had him!

The Palace had been destroyed during bombings in good old WWII and so it was rebuilt by the government for the pleasure of us tourists. The reason why I had misgiving about seeing it was that it is rumoured that it was rebuilt using forced labour which as we all know is very bad…
I had this perverse curiosity to see what these oppressed workers had created, after Ankhor Wat and the Pyramids were built with forced labour so who knows what I might discover behind those red walls….

Nothing much really, it was a complete waste of forced labour, if you’re going to commit human-rights offences, the least you could do is make something worth the effort but the palace has no life or character, it’s just an empty shell…

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Travelling again

There was a flash of light and where there was once a pile of small animals and vegetables there now stood a proud steed, a resplendant carraige and a smartly dressed driver. I, in my usual scruffy travelling clothes boarded the carraige and away we went, proceeding through the town at a stately pace…..

Our destination was the small red-brick train station just on the other side of town where I was to board the first-class carraige and travel in further style through the mountains to the small town of Hsipaw…

By now you’re thinking that this is another of my occasional trips in fantasy but no, in the town of Pwin U Lwin, instead of trishaws or horse and carts, the chief form of transport is the horse and carraige, though calling it a carraige is rather fanciful, as it looks more like a mini stage coach from the wild west. They’re all painted in in wild colours, blues and greens, reds and oranges and look completely out of place in an Asian country like Myanmar!

Everyone I met in Myanmar warned me off getting a train, telling me that the train was bad but never explaining why so when I heard that the stretch of track from Pwin U Lwin to Hsipaw had some impressive views that couldn’t be seen by taking the road, I thought I’d see how good or bad the trains actually were!

My first impressions on boarding the first class was that if this was first class, I’d hate to be in second class! The carpets, the plush chairs and the pool tables had been hidden very well, cleverly disguised as wooden benches. We had air-conditioning, not though in the form of the many fans attached to the ceiling (these didn’t work and the switches had been removed just in case we were tempted to use them) but instead we got plenty of air through the wide open windows.

The true joy of travelling by train in Myanmar can’t be realised until the train actually starts moving for in addition to the gentle rocking from side to side you get on normal trains you get some extra quirks…

On some sectons of tracks, the gentle rocking was accentuated somewhat, in that the sway from side to side was enough to cause a feeling of sea-sickness… Add to that the sections of track with bounce! On the bouncy sections you would be thrown up and down as if you’re riding a horse and not a train. It was quite a relief to touch dry unmoving land eight hours later…..

Along the way the train crossed the Goteik railway bridge, which at the time it was built was the second highest railway bridge in the world, it’s just a metal bridge and not really attractive at all, though that didn’t stop people taking pictures of it.

The tricky thing was that it is forbidden to take photos of the bridge (apparently there’s a military base nearby) so police and railwayofficials walk up and down the carraiges shouting “no photos” at people wielding cameras but by the time they started this, the cameras had already been out and snapping away merrily.

There was one great moment when a Korean woman was taking a picture of the bridge and an official was standing behind her saying “no photos”. It took a few moments for him to get her attention (too busy getting that perfect shot) but when she finally turns to face him, he again repeats “no photos” , she nods her understanding, turns towards the bridge, takes one final photograph and returns to her seat!

Crossing the bridge itself is just as much fun, the bridge was built by the British just over 100 years old and since they left it hasn’t seen a whole load of maintenence, and so confidant are the railway company of the strength of the bridge that all trains cross the bridge at a snail’s pace which gives you plenty of time to look down at the huge drop and think whether today would be the day that the bridge had had one train too many and you silently will the train driver to go faster to get us across the chasm before the bridge collapses….

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Snakes

One day in 1974, three giant pythons came slithering out of the jungle, entered a temple and wrapped themselves around a statue of Buddha, they’ve lived there ever since….

The temple has since then become known as the snake pagoda. Each day Myanmar people flock to the place to see the snakes being washed and fed and even to have pictures taken with a python – not all of them look too comfortable sitting there with the snake around them…

What seems to be very popular is to have your baby’s photo taken with the pythons, they wrap up a couple of coils of snake and then place the wary babe in the middle of the coils for the photo. While I’ve no problem sitting with a snake in my arms, I’m not sure if I’d put my baby in the position of being a potential snake-snack!

It’s a total gimmick but it’s fun to watch the people react to and interact with the snakes. If the snake is heading back to it’s resting place at buddha’s feet and it’s tail moves a bit suddenly, all those brave locals take a collective step backwards!

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Everywhere I go, people always ask me…..

….who I am and where I come from….

The Myanmar people are either the friendliest or the nosiest people in the world, they all seem to want to talk and find out all about you, they call out to you in the street, chat to you in restaurants and temples, sometimes they only want to know the basics and other times it’s an
in-depth interview.

And it’s not restricted to the young people, anyone who has a few words of English will want to know all about me, I’m certain it must be like collecting stamps, everyday at the dinner they compare who they’ve collected that day – “I got an Irish guy today, age 33 and travelling on his own, and I got a French woman too”, and I get the feeling Irish people are more valuable too as they get a lot of Japanese, French, Italian and Spanish but Irish are a rare gem!

Whenever I say I’m from Ireland if I’m talking to a man then immediately I’ll be told how my country is good at football and several Irish football players will be named, some even I’m vaguely aware of but their favourite Irish football god is “Ryan Keane”! The whole country is crazy about football and if I knew anything about it would no doubt talk for hours to me about it’s every nuance, and like most Asian football fans their favourite team is Manchester United, so naturally since Roy Keane played for them, they all know him, it’s almost embarrassing that nearly every male in Myanmar knows more about Irish football players than I do!

While I was in Yangon (formerly Rangoon, yes that name change thing again) I didn’t get that much sightseeing done, I kept getting into conversations with people. I talked with a lot of monks and novices, it seems that nearly every monk in the country is learning English and their teachers tell them to get out and chat to any foreigner they see. It’s almost as if they’re lying in wait above the streets waiting for an unsuspecting foreigner to pass before they pounce, I’ve talked to a lot of monks in the last 10 days and they’re a very strong force for change in this country, some will just chat to me about football, while others will have religious discussions or talk politics, some have very strong opinions of the government!

They’re learning English partly to communicate with visitors and be able to explain Buddhism in English to them and also so that they can go to poor communities and teach them English. Some are also learning law so they can advise the same communities on legal issues, it’s really quite
refreshing to hear.

It was a very weird sensation yesterday, sitting in a temple trying to explain proportional representation to someone who has never had the chance to vote, and also emphasising that even with democracy you don’t always get the government doing things that benefit or help you….

But everyone I meet wants people to come to visit Myanmar, some to see how the people live and what they have to put up with but others because they love their country despite its problems and they want to share it with visitors, they’ll always be ready with a list of places that I really should visit.

One man I met as I was climbing up to a temple on top of a hill today was quite emphatic, he told me to go to a place which I’m actually going to tomorrow. He told me to take loads of photos to show to my friends and family so they could learn about Myanmar and maybe come to visit as well. He wouldn’t let me go until I’d agreed to all these reasonable demands!

Not being much of a photographer, I’ve decided to follow his intructions and take a few more photos……

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You want to go where?

One thing that surprised me while I was in Yangon was that the taxi-drivers really don’t the city at all, it seemed that anywhere I wanted to go, my hotel, my friend’s house, their workplace, they never knew where it was, it was amazingly consistent!

There’d be huddled conversations between groups of taxi-drivers as they tried to work out where the place was and once the lucky driver was selected he’d be coached by the group in how to get to my mystical destination…..

There was another guy who assured me he knew where to go and then proceeded to stop three or four times to ask the way and it’s not confined to Yangon either! Central Mandalay is based on a grid system, all the streets are numbered and once you know the cross streets, it’s easy to get to your destination, or so you’d think…..

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What’s in a name?

Is it Myanmar or Burma? Is it Beijing or Peking? Mumbai or Bombay? So often now names of countries and places have changed from what we once knew and were comfortable with to strange alien names that confuse us and we never can quite remember…

And so it is with Burma, the country was called Myanma for hundreds of years before the British came and called it after the majority population group, the Bamar, and so Burma came into existence.

One of the few admirable things the military government did was to change the name of the country back to its historical name. It did this because at the time of the name change, just after independance, the country was being torn apart by civil war with every minority group in open rebellion so they decided to revert back to the more inclusive original name as first step to bringing peace to the country….

It’s hard to think of any other admirable things that they seem to have done……

The sanctions have probably hurt the government but as with all sanctions it usually hits the people first. I had a prime example of this today while sitting on a tricycle being ferried around Mandalay. The driver was telling me how the price of a tricycle has gone up from about $20 over the last few years to over $100. This is because the prices of all the component parts, wheels, tyres, brakes etc have shot up (and these aren’t cutting edge tricycles either, think 1950s bikes), so these people are finding it harder to earn their living here with rising costs….

The sanctions affect me as well, there are no foreign banks here, no ATMS, no credit card or travellers cheques handling, so the money I brought in with me has to last my entire stay as there’s no way to get any more once it’s gone…..

And enough money for a month is a lot of money to be carrying around on your person so maybe the lack of crime in a military state is a plus in a way…..

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Money makes you fat….

… but spending makes your slimmer.

Money is always a bit of an issue here in Myanmar, I have it, the locals want it and it’s usually a question of how much they get, but its not simple….

There is an official exchange rate between the dollar and the Kyat but no-one seems to know what it is, all that is known is that it is significantly lower than the “real” rate that you get on the black market.

Naturally everyone uses the black market and while it’s not quite covert meetings in dark alleys, you still have to be careful of who and where you exchange money.

My first money changer was a student who carried his moneyaround in his bag and after agreeing a rate we went on a meandering walk through side-streets on the way to the tea-shop to conduct our business.

As he was a student and only exchanging money part-time, we were able to sit and chat for a while. Besides I needed time to count the money, the unoffiicial exchange rate is $1 = 1320 Kyats which means that $100 =132000 Kyats with the biggest note being 1000 Kyat, that’s a lot of banknotes to count and check…

So now I walk around with a rounded belly, my money belt stuffed with kyats and my new objective is to spend myself slim…..

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