Wednesday 28 November 2012

Burmese Daze

Nov 28 Bali, Indonesia

Wow, our travels through Burma are now behind us and I'm feeling both relieved but wistful. We're now in a rather luxurious Balinese villa resort with my parents, siblings and their spouses. We have a fleet of villa staff ready to bring us a g&t on demand and our beds get made for us every day. We have a beautiful pool and yard to ourselves and it is absolutely wonderful. It is hot and sweaty only until we slip into the pool or ocean or our air conditioned bedrooms. Did I mention it is absolutely wonderful?

Our one week of luxury living here in Bali stands in sharp contrast to our two week travel experience of Burma....a country which I admit, until recently I could not locate on a map. It was a challenging but adventurous 15 days that was eye-opening, sometimes in horrific shock, sometimes awestruck from breath taking sights.

Crash course on Burma (after reading this you'll know more about it than we did on arrival):

Burma, aka Myanmar, was a British colony until WWII. An English influence still persists and English is taught in the schools. There are several ethnic groups accross the land with Bama being the majority as well as Chinese and Indian migrant groups. In 1948, democratically elected General Aung San was about to take office before he was assassinated by a militant group which continued to rule as a brutal military dictatorship to this day. The general's daughter and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi is now poised to be Myanmar's next leader. Because of economic sanctions by the US and many other countries there are far fewer western conveniences: no ATMS or credit cards accepted (we had to bring adequate American cash-- crisp bills no less-- to last the entire trip), no 7-11s, McDonalds, and crappy wifi. In recent years the government has eased up and things are improved enough to warrant a US presidential visit.

Source: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/asia/myanmar/

Since the release of Ang San Suu Kyi from house arrest for hopefully the last time in November of 2010, there has been a dramatic increase in tourism with a demand for hotel beds that exceeds the supply. Hence our decision to stray from the backpacker path and travel via set itinerary. The whoIe trip was arranged and paid for via emails between Greg and a local travel agent recommended on trip advisor (our new web best friend). I recall thinking to myself, "this will be a snap" and rather naively looking forward to experiencing this nation untouched by McDonald's et al.



In truth, the trip wasn't a snap. The cities were hot, dusty and truthfully, unmemorable. Far fewer people spoke English than in Thailand. Our family couldn't seem to shake a fevering illness that passed from one the next. We had bed bugs one night but thankfully managed to leave them behind.  Things were altogether more raw.

We lived through an earthquake.

There were two beautiful places though: Bagan, land of 4000 temples; and Inle Lake, an expansive shallow lake bordered by mountains and rice paddies and lakeside villages on stilts. I hope to return to these places someday as they were truly magical.

Some memories:
We learned to dodge the betelnut spit from the chewers with red stained teeth toothy grins.
The men wear long strait skirts tied at the front in a bulging knot. I really loved the look of these.


The construction workers building roads and sidewalks (forced labour?) wearing flip flops.



Like all tropical countries dusk is brief and the dark comes fast. In Myanmar their are few electric streetlights and roads are illuminated only by the roadside businesses and the lights from motorbikes and cars (this is unbelievably eerie at first).

The women and children wear a paste from the sandlewood tree on their faces, ostensibly as sunscreen. The souvenir sellers are crafty about this and offer to smear it on you as you pass by their stall. Then, while you're basking in the warm feeling of cultural sensitivity and acceptance they rope you in.

As Greg can attest, I was a sucker all the time....



As Cynthia mentioned above, the two most memorable locations in Myanmar are Bagan and Inle Lake.

Bagan

Most of Bagan's temples date from 11th and 12th century, making them up to a thousand years old and in various states of disrepair. From what I read, Bagan's golden age ended in 1287, when it was invaded and sacked by the Mongols. It's population was reduced to a village that remained among the ruins of the former city. Finally, in 1998, the Generals of modern Myanmar forcibly relocated the inhabitants a few kilometers to "New Bagan".

What remains are the thousands of temples scattered within a vast, dry landscape.



We hired a horse and cart and meandered through the temples.
Perhaps Cynthia's favourite image, Max and Thomas deciding to run behind the cart.
While locals can no longer live in old Bagan, there are still goats and cows on the dusty roads.

Every Burmese Buddhist boy between the age of 7 and 13 is expected to enter the monastery as a novice monk for a period of a few weeks to several months. The monks of Myanmar wear red/maroon coloured robes, unlike monks in other Buddhist countries in South East Asia who usually wear saffron coloured robes.
Many temples are small and unattended, others like this one have mini-markets.



Boys playing with string. Note the skin treatment.
Don't even try to count them all.
A variation on hacky sack.
Pictures of monks are always cool.

Inle Lake
By the numbers:

Myanmar's second largest lake lies a couple hundred kilometers to the east of Bagan. Covering an estimated 116 sq km (remember Winnipeg is around 450) with an average depth of only around seven feet during dry season, Inle Lake houses a population of 70,000 in a number of villages on the shore and, more interestingly, on the lake itself!

We toured the lake in one of these long boats.
Our lunch stop.

The people who inhabit the lake, the Intha, are a different ethnic group than the Bama majority. Their livelihood depends on agriculture, with amazing floating gardens right on the lake, fishing using iconic wooden non-motorized longboats, and silk and lotus textile production.

The two fellows in the first picture below were clearly posing for tourists. Local fishermen are known for practicing a distinctive rowing style which involves standing at the stern on one leg and wrapping the other leg around the oar. This style evolved for the reason that the lake is covered by reeds and floating plants making it difficult to see above them while sitting. Standing provides the rower with a view beyond the reeds.

A long boat, perhaps carrying sacks of rice.

Note how the long boats are weighted so that one can sit or stand right on the bow.

Casting a net with hands while leg rowing.

These boys were pulling up sludge from the lake bottom to be used as fertilizer.
Wispy lotus thread.
She spins the raw wisps into usable lotus thread.
Finally the thread is woven into fabric.
Photo by Thomas
Excerpt from one of Cynthia's emails:

The Burmese women (well actually all the Burmese) are sort of enthralled with Thomas as he is the smaller and fairer one of our group. People literally point, stare, giggle, and touch Thomas on his shoulder or cheek, and try to get a response from him. The server at our hotel breakfast table progressively went from a smile to a cheek pinch to a kiss on his cheek with every visit to our table--we were laughing and trying to get Thomas to try our some Kung Fu blocks on her next time she approached.

What's also cute is that Thomas is referred to by all as the "baby". As in, "does baby want drink coke?"...."entrance fee 1/2 price for baby"..."baby so handsome...". We heard this in Thailand too so we're getting used to referring to our "baby" as in, "excuse me, baby wants to know the wifi password so he can play minecraft"...without hoping he lives up to his name.

One of our Inle Lake stops was at a monastery famous for trained jumping cats. Alas, we soon learned that the monks had stopped the jumping six months ago--now that the tourism was increasing the cats were getting overworked. What made our stop noteworthy, however, was that since Thomas napped in the long boat during our short excursion, Max now received the attention usually sent towards his younger brother.

Here an eighteen-year-old female posed with Max, the subject of her adoration.



Monday 12 November 2012

"Just a little shaky-shaky"

Myanmar, Nov 11

Cynthia:

0645: our rickety " upper class" sleeper train from Yangon rolls into the city of Mandalay. We are bleary-eyed and tired having endured a night of jolting and bouncing and half sleep, having been awakened by Burmese vendors at the train windows at the hourly stops along the way.

0715: we make it to the hotel in central Mandalay. The hotel is actually several stories above a market that has started to open up for the day. The train carriage had been incessantly bouncy and our bodies are still readjusting to the stillness of the ground. Like a seaman that hasn't been on solid ground for days, we still feel like the ground is moving under us. We have reservations at the hotel but we arrive so early we are advised to wait in the lobby as our rooms are prepared.

0742: the sound of rumbling and quivering of walls and glass. I think to myself, "Great, just our luck that a streetcar train runs right through our hotel", already preparing myself for yet one more thing to normalize in my brain, like putting toilet paper in the garbage can and not the toilet bowl, or hearing myself tell the boys to get ready to " run fast across the street in the 20 foot gap between the clusters of motor bikes". The fact that the city of 1 million people doesn't have electric street lights let alone any form of organized public transit beyond stuffing people into pick-up trucks doesn't occur to me at the time. The noise and shaking progresses and after about 5 seconds I notice that the locals looked panicked and are heading for the door.

This is an earthquake.

The shaking and noise has stopped after about ?10 seconds but people are still leaving the building. A worker at our government run hotel is heading for the stairs. With mantra of "warm welcome to visitors of Myanmar" drilled into him, he exclaims to Greg, " no worry-- jus an earthquake...jus a leetle shakey-shakey!"

I tell our boys, their attention momentarily directed away from their electronic video games, to get out of the building. For the first time in my living memory, they respond to my initial instructions and we gather with many others on the street.

Eventually we gather up courage to re-enter the multi-level ?50 year old cement structure that is our home for the two days. I'm still seeking some reassurance that the trembling we just encountered is something commonplace around here and nothing to worry about. I chat with the hotel worker and he says he has never experienced anything like what happened this morning. We are eager to get out of the city and spend the rest of the day touring the sites of a few small towns outside of Mandalay.

1745: we arrive back at the hotel and have nearly forgotten our earlier concerns regarding the tendency of the earth to randomly buckle up at the fault lines of its crust. We enter our room and within five minutes we feel a few seconds of trembling. I poke my head out the hotel room and see an Asian woman the next room over mirroring my expression of "not again". I give her some kind of universal sign language for "yes, I also felt the building shaking just now" and we all make our way outside again only to return moments later...after all, it really was only just a little "shaky-shaky".

Dang it, I knew I was forgetting something. Please add "perishing in an earthquake" to my top ten list of fears.

Tomorrow we depart for a small town and it can't come soon enough.

Greg:

Here's a link to give more detail about the earthquake and the two aftershocks that we felt.

http://earthquake-report.com/2012/11/11/extremely-dangerous-and-maybe-destructive-earthquake-in-central-myanmar/


Other than the quake, Myanmar impresses us with its warm people, crumbling infrastructure and evidence of deluded leadership. So far we've been in the two largest cities: Yangon, which was the capital until the 1990s when the generals decided to move the capital to some isolated location to the north, turning many former ministry complexes into empty buildings; and Mandalay, which houses a huge vacant former palace of many square kilometers right in it's centre.

We are in a government run hotel and the whole place feels iron curtain. Actually I was in East Berlin and Budapest before the wall came down and those places did not have the same signs of decay.

I tried to include a couple of photos with this post, but the server timed out before it could complete the upload. Will try another time.

Tomorrow we are taking a "fast boat" to Bagan, of which Lonely Planet writes:

Gather all of Europe's medieval cathedrals onto Manhattan island and throw in a whole lot more for good measure, and you'll start to get a sense of the ambition of the temple-filled plains of Bagan.

We'll let you know how it lives up to the hype.

Friday 9 November 2012

Sawadee Kaa

Sawadee Kaa! : family travel tales in Thailand Oct 25th - Nov 8th
A Thai tuk-tuk

It was with a tinge of sadness that we left Thailand yesterday (we are now on a very planned out tour of Myanmar). What can I say? It's a gritty, sweaty, tropical country full of friendly people and delicious food.

Our travels here were our inauguration into true "back-pack travelling" as a family. Although we had been away from home for 5 weeks we were truly on our own as a foursome in Thailand. Our boys discovered the many different tourist tracks as we made our way from mid-range hotel with pool to "back-pack guesthouse" sans A/C with shared bathroom within the first week.

The guys backpacking. Yes, Greg's backpack has wheels.

Boys taking it easy in our guesthouse room.
Lowlights: the litter, the mangy dogs, the ever-present body clammy-ness, the diesel fumes of city traffic, and witnessing the multitude of single, white, male, sex tourists with their rented Thai women sitting in silence at the breakfast table (the back-packer circuit provides a slight reprieve from this).

Highlights:

  • Thai food! We had heard about the amazing street food culture and was still blown away at the extravagance of the dishes! We saw and sampled curries, freshly squeezed juices and blended smoothies, noodle and other soups with all manner or garnishes, flame-broiled seafood, sushi, crepes, cream puffs and, Thomas' favourite--banana chocolate roti. And of course, a multitude of "unidentified frying objects" which we were, in the end, far to scared to try. [Cynthia writes: Needless to say, I have put on a few pounds what with snacking on every street corner.] Like many other travelers, we were compelled to take a Thai cooking class.
We are looking forward to cooking Thai for friends when we get home.
The roti stall
None of us worked up the nerve to try the crunchy insects.

  • Thai massage: Cynthia indulged in a full body Thai massage of the "small Thai woman hanging onto a crossbar and nearly putting all her weight on your back" type (it hurt so good!). The whole family was convinced to take in a foot massage. Thomas, unsure about the whole affair, was naturally the darling with all the Thai women. They flirted with him rather shamelessly: "handsome man....you shy?...you like foot massage?". When one of them managed to procure a half smile we heard a victorious exclamation of " I won!". (Here in Myanmar, Thomas still draws attention from the locals just like in Thailand: it's not uncommon for him to get his face stroked by complete strangers with comments of "nice baby". He tolerates it...)
The family foot massage.

  • Feeding animals: we bought food for ravenous pigeons and fish in the city canals, elephants at the elephant parks and at the zoo we must have dished out a whole $5 on food for elephants, giraffes, sting rays and leopards--all of which the boys fed by hand except the leopards which were fed via skewer through a chain-link fence! The Thais definitely have a different attitude towards animals and any and all acts of domestication are encouraged!
Feeding a black leopard through a chain link fence.

Feeding sting rays
They felt slimy.
No, Max is not wearing nail polish.
An animal show included bird races.
The crowd loved the show.
After the show, the boys posed with the birds.

  • Erawan falls: we hiked up this stunning set of waterfalls (seven tiers) and swam in their turquoise pools along the way. The natural beauty of the falls was at times overshadowed by the hordes of heavyset sunburned Russian tourists in bathing suits two sizes too small but the higher we climbed this was less a distraction!
  • Buddhist temples, shrines, pagodas,statues and monks. How blingy are the Buddha statues, how meek and mild are the monks with their shaved heads and flowing orange robes.


There are many elephants camps and shows in northern Thailand.
Yes, this elephant is painting!
This three month old baby elephant was being encouraged to kick a soccer ball.
She would play for a minute or two and then run back to her mother.


Stay tuned for our adventures in Myanmar...