Travel Diaries #36 - Myanmar

Not everything is about politics, and not every journey has a lesson - a trip to a land of infinite sunsets, and time

Welcome to Myanmar

When I moved to Asia in 2016, Myanmar was a hot topic – everyone wanted to go there. Having been self-isolating from the rest of the world for fifty years under a military dictatorship, it had only been open again to foreign visitors since 2012. It was inevitably viewed as being the epitome of ‘untouched’, which of course is the holy grail that backpackers and travellers seek wherever they go, whether on the other side of the world or somewhere in their own home country.

By the time I got around to travelling there it was a different story. Now no-one wanted to visit. It had been well over a year since I’d heard the usual professions of wanderlust from ex-pats who’d love to go to Myanmar around the cafes of Hanoi.

The controversy over the alleged genocide of the Rohingya, an ethnic group of Muslims from the region of the country bordering Bangladesh, meant that Myanmar was once again in the news for the wrong reasons (the only reason anything is ever in the news), turning off many prospective travellers once again. Some were fearful due to reports of violence from an unknown place. Others asserted their moral superiority by virtue-signalling that they wouldn’t support a country and regime which was guilty of such crimes.

I figured the only way to get a true glimpse of the place was to go there myself. I didn’t really believe it would be dangerous, and I didn’t really believe that me going to a country was supporting genocide or any other alleged government-sponsored crime. Plus, Vietnam Airlines had just opened up a cheap direct two-hour flight between Hanoi and Yangon, which I was happy to take advantage of. I rounded up my brother and a couple of friends and we headed over to Myanmar for 10 days during the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday.

Naturally, as with most places that have a reputation amongst people who’ve never been there as being ‘dangerous’, what we found was the most peaceful place we’d ever been in our lives.

Bagan

Arriving to Bagan at first light, the gang of taxi drivers lying in wait for sweaty disembarking tourists had every right to scam us out of our hard-exchanged black sack of cash, but instead couldn’t have been more helpful, friendly and exuding a protective warmth. It wouldn’t be the last time we landed somewhere with literally no idea of where we were going – or more importantly when you’re travelling: how far it was and roughly how much a fair price would cost – and yet were not just steered but carried to where we needed to be, at the expense of someone else’s time, to which they appeared to have no complaint, whether with us or with God.

The red brick temples of Bagan are numerous, unique, evocative, mystical. There are 4,400 of them. Between them the vast space of a red plain. Each one with their own story. The aura of the open space is powerful, evocative of mystical fantasy kingdoms, a place where it’s always sunset in every direction. It is the only place in the world I’ve visited where I didn’t get sick of seeing exotic temples or churches after the second one, apart from the churches of Spain, which in itself is probably a sign of some kind of maturity.

Red dirt, red brick temples, red sunsets, the dusty spectrum is broken up intermittently by the lime green of an electric scooter whizzing along the dirt roads, like the kid in Schindler’s List, the monochrome hues giving the whole countryside an air of ancient nostalgia, each setting sun making the one swimming through it conscious of every sun that has set there since the dawn of time. We ate food from abundant small plates in roadside eateries, helping ourselves to the clove cigarettes left for single purchase on restaurant tables. Drove dusty roads and hopped off at random temples on a whim, a certain one catches your eye as if it were built just for you. Each one maintained by a local family who’d come in to sweep up the dust with brooms and lay ornaments and arrangements at the shrines to the Buddha. Children approached us to sell postcards and crude hand-drawn pictures of elephants for a dollar, posing for cheap photos.

One evening we came across a Buddhist cremation ceremony in a big open garden outside a larger temple, one you might have to pay a few cents into and with polished stone floors. An open body lay on a pyre, surrounded by a large congregation of monks in flowing brown robes. Some of them wore sombre, some of them joked and laughed, some played on phones and some smoked cigarettes. At the signal, several of them let off fireworks from twenty yards away, aimed at the large fabricated adornment hanging over the peaceful corpse. One elder joker aimed his projectile at a fellow standing near and in front of him, the aggrieved target beginning to chase his assailant waving his fist, while the trickster scampered off, grinning and chuckling to himself, a comical Benny Hill routine. Fire rained down on the pyre until it was all engulfed in a brilliant rage of flames, and the crowd slowly dispersed. The whole event was a humbling sight.

One of the finest ways to idle is to sit perched on a high wall with friends watching a sunset enjoying a beer, feet dangling shoeless, one of the finest leisure activities money can’t buy. In the comforting warmth of Bagan, the hypnotic historic transcendence of the temples of time is only half the picture; the other half is the infinite space between them and the red dirt and the red sky, and the knowing that most likely this will still be practiced in centuries hence, feet still dangling shoeless over the edge of the red brick walls.

Kalaw to Inle Lake

Another overnight bus, this time to Kalaw, an airy mountain town where, after a quick few hours sleep, we began a guided trek from tour office, 60km to Inle Lake over three days. It’s one of the more popular activities people do (or people I know at least) when they visit Myanmar, and every single person I know who’s done it has defiantly claimed their tour guide to be “the kindest/nicest/best tour guide you could ever do the trek with”. Which is typical enough, though of questionable accuracy, especially considering that our tour guide was the nicest, kindest and best tour guide you could ever do the trek with.

Momo was about my age and had studied as a geologist. He’d even made plans to work abroad, in Singapore or somewhere far wealthier than his home here in Kalaw. His plans had fallen through, and the prohibitive cost of a visa meant he, like most from the region, could never afford it on his own. He’d contracted malaria while on a job and was forced to return home, where he began to work as a tour guide, which he loved despite it not allowing him his dream life abroad. He gave his illness as explanation as to why he permanently was clothed in a rough woollen jumper, despite us walking in blistering sunshine every day. He wore nothing but flip flops on his feet, his legs never tiring even though we were all wrecked by the third day.

Momo’s potentially sad story did nothing for his spirit, and he bounded along with infectious energy for three whole days and nights. Although sharp-witted there was the occasional innocence to him which possibly revealed the darkened status of his home country until very recently, usually in him asking us what various English swear words meant, which he’d heard but never understood, for which we realised we were unable to politely translate, and which slowly dawned on us that he’d gotten almost all of them including phrases like “You suck!” from his love of professional wrestling.

Tea leaf salads – if you know, you know – and delicious home cooked meals.

Hiking through isolated villages, over hills and through valleys and tea plantations, swimming in rivers and learning about the ancient Banyan tree, which you’re not supposed to piss under.

Idyllic schools in the typical South East Asian style and children in uniform waving at you from the school yards.

The scorching hot sun, everyone wearing the customary homemade sunscreen made from Thanaka paste, men wearing the traditional longyi skirt, children playing

The children of Burma are unmatched for their photogeneity.

A small boy in full Real Madrid football kit and flip flops walks up the hill to his house leading a water buffalo on a rope, a single large watermelon under his arm.

At night we’d sit on the floors of tidy wooden homes and wash ourselves from large buckets of cold water in the shed before it got dark.

Hiking along deserted railways – which were in full use, but as we’d later learn, ‘full use’ in Myanmar still equated to a snail’s pace – leading us to small, raised platforms in sleeping stations, the local markets being set up to avail of custom from the passing trains, which might wait for a half hour at the stop before crawling away again to a presumed destination. Transactions of corn and flowers and cooked meats were made through open windows, monks and babies in the arms of their parents smiled through the doors. What bizarre windows into alternate dimensions the appearance of sweating pink tourists must have been.

We passed later by a large catapult-like structure which Momo explained was used for an annual festival in which rivals took it in turns to launch homemade rockets across the valley onto their neighbours’ villages, videos on his phone confirmed the rockets could travel up to a kilometre onto the distant hill. All in the name of fun and neighbourly banter, Junior football with different physical details.

We spilled out, exhausted on the third day, to Inle Lake. First taken to the obligatory tour of the floating village, a rather large town of houses which rise on stilts out of the lake, on which generations are born and grow old and die. Like Venice but with far more space around and under the buildings, a collection of houses, restaurants, shops, and for us, visits to sword forges where smiths pounded biblical sledgehammers onto red hot metal, jewellery makers, crafters of clothing and souvenirs. It occurred to me that a distinct cultural difference between here and my home in Vietnam; Vietnam, the land of ceaseless hard work and gaudy neon lights and preposterous fonts, and there’s a far greater emphasis on functionality over beauty, the principle seems to be to bang any piece of metal onto another piece of metal to get the thing working again, and if it goes, it’s good enough. In Myanmar, no doubt fostered by the slower pace of life and development, there was a much more palpable reverence for craft, and taking one’s time to perfect a job, visible in the aesthetic beauty in even the most humble of homes.

It is a gorgeous place.

In one we were ushered to an inevitable sight, a pair of ladies in traditional garb, our attention naturally drawn to a sight from old missionary magazines, their elongated necks rising far, far above their shoulders, supported by an unnaturally lengthy circle of heavy silver rings, a magician’s trick. Tourists were encouraged while these old ladies, with years and aeons in their faces, sat with depression in their eyes for people to queue up and take photos, depositing a token donation in the box in front of them, while another did the customary weaving on a loom in front of them. An exercise in masterful meditation if not in dignity, sitting there with impenetrable stares, God only knew what was passing through their minds, the weight of the collective histories of their tribes and cultures sitting on their fragile shoulders.

On a wall outside hung a huge map, about 6 feet by 4, of the country formerly known as Burma, of which only 60% declare to be Burmese. We could barely begin to see or understand this land of 135 tribes – 136 if you include the Rohingya, which of course some do and some don’t – on our hurried 10 day trip, although dashing between regions on lengthy bus tours, the country of 50 million people was larger than we could explore in a year. As we wandered in and out over the half hour allotted for gawping at the elderly clanswomen, we found ourselves standing in front of the map time and again, transfixed by its colours and the scope of the world it symbolised, silently and loudly planning future trips in which to return and see the place ‘properly’. Of course, we were only exploring a narrowed section of the womb of the country which was already well-worn by tourists, and much of the country was still officially out of bounds to foreign eyes, though Momo advised there’s more of a subtle shaping of the tourist route from unseen hands above, rather than out and out threat of ‘getting shot’ if you step into the wrong region.

Still though, one could dream, and in a country as lazily captivating, as majestic as this, one wished to travel further and further not just in space but back in time. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and I thought often of an old friend Claudio, a Swiss guy who I’d met at a hostel in New Orleans and serendipitously bumped on the way into a music festival in Vietnam some years later, who in the meantime had begun a still-ongoing life as a full-time and authentic slow traveller. Making some money as a freelance photographer and travel journalist, he was spending months at a time in the most rural of places of south-east Asia, those places where you don’t even need money, untouched by any tourist eyes or interests, living with local families and becoming privy to the most intimate of life events, rituals and ways of life forgotten or neglected even by their own governments. Whilst in Myanmar he had gotten hold of a raft and spent a month sailing down the Andaman River with a friend, when accosted by the ruthless local police all they took were miniscule token bribes and selfies. His was a way of travelling that many profess they would relish, though from experience I knew that very, very few would be able for, myself included.

Still though – while on holidays, everyone can dream.

Zipping on high-speed boats the length of Inle Lake we felt alive. Forest fires burned on distant hills, mystical pagodas rose from far-flung islands, fishermen worked the lake with their legs wrapped around oars as the golden sun illuminated the world, sunset again in every direction. We landed at Nyaung Shwe in the dark as if creeping up a bayou, to be greeted once again by hungry touts, with nothing but goodness in their hearts.

Nyaung Shwe

A day of rest, finally, we each without words went about our business around the town. A rare chance to write, to eat, to enjoy a drink, to stroll alone. After a lifeless lunch of local fare served by a transvestite in a local eatery, I shamelessly slipped away down a quiet laneway to a craft beer pub with studier tables which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Ranelagh, where I whiled away an hour or two writing, sipping coffee and beer, smoking cigarettes and gorging on wi-fi and luxurious bathroom facilities.

Though I left and returned to the more fulfilling relaxation to be found pedalling idly down this street and that on a bike borrowed from the hotel. At sunset we visited a winery on a hill. The views and aesthetics incredible, the wine was foul, though the company was good and a fine evening was had. We cycled downhill drunk in the dark, to be greeted by a pack of feral dogs, who followed us snapping at our heels as we giggled at the thrill of it all.

We enjoyed fuzzy eyed dinner with our Italian and German hiking buddies at a bizarre establishment, an Indian joint run by an endearing Eminem obsessed teenager, a fact which wasn’t just a personality quirk but was central to the business’s brand. Dressed like Eminem and adopting the rapper’s affectations and mannerisms, he bounced around with endless energy, reciting the rapper’s hits word for word, the walls adorned with song lyrics and posters, all while his mother snarled at him from the kitchen, to which he was infectiously indifferent. We smoked clove cigarettes and basked in the post-wine glow, one of the best Indian meals I’ve ever eaten.

The Train to Thazi

We spent a whole day on a train, as good a day as any. A 12 hour trip to cover the same 50km we’d just hiked in the opposite direction. The fare cost about $1.50. We settled in and enjoyed remarkable rickety views and bridges over tea plantations and brown earth. Ticket men hid lit cigarettes behind their backs in the claw of their hand while they chatted to passengers. The train made lengthy stops at rural platforms with full-grown markets, keeping us well fed with samosas and snacks throughout the day for minimal expense. We got casually drunk.

At night we landed in Thazi, though contrary to our assumptions, there would be no bus to take us to Yangon, 6 or 8 hours away. A taxi driver took us to Meiktila a good half hour away, which we knew the name of due to it being the scene of a bloody riot a couple of years before. News articles now report it to have been due to the concerns of farmers and food producers. Someone told us along the way that it was a covert state-sanctioned bloodbath incited by releasing prisoners from jail, in order to cause political tension and disharmony, the religious and military factions playing their more politically minded opponents against one another and the people.

We didn’t want to spend the night there, partly because you can’t unhear these things, partly because our already limited time meant we would only have a day and a half in Yangon before we flew home. We somehow wandered into a taxi dispatch housed in a lawyer’s office open well into the evening. The late-working lawyer and his secretary managed to figure out how to get us on a bus to Yangon. After a series of naps interspersed with toilet breaks in fluorescent motorway truck stops, so identical as to make you doubt whether you’d gone anywhere in the meantime, we arrived into Yangon at some time in the day.

Yangon

Motorbikes are banned in Yangon, the country’s largest city. Suggested reasons include that the ‘leader’ of the country – who most visitors wouldn’t be able to identify their ceremonial title, let alone their name, myself included – was the subject of an assassination attempt by a gunman on a motorbike. Others say it was that a fortune teller that told him he’d die in a bike accident. Another is just that he’s plain old scared of dying in a motorbike accident. Nonetheless, it’s evident this leader just doesn’t like motorbikes. And so they had to go.

It made a nice change, taking a break from Hanoi – a city defined by two-wheeled motor transport. Central Yangon quieter, more colourful in a way, which one might cry is the definition of Hanoi, though Hanoi has a particular spectrum reminiscent of pirate television, a washed-out, sepia palette of greys, muffled yellows, reds, oranges, browns and things on that spectrum (with many greens of course) and in Yangon there is much of that but also far more vivid primary colours: blue. Including the sky, which was far more visible than in Hanoi at that time of year.

Apartment blocks with the washing hanging out, more scents and incense and plastic table cafes, flip flopping through busy roundabouts circling large temples, which we still weren’t sick of. We played acoustic guitars and drank bottles with some youths on a jetty as the sun set for the last time, this time only in one direction over the godly golden roof of the Shwedagon Pagoda, seen only from afar.

***

There were no life lessons to be learned on this trip. Just a good old fashioned backpackers’ journey with friends and family to a beautiful, mystical and irresistibly calm part of the world. We kept a tight and latently exhausting schedule of two flights, three overnight buses, a three-day trek and a day-long train and yet in the expanse of a place far removed from everywhere, and despite sticking to a fairly predictable tourist itinerary, it was one that while in it instilled us with nothing but a sense of freedom, including the ultimate freedom – that from time.

We returned home depleted, yet the trip itself held the sort of steady momentum that invigorates and energises you so that every action begets further action.

Tourists and insta-backpackers may have been turned off by what they’d read about a vast country’s government in the news and sadly, to be fair, they may have been proven right given recent sad developments in Myanmar earlier this year). I always thought of it like someone boycotting visiting Ireland because of the Troubles, as well as having had plenty of non-Irish (i.e. Americans) not so long ago asking me if Ireland was ‘safe’ to visit, or if they’d “get shot”.  

Of course it’s a cliché of travel writing to remark on the hospitality and warmth of a people and place, though it felt like this was one of the defining aspects of the place. Not just the people and the buildings, but the very land itself: Myanmar’s archetypal beauty leaves a profound resonance, one of understanding of the serenity of the endurance of something deeper than mere culture.

It is better if possible to travel feet first, head last and if some days down the line your mind formulates a neat lesson then all well’s that ends well. But for now, just walk.

Bamboo

We weren’t entirely ignorant or dismissive of genuine misgivings about the goings on at the top of the political chain. The history and current situations were something we were quite conscious of throughout the trip. Though we came across nothing but calmness and warmth in the people of Myanmar, the red brown earth positively exuded it.

Along the hike from Kalaw to Inle Lake Momo filled us in with a wealth of local information, skirting on the current goings-on and giving us insight into the historic relations between the 136 tribes and ethnicities of this country wedged between Thailand, India and China, the relevant national borders often being quite nebulous to those who live among them. Our trek took us from one valley to another over rolling hills, which often demarcated the land claimed by one tribe or the other. Various coloured dresses and skirts were the only overt differences we could tell between them.

At one stop, a token visit to a lady working a loom in a bamboo hut from whom we could purchase her crafts, Momo recounted some more historical stories and lore. He told a tale of ancient and bloody feuds between the two most recent tribes we’d been welcomed by, the one whose valley we stood in and the one from which we’d just came, without hassle and oblivious to any border. To us, they were just the ones who wore red and the ones in green. We asked what would happen if someone from Valley A were to wander into Valley B in this day and age, to which Momo replied with his infectious laugh:

“Oh – that’s easy!

He wouldn’t shoot him! He wouldn’t stab him!

He’d just take one of these – “

He reached over in front of me and plucked a small, razor-sized piece of bamboo from the wall of the hut we were standing in

And do this!”

He grinned, as he turned the makeshift blade horizontal between his finger and thumb and drew it across the air inches in front of my throat.

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