THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504240212
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT SHELTON, TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 271 lines
``On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin' fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder
Outer China 'crost the bay!''
IN HIS POEM, ``Mandalay,'' Rudyard Kipling alludes to the joy of travel in colonial Burma. Though the roads today are rather worse for wear, traveling in Burma - present-day Myanmar - can still be a joyful experience. It just takes the right attitude.
Today Myanmar is ruled by the Orwellian-sounding State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), an authoritarian military junta.
It was this military government that changed the country's name from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar, calling the former name a vestige of British colonialism.
The present state of political affairs, however, has done nothing to dampen the spirit or genuine hospitality of the Burmese people; some of the friendliest, most outgoing sorts you will ever come across.
On a recent trip there I was amazed that children in up-country villages frequently greeted me with gleeful shouts of ``hello'' as I walked by.
When I would respond with ``Min-Gala-Bah!'' Burmese for ``Good day,'' they would giggle with delight as their parents laughed. (English, I was told, is the most popular foreign language taught in the schools.)
For a Westerner, having the right attitude for a trip in Myanmar takes a little more effort than travel in Asia usually does.
Few of the single-lane roads have been repaired since the British left in 1948, and most of the buildings and their plumbing are rakish remnants of the colonial era. The pull-chain toilet in a creaky hotel I stayed at in the eastern mountain region had the words ``Clark & Creig, Ltd., Rangoon 1936'' rusting on the reservoir. At another five-dollar-a-night lodging, I was awakened in the morning by a finger-size wall lizard crawling across my face.
Phones don't work. Electricity goes out. Toilet paper is as precious (and brittle) as gold leaf, and getting hot water is akin to winning a lottery.
Nothing runs on schedule. My 12-hour train from Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the capital, left an hour late, and took sixteen hours to cover the 440-mile route north to Mandalay. Once you finally arrive at a train station you're liable to be chauffeured to a hotel in a pony cart.
If you can accept these inconveniences and gain an accompanying ability to look at them with amusement, Myanmar is a great travel destination; one ideal for anyone looking for an off-the-beaten-path experience. Once everything works and runs on schedule, everyone will want to go there.
During the early 1960s the xenophobic government of Gen. Ne Win closed off Burma to the outside world. For years afterward no tourists were allowed in. When the political climate eventually let up, visas were granted, but only for stays of one to two weeks.
Last year, though, the government, driven by the country's desperate need of foreign capital, made visas valid for one-month visits.
In its enthusiasm for hard cash the government has even gone so far as to officially designate 1996 ``Visit Myanmar Year,'' and has produced glossy Western-style travel brochures to encourage tourism.
Although some areas, where insurgents are fighting government troops, are strictly off-limits to outsiders, it is now possible for travelers to see the most interesting parts of the country.
Aside from seeing the glistening 300-foot high Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest in the Buddhist world, there isn't much to do in Yangon, unless you count watching the old British colonial buildings flaking paint in the tropical heat.
For this reason, the best route to take through the country is straight to Mandalay, a bustling city of 550,000 on the shores of the Ayeyarwady (formerly Irrawaddy) River. From there connections can be made to all unrestricted regions of Myanmar.
Mandalay, the last capital of the country before the British colonial period, is regarded as the center of Burmese culture.
Because Burmese kings used to build their capitals out of teak, then dismantle and move the structures whenever a whim or a change of reign dictated, the main remnants of royal life in Mandalay are some of the most sacred pagodas in the Buddhist world.
The wooden Mandalay Palace, the last and most intricate of the Burmese royal palaces, burned to the ground as a result of the intense fighting between the Japanese and combined Indian/British troops at the close of World War II. The imposing 20-foot high brick walls surrounding the old palace grounds are still standing and are worth a visit.
The most fascinating part of the city is found in its daily life. Walking amid the jostling pandemonium of the Mandalay bazaar and squeezing through curry-scented back streets to sample the kaleidoscopic variety of Burmese food are among the most rewarding travel experiences to be had anywhere.
Fly-specked orange-glazed ducks and strings of red chilis hang from stalls within the market's labyrinthine passageways, along with overflowing baskets of mangoes, pineapples and coconuts. Two merchants, one wielding an abacus, frantically point fingers at each other as they haggle over the price of sugar cane, while others rove through the din, dust and occasional stench, hawking everything from dried prawns to powdered aphrodisiacs.
The senses are almost overloaded with the raw, exotic assortment of the place. If you find yourself in the mood for something crunchy, you can try the bazaar's ample offering of pocket-watch-size cooked beetles.
As with medieval guild towns, different sections of the city house particular trades. Watching as craftsmen ponderously chisel Buddhas out of stone or looking on as boatbuilders labor along the waterfront in the still evening air is a bit like walking back in time.
From the shores and markets of Mandalay the flow of travel seems to go southwest with the course of the Ayeyarwady to the hauntingly magnificent ruins of Pagan.
With more than 2,000 pagodas stretching over 20 square miles in the distance, Pagan is one of the most stunningly beautiful archaeological sites on the planet.
Between the years 1057 and 1287, 13,000 pagodas and temples, some soaring to 200 feet in height, were built on the sprawling plain at Pagan. In response to the threat of invasion by the Mongol hordes of China's Kublai Khan, most of the religious structures were subsequently torn down to build fortifications.
Like other royal cities of Myanmar, the kings' palaces at Pagan were constructed of wood. So all that is left of this once busy city are the hundreds of sun-baked pagodas virtually covering the land to the Ayeyarwady.
In walking through scrub-dotted fields to view the ancient panorama at Pagan, fragments of the lost structures are continually underfoot. You can only guess at the grandeur of the vanished city at its peak as you marvel at the almost mystical quality of what remains.
History gives way to charm as you travel over 200 miles of dusty roads to Inle Lake in the east.
Don't count on getting any sleep during the journey, though. As is common practice in Myanmar, drivers careen down the roads, honking the horn, while swerving around, and missing by mere inches files of village women walking with water jugs balanced on their heads and oxen pulling rickety carts piled high with firewood.
At one point on the way to Inle Lake, a number of villagers had set up something of a human road block. As the Jeep I had hired approached the villagers standing on the road, my Burmese driver leaned hard on the horn and sharply accelerated, scattering all behind us in an angry swirl of dust.
It was only after this near smash-up that the driver explained that the villagers had been trying to stop us in an attempt to extract an impromptu toll. I was then glad that drive-yourself vehicle rentals were not yet available in the country.
Inle Lake is one of those places well worth any amount of trouble to get to. Home of the famous leg rowers featured in National Geographic several years ago, it possesses a distinct and enchanting beauty.
Owing to heavy water plants that float just under much of the lake's surface, the fishermen there have developed a technique of propelling their small dugouts by standing at the end of the canoe on one leg while the other leg is wrapped around an oar providing a forward digging motion.
The fishermen, clad in draped longyis (a traditional Burmese skirt), follow something of a rhythm as they skillfully propel their small boats in search of fish among the clumps of vegitation.
Early in the morning as a light mist slowly rises from the mirror-calm waters of the lake, watching the fishermen silently work is a mesmerizing, almost unbelievably picturesque scene.
Travelers have differing opinions as to where to venture next in Myanmar. Some prefer to head to the Kyaikhtiyo Pagoda built atop an enormous gold leaf boulder precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff.
Others prefer to go back to Yangon to visit the gold Shwedagon Pagoda or the huge 150-foot-high Shwethalyaung Buddha to the north.
Still others like to knock around the country for as long as their tourist visas permit to spend time at places such as Mt. Popa, a shrine to the Mahagiri Nat gods - animal spirits that some Burmese still worship.
My choice was made through an element of chance. In Mandalay, I had asked one of a line of interpreters if he knew of any way that I could visit one of the remote hill tribes in the eastern mountains.
As luck - coupled with the drive of the dollar - would have it, he knew of a mountain guide who spoke the language of the Palaung, a hill tribe in the mountainous Shan state.
With the mountain guide also able to speak Burmese, and my Burmese interpreter speaking English, we had the necessary language chain cinched.
We met the guide at a small town named Heho in Shan. Several miles from there we began a day's trek up a mountain trail to a Palaung village about 4,000 feet in altitude.
The village consisted of a small collection of smoky thatched-roofed wooden huts with diaperless children playing in the dirt amid goats, piglets and scraggly chickens.
The guide exchanged a few pleasantries with a village leader. We were then invited into his home.
Taking off our shoes at the door, as is the custom in that part of the world, we sat in a shadowy half-light on the floor with the village leader's wife and three children forming a second circle around us.
The host was in his late 50s and wore a ragged magenta turban. With leatherlike skin and vividly stained teeth from chewing betel nuts (palm tree seeds having something of a narcotic property), he had a rather stern appearance. So I accepted his offer of a cheroot cigar and lit up, even though I don't smoke.
Over green tea, a plate of small bananas, and a cheroot (a local plant leaf), we discussed up and down the ladder of interpreters life in his village.
Though he had ventured beyond the village's mountain boundaries himself, many of the 70 people living there had never seen a car or TV set.
While he and a few others were prosperous enough at farming the lush, terraced slopes surrounding the village to live in their own homes, most of the villagers had to share quarters with as many as three families crowding into the same structure.
Changing the subject, I asked if the three present were all of his children, to which he replied, ``No, two had died in childbirth.''
As I asked the question I had pulled out a wallet picture of my three nephews and niece with Santa.
At the point of the village leader's response I tried to hide the picture in my palm. His wife, however, had gotten a glimpse of the photo, and asked what I was holding.
Upon my turning it over her eyes brightened with a tickled bemusement at the sight of four kids with a white-bearded, old fat guy.
I didn't even try to explain this glaring cultural gap. But at this moment I was amazed at hearing from the interpreter the elder ask if they could keep the picture to put on the wall of their home.
On the trail back down the mountain, I thought about how through two language barriers and a world of cultural differences, the Palaung village family and I had ended up connecting through something as simple as a picture of children.
I also smiled as I thought of the picture back there on the wall of that village home. MEMO: Portsmouth native Scott Shelton has a penchant for exotic places. He has
previously written about and photographed his adventures in Patagonia
and travels on the Trans-Siberia railroad. ILLUSTRATION: SCOTT SHELTON COLOR PHOTOS
ABOVE: A Palaung village woman smokes a cheroot.
RIGHT: Temple ruins in Pagan wear the glow of sunset.
ABOVE: Pagodas in Mandalay are some of the most sacred in the
Buddhist world.
RIGHT: A fisherman on Inle Lake propels his boat by paddling with
his leg wrapped around an oar.
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
MYANMAR is the name that has long been used by its people to
describe the land the British called Burma. It became a soverign
state in 1948 after more than 100 years of British colonial
administration. Geographically, Myanmar is the largest country in
mainland southeast Asia, sharing borders with Bangladesh, India,
China, Laos and Thialand. It is approximately the size of Great
Britain and France combined. The population is about 43 million,
about 80 percent Buddhists.
Climate: Tropical with three general seasons - rainy (mid-May to
mid-October), dry and cool (mid-October to mid-February) and hot
(mid-February to mid-May).
Getting there: The best way to get to Myanmar is to fly in from
Bangkok, Thailand. A roundtrip ticket on Thai International Airways
should cost about $280. (A round trip to Bangkok on an American
carrier from the eastern United States will run about $1,600.)
Getting in: Obtain a visa by applying to the Embassy of Myanmar,
2300 S St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008 Tel. (202) 332-9044.
If you're planning to spend any time in Thailand, the simplest
way to get a visa for Myanmar is to have one of the many travel
agencies in Bangkok do the footwork for you. (A $20 agency fee over
the $30-40 visa fee will save you some headache.)
Be sure to use a reputable outfit, though. Bangkok has more than
its share of travel scams. Also, don't forget that you'll need to
get a multiple entry visa for Thailand. The address for the Royal
Thai Embassy in the United States is 1024 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20007 Tel: (202) 944-3608.
Getting along: Once you get to Yangon (Rangoon) you are required
by the government to change a minimum of $300 U.S. into foreign
exchange certificates. If possible, try to get Myanmar kyats
(pronounced chats), as some upcountry establishments refuse to
accept the foreign exchange certificates.
Health tips: Don't drink the water (That includes ice.) And, be
certain to get an anti-malarial prescription. (My doctor prescribed
Lariam in 250 mg tablets.) Check with your physician regarding this
and other recommended immunizations for Myanmar.
Last, under health tips, I would recommend that you avoid Myanmar
Airways. Given their safety record and less than state-of-the-art
airport facilities, it's best to remain on the ground while in the
country.
Protocol: Relations between the United States and Myanmar can at
times be rather strained. So it may be a good idea to check with the
U.S. State Department's Office of Overseas Citizen Services (202)
647-5225 regarding possible travel warnings and other consular
information.
- Scott Shelton
by CNB