After visiting a succession of ex-French colonies I finally arrived in a country where I could stroll around with a paternal smile, admire the distinguished Victorian red brick architecture, smoke the World’s finest cheroots and introduce myself as Rudyard; and if I was feeling particularly rakish, perch myself in a rattan chair atop four perspiring coolies and raise a glass of Gordon’s gin to Queen and country. Welcome to Myanmar, formerly Burma.
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Sadly the march of time meant that I was merely greeted with vague curiosity rather than the earnest salaaming bestowed upon Kipling and Orwell, who had jointly raised my expectations. Sandwiched between India and China, Myanmar was never going to be dull but I hadn’t expected such a revelation.
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Britain joined an official boycott on travel to Myanmar in 2005 and it is a dilemma for many potential visitors as to whether they should go. If you can avoid organised tours and government hotels then the benefit to the local economy will far outweigh contributions to the junta; whether your mere presence endorses the military regime is still a matter for debate.
The boycott is in response to the military government which refuses to take the democratic path. They did have a bash at democracy in 1990, although not before killing 3000 protestors at a peaceful pro-democracy rally. However, once the opposition had gained a convincing victory they decided it wasn’t such a good idea after all; many believe it was just a ruse to expose their opponents.
They have held the leader of the opposition under house arrest, on and off (currently on), for the last 18 years; her name is Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and daughter of the founder of Burmese independence, but the people dare not speak her name.
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As a consequence of Myanmar’s decades of isolation the country is lost in time like no other I have seen. The streets are filled with old British Leyland buses from the 1940s and 50s, taxis are 3 wheeled Mazdas from the 60s and 70s and there are no chain stores, global brands or other symbols of modernity.
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Fresh from Laos’s burning season I found myself in Myanmar during the cruellest month. I arrived in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, which is the bustling capital, unable to venture out between the hours of 10am and 4pm when the temperature could often reach 42 degrees Celsius. In response to the merciless heat I decided to invest in that quintessentially feminine of accoutrements, a fan. Not a flamboyant appurtenance adorned with pink ostrich feathers, more an unpretentious plastic spanking paddle (and in that guise it may make the return trip to London).
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I also bought a skirt, although it still lies in its packaging (for that special occasion). All men in Myanmar wear (wraparound) skirts, known as longyi, without exception. I have begun to appreciate the myriad benefits of this garment; how unfair that it has remained for so long in the domain of women and Scotsmen. The obvious and most important benefit over trousers is the constant airflow to certain areas and by that same token unfettered access.
Public displays of testicular juggling are commonplace on the streets of Myanmar and pleasingly this appears to carry little or no social faux pas.
Anyone that has attempted to right a tangled undercarriage while wearing jeans and before the relentless gaze of London Underground commuters can’t help but envy this freedom.
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It is worth mentioning that the Burmese method for attracting someone’s attention (e.g. a street vendor to a potential customer) is with repeated loud kissing sounds; back home such a gesture between two strangers would be tantamount to a gauntlet across the chops.
You can imagine my alarm when I first ventured unawares onto the swarming streets of Yangon to be confronted by increasing numbers of be-skirted men aiming loud kisses in my direction whilst rearranging themselves.
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I was in Yangon for 4 days during which time I did not see another white face other than a weathered David Beckham poster.
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The pavements were daubed with blood-red stains, not dissimilar to a British market town after a Saturday night but in a country where acts of random violence are virtually unheard of I was perplexed. It didn’t take long to discover the source, the expelled residue from chewing betel nut. Virtually every man in Myanmar enjoys this activity which gives the chewer a mild high, or more precisely a warm feeling. I tried it a few times but failed to achieve much, other than drooling and bright red lips.
Prolonged use will stain the teeth red and gums black which is not particularly attractive; when combined with testicular juggling and the hawking of phlegm it makes you marvel the Burmese woman's instinct to procreate.
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There are no ATM machines in Myanmar and I decided to change around $500 in Yangon to last me most of the trip; I hadn’t realised that the largest denomination is only 1000 kyat (approx $1) and returned an instant millionaire; my backpack brimming with bank notes. It soon became obvious that most hotels and guesthouses only accept dollars and I had a torrid time trying to offload my fortune.
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Whilst in Yangon I visited Shwedagon Paya, the country’s most sacred site. I arrived in the afternoon and after removing my shoes hopped across the white hot marble courtyard and stood in awe at the base of the main temple. Shwedagon is said to have more gold on its 98m spire than is found in the vaults of the Bank of England (after Gordon Brown’s been there) and is encrusted with 4,500 rubies, sapphires and emeralds with a 76-carat diamond gracing its peak. It forms the centrepiece in a stunning array of golden temples that constitute Shwedagon.
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Large numbers of monks, nuns and locals visit every day to pray and meditate and there is an incredible sense of peace and tranquillity; I found myself lingering until well after dark and returned the following day.
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I left Yangon and travelled East to Bago, a bustling little town filled with pagodas and temples. I happened upon a charismatic rickshaw driver and local guide named Mr Manni; he showed me the town through his eyes for two fascinating days. His father was a cook in the British army and subsequently moved from Southern India in the early 1900s.
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We visited all the main sites through the back door by tipping door attendants and thereby avoiding government entrance fees. The highlights were a monumental 60m reclining Buddha and an almighty thunderstorm which heralded the first rains of the year, encouraging an extraordinary array of amphibians from their hiding places and straight under the wheels of passing traffic.
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My next stop was Kyaiktiyo, home of the famous Golden Rock, a huge boulder balanced precariously on the edge of a mountain. Legend has it that this balancing act was enabled by a precisely placed hair of the Buddha.
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Pilgrims flock here by the thousands and I was lucky enough to witness the full moon festivities the day I arrived. Unfortunately in all the excitement I missed the last bus back to town and had to endure an anxious 3 hour walk through dense forest, accompanied only by moonlight, flashes of lightening and the sound of blood pumping in my ears.
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The next day brought an equally fretful experience in the form of a long bus journey North to Kalaw.
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Bus drivers in Myanmar are cheery sadists who operate a carefully managed policy of sleep deprivation torture. Having leant on their horn (physically and euphemistically) for the first 10 hrs of the journey they snap into action once the most ardent insomniac has finally yielded to the sweet mercy of sleep.
First they crank up Body Talk by the Burmese Pointer Sisters (with tone deaf kid brother), startling the majority from their slumber. With a sardonic smile and the flick of another switch on their torture deck they turn on all the lights to dislodge any persistent sleepers. In the dead of night dozens of uncomplaining passengers stare forlornly at the bright lights, their ears being bombarded by the speakers and the cries of confused children. This unquestioning acceptance is perhaps the result of decades of authoritarian rule.
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Next the AC unit will be turned on fully (as with all devices there are 2 states; ‘off'and ‘maximum', this ensures that a state of torpor spreads quickly throughout, giving the driver power over body and mind. After an hour or so he is satisfied that he has broken the spirit of all his passengers and after turning off each device continues on benignly.
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I started to wonder whether bus drivers were in fact government men tasked with exposing dangerous individuals. If someone were to be so bold as to entreat the driver to curb his selfish behaviour he may be marked as an enemy of the state and sent to a re-education camp; I wasn’t about to find out.
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Cheap Japanese-made buses are used for long distance journeys and have steering wheels on the right-hand side, which coincidentally is the side of the road that the Burmese drive on. When bus drivers pull out to overtake they are the last ones to see any oncoming traffic, which can be mildly unsettling.
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Kalaw was a popular hill station in British colonial days and is now the centre of a large Nepali community which emanated from the loins of retired Gurkhas.
I arrived at 4am following a shattering bus ride and stumbled into a nearby guesthouse, fully hoping to revive my spirits before forging on.
I awoke the next morning to diarrhoea on a scale that I’d never previously experienced; imagine drilling a hole at the foot of the Hoover Dam; you will never reach a natural peristaltic conclusion and must force closure at some point prior to fatal dehydration. This unpleasantry was followed immediately by the ominous sign of sulphurous belching. There are only two explanations for the latter; either I had somnambulated to a previously unseen kitchen and eaten my own weight in rotten eggs or I was providing full board and lodging to a parasite named giardia.
Giardiasis is one of the most anti-social of the non-contagious diseases and renders the victim unapproachable by anyone with even the faintest sense of smell (it has been known on occasion for the victim’s own shadow to be seen retching). The sufferer effectively morphs into a walking rendition of Yellowstone Park; bubbling sulphur pools at one end and Old Faithful at the other. I had no choice but to exist at the epicentre of this noxious malodour cursing the malignance of this parasite. With watering eyes, curling toes and clenched buttocks I went in search of a chemist.
I remembered a drug named Tinidazole from a trip to Nepal a few years ago when two of my friends contracted the very same, much to my amusement at the time which I‘m now ashamed to admit. Tinidazole is an orally administered grenade that destroys everything in your gut, leaving behind a desolate lifeless carapace, but most importantly one free from giardia.
After a few minutes I spied a chemist across the street. Waiting to cross the road I noticed that a box of Tinidazole had been placed on the counter, the hand that put it there was busy fumbling with a clothes peg. Two days later I was cured.
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To celebrate I watched the Champions League semi-final between AC Milan and Man Utd in a packed cinema at 2 in the morning. There were dozens of Man Utd fans present but also many baying supporters of Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal who had come to support AC Milan. The Premiership is by far the most successful import in Myanmar; a country without Coke, Pepsi or MacDonalds.
I wasn’t alone in failing to understand the commentary as the game was beamed to us from Indonesia; this provided a suitably energetic language for the occasion and was dotted with words such as ’off-side'and ’penalty' for which there was evidently no translation.
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I have come to the conclusion that SE Asian eardrums are made from the tough cartilage normally reserved for load-bearing joints. Not only do people tend to shout rather than talk but any sound emitting device is permanently set to its maximum volume, irrespective, and in defiance, of the level of distortion this causes (and the rivulets of blood that trickle from one’s ears). The reason for shouting has nothing to do with arrogance but a practical need to compete with the wall of sound.
Myanmar’s wall of sound is much the same as any other SE Asian country’s (with the exception of Laos where you can still hear the creaking of hammocks until noon) and begins at 2:30am with the strangled croak of a chronologically challenged cockerel. Unfortunately in Asia you rarely hear the proud ‘cock-a-doodle-do'of a Disney rooster, instead the hapless birds barely reach ‘doodle'before apparently disappearing head first into a coffee grinder. The cockerel is gradually joined by other components of the cacophony until by 5am it has reached a deafening crescendo.
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Street food in Myanmar is pretty good on the whole, given the choice between Indian and Chinese, for me there’s no contest, and a number of places serve freshly made chapatis (twice rolled!) and delicious curries. One type of street food that I noticed in every town was a selection of skewers containing various animal parts; ear, nose, bladder, foot, lung, gizzard etc, perched on the edge of a bowl of boiling water. It struck me as an effective method for teaching zoological anatomy to truculent British teenagers; if they failed to identify the requisite organ and its constituent parts they would have to pop the skewer into the boiling water for a couple of minutes and then eat it. (“But Sir, I only forgot the Latin for one of the valves.'“Tough luck Timmy, get it down your neck!'
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The Burmese were ruled consecutively by the British and then by the Japanese during WWII. A Burmese writer at the time wrote: “Under the British we were treated like bullocks, under the Japanese we were treated like dogs.'(and that does not mean the Japanese addressed them in insanely soppy voices and gift wrapped their faeces before disposing of them).
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In SE Asia, and Myanmar in particular it seems, dogs are treated, well, like dogs. These wretched creatures cower beneath a permanently frightened demeanour. Their skin is a mosaic of dermatological complaints and their xylophone chests lead down to protruding angular pelvises that look painful to sit on, let alone mount. A sorry sight indeed.
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From Kalaw I picked up a guide, a lovely old guy from Pakistan whose father had been a tailor for the British army; his dream was to visit Karache and see his extended family but it is virtually impossible for ordinary citizens of Myanmar to travel abroad due to the ridiculously high cost of obtaining the paperwork.
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We began our 3 day walk to Inle Lake hiking through beautiful rolling scenery and small villages, spending the first night with a local family from the Danu tribe. The following night we stayed at a Pao monastery and slept on the floor inside the main temple. The monks began chanting at 5am and their mellifluous tones coaxed me from my slumber into a waking dream; a dream that was later interrupted by the smell from my hiking boots.
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We arrived at the edge of Inle Lake and I was immediately taken by it’s placid surface which reflected the surrounding mountains. I continued my journey by boat, powered by a deafening engine which juxtaposed the tranquillity perfectly; imagine watching a performance of Swan Lake astride a pneumatic drill.
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I passed Intha fishermen using strange conical nets and farmers growing fruit and vegetables on floating conglomerations of marsh, soil and water hyacinth. Many of the residents live in floating villages which fringe the lake and they famously operate the oars on their flat bottomed boats using their legs; apparently this helps them navigate more easily and is less tiring. It was at Inle that I saw my first smattering of tourists.
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A sustained period of solitary travel does begin to affect a person; in the same way I believe prolonged exposure to the eerily unnatural world of city commuting can ferment mild psychosis; the solitary traveller is also a fertile breeding ground for subtle forms of dementia.
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Here are some worrying signs I have noticed: excessively deferential behaviour towards waiters and waitresses (often my only form of human interaction for the day); approaching domestic animals and asking them rhetorical questions; grinning conspiratorially at anyone under the age of 10; using a mirror for validation rather than scrutiny (in the same way that I‘ve begun to absent-mindedly check my shadow); a deep fascination with clouds. I haven’t included talking to myself as that was entrenched from an early age.
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Well, it‘s an unnatural business being surrounded by the babel of a strange place with no real reason for being there and the nearest person who even knows your name is 1000s of miles away and probably fast asleep!
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Luckily any feelings of loneliness are palliated by the warm smiles and fascinating surroundings and any worries that my brain may be becoming vestigial due to long periods of blissful mindlessness are offset by the relative certainty that it isn’t ossifying.
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After a few days cycling around Inle Lake enjoying the cooler climate and visiting floating markets and ruined temples I made my way to Bagan, the jewel in Myanmar’s generously encrusted crown.
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Postcards and prose cannot prepare you for the jaw-dropping sight of 4000 temples dotted throughout a 40 km2 plain. Climb any one of the larger ones and you are rewarded with a glorious 360 degree view; it's hard to imagine a more incredible panorama featuring a balance of nature and man. I had the place to myself and spent a week cycling around exploring (I was completely in my element!); some of the more remote pagodas had not seen visitors for some time, evidenced by the wildlife fleeing when I entered; this included snakes, bats, rats, lizards, squirrels, and on one special occasion a barn owl.
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The rainy season was getting underway and despite staying a week (and waking up at 5am every day) I never witnessed the full beauty of a famous Bagan sunrise or sunset; renowned for colouring an already spectacular scene with hues of purple, pink and gold.
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Bagan is a living landscape with new temples going up all the time. There is some controversy over this as tourists prefer the charm of ruined buildings and local people prefer the splendour of new ones (or refurbished old ones).
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After an incredible week in Bagan I set off for my final destination, Myanmar’s second city, Mandalay.
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Mandalay is famous for rubies, jade and heroin, although personally I would replace heroin with chapatis. I became a complete junkie, feasting on these wonderful creations noon and night. My co-addict was Willy, a young guy from New Zealand and we would gorge ourselves until we had pupils the size of dinner plates. I was strung out for days after leaving Mandalay and still get the shakes when I hear the ‘c'word.
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Mandalay is also famous for its marionette shows; a tradition dating back 100s of years. Puppets can have up to 60 strings, including one for each eyebrow. The whole experience was a bit strange and a far cry from the Punch and Judy shows I remembered from my childhood. In front of the stage were a group of maniacal musicians competing with one another to break as many traditional instruments (and eardrums) as possible and the puppeteers were frequently visible, proudly standing above their puppets.
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There are no such things as bars and pubs in Myanmar, most of the serious drinking takes place at beer stations; these large open air restaurants are a common feature in Mandalay. As with most drinking establishments in SE Asia they are exclusively male. The atmosphere is raucous and friendly and the chorus of belching is reminiscent of a frog pond in Springtime. It is common practise to add up to two shots of whisky to a half litre glass of beer before downing it and hitting the road; this is a favourite tipple for taxi drivers.
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Mandalay itself is an interesting place and less hectic than Yangon but the main reason for going there is to visit the ancient cities that lie just outside town. There are four former capital cities (Sagaing, Amarapura, Inwa, Mingun) that can be reached by bicycle or horse cart (still a common form of public transport in many areas).
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Alongside the ancient capitals lies U Bein’s bridge, the world’s longest teak bridge (although I can’t imagine there's too much competition). There are over 1000 teak posts supporting the 1.2 km bridge and it is a main artery for monks, nuns and commuters, making it a fascinating place for people watching, especially at sunrise and sunset.
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In two words, mind-blowing; Myanmar exceeded all my expectations. I felt as though I was travelling around Asia 50 years ago and during the four weeks I spent there I hardly saw another tourist. The people are exceptionally friendly; I know this sounds trite but in Myanmar it really stood out. Even old women crack warm, almost adolescent, smiles; a pleasant change from being regarded as if you were a stain on their new carpet. I hadn’t planned on going to Myanmar but after meeting a Frenchman in Cambodia and listening to his descriptions of the place I felt compelled to see it for myself; I am very glad that I did.
The next stop will be China, finally, but via Tibet...
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