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Bangkok - Yangon - Mandalay - Bagan - Kalaw - Lake Inle - Yangon - Bangkok
Indian buses, Indian roads - all is forgiven! We spent a total of around 53 bottom-numbing, bone-crunching hours on Burmese buses, all old Japaneses coaches and minibuses more suited for the school run in suburban Tokyo than a 12-hour trip along pot-holed and monsoon-eaten roads and rather hairy hairpin bends, with people and bags of onions crammed down the aisle on plastic stools and on the roof. They do have one redeeming feature however, despite the ridiculous hours - a 3.30am start on one route and a 4.30am breakfast stop on another - the drivers are sane (Indian bus drivers are not forgiven).
We flew back from Yangon to Bangkok yesterday after about three weeks in Myanmar. It was the end of the dry season so very hot and dry in most of the places we saw. We went through villages where everything - including the people with their Thanaka-painted faces - was the colour of dust. Thanaka is made from rubbing a kind of wood (sandalwood?) on a stone with water - the paste it forms is said to have moisturizing and sub-blocking properties and many of the the women and children - and some of the men too - have it painted on their faces. It may look like you forgot to take your face mask off, but is the hight of fashion in Myanmar.
Lucy and I tried some one day when we were being shown around a village just outside Mandalay by a former monk who taught English in the village's Buddhist school and orphanage. He was an orphan who had been to the school himself, and he acted as our guide. I'd had another bout of food poisoning (me again! I think from a dodgy bottle of water rather than food) so we been forced to postpone the day trip and our original guide couldn't make it on the new date so he sent his friend, the former monk, instead.
He insisted on showing us around his village - where we saw people rolling cigars and weaving and making Burmese-style flip flops and water pots, followed the whole way by an entourage of schoolchildren, who we'd plied with sweets and pens and who kept flashing us with the wide smiles we became so used to seeing in Myanmar. The people were so welcoming and polite, so gracious. So different to India, where people were equally friendly but in a boisterous sort of way.
When we arrived at Mandalay bus station expecting the usual hullabaloo of taxi-drivers and people clutching placards for hostels, we were confronted by three men standing patiently away from the bus. We walked (or staggered - our packs are still ridiculously heavy) over and chose one, and they all just stood there and said thank you, no jostling or mauling or sticking their faces an inch from our own and trying to convince us to change our minds. It was the same with the sweetie-sellers and beggars that would linger around a bus as it was about to leave. It's easier to dismiss people and dismiss poverty when its brash and in your face. When it stands quietly and waits, you find it hard to look away.
People were also very keen to talk to us and to practise their English. Many go up to Mandalay Hill, which is covered in Buddhist temples and overlooks the city, including Mandalay Palace, which houses the Glass Palace (there's a book with the same name; it is largely unvisited because it is said that the regime rebuilt it by using forced labour) is a hotspot for English practice, with people climbing the 1000 steps to the top once a week or more for the chance to chat to English-speaking tourists.
We spoke to an English teacher and a baker who thanked us for our time and said they wished we could swap addresses but that people would be watching. This was reiterated later in the trip when we were told that ice-cream sellers and street sweepers are often spies. We never saw anyone watching, but then the that's the point I suppose. In fact, the regime - and the effects of it - are largely invisible. If you didn't know what the reality was it could be any other country. It's only when you speak to people and hear what they have to say in their hushed tones and see them looking over their shoulder that you can start to understand; it's only by talking that you realise that sprawling building in the distance, that is not marked on the map but which looks like it should be a university, is actually a prison. Then you see the newspaper stalls, stocking a few thin dailies but mostly packed with papers about football - and English football and that. Manchester United are big in Burma, though they do follow Chelsea and Liverpool (and know about Crystal Palace). Monks stopped us at monasteries to talk about Rooney and Gerrard. I suppose with all that football to watch and discuss, it must keep people from talking about other things - suiting the regime rather well.
We went to see the Moustache Brothers in Mandalay - a trio of performers led by Par Par Lay, who has been imprisoned three times for the political satire he injected into his mix of stand-up comedy and dance routine. They are now banned from performing in public to Burmese people but are allowed to hold small performances in their living room to a handful of tourists. One of the points they raised more than once was China's involvement in Myanmar. From the bridges they are building to the opium they are flooding the streets with - it seems they are being allowed to do what they want, something we were told often. When things do change there, the resentment could well overflow.
After Yangon and Mandalay, we went to Bagan, a vast dry plain in the west of Myanmar. At the same time that York Minster was being built, work on an even grander scale saw the king at that time commission hundreds of Buddhist temples. Their pin p****steeples pierce the skyline almost as far as you can see, from palatial gold-tippled complexes to humbler brick-built temples the size of a man. We spent a day cycling around and another on a horse-and-cart (a popular way to get around in Myanmar), although our horse-and-cart trip was cut short by our very irritable horse who kept bucking and kicking and who it turned out was hungry and had to be taken home.
There are only so many temples you can climb and Buddhas you can admire. So our third day in Bagan we did what we had to - and spent the day by the pool in one of the posh hotels in town and blew our budget on cocktails.
Another painful bus journey (11 hours this time) and we were in the cooler climes of Kalaw in eastern Myanmar, where we booked ourselves onto what seemed like the sensible thing to do - a trek among the tribal villages in the hills. Now, we walked pretty hard in India - all that elephant chasing involved some pretty steep climbs - but this was painful. It still got pretty hot during the day and our feet blistered and our legs ached. We dripped in sweat and breathed in dust. And we complained! But we stopped in tiny villages where we were welcomed and given the locally-grown green tea, fresh from being dried in the sun, and we rested our pathetically weary bones and felt ashamed at the small offerings of sweets and pens and other goodies we'd brought in the face of such hospitality. It's not often in Britain that we'd see someone strolling past we didn't know and invite them in for a tea and biccies. However, the view from the the small rooms where we stayed that night made up for the pain and we hobbled back into Kalaw after two days and 30kms of walking (it really did feel like more) before opting for the *relative* comfort of a taxi to Lake Inle (the town of Naung Shwe), two hours down the road.
This was a world away - houses on stilts and streets of water and one of the strangest ways of rowing I've ever seen. You wrap your leg around the oar and, standing at the back of the boat (more of a long, wide canoe), row one-legged in a strange jerking dance. We braved our sore muscles and cycled part-way round the lake - stopping to explore Maung Thauk, a village in two halves - a dry half and a 'floating' half, which we saw by boat, a delighful way to see what life is like on water - we even stopped at the 'pub' for a drink. The next day we took a boat on a more touristy tour around the lake - and for the first time on the trip were scuppered by some very British drizzle. The lake, surrounded by high hills, was beautiful in a very Scottish sort of way.
Then we all took very deep breaths (and some of us Valium) and boarded our last Burmese bus, bound for Yangon. We arrived 18 hours later. Despite our fears, and another 4.30am wake-up call, it was the best bus we'd been on - air conditioned, enough room to stretch out, and no-one crammed into the aisle.
And so back to Bangkok. The Khao San Road is bigger and brasher than ever, and, peculiarly, has become a bit of a going-out spot for Thai people. The city is so much cleaner and more efficient here than when I first came, and with the Thai women in their kitten heels, and karaoke bars, it feels a little like Tokyo. The Japanese have a lot to answer for: karaoke is huge everywhere. We were plagued with easy-listening Burmese cover versions of everything from Guns and Roses to Roberta Flack on the buses in Myanmar, but the highlight (or otherwise) was a taxi-cum-karaoke booth we took here in here in Bangkok - the driver serenading us through his microphone as he gave more of his attention to the words on his tiny TV screen than the road.
We are doing more admin and, of course, a bit of R&R here before setting on by bus (groan!) to Siem Reap in Cambodia (and Angkor Wat) on Saturday. We might even indulge ourselves and have a massage, which will hopefully be better than the Ayurvedic one we had in India, which was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had. There was no room for modesty. Naked and oiled we had, at one point, to lie first on our front and then backs in the lotus position. Chris must have had an inkling of what was to come and was wise enough to opt out of that one.
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