Finally, our latest episode from Burma. Things have been pretty hectic since we started our gig in Australia, but I managed to put this short (3 minutes) video together highlighting our trip to this interesting land. In it are all of the places we mentioned in our posts: Shwedagon Pagoda, Inle Lake, and the weekly market. Hope you enjoy.

If Southeast Asia were Oz, we found its Emerald City. We could do things like drink tap water, not have to dodge open sewers, take trains anywhere (let alone count on them being clean and arriving on time), and strain our necks looking up at the skyscrapers. It was a wonderland of comfort and cosmopolitan guilty pleasures. Perhaps the downside of it would be we don’t have any crazy or fun stories to tell, other than that we thoroughly enjoyed the riverside skyline, museums, parks, wide shopping avenues, hollywood blockbusters, and the opportunity of trying any kind of food you can imagine.

Because traveling to Burma is something of a weighty decision, we made a difficult promise to ourselves before setting foot there: to shed 9 months worth of thick traveler’s skin. This is the stuff that you get from traveling to places like Egypt and India, the wariness of dealing with locals who, in those places, seem to only ever want to get at the contents of your wallet.

Conversing without a catch

By the advice of some other travelers who had been to Burma, we elected to be open to any and all to approach us while in this troubled country. We had heard that some people just wanted to practice their English; others looking for contact with the West (or Outside in general); and some looking to discuss politics. Because of the severity of the situation, we figured these kinds of interactions were crucial to getting the most out of a slightly controversial trip, and they were worth the potential risk of talking to the wrong types of people who often approach you while backpacking in Asia.

The Student

“Hi, where are you from?” asked the young looking, well-kept guy that appeared from behind me as we walked through a crowded street market in downtown Yangon.

A short conversation later, and Val and I had agreed to meet the young student (name withheld for privacy concerns) the next day to help him practice his English conversation, and for him to show us around town a little.

We met him in front of Sule Paya, the center of town, and on the way to the city’s main market, he immediately started telling us about the people’s dire situation. He told us about how he was studying business, and that his older brother (whom he lived with) was paying for his education. In short, he was the main hope of his family; bright and motivated, they were all sacrificing so that he could get an education, hopefully find a good job in either Bangkok or Singapore, and send enough money back home to support the family.

His English was amazing, and he was incredibly polite, and more interestingly for us, very forthcoming about the political situation in Myanmar. When we asked if he was worried that he’d get in trouble for talking to us, he assured us that as long as we spoke in English, everything would be fine.

While showing us around some of the main sites in Yangon, he told us about the restrictions on the internet, the censorship of the press, and the tens of thousands of starving people in Myanmar. “They know it, but they don’t care,” he said a few times, shaking his head. He was referring to how the military junta could spend money on whatever they wanted, yet somehow neglect to feed hungry people, even in Yangon.

He also gave us tips on how to avoid giving the government money, some of which weren’t in our guidebooks or on the internet. He gave us a list of acceptable bus companies and encouraged us to change money on the black market.

Probably the most shocking thing we learned from our friend was that he had at one time been forced to live on the streets with his older brother. His older brother, he told us, had been very good to him. He was past the age at which most Burmese men marry, but could not afford to support both his younger brother and a wife. So until he graduated and hopefully went overseas looking for work, he could not find a wife. His eyes almost filled with tears as he explained how good his older brother had been to him.

At one point, when his brother lost his job, they lived on the streets. They spent a whole week with nothing to eat, and weren’t sure what would happen to them. Finally, his older brother got a job in construction, and now they live together in a small apartment.

It was an eye-opening experience talking to our young (20) friend, who has more drive than anyone I knew growing up. When we left him we sincerely wished him well, and thanked him for telling us so much about his country.

Jack London and some Lychee

While waiting at a travel agent’s office at the main shopping area in Yangon alone, I was approached by a kindly looking old man. He wore clothes that should have been replaced years ago, looked a little too thin, and carried two large plastic bags, worn from repeated use. One was full of clothes or rags; it was difficult to tell. The other held books, sharing space with a pile of lychees.

“Hello,” he said with a warm grin. I greeted him back. He asked where I was from, and so I told him. An even warmer grin spread across his face. “I love America,” he said as he leaned forward. “It is like a kind of paradise.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said, not sure quite how to react.

“Oh, no. It is paradise. I love America. I love their ideas, the things they do,” he said, clearly undeterred by my hesitancy to accept such glowing, forgiving praise.

“Well, we don’t always do the right thing, but I think we try,” I said, making a compromise more with myself than with him. It was obvious at this point he didn’t care whether or not I recognized the complexity of the actions of the United States. He would not be deterred.

“How do you like my country,” he asked, hopeful and cautious.

“Oh,” I said, “It is beautiful here. I wish I could see more. And the people are so friendly.”

He continued smiling, obviously happy with my reply. I was expecting him to want to talk about the situation with the government, the international community, etc. Instead, he started talking about Jack London.

“I’ve read all of his books,” he said, quite proudly. “I study English and read his books.” As he said this he reached into one of his old plastic bags and pulled out an ancient copy of “Sea Wolf,” written by none other than Jack London. He went into a long, and incredibly difficult to understand explanation of why he liked him so much. He asked me if I was alone, and I said my “wife” (sometimes just easier) was back at the hotel.

“Ah, you have a better half?” he asked, clearly pleased. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out several handfulls of lychee, insisting I take them. I tried to refuse, but he was persistent, so I politely accepted his gift, promising to share them with my “wife.”

The Junta

The government of Myanmar is an authoritarian military dictatorship, often referred to as the junta. They are in complete control of the country. There is no freedom of speech or press, and they actively attempt to block the majority of internet sites, particularly news and communications, especially email.

While we were in the country, they announced that Aung Su Kyi was to be held under house arrest for another year. Many of her supporters, and probably most of the country, had hoped she would be released at the end of her most recent term. We had to hear about this from a fellow traveler; it would never appear in any of the country’s newspapers, all of which are heavily censored. We found a few copies of “The New Light of Myanmar,” which is the official government-run English newspaper. It consists mainly of positive stories about the government and the generals, and absolutely nothing about the opposition or anything that would make them look bad.

We were out of Yangon at the time, but our student friend told us that there were several demonstrations when people heard the news (on the BBC, since the in-country news outlets are all state run and wouldn’t announce something like that). Many people were arrested, even those attending a peaceful ceremony at a major pagoda, where people merely prayed for the release of Ang Suu Kyi. He even told us that locals were under a curfew for the next several days, although foreigners wouldn’t be affected.

Our student friend also said he is very careful who he talks to when he is in public, like at a bus stop. He said the government has hired spies who walk around the city center in plain clothes, trying to pick up the mood on the street or get wind of important events. For this reason he rarely speaks to strangers.

He also said that many people in the country pay very little attention to the actions of the government. This, he thinks, is because they are so poor they are simply trying to survive and take care of themselves, and don’t want to get involved in politics. He admitted that he was very careful to avoid political situations or conversations (except with foreigners in English) for fear of being arrested or getting into trouble of any kind.

More information about the state of affairs in Myanmar is available from multiple sources on the internet. If you are interested, please take a look.

We cruised on a long boat through neighborhoods built right on the water. The inhabitants row their boats by standing on one end and using one leg to move the paddle. Their hundreds of tiny little foot muscles must be insanely strong!

It seemed like one of those places that has stayed pretty much the same for decades. All over the lake you can find fishermen with old school Southeast Asian nets as well as seaweed farmers hacking and lifting piles of the stuff onto their boats. We also saw people working hard in tomato gardens floating entirely on the water.

People in the surrounding villages gather to sell their stuff in a different place on different days of the week, and we rocked up in our boat to one of these markets. It was good fun, just a lot of people bustling around the mud (it rained heavily the night before) looking for good produce, underwear, or whatever else they need/want. I didn’t do so well navigating in the mud and my foot got stuck. I was unsuccessfully trying to yank it out while leaning to the side to let a few people through who were carrying sacks bigger than me on their heads. It was stressfully funny.

And here’s a photo of a cute lady who was selling cabbage:

We went on a hike through some hilly farmland and encountered some seriously awesome swarms of dragonflies. And of course some really cute and kind-hearted kids who gave us flowers and mangoes.

Not to mention, our hotel, the Aquarius Inn, had the most incredible hospitality of the entire trip. They were always over-the-top with kindness and anytime they found you lounging around, they’d bring bananas with honey and local soy snacks with tea.

Inle rocks!

More Than Meets The Eye

Away from the stunning, gold-covered elegance of the main compound lies a small, peaceful shrine under the shade of a beautiful bodhi tree. Legend has it that this robust specimen is a clipping from the very tree the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath in Bodgaya, India.

When we stumbled upon the place, there wasn’t much happening there. Just a few people milling around, the sound of the wind rattling the chimes at the top of the nearby gold-covered pagoda, and some birds who probably have no idea they’re loitering near such a famous tree.

Welcome to Downtown Different

We started out in the major city, Yangon. Fresh from the airport and checked into our hotel, we hit the pavement looking for lunch and having no idea what to expect. We walked down the main avenue and saw locals shouting good deals for their goods, families strolling together, and friends arm-in-arm. Most of the people (male and female) were wearing a longhi, a traditional long tied skirt with anything from t-shirts to dress shirts with them. We thought it was pretty cool.

Our first reaction was to ask, “What happened to all of the foreigners?” Since we only went to major cities and tourist sites in heavily foreigner-visited Vietnam, it was a pleasant surprise. It sounds elitist, snobby, hypocritical, etc., but places are more magical and exciting when you’re the only foreigner around. Actually, it’s mainly better because people in heavily visited places are not only used to you, but have come up with clever ways to overcharge you. Not so in Burma. 99% of the time if someone looked at you they’d smile warmly and sometimes say hello. Other people just minded their own business as if you weren’t there. It was so great. It was almost never difficult to find a fair price for taxis, food, water, etc. If they inflated some of the prices a little, however, it’d be pretty hard to notice. We went to a restaurant three days in a row (lunch and dinner!) for their uberdelicious $1 all-you-can-eat Indian meals. $1! Incredible!

Shwedagon Pagoda

One of the shocks of Yangon is the unavoidable poverty. Most buildings are pretty dilapidated, the cars are ancient, and fabulous displays of wealth are few and far between. Unbelievably, the largest pagoda complex in the city is almost completely covered in gold and jewels!

Shwedagon Pagoda allegedly holds 8 hairs of Buddha inside, and is the most important Buddhist site in the country. Our guidebook lists 57 different things to see, ranging from holy bodhi trees to zodiac and planetary temples.

My jaw was wide open for about the entire two hours we walked around, and the place was definitely one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

Despite the problems mentioned in our post, Sapa is undeniably beautiful. In this 3 minute episode of BTBtv, we check out the natural scenery, complete with background noise – from waterfalls, to birds chirping, to truck horns. Enjoy!

Instead, Hanoi sports a fairly similar level of craziness and chaos to Saigon. The streets are just narrower and shadier, yet the scooter traffic zips by with the same orderly chaos and noise. The old quarter, where we based ourselves, has nearly impossible noise levels. We changed hotels here more than anywhere else, constantly searching for a place where we could sleep uninterrupted until a reasonable hour. If it wasn’t the scooters and the traffic, it was construction on a nearby building. Or it was the Voice of Vietnam, the national radio network, being blared at ear-splitting levels at 7:30am from a speaker across the street.

Irrational expectations and sleepless nights aside, Hanoi is pretty cool. The old quarter is always bustling, and is packed with shops. The further from the main tourist center you get, the fewer tour offices there are and the more interesting things get. The nearby lake is also really pretty, and is a relative oasis of calm. It’s a great place to sit, or walk, just about any time of day.

Hanoi is where you can visit Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, complete with his embalmed body lying in state. We never made it, due to an increasingly strong feeling of tourism fatigue. Rather than hitting the sights all day, we prefered to find a good place to watch life go by, and sat around enjoying Vietnamese coffee or some “bia hoy.”

“Bia Hoy” means “fresh beer,” and is just slightly chilled beer that comes out of kegs. It doesn’t have preservatives, so it really is (and must be) fresh. There are places all over the city to sit and drink it, for as little as 2,000 dong (about 12.5 cents) a glass. Most spots consist of an elderly person and a few kegs, some glasses, and lots of red plastic chairs. Several street corners in the old quarter are packed with people in the evenings, chatting and drinking lots of bia hoy. I’d have to say it’s easily my favorite feature of the city.

We planned a visit without getting our hopes up too much though, for a couple of reasons. Some of our friends (tomo) and other travelers warned us of a lack of tourism regulation, resulting in things like dirty water, overdevelopment, and just plain too many tourists. Also we’re often weary of tours in general, and we hadn’t given ourselves enough time to plan out a visit (way to get there, way to sail around, place to stay, etc) all on our own.

So after talking to some other people and looking online, we settled on a two-day/one-night tour of the bay. When we got to the dock to find our boat and set sail, it was hilarious. There were dozens and dozens of boats all crammed together with little or no organization to be seen. We were led to our boat via climbing on and off two others. Then, as we pulled out, we watched all the boats (ours included) bumping into each other to start their tours. We wondered how much normal wear and tear accelerates by doing things so haphazardly. And of course, when we got back the next day, it was the same deal but in reverse. Priceless.

The scenery was as stunning as I’d hoped, and it never disappointed as the hours went by. I got very excited sailing in between the huge limestone karsts. The bay is so huge that all of those other boats were somehow able to spread out enough so that all the romance wasn’t sucked out.

Unfortunately, a couple of things about the tour were disappointing as I’d thought they might be. We were rushed through each “activity” – 30 minutes of sea kayaking (instead of the promised hour), a 15 minute hike through a cave and up a hill, a lot of fried food, etc.

But the other people on the tour were a lot of fun to hang out with, and as I said the scenery was fantastic, so all and all it was a pretty good trip.

Nature’s Air Conditioner

The small town of Sapa, high in the mountains near the border with China, was built originally as a French hill station. You can find such hill stations anywhere the European established colonies. Before the time of air conditioning, it was the only way to escape the oppressive heat and humidity of the tropics.

Sapa’s cool climate is only one of the draws, although it’s fantastic. After sweating our way through most of India, Thailand, Cambodia, and the rest of Vietnam, it was our first cool weather since leaving Nepal. It can heat up a little during the day, but if the clouds roll in and swallow the town, the temperature drops. In the evenings it can get really cool, even in summer, requiring a fleece. It was heavenly.

They Grow Stuff Up Here?

Another reason people visit Sapa is for the beautiful green mountains and valleys, cut with thousands and thousands of terraces. For some reason I never tire of looking at them, marveling at the ingenuity and difficulty in building such things. From any vantage in town, or even out your window, you can see misty mountains, lines of terraces growing rice and other crops spilling down toward the flattened valley floor below. It’s quite a sight.

Hello! You Buy From Me?

One of the biggest reasons people visit Sapa, however, is to catch a glimpse of some of the interesting and colorful ethnic minorities living in the area. The area around Sapa primarily supports peoples of the Dzao and H’Mong minorities, whose distinctive dress makes them visible even as your minibus defies physics and sanity on the way up. The Dzao women are easy to pick out because they wear red scarves around their heads. The H’Mongs (subdivided into several different groups) wear navy blue garments and flat-topped cylindrical hats, all woven with plenty of colorful embroidery.

Most of the tourism options in the area center around guided hikes and trips to the surrounding villages, often with a homestay or overnight stop in the village. This sounds like fun, and I’ve heard good reports, but it’s not really our style. Allow me to explain.

From the second you set foot in Sapa, you are hounded by groups of women selling souvenirs. They sell blankets, bracelets, headscarves, bracelets, shirts, pants, etc. It’s all handmade and some of it is quite beautiful. The problem, however, lies with the way they go about it. They stalk tourists around town, peering against restaurant or shop windows, waiting for people to come out or trying to interest them while they are still inside the restaurant. During breakfast alone we had to say no to half a dozen or more women, from age 8 or so up until who knows, all hawking their wares.

It gets really tiresome, especially when they try to pretend to be your friend first. They all have a well-rehearsed script. The first time you hear it, you might be slightly fooled into thinking they have a genuine interest in some sort of cultural exchange. Fifteen times (and usually about fifteen minutes) later, you know it exactly for what it is and it’s frustrating, annoying, and a little sad. Here’s the standard exchange:

“Hello, what country?”
“America.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kevin.”
“How old are you?”
“25.”
“How many brothers and sisters you have?”
“2 brothers.”
“Are you the oldest or youngest?”
“I’m the middle.”
“Oh. You buy this from me?”
“No thanks.”
“Maybe later?”
“No.”
“OK, you buy from me later. OK?”

At that point you ignore them. This might not sound so bad, but it’s difficult to know what to do. Our last day we wanted to take some pictures of the clouds moving in over the mountains, so we went to the edge of town. A little old lady stood there, obviously lying in wait for us. A car flew past and then she crossed the street, and we could hear her shuffling behind to catch up. We’d been through this countless times before, so we weren’t in the mood. But when they won’t start with the sales pitch, ignoring them completely just comes across as rude. With a big smile on her face, she followed us around to our vantage point, then asked, “Name?” We looked at each other and decided to ignore her. She kept asking over and over again, “Name?” Then I said, “Sorry, no buy. Only picture.” “Yes, picture, picture!” We took our pictures, walked away, and she followed. “Hello, you buy from me?” We continued to ignore her until she disappeared.

As we walked down the road, we tried to come to grips with the fact that we just ignored and were rude to a little old grandmother. Not that we acted improperly, she just wouldn’t take the hint.

We were also followed for about 20 minutes by a group of five women. They asked us all the questions, then asked if we would buy something. We were going on a long day hike, heading out of town. I made the mistake of saying, “Maybe later.” That’s polite talk for, “Leave me alone, thanks.” So they kept following us. We kept heading further and further out of town. Our tempers were on the verge of flaring up. The problem was, we knew they had to live somewhere, so maybe they were just heading in the same direction. Incredibly unlikely, but not impossible. So we said nothing. And what could we say, anyway?

Every once in a while we pulled ahead a little bit, and they lagged behind. Then they would notice, we’d hear some talking, and then five pairs of feet all shuffled to come back within a few feet of us. Eventually, just when I was about to lose my cool, one of them popped up on either side of us, asking if we wanted to buy something. “No, we don’t want to buy anything!”

“But you said maybe later, you’d buy something.” I wanted to scream. They’d hounded us for twenty minutes, pissing us off and preoccupying our thoughts, for that. “No, I buy NOTHING!” And they vanished.

In Conclusion…

Sapa is beautiful. The surrounding mountains are great, and the weather is fantastic. The local peoples are colorful and no doubt interesting. But the place is truly spoiled. We didn’t take any tour operators up on their offers of homestays, etc. We didn’t feel like any of it was genuine. You only see them going about their lives from a distance as you walk down a trail, toiling away in the fields, or as you fly by in a minibus and they hang out by the side of the road. Everything else is just a big sales pitch. And an annoying one at that.