Myanmar: Final Thoughts

I had an amazing time in Myanmar. The country is beautiful and the food was delicious. Almost everyone was exceedingly kind and friendly; in most places, I felt welcomed with open arms. While I am very glad to have had the opportunity to travel through Myanmar, I did have some reservations about going. I’ve continued to grapple with them having visited and come home, too.

First, an extremely condensed version of Myanmar’s modern history: the country, then Burma, achieved independence from Britain in 1948. The man responsible for this incredible moment in Burmese history was the revolutionary General Aung San. He was assassinated just six months before Burma saw independence from Britain. Aung San (colloquially known as “Bogyoke” by the Myanmar people) is still widely loved and his legacy has been carried on by his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi. But more on her later.

The transition to independence was tumultuous. 1962 brought a coup d’état by General Ne Win, leading to the establishment of a military government. There were several student protests against the government throughout the 60s and 70s, all of which were violently suppressed. Ne Win remained in power for 26 years.

In 1988, there was the 8888 Uprising (so named for the fact that many of the events occurred on August 8, 1988). It began with university students in Yangon, and quickly spread throughout the country. Unfortunately the call for democracy was not fulfilled, and these protests, like the ones of the prior decades, were suppressed by the military. The Myanmar government claims 350 people died in the protests; everyone else puts that figure in the thousands. Aung San Suu Kyi, a prominent figure in the National League for Democracy, was placed under house arrest. 6,000 other supporters of the NLD were detained as well.

In the 1990 elections, the NLD won 392 of 495 seats in Parliament. Additionally, they received 59% of the national votes. Of course, the junta (military government) declared the election null and void, and remained in power. (Aung San Suu Kyi, by the way, remained under house arrest for 15 of 21 years, and was only released in 2010.)

When the 2010 elections rolled around -surprise, surprise- the Union Solidarity and Development Party (aka the military) won. Although this coincided with Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, the NLD chose not to participate in the elections. In 2012, international powers were invited to monitor the elections for fraudulent activity, which was met with varying success. It did, however, lead to the lifting of economic sanctions the USA and Europe had long imposed on Myanmar. This also meant that American and European citizens now were allowed to travel to Myanmar.

Thus a booming tourist industry was born. For the past two years, this industry has greatly expanded and has injected new life into Myanmar’s economy. The question is, how should one feel about traveling to a country with a history (and present) of such gross human rights abuses?

Suppression of democracy is not Myanmar’s only problem, either. Their treatment of certain ethnic groups, such as the Rohingya Muslims, is appalling. These groups of people are made to live in concentration camps, and the violence against them is terrifying. The New York Times has had several excellent articles that explain the situation much better than I can.

Since the government controls everything, including the tourism industry, most tourist dollars go directly to the government. You’re asked to pay a fee for entering certain zones (such as Bagan and Inle Lake). Although they tell you that this money goes toward the preservation of the area, you can be sure that most of that money goes right to the junta. The same for hotels: many hotels are government owned, and even the ones that aren’t still must pay a heavy tax to the military.

At the same time, there are ways to support the people of Myanmar. By booking tours through private companies (and tipping at the end, since all of that money goes to the guide), and buying handicrafts from markets and street vendors instead of in large, government-owned stores, you can direct your dollars to the people who need it the most.

It’s also important to remember that the views of the government do not necessarily reflect the views of the people. Aside from our insane taxi driver who spewed his hate for Muslims, I did not encounter any hostility like that from anyone else. Ko Min, our trekking guide, freely discussed how he is a firm supporter of the NLD and that the government is incredibly corrupt. It’s not exactly a secret, after all.

I am very glad that I was able to see Myanmar for myself. Yes, giving money to a government that I do not support in any way is a tough pill to swallow. But going there allowed me to learn much more about the country, and most importantly, to see its changing political climate with my own eyes. I believe that large scale changes are on the horizon for Myanmar, and I sincerely hope that all issues, from basic human rights to democracy, are addressed.

Anyway, this concludes my recaps of Myanmar. I’ll be back soon with some life-in-Malaysia stuff to share!

Mandalay

Our last stop in Myanmar was a whirlwind, one day tour of Mandalay. Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar, located about 9 hours north (by bumpy bus) of Yangon. Mandalay is home to the Royal Palace, as well as the highest concentration of monks in Myanmar.

Since we had such limited time there, we decided the best way to see the city would be renting a taxi for the day (with another of Alex’s friends and a friend of his). The four of us flagged down the first guy we saw, and negotiated a $32 tab for the day. A pretty good deal, right?

That was, of course, until we found out about our taxi driver’s political leanings. He kicked off the ride by showing us a video on his phone of an Israeli parliament member espousing the evils of Islam. After a brief and bizarre misunderstanding of his thinking that we were all Muslim, he quickly backtracked and told us that he was a simple working man who didn’t involve himself in politics. All of this before 10 am.

Anyway, our first stop of the day was the Mandalay Royal Palace. In case you had any questions about who’s in charge…

“Tatmadaw” is the official name for the military in Myanmar, which also happens to serve as the government. How convenient.

The Mandalay Royal Palace, as I mentioned before, is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Mandalay. It was built between 1857 and 1859, and served as the palace for the last monarchy in Myanmar, the Konbaung Dynasty. It was first occupied by King Mindon, and later by his son, King Thibaw.

This is the Mandalay Palace Watch Tower:

And here are some views from the top:

Overall, it was a cool attraction but not worth making a specific trip to Mandalay.

Moving right along, our next stop was the Schwenandaw Monastery. It was built in 1880 by King Thibaw, who dedicated the space to his father.

 

Those are teak carvings, which are commonly found in temples, pagodas and monasteries around Myanmar.

Next we visited the Kuthodaw Pagoda.

Our last stop before lunch was Mandalay Hill, which is actually how the city got its name. This was my favorite site of the day so far, as I’m a sucker for a great scenic vista.

We were just about gnawing our arms off at this point, and made our way to Spice Garden Restaurant for lunch. We stuffed ourselves silly with delicious Indian food, of which I took exactly zero pictures. What can I say? We ate fast.

Our lengthy morning of sightseeing combined with an enormous lunch made us quite sleepy, but we did manage to squeeze in one more stop on our tour.

If you were wondering where you could find the longest and oldest teak bridge in the world, the answer is Mandalay. U Bein Bridge, a 1.2 km walking bridge, was built in 1850 and is every bit as rickety as you would expect.

It was a nice way to end our marathon day of sightseeing, even if we had to endure a rambling account of our taxi driver’s many illegal transgressions (including but not limited to dealing heroin and pimping) on the way back to our hotel. A colorful guy, indeed.

I’ll be doing one more post on my final thoughts about traveling to Myanmar, addressing some issues that I mentioned in my introductory post awhile back. Stay tuned!

Trekking Through Myanmar

I still have a couple more Myanmar recaps coming your way (slowly, but surely). Today, I’d like to tell you about my favorite part of the trip: our trek through the countryside.

Incidentally, this was the part of the trip to which I was least looking forward. Alex loves to hike. I do not. Hiking is essentially just walking uphill, so I guess that’s partially why I don’t really understand the appeal. Of course, it’s all worth it when you reach the summit and you can Instagram the beautiful views, right? Anyway, over the past couple years, I have become less averse to hiking as I’ve started to do it more and more. That said, I was still not sure that I was up to the task of trekking (read: walking) 36 miles over the course of 3 days. But Alex was dying to do it, so I womaned up and accepted the challenge.

We started in Kalaw, where most of the treks begin. There we met up with a couple of Alex’s friends, one of whom had arranged a guide for us. Our guide’s name was Ko Min, and he was awesome. Over the next three days, he would lead us through woods, over mountains and past many, many farms to Inle Lake, our final destination.

The cost of the whole trip? $36 for three days. This included food, housing and Ko Min’s services. So if you’re looking for a cheap way to see Myanmar, trekking is a great option.

So we set off on Thursday morning, hiking for about 2.5 hours before breaking for lunch. Some shots from along the way…

A little break for lunch…

Chapati and pickled cabbage

View from the farm where we ate lunch

So with our bellies full, we headed out into the heat of the afternoon to finish up the day’s hike.

A woman separates out green tea from her farm.

We passed by a school at one point, and it just so happened to be recess. All of the kids immediately ran over to the guys, wanting to play a game of “Helicopter.”

Since boys rule and girls drool, I didn’t get to partake but I did get some good photos! They were total hams for the camera.

As we walked, we did make a few stops to rest. The drink of choice was always hot tea, which makes sense given that it grows everywhere, but strange because I never think to drink hot tea in hot weather (though this is common in Malaysia as well). Here’s a shot from a roadside tea stand:

Later on, we took a snack break shortly before reaching our destination for the evening. On the menu? Fresh yogurt with a little sugar and sliced banana. Given my stomach troubles earlier on in Myanmar, and the fact that I don’t equate dairy with being the most refreshing thing on a hot day, I was a little wary of it. Ko Min seemed to sense that, and assured me that it was “safe to eat.” Good to know. It actually did turn out to be a nice little treat.

Around 5 or so, we reached our homestay, located in a small village of about 100 people. Families receive a small stipend for allowing us to stay, and we get to see how Myanmar families live.

There was no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. Instead, they had a giant battery hooked up to provide a couple lights upstairs. Showering was done outside with a bucket of water. I did not end up showering because I actually wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Women usually wear a kind of towel cover-up while they shower, but I didn’t have one. Nor did I think to bring a bathing suit, which probably would have been my best option. Oh well. I contented myself with make-up remover wipes and being quite smelly for the next few days.

These were our beds (excuse the blurriness)…

The view from our room, both when we arrived and by sunset, was absolutely gorgeous.

We were absolutely exhausted, and were all asleep by 7:30. Which was fine, because we were up-and-at-’em early the next day…

This breakfast was delicious: tons of fresh fruit, and crepes with chocolate. And tea. Always tea.

We needed it, too, because Day 2 was the most grueling day. I think we did around 14 miles altogether, but the morning was especially long (around 8.5 or 9 miles).

As beautiful as Day One’s mountains were, I think I liked the scenery of Day Two even more. Between the farms and rolling hills, I half-expected Maria von Trapp to pop up and start singing.

This complex of pagodas was planted in the middle of the woods, and we randomly happened upon them.

Almost there…

We made it to our second homestay, with a steaming hot cup of victory tea waiting to be imbibed on arrival.

We awoke the next day for our last day of hiking, which would bring us the shores of Inle Lake. Admittedly, I was both physically and camera-ally fatigued at this stage, so I don’t really have many pictures from the last push.

Here is the amazing Ko Min, though, as we were ferried across Inle to our hotel:

As lengthy as this post is, it’s an extremely condensed version of all the amazing things that we saw in our trek. It was long and tiring, but completely worth it.

If you’re looking for an excellent guide for your own trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake, please consider booking with Ko Min. You can email him at kalawcountryside@gmail.com, or find him in Kalaw right next to the Honey Pine Hotel (it’s a small town and is easy to find).

 

Bagan

After a harrowing 9-hour bus ride from Yangon, we arrived in Bagan at around 4 am. Bagan is a city located about 3 hours southwest of Mandalay, and is known for having the highest concentration of Buddhist pagodas and temples in the world. There used to be over 10,000 such structures in the Bagan region, and 2,200 of them are still standing today. 

In order to enter the Bagan Archaeological Zone, you must pay a $15 fee. I’ve been trying to determine how much of that money goes toward the preservation of Bagan, and how much ends up lining the pockets of the government. The notorious corruption in Myanmar leads me to believe a significant portion of that money goes to the military. Nevertheless, the fee is unavoidable (even if you roll in in the wee hours of the morning). 

I also have another glowing review for the hotels in Myanmar. The Zfreeti Hotel allowed us go to our room as soon as we arrived, despite the fact that it was about 10 hours before check in time. Given our sorry state, we were eternally grateful.

While Alex was still feeling under the weather, I felt well enough to go on a short walk that afternoon…

It was so oppressively hot that I was only out for about 30 minutes. Strolling around, I realized, is not the way most people see Bagan. It’s far too hot and sprawling for that. Still, it was a great taste of what we would see the following day.

By the next day, with both of us back in tip-top shape, we hired a horse cart to take us around to the different pagodas.

Our first stop also happened to be my favorite pagoda of the day. The caretaker (and seller of souvenirs) told us a little bit about the history of it, and let us take in a view of the region from the top.

This painting of Buddha is over 800 years old, and made it all the way to 1975 without much incident. An earthquake that year did significant damage (we heard a lot about this infamous earthquake throughout the day).

And to answer your question, yes, our feet were quite grubby even after just one pagoda (you always take your shoes off when entering a Buddhist temple). 

Next up was the Thatbyinnyu Temple, one of the tallest pagodas around at 216.5 feet. 

Roundabout Pagoda #6, temple fatigue was hitting us hard. We were sitting outside of (another) pagoda, when a woman told me that I looked very hot and motioned for us to come with her. She mixed us up some thanaka, a paste made from ground bark that women put on their faces as make-up. It also has the wonderful side effect of being a protectant from the sun and cooling on the skin. It’s not uncommon for little kids, or even men, to wear it as a facial sunscreen.

We both felt much better and ready to take on (a little) more sightseeing before lunch.

I know I don’t have a whole lot of information about individual temples, but they all started blending together a bit. I wasn’t interested so much in the individual architecture of each one as I was in the overall feeling of Bagan. It felt so different from Yangon: though touristy, it was quieter and better suited my mood for the couple of days that we were there. What I’m trying to say, even though it’s incredibly cheesy, is that Bagan felt magical to me. I was enchanted by the landscape, and the continued kindness of the Myanmar people. 

 

 

Yangon

After a two-week(+) hiatus, I’m back from Myanmar/Burma with pictures and stories and fun facts to share. I mentioned in my last post that I had something prepared about the ethics of visiting Myanmar, but I’m saving that post for later on. I have some new insights that I’d like to add in, and I’m still gathering my thoughts on the whole experience.

But first, let’s backtrack: Alex and I have been in Myanmar, formerly Burma, for the past two weeks. Our trip went like this:

May 30th-June 1st: Yangon (formerly Rangoon, and formerly Yangon before that. Colonialism makes things confusing.)

June 1st-4th: Bagan

June 4th: Kalaw

June 5th-7th: Trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake. I remember exactly zero names of the villages we passed through on the way…great when you’re writing a blog, I know.

June 7th-10th: Inle Lake

June 11th-12th: Mandalay

If you’re sitting there thinking, “Wow, I don’t know a single thing about any of these places at all,” then you’re about where I was about a month ago. I was aware than Myanmar is a country located somewhere near India (right next to it, as it turns out), and that Yangon is the nation’s capital. I didn’t find out until I got to Yangon that it’s not actually the capital. 0/1 on my Myanmar trivia.

But Yangon is the only city you can fly into from Kuala Lumpur, and so it was our first stop. Despite no longer being the nation’s capital (it was moved to Naypyidaw in 2006), Yangon remains the largest city in Myanmar. It is chaotic and congested in the same way as many Asian cities. The sidewalks, crowded with everyone from tiny monks no older than seven to street vendors hawking tempting bites of fried food, must be carefully navigated in order to avoid bumping into anyone. The acrid smell of exhaust fumes permeates every breath one takes. Traffic, needless to say, is a nightmare.

That said, Yangon appealed to me in that it is the least Westernized city that I’ve ever visited. There were no McDonald’s or Starbucks dotting every corner (or any corner, for that matter). Aside from a few foreign visitors in the city and an apparently increasing number of donut shops, the West has not yet arrived in Yangon. I found this refreshing, though I doubt it will remain this way for long. While most people were welcoming, I also got the sense that a sizable number of people resent the rapid arrival of tourism in their once-isolated country. Mixed in with the kindness were more than a few disapproving looks. Though it’s difficult to describe exactly why, I found this weirdly refreshing.

Spending a couple days in Yangon was a great introduction to what the rest of our experience in Myanmar would bring. Here are some of the highlights.

Located in downtown Yangon, the Sule Pagoda is said to have been built over 2,500 years ago. In addition to being a Buddhist place of worship, it also served as a meeting place during the protests of 1988 and 2007.

The Shwedagon Pagoda, not to be outdone, is said to be over 2,600 years old. It is the most significant Buddhist site in Myanmar, boasting the largest pagoda in the country and an impressive array of smaller shrines. We went for sunrise one morning, witnessing the complex coming alive for the day. It was one of the most memorable aspects of the entire trip.

Yangon was also where we were introduced to Burmese food. My favorite dish was a bowl of rice noodles, topped with a spicy peanut sauce; cilantro; crispy, fried onions; raw onions and cabbage. It costed $0.50 on the street and even came with a bowl of soup. I had it on our first night, when it was pitch black out, but here’s a picture of a similar dish (because clearly I need to show you what a bowl of noodles looks like):

Unfortunately, our luck with food took a turn for the worse. On our last night, we went to 19th Street to enjoy some of its famous grilled “street meat.” Essentially, you choose from a wide array of skewered meats and vegetables (which have been sitting out for an indeterminate amount of time), which the restaurant then grills and serves to you. Well, that turned out as well as you’d expect. We both got food poisoning, which lingered for the next couple of days, and nearly caused us to miss our bus to Bagan the following night.

Luckily, the hotel (Hninn Si Budget Inn) where we were staying was owned by the nicest woman in Yangon, Khine. Not only did she let us stay way past check out time, but she even gave us medicine, electrolyte drinks and chicken soup. We wouldn’t have made it to Bagan without her!

 

While our last day in Yangon was sidelined by sickness, I found that our first two days there were enough to see the major sites and get a feel for the city. If anything, it made me anxious to leave the city and see what else Myanmar had to offer.