Wandering Scotsman

More Myanmar stories will come when I have a moment. I’m off down to check out the Chiang Rai night market and break my slave to technology mantra. It’s a lot more chilled out here than Chiang Mai.
Myanmar stories to follow…. the sleepy 8 hour boat journey to Bagan, the 1000’sof stupas there, all to ourselves. Getting pissed with the locals (cheap Rum again – like the Perhentians!) and a free Myanmar language class. Bus to Inle Lake – Darren follows more floods as earthquakes hit Chiang Rai (my next destination)…two trucks stuck, only pickups getting through, and 7 travellers with a shitload of Kyats in their wallets….paid out only to get to our destination in ‘locals-style’ in the dark…to our……da da daaaa….flooded hotel. Inle Lake chills and boat trips. Israeli politics discussions in Yangon, and more exotic stories………….

As soon as the boat stopped at Bagan, we knew we were in for a bit of R&R here. Despite the landing area (note, not a pier, a landing area) having a couple of motorised modes of transport for the more plush hotels, it was just a collection of shacks selling stuff, and a load of horses and carts waiting to get as much as they could for taking us to a guesthouse. Two woman, an Italian, and Australian travelling together and rescued Tracy and I’s lack of hardened haggling, and we were off on our bumpy ride up the road for arond $0.50. Splashing out, we decided to have our own rooms, at around $3 each per night…with private bathroom.

Like Cambodia, you usually pay for flights, boats and accommodation in dollars, and everything else in Kyats (although most will happily take dollars for stuff). We didn’t do too much the first day except have a stroll around the main streets, bewildered by another step back in time – the main transport being horse, carts and pushbikes, the rest being made up of motos and large trucks.

At night we were joined by the two woman for a pizza and more travel and life chat. I love meeting different folk when travelling as you tend to have pretty interesting chats about local and internation travel, and anything else that crops up. We finished the first night with a beer in the ‘local’ having a brief chat with an artist. Of course, we had been sucked into buying the ‘hand painted’, sand based buddha paintings on the first temple we visited. The local artist said they were genuine, but we still had our ‘I reckon they were screen printed’ doubts, as everone seemed to be selling them. Despite me paying $34 for two, and the two woman finding them for $7 each, we put it down to experience. At least we gave the seller a bit of entertainment with a ten minute game of paper, scissors and stones to find out which of us would be able to buy the one we both liked. Of course after I parted with my cash, he popped round to a mate’s to find a similar one in different colours for Tracy, happily taking $20 for hers.

The second day here were hired a horseman for the day to be taken around some of the stupas around the area. Like a lot of these things, the general setting was pretty amazing, but once I had seen a few of them, anymore would have been too much. After spending a pretty trivial sunset on our own a the top of the stupa, with thousands more spreading as far as the eye could see, we made a call to leave the following morning to get to Inle Lake, bypassing a couple of other local attractions.

To end up, we were back in the local ‘bar’ chatting to our artist friend, and his mates, having a right good laugh for a couple of hours. They told us some local lingo (largely around telling women whether you liked them, or loved them), we looked at their English lessons, and we tried the local ‘Chee Root’ cigarettes – Myanmar tobacco wrapped in some kind of leaf – all totally above board, but what most men smoked here. We took a couple of group photos, laughed a lot, then retired too late, knowing we were up at 4am to hope we got a space on the 5am bus to Inle Lake.

As we were pretty much surrounded by waterin Mandalay, we didn’t stay around for long, leaving there after only one full day. We took the 8 hour boat trip south to Bagan to see the stupas and temples there, which Lonely Planet compared to Angkor Watt. The journey was pertty uneventful, and you were often too far away from the bank to really see life on the riverbanks. The best thing about the trip was that you were forced to sit and do nothing for a whole day, except eat, write….or drink the bottle of Rum you bought the night before.

The one thing that stood out at me was the boat had 95% tourists on it and it felt like I had left the Myanmar we had grown to enjoy. When the boat temporarily docked at a couple of towns, several locals stood on the pier trying to sell you crafts or bananas, and asking for money. I found it quite hard from our elevated position on the boat, looking down on them, cameras poking around. At least when we travelled by bus, we were the only tourists on it, and you never felt you were throwing your money at things just to make life easy for yourself. One travelling partner put it in a pretty realistic manner a few days later though – we’re here for different reasons, some travelling, and some living, with different purposes, and different backgrounds. I guess sometimes you just have to make yourself as aware as you can of the surroundings, and get on with your travel plans. Despite this, you still have to laugh with the happieness of the locals like one of the kids diving underwater as soon as he saw your camera. then creeping up slowly. I know some people don’t want photographed, but this guy was just having a laugh with us.

We bought bus tickets to Mandalay, against the travel agent’s advice. It was all going well until we got to the outskirts and woke up to grade 1 currents running under our bus. It was quite depressing to see as whole communities had washed away, all heading towards the main road. The floods in some areas were well above the start of the roof of some of the shacks we saw, and the flood plains extended as far as the eye could see. Yesterday buses weren’t getting through so this must have been the floods receded a bit.

Amazingly the bus made it through to Mandalay which wasn’t flooded in the city. It has pretty much been cut off for a few days though, and any of our planned day trips outside the city were well off the agenda. We subsequently heard that at least 100 people lost their homes, and several died but I’d have to verify that. The airport had been closed off as first it was under water, and then you couldn’t get to the city. We spoke to one guy later who had flown to Mandalay, but it took him over 4 hours to get ferried from the airport to the city, and the army were helping out at times.

We managed to take in a day trip out and around some of the usual sites – yet another pagoda, yet another stupa,yet another buddha, and an amazing old teak bridge – the longest apparently amazing one in the world.

We decided to hot foot it to Bagan the next day on the boat. I had heard Mandalay wasn’t too exciting on it’s own, and we weren’t too impressed compared to Yangon, especially without the day trips around.

One thing we had to see was a show from the Moustache Brothers before we left so we went there in the evening. These guys are in their 50’s now, but previously spoke out about the government regime here and promptly got arrested, and thrown in jail for 7 years. They finally got out after some famous comedians spoke out about it, and they featured in a Hugh Grant film as he comments on them while answering a call in a call centre (‘Love Actually’ maybe?). After that they kidded on their performance wasn’t a performance as they didn’t wear costumes. Now it is so well known about they are tolerated.

To be honest I don’t know what the fuss is about. Apparently the show has been the same for years – we sat there and wandered what the hell we were watching – everyone bemused in the audience. It was manic, with a lot of mention of how many government organisations are apparently watching them, some traditional dances from their partners, and other random stuff. Quite an experience, but it wasn’t quite the comedy we expected!

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to access the internet in Myanmar, from a few select places, on dial up.

So far we’ve done a whistle stop tour – one night in Yangon, an 18 hour bus trip to Mandalay for a night, then an 8hr boat trip to spend one day in Bagan. There’s some method in our madness though, as the whole of the area around Mandalay was yes…you guessed it, flooded out. The Bagan buses were sold out for the day we wanted to travel, so against the advice of the travel agent, we grabbed the only bus to Mandalay. As we survived the ‘interesting’ road stop cafes, we arrived on the outskirts driving through the floods -flooded plains as far as the eye could see. We’re still not sure how the bus made it through. Anyway, we saw the Moustache Brothers show, then got the bus the next morning to Bagan. We saw one temple too many here and are getting up at 4am to try and hot foot (well, bus) to Inlay Lake to have a few days chilling out there.

It’s a great place here, but not quite sure in what way. It’s like stepping back in time, with ancient 1950’s buses overloaded with people and goods, horse and carts dashing around (and not just for the tourists), people mending watches at their roadside stalls, and most of the population travelling around on bikes. There’s definitely some poverty though which has been quite sad at times coming on on the western gravy train.

Anyway, more soon. Get here while you can though – it’s definitely an experience!

Yesterday I got my Myanmar visa with no glitches, and no queuing, so fly there in a couple of hours to meet Tracy.

I got back to the hotel yesterday to go for a relaxing swim, but the daily storm passed through for the next 6 hours. I’ve never quite seen a lightning storm quite so big before – you could feel the flashes of lightning, followed by the cracks of thunder just milliseconds later. The road outside had at least a foot of water on it, and the hotel foyer had to be pumped out, with sandbags protecting it. Some poor soul in the restaurant missed her flight to Sri Lanka as it took hours to get across town, then all the taxi stopped running. Still, at least it gave me time to pick her brains on Myanmar as she lived there the last two years, and it now looks like I have done some research.

I’ll be out of touch with the electronic world until at least the 22nd, then I fly up ot Chiang Rai on myown to venture over to Laos, and hopefully meet my sister within a week of that.

This week should be a great adventure. I just hope I have enough dollars as you can’t get cash there.

Yes I’m finally starting to ‘travel’ rather than bum around for bum-arounds sake.

Some people think I’m having a real adventure. Today I went to the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, I escaped when it closed at lunchtime to call my mate to let her know the hassles I was having with my visa (no mobile now only texts incoming, the Malaysian credit has ran out, and I can’t top it up online), then I got a cab back to the embassy. I left there at 4pm. On the way home it pissed it down as soon as the Bangkok Skytrain deposited me at the station. I walked a few hundred metres and I had to squeeze the water out my clothes. And my money. And my travel notes. I think I may have left my bank card at the internet place I was using to call my mate. I went and got the Skytrain back to the internet place, but no joy. I haven’t cancelled it yet though as usually I put things in a safe place then they turn up (like my travel speakers I thought I’d left in Labuan, but I realised several days later I had wrapped them up in my clothes to protect them….a ‘safe’ place). I wanted to get hammered, but my mate had went out with here mate, and I didn’t want to get accosted in some random bars that are a couple of blocks from this neighbourhood, by some goergous woman, who turns out to be a man, and that takes all my money that I can’t access cos I’ve lost my bankcard.

Ahh….the joys of travelling.

So…the Myanmar Tourist Visa. Lonely Planet says ‘takes at least a day’. Get there early. Now my mate had interpreted that as you could get it in a day (no fault in that). Get there early, should really say…”If you want more chance of getting your Myanmar Visa within a day, than you would have of knocking up Claudia Schiffer, arrive there by 6am”.

So here’s the scoop if you want your Myanmar visa from the Bangkok embassy within a day. First of all, think you won’t. Don’t book your flights until you know you are getting your visa the next day (a few did – ouch). “At the time of writing…” if you want your visa in a day, camp out from about 6am – it opens at 8.30am, but just now, they only issue 20 visas on the same day. If you get there well before it opens, today, number 20 got served at around 2.40pm. I was number 46. I turned up 8.35. At 9.40am I passed over my papers to the guy at the desk, passport photos attached, all completed. He glanced them over, and I was thinking “Shit, this is no big deal”. He then handed me a chit of paper with 46 written on it. I sat down. Of course the numbers on the display go up super slowly but you don’t want to leave and come back just incase there is a spurt of activity. At 1pm it closes for lunch (of course). At 9.15am I got a text from Tracy “How’s it going?”. Of course when I tried to text back, my Malaysian Celcom credit had ran out, and there was nothing around the embassy. She was waiting to hear to book flights for tomorrow. Lunchtime came, I cabbed it up to the Siam Centre, grabbed an internet cafe, called here, rushed lunch and headed back.

I soon found out after asking that they only issue 20 visas within the same day. At number 46, I later found out that they only issue 50 numbers a day before sticking up a sign saying ‘come back tomorrow’.

Eventually I got served at 4pm. I had been there since 8.30am. The guy took a slightly longer cursory glance at my papers, took the 825 baht fee, plus of course another 210 bhat for the ‘express’ next day service, and my passport, then handed me a chit, 90 seconds later – ‘come back tomorrow – 11 to 11.30am and get your visa’.

I needed a cold beer. Of course while you try and do this independently, and treat the place like a normal country, there are scores of tour guides and people coming in, handing over batches of 20 passports, then coming back to get served.

But…I’m looking forward to it. Common myths say be careful, but everyone Tracy has spoken to that has actually been there has said it’s one of the friendliest places they’ve been, people running up to them to give them their dropped $500 note (erm, rather a shitload of money to folk there), and very picturesque – I can’t wait.

Tracy leaves to Yangon tomorrow and I fly in the next day, colming back Sunday 22nd. I’ll have no online or phone comms while there for (if you know about the place) obvious reasons, but I look forward to giving an update post trip.

Hopefully after that I’ll be back in The Atlanta Hotel for a night, then maybe biting the bullet and flying to Chang Rai, then over the border to Laos to hopefully meet up with my sister for a few days.