Burma- (Myanmar) 2000

I’m writing this in October, 2017, about our trip to Burma in year 2000.  Burma, officially known as Myanmar, has lately been in the news because of persecution of its ethnic minority, the Rohingya, a Muslim population living in a Buddhist country. The military government recently began a program of ethnic cleansing, resulting in the displacement of more than 300,000 Rohingya, causing them to flee to Bangladesh.  But my story is about our visit to a more peaceful Burma years ago, when few tourists even knew Burma existed.

When people learn that we travel a great deal, they invariably ask what is our favorite country.   Difficult to answer, since there are so many wonderful destinations, but I must say Burma goes right to the top of the list.  Our decision to visit Burma began in 2000 in a small Burmese restaurant in San Francisco, Burma Star.  It was owned by a man in his seventies, and on one visit, as we feasted on their famous tea salad and listened to stories of his exotic homeland, we decided Burma would be our next travel destination.

We learned from fellow travelers about Pandaw, small (about twenty passengers) riverboat cruises, and booked a one-week cruise on the Irrawaddy River (also called the Ayeyarwady), which was the focal point of the trip.  The cruise began in Mandalay and ended seven days and 118 miles later in Bagan. After the riverboat, we spent two more weeks traveling through this fascinating country, which then was still untouched by the outside world.  I don’t know about now, but in year 2000 we found it to be a walk back in time, not only in the rural villages reachable only by riverboat, but the cities as well. 

Where is Burma?  It’s in Southeast Asia, bounded by Thailand and Laos to the east, China to the north and India and Bangladesh to the west.  It has a coastline of 1,200 miles along the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.  It has been occupied since the ninth century, became a British colony in the mid 1800’s and received its independence in 1948, a year after India.

Our trip began in Yangon, formerly called Rangoon, the country’s largest city located in the southwest, on the Bay of Bengal.  We had arranged in advance to stay in a sort of bed and breakfast, Burmese style, and we were met at the airport by our host, a doctor in his sixties, who gave us an indoctrination into the country.  We quickly learned about the iron fist with which the military dictatorship ruled Burma.  The doctor had to keep a list, on paper since there were no computers, of all guests, arrival times, passport numbers and amounts paid, and had to deliver this list daily to the local government office.  This enabled the government to keep track of who was where, who they were, where they came from and their reason for coming to Burma.  A bit like Soviet control during Iron Curtain times, but actually kind of intriguing, as long as we weren’t on the wrong side of the government.  We also learned there was no Internet available anywhere in Burma; maybe now that has changed.

History of Pandaw:

John, who was purser of our boat, told us the history of the Pandaw Company and of our boat, Pandaw I. It’s an intriguing story.  We learned that the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, IFC, was a passenger and ferry company operating on the Irrawaddy River in Burma from 1865 to the early 1940’s.  The IFC had more than 600 vessels, and at the time was the largest fleet of riverboats in the world.  It was Scottish owned; most of the ships were built in Scotland, and then transported to Burma for assembly.  In 1942, when the Japanese invaded Burma, the manager of the IFC fleet ordered the scuttling of all its ships, to prevent the Japanese from having them.

In the mid 1990’s, Paul Strachan, a Scot from Glasgow, who had spent time in Burma and had learned the language, recognized a market for riverboat cruising in Southeast Asia.  He learned there was an IFC riverboat, that during WWII was under construction in Glasgow, so it escaped being scuttled. He bought it, finished it, and had it sailed from Scotland to Burma, no easy feat for a flat-bottomed riverboat crossing an ocean. He started Pandaw Company in 1998, two years before our voyage. 

On the boat:

Our week on Pandaw, slowly cruising down the Irrawaddy River, was a wonderful and memorable experience.  The serenity, beautiful scenery, watching temples and pagodas as we sailed, at about eight miles an hour, often with a cold drink in hand, gave us a new sense of tranquility.  It opened us to a new way of travel that we were to repeat many times in years to come, in countries like Laos, Vietnam, China and India.  Pandaw is a special kind of small riverboat travel, and isn’t much like the Viking and other larger riverboat cruises that ply European waters.

The Pandaw Company does it right, down to details like greeting you with a cold drink and cold towel as soon as you return to the boat, taking your shoes, cleaning them and leaving them by your cabin, and a host of other niceties that made for a pleasant and memorable voyage.  There were twenty people on our cruise, mainly Brits (as is often the case) and a small mixture of Europeans and South Americans, and one other American couple.

When we took our cruise, Pandaw had only been operating on the Irrawaddy River for two years, and was the only company taking tourists into the heart of Burma. We learned that the river is not charted, and is often difficult to navigate.  Several Burmese men were always in the wheelhouse, and one usually was on the bow with a long stick, testing the water’s depth and looking for obstacles like sandbars.  We did get stuck a few times, but always managed to get free.

The best part of the cruise was stopping in small villages not accessible by road, where the people depend on ferries and merchant boats for transportation and supplies. These small villages were pretty much unspoiled, since they had little or no contact with tourists and the outside world.  That was in year 2000, when Pandaw had only one boat, and was the only one on the river.  The innocence of the villagers may be a thing of the past.

We saw so many wonderful sights and had many great experiences interacting with the village people.  We visited several schools, and in one Misti led the kids in the alphabet song, with the kids following along.  We were told not to give the villagers any money since that would “spoil them,” but we all did contribute to a fund that was given to the schools for books and supplies.

In one village we visited a cheroot (cigar) factory, where young women sat on the floor making cheroots.  We learned that they work twelve hours a day, were expected to make one thousand cheroots each day and their pay was fifty cents a day.  No unions in Burma.  Many of the people, especially the children, had their faces partially painted white, and we learned that was to protect them from the sun.

The villages had no electricity or telephone service.   Power was provided mainly by hand or foot power, although there were also some small diesel generators.  These are simple people leading very simple lives, and seeing them made me wonder if they were better off and happier, being so far removed from the hassles and travails of our modern civilized world.

New Year’s Eve:

We were on Pandaw for New Year’s Eve, 2000, which was the turning of the millennium, and Pandaw celebrated the holiday in a grand style.  Late afternoon, the boat pulled over to the riverbank and sank a pole to secure the boat (at that time there were no docks anywhere on the river).  The crew removed all the deck furniture, as well as tables and chairs from the dining room, and arranged them all on the shore.  They moved coolers, grills, cooking equipment, and set up a kitchen to cook dinner for the twenty or so guests.  The deck and dining room furniture were all teak, with brass fittings; quite elegant for a beach party.

We celebrated the turning of the millennium drinking Burmese beer, eating gourmet roast pork and chicken, enjoying good conversation with our fellow passengers, listening to musicians from a local village and watching fire balloons ascending to the heavens.  Best of all, we watched the star filled sky, on the shore of the Irrawaddy, in a remote part of Burma and as far away from the rest of the world as it’s possible to get.  We couldn’t have asked for a better way to go into the next century.

Bagan (also called Pagan):

Another highlight of our Burma trip was visiting the ancient city of Bagan, which is where our cruise ended.  Bagan can be considered one of the wonders of the world, since it still has more than 2,000 Buddhist monuments, dating back to the 9th century.  Between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Pagan Kingdom had more than ten thousand of these temples, pagodas, monasteries and stupas. 

Because the area is large, we hired a guide to take us from temple to temple by horse cart, which enabled us to see the main temples.  We stayed two nights, and both evenings went atop some of the higher temples at sunset, to watch the setting sun paint the temples ablaze with a golden glow; magnificent and very memorable.  Looking down over the plain, at hundreds of temples and pagodas, is a thrill that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.  When we visited in 2000, Bagan was becoming a major tourist site, and I suspect it’s even more so now.  Some feel it can compare with Cambodia’s Angkor Wat.

Mt. Popa and Inle Lake:

From Bagan we hired a car with driver to take us to Inle Lake, 200 miles to the east and about a ten hour drive, on a rutted one lane road, filled with smoky buses and animals.  We’ve always felt the best way to see any country is on the ground by car, and that certainly was the case in Burma, with every bend bringing another adventure.

Even though it’s only a 200 mile drive to Inle Lake, we decided we’d spend the night mid-way at Mount Popa, which is a 5,000 foot volcano in the center of the country.  Mt. Popa is a popular pilgrimage site, with a Golden Buddhist Shrine at the top.  We stayed one night at the Mt. Popa Resort, and that afternoon decided we’d climb to the Shrine.  Looking at the temple from our room, we didn’t realize there were 777 stairs to the top.   It was a warm afternoon and as we began to climb, with monkeys everywhere begging to be fed, we realized we may have bitten off a bit too much.  A young girl saw Misti struggling, and she more or less pushed Misti from behind, half way to the top. 

A wonderful temple, and the monkeys were lots of fun, but an elevator and a cold beer would have been great.  When we got down, I tried to find a ride back to our hotel but none was to be found.  I went up to a guy in a pickup, and using sign language, explained I’d pay him the equivalent of five dollars in kyat, and off we went back to the hotel.  I don’t think we could have walked ten steps, so the ride was a lifesaver. 

We arrived at Inle Lake late afternoon and piled into a narrow longtail boat, for an hour trip across the thirteen mile lake to our guesthouse.  Inle is a water world; there are no roads from town to town, and everything is accessible only by boat.  We spent three days and nights, enough time to visit several of the rotating daily markets and watch the fishermen perform their “fishermen’s ballet.” 

Because the lake is covered by floating plants, in order to see where they are going, fishermen developed a method of rowing whereby they stand at the rear of the boat on one leg and wrap their other leg around the oar.  Watching them maneuver their small boats, and balance their nets, is mesmerizing, and not a sight you’ll see anywhere else.

The lake is surrounded by small villages of wooden stilt houses, interlaced by small waterways filled with the narrow boats, used for transporting people and merchandise.  In addition to the markets, we visited several temples and craft shops with everything, of course, made by hand without the benefit or machinery or electricity.  Simple and primitive, but colorful and fascinating.

The Elephant Camp:

In Yangon we saw an advertisement for an elephant camp, deep in the jungle, and thought that might be fun.  We set out in a broken down jeep, with a driver, for an all day ride, on a mostly impassable road, to reach the camp.  When we arrived we quickly realized we were the only ones there.  The camp was set up to accommodate perhaps thirty or so people, and it was a bit creepy our being the only guests.  But the cabin was fine, the hosts were friendly, and we were served a nice meal.

We were asked if we wanted to go out the following morning to “find” the elephants.  This was a working elephant camp, which used elephants to haul logs, since in the deep jungle it’s not possible to use trucks.  They told us we would leave at 4 am, which almost caused us to rethink the idea of looking for elephants, but we were looking forward to the adventure, so went to bed early.

We were awakened at 4, had coffee and a quick breakfast, put on our hiking boots, and set out to look for the elephants.  We were told they let the elephants loose each evening, after the elephants finished their work, so they could forage for food.  Then, the following morning, the men would go into the bush to find and bring them back to work.   Each elephant wore a huge wooden “clapper” which made a sound as they walked, thus making it easier to find them.  I asked to buy one and it now hangs in our family room, and in all the years we’ve had it, no one has been able to identify what it is.

Elephants are big animals, have amazing memories, have the largest brain of any land animal and are considered to be exceptionally smart.  That may be, but the first elephant we found was hiding behind a small tree with a tiny trunk; maybe he didn’t realize how big he was next to the little tree.  Our guide got the elephant to kneel down, he mounted its head, and then we got into a chair placed on the elephants back.  You don’t realize how big a full-grown male elephant is until you’re riding on one; they grow to 12 to 14 feet at the shoulder. 

At the driver’s prodding, with what looked like a short spear, the elephant took off headed back to the camp.  Along the way he decided he was hungry, so this powerful four-wheel (leg) drive animal took a detour uphill, with us holding on for dear life, found a small tree, and started, wrestling to pull it out of the ground.  The driver tried to get him to stop, but the elephant knew what he wanted, and as our “chair” on his back rattled back and forth, we were certain we’d plunge to the ground and be trampled by this huge animal.  Didn’t happen.  The driver got him under control and off we went back to the camp.  This wasn’t our first elephant ride, we had similar, but not nearly as thrilling experiences, in Vietnam and India, but this was the most fun.

Ngapali Beach:

 We returned to Yangon and flew, on a small plane, to Ngapali Beach, on the Bay of Bengal.  We had heard from some fellow travelers that it was a great beach and they were right; an expansive white sand beach, warm waters in the Bay of Bengal and best of all, very few people.  There were only two hotels, the Sandaway Resort, which was Italian owned and a German owned hotel at the other end.  We stayed one night at the Sandaway, but didn’t like the room arrangement, so moved for another three nights to a small cottage right on the beach.  It was primitive with no electricity during the day, no hot water and no services whatsoever, but it was fun, cheap as dirt and we liked the idea of “going native.”  We had all our laundry done for about two dollars and great seafood dinners, with cold beer, overlooking the sea, for under five dollars.  Again, a walk back in time, to the way small fishing villages were in Mexico seventy years ago.

We returned to Yangon for our flight home, by way of Tokyo.  We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to see Burma, while it was still essentially unknown. and to visit small villages that as yet had been untouched by modern civilization.

Art Faibisch

October, 2017