Nyaungshwe, Kakku and Inle Lake in Photos

This is one thing that really bugged me about Burma, and which bugs me about religion in general. There's this idea that men are closer to Nirvana than women in Burmese-style Buddhism (which I believe is of the Theravada school? But don't ask me) and so there are temples and shrines that men may enter but women may not, or that men may get closer to, and women have to stay back from.

I know, I should be openminded and whatever, but no. I call BS. I don't really care if someone's religion says that women are somehow less than men, it doesn't mean that belief is any less sexist. It just means that religion's creed includes teachings that are sexist. The veneer of religion doesn't make it any more acceptable, or any less bigoted/misogynist.

Plus, hey man. Pretty sure Buddha himself never said anything about women being lower on the rung of reincarnated beings than men, and plenty of Buddhist deities are either androgynous and sometimes depicted as women - like Guanyin - or, and I'm pretty sure I'm right about this - are all-out female.

Kind of like, in the USA, when people use "Christianity" to claim that women shouldn't do whatever thing, or they should act a certain way, or they should submit themselves to men, or that they can't be leaders, or that they can't have control of their own bodies and healthcare. Uh huh, no. First, just because you claim your religion says as much doesn't make it not sexist - it's just that your religion has sexist teachings and so your belief in those teachings is also sexist. And second, the Bible says all sorts of things, but Jesus himself never said any such thing, so I call bullshit on that idea anyway.

So I guess we can mark Burmese Buddhism as yet another religion I am not interested in participating in, because I won't participate in religions with sexist teachings or rules. That and the whole not believing there is a higher power thing, too.

Phew. Anyway.



At Inle Lake, the cost of accommodation on the lake is currently stratospheric - and being the high season, isn't negotiable. So we stayed in the pretty little tourist ghetto of Nyaungshwe. It wasn't bad - lots of amenities and tourist infrastructure, had its own interesting things to see, lots of food choices which was great given the state of my digestive system - but don't think for a second that Nyaungshwe is indicative of what Burma, generally, is like. Far from it. And after a couple of days I was sick of it and really couldn't wait to get out.



On our first day there, we arrived via the dreaded night bus. I got sick on the night bus - not motion sickness, although the winding mountain roads certainly didn't help. It was something else, that had me puking for half the night - yes, into bags, which I then had to deal with until the bus stopped and I could throw them away - and left me with a mild fever the next morning. Unfortunately, we had another 4am arrival which involved another overpriced taxi ride into town (I think they do this on purpose) but I was sick and not in a position to argue.

You pay your admission into the Inle Lake tourism zone here - $10 US dollars which goes straight to the military junta (YAY.) and they collect it from you in the most annoying way possible - kids with tickets accost you when you get off the bus at 4am insisting you hand them $10 or the equivalent in Burmese kyat, at 4am when you're disoriented, cold, also accosted by taxi drivers and have barely slept or just been shaken awake (take your pick). You might almost be convinced the whole thing is a scam and no such fee exists, because it's collected in the shadiest, least reputable way possible, but it is, in fact, a real thing.



Our hotel had no beds for that "night" - they seemed surprised that we didn't want to walk around a deserted, freezing, unfamiliar town at 4am while I had a mild fever (huh! ya think?) and that we'd rather find another hotel for a few hours or curl up in the lobby somewhere. The owner finally kindly pointed us to a nearby hotel that did have a quick room we could check into for a few hours. I slept off my fever, choked down the free breakfast - not that it was bad, I was just sick - and slept again until it was check out time, at which point we trudged back to the hotel we'd reserved. We met a friendly couple named Dick and Florence and arranged to share a boat with them for a lake tour the next day.

At about 3pm I finally felt like I was able to walk - slowly - around town, so we checked out a few temples, stupas, a local soccer game between kids' teams, walked past some souvenir shops and travel agencies, and then I managed to very slowly eat a plate of gnocchi in tomato sauce and a can of soda water.



That stayed down (yay!) so we walked some more until sunset, when I took photos of the temples and stupas in silhouette (above).

After another rest - lots of resting that day - we walked down to Green Chili, a touristy Thai restaurant which was breezy, with large open windows and verandahs, and beautifully decorated in marble, shell, rattan and teak. It was very Southeast Asian Contemporary Chic. I got a nice bland plate of pad thai and something fizzy to settle my stomach.

One thing that bugged me was that at places like this in other countries - Thailand, India, China, Guatemala even - you'd see upscale or even mid-range tourists (and Brendan and I are solidly mid-range now, our roving backpacker budget days are over) at such places, but you'd also see well-to-do locals there, or young modern couples on dates, too. Cafe Mondegar in Mumbai gets as many local visitors as it does foreign ones. The very nice traditional Malayali homestay we booked in Kerala had young, well-heeled local couples staying there too. Guatemala Antigua's best restaurants have local clients. Some of the nicer places I went to in Bangkok were just as full of well-to-to Thais. Nicer restaurants and shops in Shanghai had wealthy locals sampling their wares. In Burma that simply was not the case. Although there are some very wealthy Burmese (most of them have questionable relationships with higher-ups in the military), generally speaking the upscale touristy places only had foreign patrons, and never had any local ones.

And that says a lot about the local economy and standard of living.

On the other hand, while these nicer places exist solely for tourists - locals clearly just can't afford them - they do provide employment that would not otherwise be available if they did not exist. At Green Chili, for instance, while I am certain none of the staff could actually afford to eat at the place where they worked, they all looked put-together, well-fed and rested. They had incomes. They might not have that if Green Chili didn't exist.



The next day we boarded a boat for Inle Lake. Fishermen with "traditional" nets and boats hang out where the Nyaungshwe canal meets the lake, posing for you and soliciting tips in return. Hardly the rural, idyllic, traditional community you might expect (or that the photos imply) but on the other hand, locals do deserve to gain from the tourists visiting their lands.







We went to Nampan Market, which was great once we ran the gauntlet of souvenir shops - the back end of the market where locals shop was interesting. To get there we had to not only climb out of our boat but also clamor over other people's boats.



And at the souvenir stands, you can see all manner of fake crap. Or maybe this is real, and it doesn't matter that it says "Five Dollars" in Chinese but "One Dollar" in English! :)



Although some of the souvenir stall crap was actually very pretty, I was not in the mood to bargain for its true worth (because you know they'd insist it was real silver and therefore worth tens of dollars, when in fact it's plated nickel and worth maybe $2) and, honestly, can make most of that beaded stuff myself anyway.







We also got taken around to all the local "factories" that showcase traditional industries. I have to wonder how traditional these workshops are, or even how traditional the goods are - I'm sure they're locally traditional to somewhere, but I'm not convinced they're all local to Inle Lake. But the weaving "workshop" was nice enough, and I got a pretty peacock blue silk scarf for a good price (real silk as far as I can tell, but I'm pretty good at telling).







We also went to Inthein, where we saw more stupas (I was getting a little sick of stupas and Buddhas to be honest) and the Jumping Cat Monastery where the cats no longer jump - differing accounts say the monks got sick of the tourists encroaching on their eating and prayer time, or that the original cat trainer died. But it was pretty nonetheless.













Also - "Surprise!" brand men's boxers.

I wonder what the "surprise" is. it is a size large, after all.

...surprise!



We boated through the floating gardens as the sun set, which was lovely...





...and headed back into town.

The next day we hired a taxi to Kakku, an area with yet more stupas, with the idea that we'd go to the Taunggyi wet market and stop at a few Pa'O villages (Pa'O being a local ethnic minority) on the way.

And we did do that, and it was nice, but Kakku is basically more stupas, and the villages are basically more villages.





Honestly speaking, I was starting to tire of villages because, while they're nice to visit when people are welcoming or you have a reason to be there, after awhile I felt like we just didn't have a reason to be there. I felt like an intruder, an encroacher. Like I was wasting people's time. During the day they tend to be empty anyway, as most households are out tending their farmland. Although nobody was ever unfriendly - in fact, most were curious and thought it was a riot that we were there - I did, after awhile, feel like I was just some rando who was all "hey can I check out your living room?" or taking a photo of a guy with a plow and a bull, like "I'm gonna take a picture of you working!"

And I felt like, how would it be if a bunch of tourists from some other country got on a tour bus and stopped in the "village" of my hometown in upstate New York. And some of them hired a taxi to rove around the country roads, and decided my parents' house was picturesque, and knocked on the door and were all "hey we're just visiting, can we walk around your yard and take some photos! It's so lovely and traditional and picturesque!" and then wanted to take a picture of my mom on her computer in the living room doing her job. Maybe they could go to my dad's office and take a picture of him talking to his boss.



So even though we had a Pa'O guide, who was welcome in basically any Pa'O home, and it was totally not a big deal, I did start to feel like exploring local villages was getting a bit...silly. Although Grandma here seemed to enjoy having her photo taken. She posed very seriously.



And to go to Kakku, you have to have a Pa'O guide. You don't actually need one to get the point of the place - a bunch of ancient stupas in the countryside - but you won't be allowed to go without one, because the stupas are on Pa'O land. I don't mind that at all - if you've got a popular cultural relic on your land, your people deserve to benefit from that and from those who'd like to see it (only foreigners need the guide: it's free for Pa'O and non-Pa'O Burmese alike). And while I suppose you could choose not to eat lunch, if you do eat at Kakku your only choice really is a Pa'O restaurant (run by Pa'O - it's not Pa'O food. In fact most of it is "Chinese style" food) that, while good, is a bit overpriced. Otherwise there's nothing for miles around and only a string of teahouses that don't appear to serve food nearby.





But our Pa'O guide was a nice kid who had a locally-bound "copy" of Headway Upper Intermediate in his bag and was excited to practice his English, and we enjoyed hanging out with him.





Finally, we hired the driver who took us out there to take us to the two local vineyards - yes, Myanmar has at least two vineyards: Aythaya and Red Mountain.

All but one of the whites from these two vineyards were excellent (Red Mountain's blanc was far too sweet). I didn't really the red that Red Mountain served in their wine tasting, but Aythaya's red, though not earth-shattering, was good. We brought back a bottle of Aythaya red and Red Mountain white.





















In the end, Nyaungshwe was nice. Inle Lake was nice. Kakku was nice. I'm happy I went. But after a few days the touristiness was really starting to annoy me, and I wanted out. I needed out. Like a cat behind any closed door, I was desperate to get out.

Not because I think I'm "better" than other tourists. Not because I think my presence in a place is better than some other tourist's presence there, or that if I'm there it's "authentic" but if a tour group is there it's not.

More that lots of tourists in one place would be fine, if that place retained its own local culture. And some places do. New York manages to continue to be New York despite the tourists. Bangkok is the same way if you avoid Khao San Road (and I do!). Large cities can absorb large numbers of visitors, I guess.

But often, what you get instead is this international, homogenized, detached-from-local-reality "traveler's culture" that is basically the same in most of these spots. Nyaungshwe really wasn't any different from, say, Ayuthaya (Thailand), or Bukittinggi (Indonesia), or Yangshuo or Dali (China), or El Nido (the Philippines), or Hikkaduwa (Sri Lanka) or the various towns along the coast in Goa (India)...or how I imagine places like Manali, Rishikesh, Bali Island, Angkor Wat etc. are, although I haven't been to those places.

They're really not much different from each other, these places, although they once were quite unique indeed. Now it's all the same stuff - souvenir stands (sometimes selling the same souvenirs! I once saw a batik on the wall of a friend of a friend's house, which she bought in Thailand - exact same batik as the one I bought in Dali. As a joke I once bought Brendan a preposterously fierce-looking carved wooden mask at some shop near Lake Taal, and saw the same one for sale in Sri Lanka), "Italian" food (banana pancakes are passe, now it's all about Italian food for travelers in Asian countries), well-appointed Thai restaurants, travel agencies.

And if you've seen one traveler's ghetto, you've seen 'em all, so I was ready to move on. Not because I think I'm better than other travelers - my presence contributes to these places and their atmosphere after all - but because I didn't feel like I was getting anything new out of the experience at that point.

One major reason why I kind of hope tourism to Taiwan never fully takes off. Sure, I'd like to see something kickstart the economy, but I'm not sure it's worth the cost of homogenizing Taiwan. I'd hate to see this country dotted with these same-same-not-even-different traveler's ghettoes.





Then we booked bus tickets to Bago, where we'd stop for a rest before continuing on to Kinpun, the "base camp" for the Golden Rock up on Mt. Kyaiktiyo. We were happy that the bus would leave at 2pm and arrive around midnight - that's more like our regular sleeping schedule and it suited us just fine to get in late and then sleep through the night before heading on to Kinpun, three hours south.

And then, the guy booking the tickets called up the bus company, talked to them about the schedule, put down the phone and said "today is your lucky day!"

I thought - great! The bus is a day bus, it leaves earlier and we don't have to take another freakin' night bus! 

"The bus schedule has changed."

Woohoo!

"Now the bus leaves at 7pm and gets in at 5am, instead of leaving at 2pm. Isn't that great?"

DAMN IT.

The poor cherub looked embarrassed when he saw my crestfallen face. I tried to be polite - "actually I hate night buses. I can't sleep on them at all."

Sadly, it was the only bus available and we had to take it. I wasn't sick anymore, so at least I could count on my buddy Dramamine to get me through it. So I girded my guts and got on the bus, and once again got no sleep at all until we arrived.

But this time we were smart and pre-booked a hotel for the night we were going to be on the bus, so when we got in at 5am we could immediately collapse into bed and wake up whenever we darn well felt like it (before noon, anyway).

The Irrawaddy and Hsipaw in Photos

After leaving Bagan, our first stop after landing in Rangoon on Friday night, our next destination was Hsipaw, via Mandalay. Hsipaw is east of Bagan by a fair distance, and there are no direct connections that we know of. The Rangoon-Bagan bus wasn't so bad, except that:

...it left at 7pm and arrived at 4am, as many buses in Burma do (almost all buses are night buses - apparently the locals prefer it. I hate it). 4am is not a good time to be at a bus stop 7 kilometers from your hotel, shivering (yes, it gets cold in northern Burma at night) and negotiating with avaricious taxi drivers.

...it means once you get there, you won't be able to check into a hotel unless you've paid for one for that night, which means no shower either. With very little sleep, this translates to feeling like crap for the rest of the day. Your choices are to walk or bike around before dawn when nothing's open, or sit in the lobby and try to sleep in a chair. Wheeee!

...the air conditioning is turned way up on these buses so even if you are the sort of person who can fall asleep on one (sometimes I am, if I'm tired enough, sometimes I'm not - and I do get motion sickness), your teeth will probably be chattering too much to nod off.

...these buses tend to play movies, TV serials and music for much of the night at ear-splitting volumes, and when they stop for breaks, everyone has to get off. That's fine if the break is at 9pm, but sometimes it's at 3am.

In short, I am not a fan of night buses.

Much better to get out of bed at a preposterously early hour (4am) and clamor into a boat slipping softly down the pre-dawn Ayeyarwadi (Irrawaddy) River to Mandalay. So what if it takes twice as long? It's not a goddamn night bus and boat trips can be fun!

We grabbed wicker lounge seats on the deck and didn't bother to move from them all day. There were blankets on board (which is good, because it's freezing) and you get a free breakfast that you can eat whenever you want (coffee and a box with a boiled egg, two packaged pastry things and a banana) and we had the hotel's packed breakfast as back-up snacks. I slept briefly in the pre-dawn hours, nestled in a deep nest of blankets while my nose turned cold and red from the outside air, and then woke up to see the sun rise:



A pretty banal photo, I know, but compare that to a night bus and you get magic.

After the sun was well and truly up, the air warmed up quickly and I cast off blankets, one after the other, as I stretched out like a cat in the warm sunlight and napped until about 10am. I bought more coffee - well, three-in-one - which is free with breakfast but not after - and spent the day looking at the view, waving to passing boats, snapping photos and reading my book (Lonely Planet Publications' A House Somewhere).



People - well, at least I did - imagine Burma as a land of endless jungle: overhanging palms, mangroves, deep grass, colorful birds, huge flowers, monkeys and tigers and elephants, oh my! (we didn't see even one monkey on our trip. Or one tiger, but the lack of monkeys was more surprising).

But...well...no. The fact that we traveled in dry season probably had something to do with this, but it was more of an alternating flat farmland and nearly desert-like landscape, with the Irrawaddy as a big wet gash running along an often scabby shore, with few trees visible at all.



In short, I was picturing something of the wet palmy jungle of Sri Lanka, but Burma - as might be expected - was more of a pancake-flat Bangladesh or ruddy northern India. Geographically this makes sense, but it's a shock to have one's pre-imagined geography rudely shaken awake and pushed out of the layers and blankets of the mind.

We hit Mandalay just before sunset - it takes longer to go upstream after all - and stayed at the perfectly serviceable hotel that our hotel manager in Bagan booked for us. Hotels in Burma are surprisingly expensive, with a shortage of rooms and an influx of tourists ever since the government liberalized the tourism industry (you no longer have to pay lots of money to the military junta for the pleasure of going) causing demand to outstrip supply and prices to skyrocket. What was an $8 hotel room a few years ago is now a $25 hotel room. What was a $30 hotel room is now a $75 hotel room, and so on. I'm not complaining - locals deserve to prosper from tourism - but just so you know. Don't go expecting a budget vacation.

We didn't spend long in Mandalay - rather than see the concrete chock-a-block city's few charms we wanted to head straight for Hsipaw. But we enjoyed the Indian street food at the teahouse across from our hotel, the easy-to-find pharmacy for ibuprofen to treat my blossoming headache (all the crazy sleeping and wake-up times were wreaking havoc on my poor brain-box), and the fast, reliable Internet. Internet in Bagan - whether computer or wifi - was so bad that we, for all intents and purposes, did not check e-mail or social media for 3 days.

Getting to Hsipaw was almost a dream. Brendan got sick in Mandalay and puked once at the hotel and once on the way, but we were able to take advantage of a local taxi service to get there cheaply and efficiently. For about $18 US dollars, a nice fellow - I suspect he was Shan from his cabalistic arm tattoos - picked us up at our hotel in Mandalay, drove us for 5 hours through the gorgeous countryside, and deposited us at our homestay at the other end. We stopped in Pyin Oo Lwin for lunch.

I thought this was a very low price for Burma, considering what it costs to avail oneself of other tourist infrastructure, but he also stopped at his own house on the way, not far from Hsipaw. I gathered that he made the trip frequently for other reasons, and the taxi service was like an extra income he could sign up for.

Hsipaw is in an area that may even be more culturally diverse than the rest of Burma (which is extremely diverse - Burmese, Chinese, Indian, Thai, other tribal and ethnic minorities), where the majority of people are of Shan descent but there are also Padaung and other groups. You may know the Padaung as the "long-necked tribe", but in actuality most Padaung don't do that - those who do may have once done it for their own cultural reasons, but now they mostly put rings on the necks of young girls so that tourists can gawk at them and open their wallets. Ick. And the Shan are more closely related to the Thai people (according to our guidebook, "Shan" is an old word related to "Siam", and the Shan call themselves "Thai"). The language is similar to Thai and Lao.



Also Burma has a lot of cats - mostly street cats, but mostly well-fed - and Hsipaw is no exception.

On our first day, with Brendan feeling a bit off, we walked the easy mile to the home of Donald and Fern. Donald is the son of the older brother of the last Shan Sky Lord (rulers who ruled over one part of Shan territory, Hsipaw being the seat of one of these territories). The last Hsipaw Sky Lord himself was killed by the government in the 1960s (although they have never admitted this), and was married to an Austrian woman he met at university in the United States. After fleeing Burma with their two children, she described the tale in her book, Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess.

Well, he died, she left, and his older brother - who had been chosen to represent the Shan people in the national assembly, took over care of the family properties. When he died - not that long ago, of very old age - his son, Donald, took on that and other roles along with his wife, Fern (the daughter of a Sky Lord from another area of Shan State).

You can still walk up to the old English manor built by the last Sky Lord's father, who was educated at Oxford and came back with a Westernized attitude (he didn't want to live in the old "Oriental" palace, but would use it, and his various regalia, for ceremonial functions. The "Oriental" palace was destroyed by the British, bombing out the Japanese, around World War II). It used to be that you could meet Donald and he'd show you family photos and tell you the story. Then the government decided to crack down on tribals and accused him of being a "tour guide without a license" (not true) and told him to basically never talk to foreigners again. It's not clear if that restriction has now been lifted, but what's clear is that he's not in Hsipaw.

Now, he's off taking care of other family business. However, you will receive a warm welcome and hear interesting stories from Fern, who remains in town.

The next day, we set off on an easy morning hike through a string of Shan villages outside of town. It was hot and dry, but also nice and flat. We weren't the first tourists to ramble through, but people were friendly and welcoming, and it wasn't a road overrun with foreigners (we saw one other).



As long as you're friendly and ask nicely, it's fine to take photos of locals. People do enjoy it when you show them the pictures you've snapped.







One thing that nagged at me was when we saw local construction projects - fixing a stupa, as shown here, or repairing a road or bridge. On one hand, it made sense to do these things. On the other, modern Burma has a history of forced labor, with the government insisting that people "donated" their time and tools to "work together" to "develop the country". In actuality it's unpaid - basically, slave labor. So when I saw such projects going on, I wondered - is this just something the community is doing or are these people being forced to work for no pay? Are they compensated, willing workers, or are they slaves?

I don't know the answer.










After our hike, we had a nice, relaxing cup of coffee at Black House, an old teakwood warehouse converted into a coffeeshop down by the river. Then we wandered over to the local Hindu temple, which was basically like a game of religious scattergories:



Check out the Chinese Fat Buddha and Guanyin along with a Hindu Hanuman idol with Indian and Southeast Asian-style altar decoration.

The next day we did a punishing 5-hour hike up the nearby mountains - not as high as the ones we drove through between Mandalay and Hsipaw, but definitely with some awesome views back over the plateau:









We signed up for the hike the day before, and thought we were getting our own guide. That was not the case. Although I liked our hiking companions - seemed like nice people and we'd all lived in the same area of the USA - I was kind of hoping we'd be hiking on our own. I don't like slowing other people down, but let's face facts: I am a slooooow hiker. I always get to the top. I always make it as far as I say I will make it. I always reap the rewards of the hike. But it takes me awhile, and I don't like being dead weight. That's why I prefer to hike with Brendan or a few close friends who understand this - not with people I've just met who are wondering what's taking me so long.

Oh well. We got there. In the scheduled 5 hours no less (although they could have gotten there faster without me).

The destination was Pankam village, a small mountain village that does quite good business as a hiking destination for foreign visitors. It was a Padaung village, but there were no neck rings or long-necked women to be seen. Just normal people living normal lives. I would much rather meet and spend time with people just being their normal selves than gawk at something done up for the benefit of tourists.





On the final day before our dreaded night bus to Nyaungshwe (on which I got sick - not motion sick but genuinely sick) we walked up to some old monasteries and ruined stupas and enjoyed cool tamarind tea at a cafe nearby.










Note how the tree is growing right out of the stupa, cracking it in the process.

This area is not unknown to tourists and guidebooks, but we only saw one other small group of walkers.











Next up: Nyaungshwe and Inle Lake (tourism central, but still worth it).