Ferry to Dalah

In the late afternoon the Strand, the street along the river, is choked with the exhaust of trucks, some piled with giant logs, on their way to China. Large machinery, backhoes, nothing like we saw years ago, are parked on an unfinished concrete slab, a new lane or parallel road. It is filled now by pedestrians, avoiding the mud puddles on their way to the ferries, snack sellers, and young men playing soccer, volleyball, or the Burmese game of chinlon where a wicker ball is batted around with the feet. It’s the playground of the poor, since the green spaces in this part of town are either a couple threadbare gardens that charge admission, or the fenced-off jungle grounds of deserted government buildings.

We are swept into a stream of passengers getting on the commuter ferry which goes across the river to Dalah. It’s only a 20-minute ride, but the students and office workers and women with bundles scramble to grab small plastic chairs so they don’t have to stand or squat on the deck. We go upstairs where it’s less crowded, and costs more. The Yangon River is wide and grey and the breeze is welcome as we take off. Long wooden boats, river taxis, buzz around, and a couple boys are swimming near the jetty.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

Dalah is a village, but the landing is more chaotic even than Yangon, a crush of trucks, blasting horns, motorcycles, bikes, shouting people. Boys stick to us, offering rides, and they won’t take no for an answer. We trip over the flower and egg sellers with their babies, and duck down an alley, from a concrete sidewalk onto a dirt track lined with wooden houses with tin roofs, then bamboo huts, dwindling to lean-tos. Low enclosures makes it feel like we’re in an open living room, people going about their evening routine, bathing with buckets of water over their longyis, eating dinner of noodle soup, or rice and curry scooped up with hands, playing card games in the shadows. A couple of electric lines are strung so low I have to duck, where a TV is blaring.

Two tall foreigners here are an unusual spectacle, but people smile and greet us as if we come every day. They say “Hello” and I answer “Mingalaba,” which means “it’s a blessing.” One hut has a sign, Learning Academy, where I hear children’s voices reciting, abc’s in English. Even here.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

These people are poor, but not isolated, so close to Yangon. Some are of Indian background, darker-skinned, babies with red tikkas on their foreheads. I wonder if they are former residents of the old city center, since in the 1990’s fifteen percent of the population was forcibly moved by the government to outlying towns. We go inside a brightly painted Hindu temple, with clothed statues of the deities, as well as a Buddha or two.

We return by taxi, and it’s barely 9 pm but it seems like 2 am with so many dark streets. During the day, hard to believe it’s a city of six million. At night it’s like a village. You need a flashlight to find your way around potholes and puddles.

A Burmese Family

The morning market is breaking up in Bago, motorcycles splash in the red puddles, swerving to avoid people with baskets and trays on their heads, carrying bottles, cabbages, tomatoes, flowers, mangoes, fabric, cookware, toward a foot bridge near the river. We are drinking tea and taking it all in.

A young woman waves to us from across the street. She is still in her pyjamas, tussled hair, t-shirt and trousers. “I’ve found you!” she shouts. We had met her just a half hour ago as we stopped to admire a wooden house covered with foliage, where her stooped grandmother was standing with a kitten. The friendly woman spoke some English, told us she was 24, studying ‘med tech’ in Yangon, and she’d come to visit her family for the weekend. I’ll call her Mi.

“My grandmother has invited you,” she says breathlessly. “She wants to see you.”

Anywhere else in the world this would not be an unusual invitation. But in Myanmar, it’s illegal to have foreigners sleep in your home, and technically you need to report guests of any kind. This was special, but we hesitated to go. Mi had told us she was married to a military officer, and so surely the family wouldn’t get into trouble. We politely accepted.

This turned out to be our only opportunity to go inside a Burmese home. We’d looked into open huts, or seen families eating in their shops, where they also slept, but this was different. We take off our shoes to enter an empty room as Mi is clearing away a mosquito net where her baby son and husband have been sleeping. The slight young man gives us a betel-stained grin and leaves.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

Then the old woman greets us, looking younger than I remember, but it turns out to be Mi’s mother, who must be my age. The grandmother, 85 years old, hobbles out, clutching a photo album. We sit on a bamboo mat on the floor and sip good coffee in tiny cups and eat slices of crunchy mango, picked from their tree. It was a once-prouder house, built fifty years ago, with a desk and bookshelves and buffet along the wood wall, piled with dusty books and dishes. Old black and white family photographs hang from the rafters, with a large color graduation portrait of Mi.

G bounces the baby on his knee, and we look at what turns out to be the only family album, a couple of faded photos of Mi as a child, then it jumps to her formal graduation and some wedding photos, and mostly color shots of her engineer uncle and cousins, now in Singapore. Seems like it’s always the people with relatives abroad who make contact with us, hoping their own family in faraway places will be treated as kindly.

I wonder what stories the grandmother and mother could really tell. Their husbands have died, not unusual since the life expectancy for Burmese is barely 60. It is obvious they think this baby is going to have good luck, meeting foreigners. The grandmother has known British colonialism and Japanese invasion, the mother in her 50’s has grown up in complete isolation after the first military dictator Ne Win took over in 1962.

And now, as Mi is writing down her g-mail address for us, she jumps up. “I’m fixing the electricity in the house today,” she says. “All by yourself?” G asks, handing back the baby. “Oh, no,” she laughs, “the electrician is here.” She explains that the house needs rewiring, is dangerous for her grandmother, who has been living here alone, since her mother has gone to live with Mi in Yangon to help care for the baby. Hopefully there will be fewer daily blackouts so she will be able to use the electricity.

We don’t ask where the husband is posted. He comes back briefly, and tells us he is also studying. Normally military personnel have better connections and job prospects and don’t pay taxes, so his son and these gentle women will know better days again, soon.

Feeding the Monks

The last available seats on the bus to Bago are in the back, but we don’t mind since the two-hour trip is only a dollar each, though the AC doesn’t work. The windows are stuck open and we can close the curtains if the sun shines in. A couple of monks sit up front, and flowers decorate a Buddha image. We are already sweating as neatly-combed families sneak glances at us, point us out to their babies, and lean out to buy bottles of water, potato chips, and mango slices in plastic bags. The bus doesn’t leave until the entire aisle is occupied by passengers seated on plastic stools.

Soon we are racing down the Mandalay highway, which becomes a divided toll road, passing cargo trucks, buses and pick-ups with local passengers, a taxi, but few private cars. We roar past fields and fish farm ponds. Occasionally a dog, water buffalo, or woman with bundle and child cross the road. Along the paved shoulder rice is raked out to dry, and a threshing machine operates, next to bamboo houses and snack huts. On the fifty-mile trip a number of brand-new gas stations are in various states of construction. Looks like Myanmar is gearing up to start guzzling its oil and natural gas resources.

As we approach Bago, along with the trishaws and bicycles, motorcycles buzz around like flies. Riders wear helmets that look like military surplus, straps dangling, and many are carrying a passenger on the back. In the town center we duck into a tea shop to avoid a cluster of men, young and old jockeying to be our guides. Hard to tell who is who, a boy wipes our table with toilet paper, one brings a fresh pot of green tea, another brings chairs for our day packs, yet another brings plates of pastries, Chinese pork buns, long donuts, sesame bean cakes or chicken and onion samosas. We drink sweet Burmese milk tea, trying to ignore the tour guide solicitations, which we never got in Yangon.

We end up walking to a large monastery, followed by one determined young man on his motorcycle. He sits down next to us on a bench under the columns and starts telling us facts about this famous place, then talks motorcycle prices ($500 smuggled from China, $2000 from Thailand or Japan), and then, his life.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

“I am 32,” he says, “two kids, though we only wanted one.”  Most Burmese look older than they are, but he looks sixteen. “My name means Peace,” and he shares his story. Sad. His first son is seven, was born healthy but when he was one had a seizure, with a high fever, so ill they took him to a hospital in Yangon. The baby stayed there for a month, but the doctors didn’t say what was wrong with him- Peace doesn’t know- and now the boy is mute and can’t do anything for himself. That’s why finally, last year, they had another child, luckily a son, so he can take care of his brother in the future.

We are interrupted by the sound of a gong, drowned out by the whine of stray dogs, coming out of nowhere. “Meal time,” Peace tells us.

He squints toward the faraway entrance, “Tourists,” he smiles. It turns out to be a group of Thai pilgrims, who are here to offer a meal to the monks. As a second bell sounds, the dogs whine, and a long line of monks files toward us. The Thais begin scooping rice from a large vat into silver bowls, and Peace jumps up and hands us some bowls too. Each monk goes by and opens his black alms bowl, one of us gives him rice, and he bows and goes inside the dining hall. We refill our silver bowls again and again, to serve over a hundred monks.

They sit down at low round tables where vegetables are served from the kitchen. We sit with the Thais along the side of the room, watching the monks eat their one main meal of the day, before noon. Peace leaves, before we get a chance to say good-bye, or pay him any money. We are whisked away by other motorcyclists to the Green Jade Hotel. I insist on buckling my helmet.

Stars in the Night Sky

We see few tourists amongst the six million souls in Yangon, a few Spanish, Taiwanese students, a middle-aged Dutch couple. It is not tourist season, but the hottest time of the year, April and May, which is in fact the long school vacation, and the monsoons are beginning. So far we’ve had a couple of sudden, wind-gusty downpours, but they last barely a half hour and don’t cool things off much.

Even in July and August, Europeans with their long paid holidays do not choose Myanmar. The country is similar in land area and population to Thailand and France, each visited by 14 and 80 million visitors yearly. Myanmar has held steady at 300,000, due not only to government restrictions, but also Aung San Suu Kyi’s past support of a travel boycott.  The government now grants visas on arrival, that is, if you’re not on the blacklist, like Michelle Yeoh, the actress starring in a major movie being made about Suu Kyi.

To Go or Not to Go, that is the question. Lonely Planet guidebook features an article considering both sides of the issue. The travel boycott has long been part of larger economic sanctions by the US and the EC, targeting the trade in weapons, that was imposed on Myanmar in the 1990’s (when the government declared 1995 the Year of Tourism), and then again after the 2007 protests led by the monks, but brutally repressed by the generals. The boycott targeted organized group tours, that use higher-end hotels and enrich government agencies. We saw one French group while we were there- ne faîtes pas de tourisme organisé!

Pro-democracy activists, including Suu Kyi, have now, in June 2011, called for an end to the travel boycott.

Photo:Geoffrey Hiller

As more independent guesthouses and restaurants open, private citizens can benefit from tourist money. In a country with strict media censorship, of the press and internet, the Burmese depend on encounters with travelers for news from the outside.

Foreigners are quietly going in and out. Since Cyclone Nargis in 2008, Western NGO’s have had an increasing presence. Most of all, business people and engineers from Singapore, Korea, Russia, and especially China are programming software, selling machinery, motorcycles, buses, trucks, clothes and household goods (not to mention the illegal trade in drugs, gems, etc).

We met an ex-pat English teacher, one of several at the few private international schools. He said unlike in the past, he is able to visit his students’ homes. Only he is  careful, arriving always one hour early, before the other guests, so the neighbors don’t notice. The middle-aged parents are particularly eager to meet him, since they grew up in a more isolated Burma, and that generation never learned to speak English.

“Visitors are like stars in the night sky.” Most Burmese can’t travel abroad, so the next best thing is to have contact with travelers. Long after we leave, they will remember us.

Full Moon at Shwedagon

Laughing orange-robed monks from Thailand beckon us to squeeze into the elevator with them. It is May 17^th, the Full Moon of Kason, the biggest holiday of the year in Burma, celebrating the birth, enlightenment, and reincarnation of Buddha. Our hotel is walking distance across the park from the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda, a golden bell sitting on the horizon that can be seen from almost everywhere in Yangon. It is the most sacred paya in the country, from the sixth century, through weather and wars it has been rebuilt many times, and is encrusted with tons of gold, topped with rubies, emeralds, and diamonds.

7:30 am, the sun high already and I am dripping sweat under my new umbrella. Using an umbrella in the sun is one custom I love here, so civilized.  Streams of people, on foot, and crammed into cars and pick-ups, are pouring through the gates of the West staircase, past the giant lion dragons into the marble-columned halls, where there is an elevator, literally a Stairway to Heaven. Burmese families are decked out in silk shirts and pressed longyis, flowers in their hair and white circles of thanaka on their faces. Some teens wear jeans despite the heat, but even the unaccompanied boys are as orderly as the grandmothers.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

We leave our shoes after having to pay the fee that is only for foreigners, irked by this, but reassured by a professor we meet that not a penny of the money goes to the military. “No foot-wearing allowed” say the signs. I have not gone barefoot for years, but I will do so daily during the next weeks. The marble floors are cool on my bunion feet, though they become sticky by afternoon.

This is the only one of the four entrances that does not have shops. Later we will walk down the south stairs, with glittery parasols, flower offerings, Buddha statues of all sizes, paper maché animals, beads, sacred books and bells. Now we float up past gardens and out-buildings where monks’ red robes are drying on clotheslines, past nat (spirit) statues that look like elves or pirates.

The marble plaza is more impressive than I remember, today a sea of heads and umbrellas, moving clock-wise, in a haze of incense, and sun glinting off the smaller gold payas and other halls of prayer. Flocks of marooned-robed monks, or nuns in pink robes, all with heads shaved, walk by chanting, a soothing sound like the buzzing of insects.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

“What day of the week were you born?” Everyone asks us, trying to be helpful. An essential question, since each day of the week- including two Wednesdays, morning and afternoon- has its own shrine at a precise direction on the compass, where you stop to pray, light candles, and repeatedly pour water over Buddha statues, once for each year of your life.

I slip in a puddle of water, near a giant Banyan tree back in a corner, the only greenery, that is said to be grown from a branch of the original Bodi tree of enlightenment.  Young men are laughing as they scoop up buckets of water from a fountain, which they pass to a line of girls who are pouring them onto the tree. They began at 4 am and will continue until 10 pm tonight.

Today this religion seems both serious and relaxed, people chatting as they walk, then stopping to bow, kneel and pray at the shrine or hall that takes their fancy, in front of standing, lying or sitting Buddha statues. Group prayers are being led by a monk in one pavilion, but individuals wander in and out as they please.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

I wish I could understand the conversations around me. We stay for a few hours until the heat is unbearable, then return in the evening, when the sun is setting on the giant pagoda, and a breeze moves the tiny tinkling bells at the top. Some nuns with binoculars show me, if you look up and squint, you can see the different colors refracted in the diamonds.

Train, Money

The Yangon Circle Train makes a 28-mile loop around the city, with dozens of local stops, and it turns out to be a three-hour ride. We escape the exhaust of the buses around Sule Pagoda, where I remember hardly any traffic twenty years ago, and walk down to a green gully to the train platform. It could be a village, a hundred years ago, with people quietly sitting with their bundles. All the signs are written in the circles and curlicues of Burmese, so we try asking some people where to wait. No one speaks much English, but finally a middle-aged man takes us under his wing and shows us where to buy a ticket.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

The booth is marked ‘Foreigners $1’, about 800 kyat, way more than the locals pay. The price difference is from the old days when there was a special FEC currency for foreigners. Here the ticket seller examines our dollar bills, but rejects them immediately. We hand him a five then, which he and his colleagues also refuse. Doubtful if he has change, we then offer a twenty. We were warned that people are careful, due to a rash of North Korean dollar forgery. “We’re fresh off the plane,” we say, “from America.” But he points each time to the faint crease across the presidents’ faces. Invisible to us. We end up paying in kyat, with bills that are wrinkled and torn. No problem, he hands us back soggy brown kyat bills (no coins are in use). From then on, every time we try to pay in dollars or change money we face the same niggling.

By the way, we never see many banks, even in the capital. It is unclear to us whether people use them much. They walk around with large wads of money, and we know they prefer savings in dollars, which they change on the street or with travel agents. The ex-pats we talk to who are working in Myanmar report they simply keep cash under their mattresses. No credit cards, no ATM’s, no travelers’ checks accepted anywhere.

None of the clocks on the platform work, but we are told the train will come in twenty minutes, and it is on time. We climb inside a dark wooden car, with benches on both sides, open windows. Our friend seems to know the ‘guardian’ in uniform who lets us sit in a roped off area. As the passengers crowd on they are obviously astonished to see us, but as will occur throughout the trip, they are polite and do not stare, only steal glances while we are not looking, even the children.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

Everyone is well-dressed but not because it’s Sunday. The lady next to me has fresh yellow roses in her hair, another buys a string of jasmine from a hawker. This first ride turns out to be best for passenger-watching since there is just vegetation on the embankment outside. Toward the outskirts of Yangon we see farmers standing waist-high in watercress fields, bamboo huts, markets on dirt roads, but then also in  a cornfield a brand-new manufacturing plant.

Feels like I’m in a movie. Our friend turns out to be of Indian origin, works for the railroad up north and at age 62 is ready to retire. His grown kids work in Malaysia and Singapore. His cousin teaches engineering in Chicago. He would like to travel but cannot get a visa. He proudly points out his house along the railway line as we pass, made of unfinished red brick.  We say good-bye as he gets off, leaving us in the care of the guardian, who at each stop watches for passengers and people on the tracks, then leans way out the window to wave either a red flag or a green flag, and the train moves on.

Old Rangoon

Graham Green missed a great setting for a novel. The city center hasn’t changed much in twenty years, unlike other Asian capitals. There is more car traffic , continuous electricity, but the buildings in old town, many colonial era, are dilapidated and moldy, vegetation growing from the walls. Apartment buildings several stories high have bars over the balconies and windows (how could anyone climb up), laundry on hangers, but also satellite dishes. Squeezed in between are some skinny newer buildings with shiny tiles, often with Chinese lettering, already spotted with dark mold.

The sidewalks are broken, with square slabs of concrete wobbly, beware the holes. Yet they are packed with tables displaying clothes, umbrellas (umbrella repair), flip flops in a thousand styles- rubber, velvet, sequined, the only shoes bearable here in the tropics- watches, old cell phones( SIM card prices were just raised from $50 to $1500 so few can afford them now), pirated CD’s and DVD’s, Hulk movies, Gossip Girls, popular music, and food.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

Food everywhere, the smell of durian, like rotting fruit, the smell of Asia I remember now, those spiky footballs piled up high, some cut open to reveal the fleshy yellow center. Noodles, in mohinga fish soup, or tossed in a bowl, skewers of fish or chicken balls, samosas and other deep-fried snacks, and Burmese curries, oily and spicy, that sit out in the heat for hours while flies feast. Some of the dishes are covered by netting but we don’t try any. And, betel nut sellers at every corner, rolling up the bitter nut and white paste in green leaves. Betel nut was outlawed years ago, to get rid of the red spit everywhere, but it is one policy obviously not enforced.

G says it’s not as dense as Bangladesh, politer than India, but it’s overwhelming for me. Here on Anwahrata St. a Hindu festival is going on, near the temple a naked man is dragging coconuts on strings attached to his back with fish hooks. A man hands me a pink-colored drink, offended that I won’t let it pass my lips. Muslims with white caps and beards, some headscarves and a couple black veils (behind one a lady winks at G, he swears), selling old tools, rusty hammers, nails, parts, and brand-new, wires, plugs, outlets, the ultimate recycling. Chinese pastry shops, clothes, bags and eyeglass shops, some new and air-conditioned. Stray dogs, kids… I am dripping sweat in the grime, but most people are well-groomed, with pressed longyis,  hair combed, as if they just stepped out of the shower. How do they stay so cool and clean?

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

We go into a tea shop and sit down in tiny chairs at a child-sized table, an upscale place, so wood not plastic. On our first day, we play it safe and don’t try the tea, but order soda, Max Orange and Star Cola, as we watch them uncap it. We wipe the rust from the lip of the bottles with the toilet paper from the roll on the table, in a green plastic Myanmar holder(fancy places offer Kleenex boxes).

Times have changed- a plastic cigarette lighter is hanging on a string from the ceiling. Years ago I only saw people light up from a lit string. Hardly anyone smokes here though, since they can’t afford it.

Taxis, Soldiers and Billboards

We get a taxi out of the airport, past a ‘Welcome to Myanmar’ sign decorated with golden pagodas, and speed along a road toward the city center. The first of countless white sedan Toyota Corolla taxis in varying conditions, steering wheel on the right, but driving on the right side of the road. Other cars, especially the newer but few, jeeps, hummers or SUV’s have the wheel on the left. The road is not too crowded, early on a Saturday, but large trucks rumble by, some carrying people, packed in, standing up human cargo. Smaller pick-ups with benches in the back and riders hanging off, men with shoulder bags and longyi’s flapping. Bikes, a couple trishaws, but no motorcycles, which turn out to be prohibited in central Yangon.

Our taxi has a meter, which does not function, and the windows are either stuck open or closed, the seats sag. On the dashboard, cracked with wires hanging out, the driver’s photo is similar to the one in all taxis, well-combed hair in a white shirt. Each vehicle is personalized, with a picture of a monk (all Buddhist men spend some time in a monastery, which in heavy traffic is reassuring to me), or a plaque in Arabic for the Muslims, who also have half-beards, or else dangling Chinese coins, or a Hindu goddess.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

The diversity of the drivers reflects old Rangoon, the capital established under the British, who imported workers and soldiers from their vast empire.  It is called Yangon now, but is no longer the capital. The national government was moved north to a brand-new city opened in 2005, Napyidaw, the ‘City of Kings’ ,where a million people have relocated so far.

We pass crowded bus shelters. With few traffic lights, people cross and wait in the middle of the street. A boy monk stands alone with his black alms bowl, women balance baskets on their heads, a man holds a baby- which we miraculously miss hitting. It doesn’t strike me until a few days later that no one ever runs.

This first day, I do see soldiers, posted along the sidewalks, behind barbed wire saw-horses. In a dozen different kinds of uniforms, some with spats, helmets, armed with ancient-looking rifles or machine-guns. After that day, I hardly see any in the city, but maybe I simply quit noticing them, because they are not to be photographed, along with bridges and trains and other sensitive topics.

Billboards, especially at the roundabouts, advertise gems and jewelry, private day camps, academies for learning English or computers, fire extinguishers, and Kohler bathroom sinks and toilets. I wonder if most Burmese can afford these things?

Customs

May 15, 2011- We arrive in Yangon early in the morning. Especially after the layover at Bangkok’s high-tech airport with designer shops, it feels like we have traveled backward in time. This airport is like a railway station in a provincial town. Longyi-clad men with umbrellas, women restroom attendants with white thanaka on their cheeks and flowers in their hair, it’s the Burma I remember!

At customs, however, three queues are labeled Myanmar, Foreigners, and Diplomats. Twenty years after the name change, dissidents world-wide (and the US government, among others) still use the name ‘Burma’, as a way to protest the military regime and its abuse of human rights. After the last free election in 1990, when Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy(NLD) won by a landslide, some party supporters are still in prison, along with over 2,000 others (university students I talked to had no idea of the number, but guessed about 400).

Confused yet? The generals claim they just changed the old Anglicized names back to their original Burmese. No one can deny that the British colonial regime up to 1947 was exploitive. George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days, based on his experience as a police officer, describes that period. The book is banned but at the first traffic stop, a hawker tries to sell us a copy in English.

Westerners forget that in the tonal Burmese language,  ‘Burma’ and ‘Myanmar’ are one and the same word. So I will use both.

The customs officials sit behind open wooden counters, turned side-ways, as we file on both sides of them. Our ‘Foreigner’ line is the shortest, with few Westerners, and the yellow ‘wait here’ line is also marked in Chinese. I wonder at the numbers of Burmese in the ‘Diplomat’ line, but don’t see much difference between them and the ‘Myanmar’, all of whom look well-to-do. It is very difficult for most citizens to get passports or travel out of the country.

There are computers here (as we see later, unlike in the downtown immigration office). I can’t help but notice the screen for the person across from me, in the Mynamar line, where a ‘Block List’ window pops up. Many Burmese ex-pats are political refugees who cannot go back to their country.

Burma, Fairy Tale Revisited

A dream come true-return to Burma. I had longed to go back ever since my visit in 1987, when during a six months-long trip to Asia, my husband G and I traveled there for seven days, all that was allowed then. We met some Italians in Bangkok who were raving about the place, ‘magnifico’  they kept repeating, so we decided to see for ourselves. A hassle to get a visa for the isolated country but we did it.

Word on Khao San Road was, you could pay for the entire week’s stay in Burma, if you brought in one duty-free carton of cigarettes, and one bottle of whiskey, preferably Johnny Walker Red, and sold them in the market in Rangoon. Plenty of buyers were waiting, ready to pay in wads of kyat. Only problem was, at customs tourists were required to exchange a fixed amount of money into kyat, which could not be changed back when you left, and if not spent, it was confiscated.  Burma ended up being an expensive jaunt for our shoe-string budget, but worth every minute.

Photo: Geoffrey Hiller

History in a nutshell, we were there before the pro-democracy up-rising in 1988,  the subsequent election and house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, before the monk-led protests of 2007. Several military regimes have held firm. Burma is poor, not due to lack of resources, but paranoia and greed of the ruling generals.

In 1987 we could only stay in a couple approved guest houses, and it was hard to find food, few restaurants, and the Burmese were not allowed to invite foreigners to their homes.  No bic pens, no cigarette lighters, no plastic in the markets. We rushed from the steamy, colonial capital of Rangoon (the original YMCA cost $1 a night) to the horses and buggies on the dusty streets of Mandalay, to Pagan, the main attraction, where thousand-year-old stupas, payas spread across the plains.

The magic of Burma then turned out to be Buddhism, the monks with deep-red colored robes, filing out of the monasteries in the morning with their alms bowls. Nuns, too, with shaved heads and pink robes. We didn’t have time to speak with many people, except a few old men in Mandalay, readers of Dickens, who spoke superb English.

Flash forward to 2011. We are older, and the tourist visa allows 28 days. Despite sanctions by the US and the EC, foreigners are trickling in, nothing like the tidal wave to Thailand. It’s low season, May, peak of the heat, when the monsoons start. On this visit we decide not to rush around only to tourist sites, but instead stay in Yangon(new name), and do side trips to once closed areas like Bago and Inle Lake in the north.

One reason Myanmar has stayed on our radar is that G went back and photographed there in 2000, resulting in a multi-media website, Burma: Grace Under Pressure. It was seen by millions. We did not take it down until after we applied for our visas. Turns out we didn’t need to worry, internet use is spotty, and heavily censored, the word ‘Burma’ for example, and anything about AASK. The government’s current whim is to block all of Yahoo, Skype, blog sites. G-mail and Facebook work, for now.