December 16-17, 2013: Pyay to Taunggok

In Pyay on the 16th, I got up early and walked up to the daily market north along the river, passing a tree full of sleeping fruit bats.  A very cold wind came off the river.  I could see sand being blown all over off the sand bank on the other side of the river.  People were all bundled up at the market against the cold.  I passed a row of thanakha sellers as I entered the streets of the extensive market.  Thanakha is the wood ground down and used as face powder and is sold as little logs, a few inches long.  Many varieties of fish were also on sale, as were flowers, vegetables and much else.  I eventually came back to my hotel for breakfast and then walked up to some low hills just southeast of Shwesandaw for the morning views of golden Shwesandaw Pagoda on its hill.  An old woman chased away a dog barking at me on one of the hilltop pagodas I walked up to.  I walked back to my hotel before noon by way of the decrepit railroad station.

I had lunch and then walked again along the river.  The bats were still hanging high up in their tree.  A few boats were on the river.  On the riverbank I came across dozens of large varnished earthenware pots, perhaps drying in the sun.  I climbed the steps up to Shwedandaw again in mid afternoon and spent about an hour there, just sitting and watching the people.  I again visited the large Buddha and then ate an early dinner and took a motorcycle taxi to the bus station at about 5:30.

I would have liked to have spent another day in Pyay in order to visit some sites outside of town, but was given incorrect information about the departure days of boats to Sittwe on Burma's west coast.  I also would have much preferred taking a day bus rather than a night bus to my next destination, Taunggok, where the boats to Sittwe depart, but there weren't any.  I was hoping for a decent bus for the journey over the mountains to Taunggok on the coast, but found it was a decrepit old bus, with all the seats in the back half taken out so cargo could be loaded there.  And an enormous amount of cargo was slowly being loaded onto that bus.

We left shortly after 7 on a night with an almost full moon.  Three other foreign tourists, two German women and a Frenchman wearing a turban, were on the bus.  The French guy had pointed out to me a gash in one of the bus' nearly bald rear tires before we left.  The bus reached the long bridge over the Irrawaddy, the one I had crossed entering Pyay and stopped a short way across.  I wondered what had happened, especially once a policeman showed up and several of the men in the bus got off and pushed the bus back to the Pyay side of the bridge.  Then a guy showed up on a motorcycle with a jug of gasoline.  Apparently, the bus had run out of gas.  It was refilled and we set off again and crossed the bridge, stopping at a fuel station just on the other side to fill up.  We headed west on the paved road and eventually reached a town where we went down a dusty side road to some sort of lumber mill, where some long and heavy pieces of lumber wrapped in some sort of cloth were added to the cargo in the back.  It took them awhile to load the stuff, and then they discovered that they couldn't close the back door of the bus because the lumber blocked it.  So they unpacked some of the lumber and the repacked it.  Well over an hour later we finally got going again.

About 10 we left the paved road and started climbing into the mountains on a bumpy and dusty road.  Quite a few buses were making the night journey over the mountains, and some of them looked quite comfortable.  They were coming from Yangon and I sure wish I would have been on one of them.  Our heavily laden bus plodded along slowly.  We stopped for a while to watch another bus being repaired.  On the dusty, bumpy mountain road we rose to about 2600-2800 feet, I think, before stopping at midnight for a meal at a scraggly truck stop.  The air was cold.

After our meal stop, we continued rising, the bus very slow on the inclines.  The bus was dusty and cold and it was impossible for me to sleep.  The seats didn't recline and my window wouldn't stay shut.  I was fairly warmly dressed, wearing almost all my clothes, but was still cold.  My altimeter registered about 3300 feet at our highest point as we went up and down on that dusty road.  About 2:30 we stopped for about half an hour to replace a tire.  Most stayed on the bus, but I got out in the cold.  We had been scheduled to arrive in Taunggok at 4, well in time for the 6 a.m. boat to Sittwe, but I feeling pessimistic about that.

After we got going again, I must have briefly dozed off, as I thumped my head two or three times against the hard metal wall of the bus.  The short Burmese guy next to me kept bumping his hard head into my shoulder when he dozed off.   I had little leg room.  A most unpleasant journey.  I was losing hope of making the 6 o'clock boat.  We reached the coastal flatlands as the orange moon was setting before dawn and arrived in Taunggok in the dark and cold just before 6 a.m.  Almost eleven hours to cover the 70 or so miles as the crow flies from Pyay to Taunggok.  It took a while to get my backpack unloaded from the crammed cargo half of the bus.  The other three foreigners were heading to a beach resort further south.  With my pack on my back, I jumped on a motorcycle taxi and we sped in the dark on a bumpy road towards the port, a very cold journey.  It took us about ten minutes to get there, arriving about 6:15, to find the boat had just left.  That was disappointing, but I was told that there was a boat to Sittwe the next day, contrary to the information I was given in Pyay.

The motorcycle taxi took me on another cold journey, as the sky lightened, back to a simple guesthouse in Taunggok.   I checked in and then went to a nearby tea house for hot tea and a breakfast of fried rice.  I was covered in dust and still cold, but the tea and hot food helped.  As I finished I was joined by a guy who told me he taught English in Taunggok.  He took me by motorcycle to show me his simple English classroom.  I think he charged something like $20 for three months of classes.  He then walked me around the center of the pleasant little town, including the market.  We sat in the sun watching a betel nut preparer, spreading lime paste over bright green little leaves and then adding various things plus chopped betel nuts and then wrapping up each leaf.  One of the English classes began at 8, with four young women students.  I was tired, but agreed to talk English with them, and enjoyed it.  They were very earnest and friendly as we had some fairly stilted conversations.

The friendly English teacher then took me by motorcycle to a pagoda on a little hill a little outside of town for the views, which were nice.  The day was sunny and warming up.  Back in town he treated me to mudi, a traditional breakfast noodle soup with fish broth in Rakhine state.  Rakhine, formerly known as Arakan, is Burma's westernmost state, with a distinctive ethnic group, also called the Rakhine.  We went to buy a boat ticket, for $30, for the next day's boat to Sittwe and then met up with a friend of his to go to a little bar on the outskirts of town where we sat in a little open hut with a view of a man and woman (the latter in a conical hat) reaping rice. They ordered whisky and water, but I declined, so they ordered a Red Bull for me.  First time I have drunk it.  It is quite popular here.  Someone told me it was developed by a guy from Thailand.  They were interesting to talk to, especially about Rakhine state and the Rakhine people.  They were very anti-Muslim.  There has been much discord, and even violence, between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine and other parts of Burma, especially with the Muslims known as Rohingya, whom the government and most Burmese consider illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.  Last year the government prohibited foreigners from going to Sittwe because of the violence.  They told me the trouble started when Muslims raped and cut the throat of a Buddhist girl.  The Rohingya are in camps near the border with Bangladesh and getting assistance from foreign NGOs, which the Buddhists resent, calling it interference by foreigners.

We had been invited to a lunch at Taunggok's Shwe Myitta Home for the Aged, a new place built and supported by donations, with 21 people living there.  They told me it is unique in the country.  Out front is a sign in English stating, "You'll Become Old and Infirm One Day."  We arrived as they were saying prayers.  Six or so old men were in traditional dress, including traditional Burmese hats with flaps on one side.  While the old folks ate lunch, we sat and talked with some of the very friendly people there, and then had lunch ourselves after the old folks finished.  About five of us, including the man who had donated the lunch, sat on the floor at a low table and ate a traditional meal of several dishes, including rice, fish, chicken, greens, dried anchovies, and something called ngamonton, which is dried fish subsequently fried.  It was very tasty.  They brought me a fork and spoon, but I declined them and ate with my right hand like everyone else, rolling up little balls of rice with the other foods mixed in, though my technique of rolling up little balls of rice leaves a lot to be desired.  After finishing and washing our hands, we had tea and bananas before sitting outside again and talking.  It was a very pleasant lunch, with very friendly people. 

After lunch I was taken back to my little hotel and relaxed there until almost 3.  I didn't really fall asleep.  Perhaps it was the Red Bull.  I took a walk around town for about two and a half hours after that, until almost nightfall, and enjoyed that. As always, people were very friendly.  I crossed a bamboo bridge to get to a little village on the other side of the river and walked around there.  I was told the bridge has to be rebuilt every year after it washes away in the high water during the rainy season. 

I had been asked to make another appearance at a 7 p.m. English class and then go to dinner.  I decided instead to have an early dinner, go to the class, and then to bed.  I enjoyed the class, full of friendly and eager young people, about ten or twelve in all, and was in bed by about 8:30.  All in all, I was glad to have missed the boat.  Though tired, I very much enjoyed my day in Taunggok.

December 11-15, 2013: Pathein to Pyay

I got up in the dark at 5:30 on the morning of the 11th, had breakfast at 6, and at 6:30 boarded a taxi to get to Yangon's bus station almost ten miles from the city center.  I had been told that with the morning rush hour traffic it might take an hour or more to get to the bus station, but it took only 45 minutes.  The traffic was quite thick in places.  My  taxi crossed the wide Yangon River by bridge and headed through almost rural areas to get to the bus station east of the city.  I wonder why they put it so far out.  In any event, my bus left about 8, heading west to Pathein, formerly known as Bassein.  I had hoped to get there by river ferry from Yangon, but have been told they were discontinued about six months ago.

The bus was fairly comfortable, but without much leg room, and I enjoyed the journey through the verdant Irrawaddy (now Ayeyarwady) River delta region.  Greenery was everywhere, as was lots of water. The narrow asphalt and much patched road passed very green rice fields and fields of other crops.  In some places, however, the rice was either ready for harvesting or had just been harvested.  The sky was cloudy and a few raindrops fell.  There was very little traffic on that narrow road.  Water seemed to be everywhere:  canals, ponds, rivers.  Houses often had narrow bamboo bridges built over the canal between them and the road.

We crossed the wide Irrawaddy about 9:30, a bit more than 40 miles from Yangon.  The bridge is supposed to be about a mile and three quarters long, though much of it is over land.  When the river is in flood, the situation must be much different.  There was another bridge, for both trains and cars, just upriver, and a sandbank in the center of the river.  We stopped at a roadside restaurant soon after crossing and spent almost an hour there as the bus driver and his assistant spent the time making repairs under the bus.  I ate some quail eggs, which were good but difficult to peal.  We didn't have any problems as we continued west through the green and watery countryside.  There were very few road signs in the Roman alphabet.  Burmese has quite an appealing, curlicued alphabet.

We reached Pathein's bus station, three and a half miles from the city center, about 12:30 and I took a motorcycle taxi to a hotel in the center. Pathein is the largest port in the delta and has been a major port for centuries.  I think it has about 200,000 people, but doesn't seem that populated.  I ate a fish and rice lunch and then looked around the town.  I walked to the waterfront.  The Pathein River breaks off from the Irrawaddy more than a hundred miles to the north.  Many boats were ferrying people across the wide river, or chugging up or down the river.  The small boats ferrying people across the river are paddled by standing boatmen using two oars on small posts.

From the riverfront I walked to the train station, first passing some shops selling the colorful silk and bamboo parasols that Pathein is famous for.  I talked to the friendly train personnel and then sat in the station long enough to watch some passengers toting a lot of bundles leave on some sort of one carriage train.  I walked back to the town center and entered the Shwemokhtaw Paya, another golden stupa surrounded by prayer halls, near the river.  As always, people were friendly and I talked to a red robed monk and his sister, clad in lime green tights with not quite matching green fingernail polish.  It was a bit surprising to see a monk accompanied by a young woman dressed like that, or by any woman at all, but I figured they must be brother and sister.  They told me they are Karens, from near Hpa-an.  The brother is in a monastery near Pathein. 

From the stupa I walked a bit north and then along the riverbank as the sun set.  There is a very nice place to sit, with benches and individual plastic chairs on a sort of patio right along the river.  A lot of folks were there and I sat among them and watched the busy river traffic until it got dark about 6.  Before dark, lots of birds, mostly egrets but also some ibises, I think, were flying downriver, often in V formation.  It was a very nice place to see the end of the day.   I walked back into the pagoda to see it all lit up at night.  The opening ceremonies of the South East Asia Games, hosted by Myanmar, were on television that evening, and I watched large portions of them over the course of the evening  on televisions in the arcades leading to the pagoda, in my hotel lobby, and in the restaurant where I ate dinner.  The opening ceremonies, obviously modeled on the Olympics, were very professionally done.  The slogan for the games is "Clean, Green and Friendship."  A little odd.  Perhaps "Friendly" would have been better.

The next morning I got up early and walked around the city center, to the riverfront, through the colorful morning market, and to the central pagoda.  People were particularly friendly, as comparatively few tourists come here, although I have seen several.  A particularly friendly, but shy, girl monk, maybe in her early teens, with pink robes and an orange cloak folded on top of her shaved head, sat down near me on the riverfront and kept looking over.  I'm never sure how friendly you should be with Buddhist nuns, but eventually I asked to take her picture and she seemed pleased.  From the townspeople I got lots of hellos and mingulabas ("mingulaba" is the standard greeting and is supposed to mean "may auspiciousness be upon you") and lots of big smiles.  I spent about two hours walking around until I got hungry and stopped for breakfast at a tea house where I ate some sort of chappatti with sweet little beans and a couple of doughy, sweet pancakes with some sort of little seeds on them, plus coffee and tea.  Very good.

The day, unlike the day before, was sunny.  I had torn a hole in one of my two pairs of shorts, so was taken to a seamstress in the market by a boy from my hotel.  She quickly and expertly patched it using an old fashioned, pedal powered sewing machine at a charge of about 50 cents.  Afterwards I wandered through the indoor market.  It contained enormous amount of bananas and quite a lot of big, dark tobacco leaves.  Dry beans and rice and other grains, plus much else, were also on sale.  Old fashioned metal scales were being used for weighing.  Lots of baskets, rather than plastic or cardboard, were being used for containers.

Eventually, I hired what is called a trishaw or saiq ka (as in "sidecar"), a bicycle with a little wooden sidecar attached to it, to take me to a parasol workshop about a mile away.  The ride was bumpy on the dirt and poorly paved roads we eventually had to pass.  I probably should have taken a motorcycle taxi, as it would have been faster and more comfortable, but I decided to give my custom to the saiq ka driver as I figured if he could have afforded a motorcycle, he would have had one.

The parasol factory was very interesting.  There were dozens of colorful silk and bamboo parasols on display in the simple, but large, workshop.  An English speaking guy showed me around.  Some larger parasols were being made out of cotton, then waterproofed by being covered first with glue and left to dry in the sun for the day.  The guide told me they next would be covered with diesel and then persimmon juice (if I understood him correctly, and I think I did).  The big parasols were maybe eight to ten feet in diameter.  I also watched a guy putting the wood and bamboo frames together and a woman tying the intricate string lacing under one of the large parasols.  Another guy, a man of 60, was very delicately hand painting flowers on parasols.  Other parasols had ducks and intricate designs painted on them.  The guide told me the painter was the grandson of the founder of the workshop.   Prices were very reasonable for the standard size parasols, something around five or seven dollars.

I wandered around watching everything for more than an hour, and nobody seemed to mind.  In fact, as usual, they were quite friendly.  I next walked a short distance to the Settayaw Paya, a part dilapidated and part under construction pagoda.  One old timber hall was very nice, with a large standing Buddha inside.  Outside were uncompleted, rough statues of demons rather gruesomely punishing sinners.  I watched some chinlon players nearby for a while.  One guy was particularly good, especially with his behind the back kicks.

I took a motorcycle taxi back to the center and spent a couple of hot afternoon hours in an air conditioned internet cafe, and then in the late afternoon walked to the river to see the sunset.  I met a chubby, jovial, bald headed (except for a little tuft in the back) French guy with a bright orange shirt and tiny circular glasses with wide orange rims. He was quite interesting to talk to and had been in the city for three days. Some boys about 12 or 14 showed up and then showed off by jumping into the river.  One even did a back flip into the river.  Later they both snorted thread into their noses and then pulled it out.  One managed to snort it into his nose and then pull it out through his mouth.  He held both ends of the thread, one out his nose and the other out his mouth, and pulled them back and forth.  Pretty odd. 

The sunset was particularly beautiful, with lots of boats on the river and lots of birds heading south over the river.  People on the waterfront were very friendly.  Other than perhaps West Africans, I don't think I have ever met people as friendly as in Burma.  I stayed again until after dark and then went to the illuminated pagoda, where there were more worshipers than the evening before.  I suppose the evening before a lot of people were home watching the opening ceremonies of the South East Asia Games.

From Pathein I wanted to head north to Pyay and decided to do it with a couple of stops in towns on the way reachable by train.  I had set my alarm to get up the next morning in time for the 5:30 express train north, but managed to sleep through it.  I did make the slower 6:40 train (more than eight hours northeast to Hinthada, maybe a hundred miles from Pathein, in comparison to five hours and forty minutes on the express), with a two dollar ordinary seat, on wooden slat benches.   The old carriage was not full, and a pretty, pink-clad young nun sat across the aisle from me.  She shyly offered me some cookies and spoke some English.  We slowly headed north through the green countryside in the early morning, the carriages rocking.  The nun pointed out some things along the way that she thought I should photograph and then got out at Daka about an hour and a half after we left Pathein.  As she left she handed me what she called a "present," wrapped tightly in green leaves, and then walked away from the train under her dark red Pathein parasol.  Inside the leaves was sticky sweet rice, very good, that she had bought at a previous station stop.

We continued northeast passing very simple thatch houses among the fields of rice and vegetables.  We made stops at very small, decrepit stations, and some longer stops at larger, decrepit stations, once for forty minutes.  I enjoyed the stops as I could watch all the people in the little towns and villages.  I was the only foreigner on the train and, as usual, people were very friendly.  I got a lot of curious looks from the local people at stations who saw me peering out the window.  Big bundles and baskets were loaded on at some stops.  I bought peanuts and quail eggs.

The terrain became drier as we headed north, though there was still lots of water.  My butt was getting sore by the time we arrived at Hinthada at 2:45.  Hinthada is a fairly large city, just west of the Irrawaddy.  My guidebook had nothing about it.  I think it has just been opened to foreigners.  A trishaw took me through dusty streets to a hotel and I got a good room, with air conditioning, for 24,000 kyat (about $25), the first hotel that I paid for in kyat rather than dollars.  Hungry, I went to a nearby tea shop and ate some sweet and greasy large things shaped like very large doughnut holes, along with tea, while watching the South East Asia Games on television.  I took a walk around town until sunset, visiting a couple of pagodas, a dirty market, and passing lots of very friendly and curious people.  I got lots of smiles.  Sometimes someone would look at me curiously and then break into a big smile once I smiled at or greeted him or her.  I went to bed at 8:30 and slept for eleven hours.

The next morning I had a greasy but good breakfast, four samosas, two doughy sweet things, and tea, all for about 50 cents, and then caught the 11:20 train, the express I had missed the day before, heading further north.  This time I was sold a five dollar upper class ticket, with padded seats.  Still, it was another rocky, but very interesting ride through the countryside, mostly of rice fields already harvested or ready to be harvested.  I saw quite a few bullock carts, with wooden wheels, heaped with rice stalks.  I saw some threshing here and there.  The day was cloudy, with even a few raindrops.  We crossed the wide Pathein River about 15 or 20 miles south of where it breaks off from the Irrawaddy.  As always, the people were very friendly and I once again was the only foreigner on the train.  A little boy across from me was dressed in a Spiderman style pajamas.

Arriving in the small town of Maun-aung, about 70 miles from Hinthada and another town not discussed in my guidebook, I took a trishaw to a hotel and was given a "special room," with air conditioning, for 15,000 kyat.  I noticed they had other rooms for 8,000 kyat and asked about an ordinary room, but they made clear I was to get the special room.  I walked around the very pretty little town, with wet streets from the short rain.  I walked through the grounds of a large, old monastery and meet a few of the six monks staying there.  One spoke some English and told me the grand wooden main hall was over a hundred years old.  I walked to the railroad tracks and then back towards the Irrawaddy.  The outskirts of town, near the tracks, had quite a village feel to it, but in the two blocks closest to the river there were some two and three story colonial buildings.  There wasn't much traffic.  The Irrawaddy is quite wide here, and down maybe twenty or thirty feet below the bank.  There were a few boats on the river.  People of all ages were again very curious and friendly as I walked around until it got dark.

I spent more than an hour the next morning at the fantastic market in the streets and alleys near the river.  Lots of fish, of all types, was on offer, along with vegetables and much else.  People were very curious and friendly.  I suspect I was the only foreigner in town and not many others had visited in recent years.  One old woman came up to me to have her photo taken.  I could have stayed for hours, but left for breakfast at a tea house.  The hotel manager from my hotel came in and paid for the breakfast as a parting gift.

At 9 I left on a small bus heading the final four hours on bad roads to Pyay.  We passed lots of heavily laden bullock carts, full of rice stalks, and I saw lots of threshing being done.  The terrain turned hilly in the latter part of the trip.  At a tea stop the bus driver bought me tea.  We crossed the wide Irrawaddy on a long bridge (3/4 of a mile), with views of Pyay's golden Shwesandaw Pagoda up on a hill in the center of town on the opposite, eastern bank of the river.  In town we passed between the Shwesandaw and a giant Buddha, called the Ten Story Buddha, but not quite that tall. 

In Pyay (also called Pyi, but known as Prome in colonial times) I found a hotel, had lunch, and then walked along the river under shady trees.  Turning inland away from the river, I walked to the Shwesandaw Pagoda and climbed the covered stairway on its west side to the top, a climb of a little more than a hundred feet.  I got there about 3 and stayed until after nightfall, until about 6:30.  This is quite a beautiful pagoda, all gold with lots of golden spires and smaller golden stupas and altars all around, with halls on the outside of the circuit around the stupa.  It is three feet higher than the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, but has only four hairs of the Buddha inside, in contrast to Shwedagon's eight.  A little photo gallery in one of the halls had a photo of it in 1855 and another photo of it from 1945 with Gurkhas walking past it as they retook the city from the Japanese.  From Shwesandaw there are great views, of the ten story Buddha and other golden stupas on nearby hills.  You can see the wide river, the bridge across it, and the hills beyond.  Across the river is another golden stupa on a hill. 

As the afternoon wore on, the number of worshipers increased, many praying at the flower laden altars ringing the main stupa.  The sun set behind the hills across the Irrawaddy about 5:30, as hundreds of little, chirping birds landed on the pagoda's minor stupas and spires ringing the main golden stupa to settle down for the night.  The birdsong as it grew dark added to the beauty of the place.  The lights came on, illuminating the huge gold central stupa.  A group of six monks came up and asked to pose with me for photos.  I think I was at least a head taller than each of them.  Leaving, I walked down to the foot of the giant Buddha, also lit up, and then walked back in the dark to my hotel.  In the town's main square, behind an equestrian statue of Aung San, a giant video screen showed a soccer match from the South East Asia Games.

December 7-10, 2013: Yangon (Rangoon)

I was up about 5:30 on the morning of the 7th and walked to Bago's train station in the dark.  The window selling tickets for the 6:30 train to Yangon opened at 6 and I eventually got a ticket for $2.  The train wasn't overcrowded and I enjoyed the almost two hour ride 50 miles southwest to Yangon, despite the hard wooden benches and the rocking carriages.  Most of the rice fields along the way were unplanted or just recently planted, and I saw men with teams of bullocks apparently leveling several plots, the men standing on boards pulled by the bullocks.  We passed lots of simple, thatched shacks and a few forlorn little train stations.  We only made two or three stops.

Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is a big city, with four or five million people (maybe 60 million in Burma as a whole) and it took a while to reach the city center.  I walked from the train station to a guesthouse I had booked the night before near the Sule Pagoda in the heart of downtown.  I had stayed in a different hotel in the same area in 1994.  Yangon is much changed after 20 years, with skyscrapers now and lots of cars.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are 100, or even more, times the cars now than 20 years ago. This was a Saturday morning, though, so the traffic was relatively light.  I found a tea shop and had breakfast, the traditional Burmese breakfast of mohinga, a noodle and fish broth soup.  I later ordered a rice, egg, peanut and onion dish that I liked much better, and then some greasy but delicious shrimp egg rolls.  With tea with milk and sugar it all came to about a dollar and a half.  The waiters were all very friendly.  The only problem was the very tiny seats and the table too low for my knees to go beneath it.

After breakfast I walked around the city center, past the golden Sule Pagoda in the center of a traffic circle to the park fronting the colonial city hall.  A Baptist Church and a huge and beautiful, but derelict, old colonial building with a clock tower, the former High Court, also front the park, with other colonial era buildings and a couple of shiny new glass and steel skyscrapers of about 25 or 30 stories.  I walked down a wide street further to the east lined with more old and decrepit colonial era buildings and reached the waterfront road, with more colonial buildings including the 1901 Strand Hotel, now restored, air conditioned and expensive. I went inside and looked around.  There are great old photos on the walls and a wonderful 1930 map of Rangoon.  Rangoon was such a small city back then compared to now, though I've read that at the time it was the British Empire's third busiest port, which is saying something considering its rivals were not only London and Liverpool, but also Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong and many other important ports.  A woman was softly playing a Burmese xylophone in the Strand lobby.  I sat in the deserted bar and read an International New York Times and an English language Burmese newspaper.  Now that press censorship has been largely lifted, there are dozens of newspapers for sale on the streets.  Oddly, quite a few have mastheads in English, but all the articles are in Burmese.

I spent quite a bit of time at the Strand and then checked out the ferry terminal nearby.  I walked a few blocks to the old colonial secretariat, a full block of buildings now in great disrepair.  I walked around the block and peered through a chain link fence at the grand old buildings.  A guard told me it will be reconstructed and made into a museum.  Aung San, Burma's independence hero, was assassinated here in 1947, about six months before independence in January 1948.

I took a long walk west to the jetties to check out a ferry to Pathein in the Irrawaddy Delta, but was told there no longer is a boat.  There was a crowded boat getting ready for an all night journey to the town of Bogale in the delta.  Various ferries were leaving for short journeys, as were some small boats taking passengers just across the wide Yangon River.  The Yangon River is not part of the delta, but is connected to it by the Twante Canal.  I watched the ferry traffic and the stevedores carrying hefty sacks onto several of the boats until almost dark, and then headed to 19th Street, where there are outdoor restaurants on the narrow street where you order meals of grilled food.  You pick out little wooden spears of meat and vegetables and they grill them for you and bring them to your table.  I ordered two of chicken, one of pork, two of broccoli and one of okra, and it was all very good.

My hotel provided a small but tasty Burmese breakfast, noodles and little fried dumplings, the next morning.  I walked to a colorful street market and then to a large market building built in 1926 and now apparently devoted mainly to the tourist trade.  I also stopped in at a synagogue built in the 1890's and still loving maintained by Yangon's now very small community of Baghdadi Jews.  I met Moses Samuels, the guy in charge, and also met a guy from California, ethnically Chinese who fled Burma in 1973 when the government was making difficult for the Chinese.  He had returned with his daughter for sightseeing and to build a library near Inle Lake.

I had a second breakfast about 11 at the tea house I had eaten at the day before and then took a taxi (which are relatively cheap here, $2 or $3 for trips) to Chaukhtatgyi Paya, another big, reclining Buddha, this one with a jeweled crown, in a large shed.  Nearby is Ngahtatgyi Paya, with a large and beautiful seated Buddha with intricate woodwork behind it. I then walked through some old and new monastery buildings to the Aung San Museum, in the large wooden house he lived in from May 1945 until his death in July 1947.  It contained very interesting photos of him, his wife and his three little children, including his youngest, Aung San Su Kyi, who was 2 when he was assassinated.  On the streets of Yangon and elsewhere I have seen lots of posters and photos of her, and I have seen a few offices of her political party, the National League for Democracy.  I've been told that two years ago her photo would not have been found in public places.

From the museum I walked to the magnificent Shwedagon Paya, a golden stupa on a hill.  Covered stairways lead up to it on four sides, with vendors along the way.  The hilltop is 190 feet above sea level and on top is a platform twelve acres in size, with the 322 foot high stupa sitting atop a plinth itself 21 feet high.  More than 60 smaller stupas ring the main one and it is all quite a sight.  Foreigners have to pay $8 to enter and short pants are not allowed. I always carry zip on extensions to my shorts, but before I could pull them out of my daypack, the ticket seller had pulled out a longyi, the Burmese skirt-like garment worn by men, for me to wear,  It is a wide piece of circular cloth that you step into and then knot in the front.  It is very comfortable.  So I wore that for the three and a half hours I spent there.

I arrived about 4, with the late afternoon sun on the golden stupas and many tiered roofs.  I walked around slowly the first time.  The crowds were very large on that Sunday afternoon.  The circular walkway is wide, with halls full of Buddhas on one side and the stupas on the other.   At several spots below the stupas are altars for the days of the week, where people born on that day pray and make offerings, typically flowers and pouring water over the small Buddhas at the spots.

The stupa is claimed to be 2600 years old, and probably is at least a 1000 years old.  Eight strands of Buddha's hair are said to be encased inside.  The current version is said to date from 1769, after an earthquake.  There are 13,000 plates of gold covering the upper portion of the stupa, and at the very top is a hti, an umbrella like pinnacle, of iron covered in gold.  Its metal flag is said to contain 1100 diamonds totaling 228 carats and 1383 other stones.  At the very top, above the iron flag, is an orb covered with 4351 diamonds totaling 1800 carats, with a large 76 carat diamond at the very top of the orb.  Of course, you can't really see any of these jewels from more than 300 feet below.  However, there is a hall with photos of them.

After dark, lights illuminate the whole gold assembly.  The crowds were still heavy and I walked around another time and sat here and there to watch the friendly crowds.  People were chanting in some of the halls, monks could be seen here and there, and there was still a lot of activity at the birthday posts.  A lot of tourists showed up for sunset and just after dark.  By about 7, an hour after dark, the crowds had diminished, but there were still lots of people up there.  I walked around one last time and left about 7:30, taking a taxi back to the center of town.  I easily could have stayed longer at that beautiful spot, but I was getting hungry. 

The next morning I took another walk around the city center, very nice in the cool morning air.  I walked through the central grassy square, called Mahabandoola Garden, with a 165 foot tall white obelisk in the center commemorating independence and interesting colonial buildings all around.  I walked again to the Strand Hotel, stopping in at the Inland Water Transport Office, with a cavernous hall where tickets used to be sold by the old colonial company that I've read had a fleet of 600 ships plying Burma's inland waters.  Most were sunk to prevent them being used by the invading Japanese.  On the same block as the Strand is the former headquarters of the Bombay Burmah Teak Company, I think it was called, the British company that dominated Burma's teak trade.  Its dispute with the King of Burma in Mandalay led to the Third Burmese War in 1885 and the deposition of the king, sent to exile in Ratnagiri on the coast of India south of Bombay.  Now the building is the office of the national airline. 

I read the newspapers at the Strand, and listened to a woman in the main lounge play first a Burmese xylophone, made of wood, and then a boat shaped Burmese harp, with sixteen strings.  It was very interesting to watch her play the harp. 

After another breakfast at a tea shop, I took a taxi through the very heavy Monday morning traffic to the National Museum, only to find it closed on Mondays.  So I walked to the nearby tomb of the last Moghul Emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar.  He was exiled to Rangoon after the insurrection of 1857-1858 (variously called the Indian Mutiny or the Sepoy Rebellion or, by the Indians these days, the First War of Independence) and died in Rangoon in 1862.  He was buried in an unmarked grave, but it was discovered in 1991.  A tomb has been built and is covered with linens and fragrant flowers.  Nearby are photos of visiting dignitaries, the Presidents of India and Pakistan and the Prime Minister of India. 

I took a taxi back to the city center and later in the afternoon, about 4:30, walked to Mahabandoola Garden, filled with people at the end of the afternoon.  There was even a small protest gathering on the street just outside the park.  I walked around and then sat for a while just under the independence monument.  A young guy from Rakhine (formerly known as Arakan), on Burma's west coast, struck up a conversation.  He has just arrived in Yangon to study English, which he spoke very well.

My guesthouse in Yangon had very good Burmese breakfasts, and the next morning I had a double breakfast of small, crunchy, rice filled rolls as the woman seated across from me didn't like them.  They did have a slight fish taste.  I again walked to the Strand and read the newspapers and then walked to the old colonial post office.  I've noticed quite a large number of people on the streets in Yangon and elsewhere wearing American flag themed shirts and even shorts.  My favorite proclaimed, "Back to Back World War Champs."  There are also quite a few British flag themed shirts, but none I've see featuring flags from France or Russia or China or anywhere else, with one unfortunate exception:  I have seen a couple with the flag of Nazi Germany.

About 10:30 I took a taxi to the National Museum and ended up spending three and a half hours there.  It has five large floors, with the pride of its collection being a 25 foot or so high throne used by the Kings of Burma to decide court cases.  It came from the palace in Mandalay and dates from the early 1800's.  It was taken to the museum in Calcutta after the 1885 conquest of Upper Burma and returned at independence by the British.  Apparently, there were nine of these huge thrones, but the other eight were destroyed during World War II, when the royal palace in Mandalay was burned to the ground.

The museum collection is very interesting and well laid out and fairly well explained.   There are many beautiful gold ornaments, furniture, and other items from the royal court.  There are also some very interesting royal clothes, including a set worn by the last king and queen, with a photo of them wearing the clothes.  On the top floor are 50 pairs of mannequins, each pair showing the male and female dress of an ethnic group.  There are also musical instruments, weapons, tools, carts, and much else.  The museum even has three or four chandeliers from a now torn down colonial building that housed the head of state after independence.

For lunch I stopped into a nearby restaurant known for its good Burmese food and had a very good lunch, fish, rice, tomato salad, and soup, with a German guy I had run into several times before, first in Mawlamyine.  After lunch I walked to the Shwedagon Paya, approaching it at its southern entrance, with massive statues of guardian chinthes, combinations of lions and dragons.  I didn't go back into the heart of Shwedagon, bur rather walked around it to see the views of it from the surrounding park and streets.  After sunset, about 5:30, I took a taxi back to the city center. 

December 1-6, 2013: Hpa-an, Kyaiktiyo, and Bago

I left Mawlamyine on the morning of the 1st by boat up the wide Salween heading to the Karen town of Hpa-an.  Ferries used to run this route, but have just recently died off as the roads have been improved and new bridges built.  Local people prefer to take faster buses.  The hotel I stayed in, however, has a boat almost every day, if enough tourists are interested.  Nine of us were interested on that morning, with each paying about $8.50, more than four times the bus fare.  But the journey upriver was very pleasant and scenic.  We sat in comfortable plastic chairs, two across in the narrow boat, with a covering to protect us from the sun.  We left about 8:30, hugging the riverbanks to avoid the swifter current in the middle of the river.  The scenery at first was mainly flat, with pagodas on top of hills in the distance.  We passed several riverside villages without electricity.  There wasn't a lot of other boat traffic, but there was some, both fishermen in small boats and larger cargo boats.  It took us about five hours, with a half an hour or so stop about midway, to make our way to Hpa-an, only 35 or 40 miles upriver.  The last part was particularly scenic, with lots of steep sided craggy hills on both sides of the river.  They rise almost straight up out of the flat landscape.  Just east of Hpa-an is the particularly impressive massif of Mount Zwegabin, rising to 2372 feet.

Hpa-an (the H signifies there is an aspiration, or a puff of air, before the p) is a small town and the capital of Kayin (or Karen) State.  Several of us checked into a cheap ($6 a room for a single) but pretty good backpacker hotel run by the Soe Brothers, a local Karen family.  I was hungry and ate a big late lunch about 3 and then walked to the river.  A pagoda with a golden zedi, or stupa, stands right on the riverbank.  I walked a little north and watched all the activity at a boat landing.  Small boats were passing from a village across the wide river, while others were going up and down the river.  A few larger wooden boats passed by.  Up and down the river were great views of those craggy, steep sided hills.  Eventually, I walked into the pagoda and watched the sunset over the wide river from a terrace.  Quite a few townsfolk were also there for the end of the day.  The river was still full of boat traffic.  I sat for a while and watched all the activity, including a cigarette smoking, red robed monk.  Another monk sat down next to me and chatted away in Burmese or Karen or whatever he spoke.

Other than the pagoda and the river, there is not much to see in Hpa-an itself, so the next morning I joined with seven others for a tour the Soe Brothers put together of sites in the hinterland.  We were driven around in a sort of carriage powered by a converted motorcycle and it was comfortable enough.  We headed downriver a few miles to the bridge over the river, crossed it, and reached a cave, the Kawgun Cave, in one of the steep sided crags on the other side of the river.  This cave reached several stories high, with thousands of little clay Buddhas attached to the walls and ceiling of the cave, dating back hundreds of years, at least to the 14th century, I think, but maybe older.  Below are much newer and larger statues of Buddha. 

From there we drove through rice fields and past more steep sided rocky hills to another cave, the Yathaypyan Cave, similar to Kawgun but with fewer Buddhas.  However, in Yathaypyan you can walk through it for about ten minutes to an opening overlooking a pond or river.  Unfortunately, however, you are required not to wear shoes to enter the cave.  Thus I trod barefoot through the rocky, up and down, dark passage through the cave to the opening at the end.  Inevitably, I stubbed my little toe on a jagged rock on the floor.  It bled profusely, but I was able to wash it when I got out.  I tore off a big piece of skin and was worried about keeping it clean, but it has healed well.

We recrossed the river and headed towards towering Mount Zwegabin, stopping at Kyauk Kalap, a towering pinacle of steep rock with a pagoda on top.  You can go up stairs part way, but are not allowed up the bamboo ladders to the very top.  Surrounded by a pond, it has great views of Zwegabin and the rice fields and other hills around it.

About 12 we had a lunch stop and then made our way south along a maze of little roads to Saddar Cave.  It has some Buddhas and pagodas at its mouth, but then there is a very high ceilinged passage, several stories high and equally wide, through which you can pass to an exit after maybe a fifteen minute walk.  This time I carried my sandals with me through the part of the cave with Buddhas and pagodas and then put them on once we reached the rough floored dark passage.  Fortunately, someone turned on lights than ran through the passage, making it much easier to pass.  There were bats hanging above, and bat guano on the floor.  It was a bit slippery at places.  At the exit is a little lake with craggy hills all around.  Boatmen (and women) wait there to ferry you back to the entrance for a fee, paddling you across the lake to a low overhang that is the entrance to a water filled low cave with an exit on the other side.  Emerging, you are paddled and polled past rice fields and craggy hills.  Much of the watery course seems to be fenced off into fish ponds.  Quite a nice journey.  From there we headed back to town, about an hour's journey in the late afternoon.  Back in town several of us went to the pagoda on the river to enjoy the sunset and all the activity on the river and in the pagoda. 

The next morning I walked to Hpa-an's colorful morning market to search for quail eggs.  I didn't find any, but I did find a big bag of peanuts and soon after 7 took a motorcycle taxi about ten miles east to the start of the footpath up to the top of Mount Zwegabin.  It felt cool zipping along on a motorcycle in the early morning air.  We passed through a sort of canyon between Zwegabin and the craggy hill to the south.  At the foot of Zwegabin are, reputedly, 1021 Buddha statues, spread out over several acres.  I motorcycled and then walked past a good many of them and then began the steep climb up to the top, a climb of about 2200 feet according to my altimeter.  I climbed up the west side, shaded in the early morning and with lots of trees.  The stairs and paths, more stairs than paths, were irregular but not bad.  About halfway up I reached a spot where I had a good view to the east and stopped for a while to eat some peanuts and drink water.  From there on the views just kept getting better, down the steep slopes and out over the plains filled with steep, craggy hills.  I reached the top after a little more than two hours, with my altimeter pretty close to the 2372 foot reputed elevation of the mountain.  Three other tourists had preceded me to the top and there were monks up there, too.  A golden stupa on a platform, with a monastery all around, dominates the top.  The views are fantastic, especially to the north, where a further ridge has four more golden zedis (stupas), with Hpa-an and the Salween beyond.  The air was fresh and cool up there, too, and I sat and relaxed and ate more peanuts as I enjoyed the views.  I could pick out many of the places I had visited the day before.

After about 45 minutes, I started down.  I could have happily spent several hours up there, but I wanted to get down before it became too hot.  It took me about an hour and a half to walk down, much hotter than the trip up, and eventually plodding down all those stairs became pretty wearying.  I spotted a couple of monkeys on the way down and passed other tourists coming up.  I got down about noon, drank a liter of water, and then took a motorcycle taxi back to Hpa-an.  On the way I marveled at how steep and high the mountain seemed as we sped by its western flank.  In town I changed some dollars into kyat at a bank at the rate of 977 to 1 and then had a big lunch.

About 3 I took a boat across the wide Salween to a little village at the base of another steep sided rocky hill, called Hpan Pu.  I walked through the village to the base of the hill, right along the river, and on the way spotted a wiry middle aged man high up a sugar palm tree.  He had ascended on bamboo ladders attached to the slim ttunk and was pouring palm wine that had collected in bamboo containers into his own bamboo container hanging on a strap around his chest.  He climbed down and offered me a taste, motioning with his finger that I should dip my finger into it.  I did so and licked my finger and got a taste of the toddy, very sweet and tasty and not too alcoholic.  It gets much more alcoholic with time.  I watched him climb another tree to repeat the process and he offered me another taste when he climbed down, which I was happy to accept.  It is quite tasty.

I started the climb up Hpan Pu, with stairs and paths much rougher than at Zwegabin and climbed about 400 feet before reaching a spot where a landslide had obliterated the path.  I tried to cross, but the rocks and dirt kept sliding and I decided against going further.  Hpan Pu is much lower than Zwegabin, so I wasn't much below the top.  Three other tourists came up and we sat together to enjoy the fantastic views of the river and town and the countryside beyond, especially Mount Zwegabin.  We stayed until sunset and then made our way down and to the river, where we took a boat across just before dark.

The next morning I again walked to the market early, before 7, and spent about an hour looking around.  All the women had the yellow thanakha on their faces, and some wore conical hats.  Vegetables and fruit and flowers were on sale, and much else, including cooked food.  There were plenty of butchers.  I saw a basin full of duck heads and many defeathered chickens with their lower legs and claws still attached.  One guy brought in a fish that looked like a catfish and must have been at least five feet long.  It was quickly chopped up, with a little crowd watching.  The market was crowded and messy, but the people were very friendly and very polite.

About 10 I left on a bus headed north to Kyaikto, back in Mon State.  The bus was fairly modern, but with poorly functioning air conditioning and a distracting video.  Plus I had a big guy snoring right behind me.  My favorite part of the slapsticky video, which often elicited chuckles from my fellow passengers, was a scene where a young women played a violin to a soundtrack of the theme from Titanic, but played on a clarinet.  We passed through flat countryside for the most part, with some rice but much of it uncultivated.  There were groves of rubber trees.

We reached Kyaikto about 1 o'clock and I boarded a pick up for the short, maybe 20 minute, ride to the small town on Kinpun, where I checked into a hotel.  Kinpun is the base for visiting Mount Kyaiktiyo, the Golden Rock, and I should have taken the truck up to see it that afternoon, but I had bad information on how long it took to get up there, so I didn't go. I did have lunch and watched the trucks full of pilgrims coming and going.  Burmese can stay the night up there in hostels, but foreigners must stay in expensive hotels if they want to spend the night up there.  Towards nightfall lots of pilgrims who had come down the mountain were leaving Kinpun in very crowded pick ups, with many sitting on the roofs of the covered back portions.  All seemed in a very good mood.  There were thousands and thousands of pilgrims.

The next morning soon after 7 I did leave on one of the crowded trucks up the mountain.  The trucks were similar to the ones I had taken near Mawlamyine, but better.  The seats were padded, though still very narrow, and some trucks, including mine, had metal backs to the seats.  I also got a seat in the front row, with more leg room.  You board by climbing up stairs to platforms in a big shed and then climbing over the metal rails of the big trucks.  We were all packed tightly and I was the only foreigner on the truck.  It took us about an hour to climb through the hills to Kyaiktiyo, rising from about 300 feet elevation at Kinpun to about 3600 at Kyaiktiyo.  ("Ky," by the way, is pronounced something like a "ch.")  From the truck terminus it was only about a ten minute walk to the Golden Rock.  My guidebook had said it was a 45 minute ride on the truck followed by a 45 minute to one hour walk to the top, but obviously there is now a road all the way.

There is quite a large complex on the top, and at the edge is a huge, precariously balanced, gold covered boulder with a golden stupa on top.  It is considered one of the holiest shrines in Burma, which accounts for all the tourists.  A hair of the Buddha encased in the stupa is supposed to keep the boulder properly balanced.  The morning was sunny, with wonderful views of the surrounding hills.  I spent about an hour walking around, enjoying the views of the countryside below and the pilgrims around the Golden Rock.  Only men can cross onto the terrace right next to the boulder, where most affix splotches of gold from little patches of paper, the little squares of paper constantly fluttering down after they are discarded.  There are several different terraces with interesting views of the rock, and the pilgrims are interesting to watch.  At the very top of the mountain is a tree or two with statues all around.  A red robed monk sat meditating among them. 

I enjoyed walking around and watching everything, but as it became warmer in mid morning the number of pilgrims diminished.  I had planned to spend the day up there, but thought about descending and heading further north.  Eventually, I decided to hang around and took a walk to a couple of nearby, lower hilltops, passing the pilgrim hostels and shops along the way.  The walk wasn't all that interesting but for a couple of shops that had some interesting little bottles of perhaps liquor, or medicine, or both.  They contained some weird vegetation in the liquid.  There was some very odd food, too.  At one spot, a guy with a branch of some sort of wood chopped off about an inch portion, maybe a half inch thick, scraped the side with his axe, and gave it to me to smell.  It smelled very strongly of menthol, reminding me of Vicks Vaporub.  I handed it back, but he made clear it was a present.  The little piece of wood continued to smell for quite a while.  I watched some young men playing chinlon, the game similar to volleyball but where you can use any part of your body other than your arms and hands to touch the ball.  They were very skilful at kicking, kneeing and headbutting the wicker-like ball.  I've also seen guys playing it in a circle, without a net.

I walked back and had lunch about noon at one of the many little restaurants and then sat there until about 3 reading and watching all the pilgrims come through.  Some were dressed like hill people.  It had clouded up by midday, but was sunny again in the late afternoon.  I walked around some more and watched the pilgrims.  A lot more pilgrims, and a lot more tourists, arrived towards the end of the afternoon.  The sun set into the clouds to the west, imparting a wonderful glow to the Golden Rock just before the sun set.  Once the sun got low I could see the Sittoung River to the west.  The last truck down is supposed to leave at six.  I got to the truck about 20 minutes before and we left just before 6. It took us only about a half hour to get down, under a crescent moon and Venus in the sky, the truck's light illuminating the forest on the way down. 

About 9 the next morning I left Kinpun on a very comfortable bus, with functioning air conditioning, bound for Bago to the west.  The buses in Burma certainly have improved since I was here 20 years ago.  Back then public transportation was so uncomfortable that backpackers generally banded together to hire vans to see the country, which worked out very well.  I saw more rubber drying on poles along the way.  We crossed the Sittoung River on an old railroad bridge with the roadways later built on either side on the tracks and entered the Burmese heartland.  Burma, or Myanmar as it is now officially known, is composed of seven states based on ethnicity and seven divisions where ethnic Bamars (70% of the country's population) predominate.  The districts generally cover the long central valley of the Irrawaddy (now spelled Ayeyarwady) River while the states are on the mountainous border regions of the country, although it looks like there is more national territory in the states than in the districts. 

After a lunch stop in Waw about 11, we arrived in Bago, formerly known as Pegu, about noon.  This was a well known port to Europeans since the 16th century, I think, but the city was destroyed in the 18th century in the struggle between Bamars and Mons and despite some rebuilding never regained its past glory.  I checked into a hotel on the main drag, the road to Yangon cutting through the center of town, and then took a motorcycle tour around the city sights.  Bago has about 200,000 people, though it seemed smaller to me.  We headed first to the Shwemawdaw Paya, another golden stupa, this one the highest in Burma at 376 feet.  The gold glared in the midday sun.  This stupa has collapsed and been repaired many times over the centuries.  A 1930 earthquake completely leveled it, and alongside the present stupa is the big, brick, upper portion of the stupa destroyed in a 1917 earthquake.  I slowly walked around it, with temples all around and a few worshipers there at midday. 

From there we drove to a monastery housing a 20 foot long python, supposedly the reincarnation of a previous abbot that found its way to the monastery from somewhere in the north.  It was sleeping on a bench with a guy sitting next to it.  I was told it eats either 11 pounds or 11 kilos of chicken every week or so.  I was also told it is 125 years old.  It is quite thick, maybe almost a foot at the thickest.  There are a few photos of old monks with it draped around their necks.

We next visited a monastery said to have about 600 monks and I saw about 200 young ones studying in a big hall.  Our next stops were big Buddhas, four standing ones of maybe 40 feet and a reclining one about 250 feet long, all recently built.  Next was Mahazedi Paya, built in the 16th century, destroyed in the 1757 sacking of Bago, leveled again in the 1930 earthquake, and rebuilt in 1982 with a white base and a gold spire.  I climbed up the lower portion, ascending about 90 feet and over a hundred stairs, for great views of the town, including the reclining Buddha and the golden Shwemawdaw Paya.  Nearby was another stupa that you could enter to see 64 Buddhas side by side in the circular chamber.  Our last stop was at the Shwethalyaung Buddha, a reclining Buddha 180 feet long housed in a large shed.  It, too, had been destroyed in the 1757 sacking and was not rebuilt until 1881. 

By about 4:30 I was back at the hotel and took a walk around the town center for about an hour.  Just a block or two from the main street there was some very substandard housing in what looked like a very decrepit old building. I also ventured over to the decrepit old train station to check about trains to Yangon, and then returned to my hotel through a street market.  The hotel's electricity came on about 6 and I even had air conditioning in my room.  I had dinner in a restaurant with a menu featuring "Goat Fighting Balls," which I think are testicles.  You could get them dry, cabob (a kebab of testicles, I suppose), sweet, with mustard, with beans, and with cauliflower.  You could also get goat brains.  I can't remember what I had for dinner that night, but I know it wasn't anything from a goat.

November 27-30, 2013: Into Burma, to Mawlamyine

Getting a later start than I had hoped, I took a songthaw the five miles or so from Mae Sot in Thailand to the border with Burma and crossed the border about 10 in the morning (9:30 in Burma) on November 27.  I had been to this border in 1992 to see the Burmese market on the Thai side of the narrow river that is the border.  Back then it was a very simple village with only small boats to take you across the river, with only Thais and Burmese allowed to cross.  It has completely changed, with lots of big buildings and traffic and a big bridge over the river.  I checked out of Thailand, walked over the bridge to the Burmese town of Myawady and was quickly processed by the very friendly Burmese immigration officials.  One told me about 15 foreigners a day have crossed since the border opened in late August

I was able to change 1000 baht for 31,000 kyat, a very good rate, and almost immediately left in a small station wagon for the city of Mawlamine at a cost of about $10.  Surprisingly, there were only four passengers, one in the front and three, including me, in the back, so the seating was quite comfortable.  The road, however, was a different matter, very bumpy and dusty for the first hour and a half or so on a road rising to about 2500 feet above sea level through jungle clad mountains.  This part of Burma is inhabited mainly by Karen (or Kayin) people, one of Burma's many minority groups.  In 1992 I had traveled north from Mae Sot along the Burmese border on a newly paved road, hitching a ride in the back of a speeding pick up along with two Australians who were heading to an unofficial crossing of the border to visit the headquarters of the Karen insurgency army then fighting the Burmese government.  They said they were journalists.  Now the Karen have signed a ceasefire with the government and won seats in both the national parliament and the Karen State one. 

The road over the mountains is one way, eastward and westward on alternate days.  There was a lot of traffic, and some great views, on the bumpy road, but our driver was very skillful, and even daring, in getting us around the big buses and trucks.  When we came out of the mountains, reaching the plains, he stopped, had us roll up our windows, and washed his car from a couple of the many hoses waiting for cars wanting a wash after the mountain passage.

We headed west towards Mawlalmyine on the coast on a still bumpy, but paved, road, with a lunch stop at a little outdoor cafe, where I had chicken and rice.  The waitresses were very friendly, but shy.  One walked by me and then said, without looking at me, "What is your name?  My name is . . . ."  When I looked up, the others all laughed.  I guess I was quite the celebrity, or oddity.  On the way to Mawlamyine we passed rice paddies ready for reaping, banana trees, and sugar palm trees.  Many of the houses were simple shacks with big broad leaves used for both roofing and walls.  I saw almost no horse or bullock carts.  I had seen plenty twenty years ago when I first visited Burma.

We crossed a wide river on a new bridge, passed some steep sided, rocky, little hills, and reached Mawlamyine about 3.  I took a motorcycle taxi to a backpacker's hotel on the waterfront and had a choice of a very small room with a very thin mattress for $10 or a larger room with a much more comfortable mattress for $20 and chose the latter.  To my surprise, it also had air conditioning.  In Burma, it seems, you pay for hotels in dollars and almost everything else in kyat.  And the dollars have to be pristine, with no tears, marks or even folds, and dated 2006 or later. I brought almost $1600 in cash with me, but it turns out there are now quite a few ATMs where you can use your credit or debit card to get kyat.  You still need the dollars for the hotels, though.

Mawlamyine (formerly spelled "Moulmein," as in "By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea," the opening lines of Kipling's Road to Mandalay) is a city of about 300,000, though it doesn't seem so large, at the mouth of the Salween River (now the Thanlwin River; it seems the British had a very hard time hearing Burmese words correctly), which has its headwaters far to the north in Tibet, near the headwaters of the Mekong and Yangzi.  It is the capital of Mon State (Mons are another of Burma's many ethnic group, though apparently very closely related to the Bamar, or Burmese, who make up about 70% of the country's population) and was the first capital of British India, captured by the British in the First Burmese War (of three) in 1824 or so.  There is a large island just west of the water front, so it doesn't seem like the sea, though it clearly is tidal.  I walked north along the waterfront and was disappointed to see that the waterfront below the street promenade served as the city dump.  Lots of garbage dumped there.  People along the way were very friendly.  I watched some feeding a large flock of pretty gulls that caught the food in mid air.  There are some colonial buildings along the waterfront and the downtown streets further inland, including three mosques that served the Indian Muslim population, but all are pretty dilapidated now.  I ate dinner outdoors on the waterfront just after it got dark about 6.  Back at the hotel I washed my very dusty clothes and self.

I got up about 6 the next morning.  Mist sat upon the river, almost obscuring the island to the west.  It quickly dissipated, and after breakfast, about 7:30, I walked up to the ridge, rising to about 250 feet, just to the east of the downtown.  On the way I passed a group of guys making very thin rice pancakes, one guy kneading the thick dough in a wooden tub and others taking fistfuls and then spreading small amounts on metal griddles over basins full of charcoal.  The pancakes cooked quickly and then were collected and stacked. One guy gave me one to eat and it was good.  I think they were amused that I watched them for so long.

The ridge above town is crowned with pagodas and I walked up the steps under a covered walkway, with a few red clad monks for company, towards the Kyaikthanlaw Paya, Kipling's "old Moulmein Pagoda."   This complex centers around a tall, gold plated stupa, called a zedi here in Burma.  There are all sorts of buildings with altars all around it, full of white faced, very feminine looking Buddhas of many different sizes.  The attendants are all, it seems, pretty young women with the traditional yellow sandalwood-like paste called thanakha on their faces.  It seems that almost all women wear this, as do many children and young men.  It serves as a combination sunblock, skin conditioner, and make up.  Some women draw swirls or dots or lines on their faces with the thanakha, which is made by grinding a type of wood, which I've seen on sale in the markets, into powder and then adding water.  From the pagoda I had great views to the east and west, with rocky,steep sided hills to the east.  I could see the wide Salween which reaches the sea just north of the city.

I walked around the stupa several times.  There were few others there.  Eventually I walked north along the ridge to the Mahamuni Paya, with a mirrored inner chamber, set with diamonds and rubies they say, containing a large gold Buddha with a silver face, a replica of one in Mandalay.   I stopped for an early chicken and rice lunch about 10:30 and then walked south along the ridge as the day got hot.  Just south of Kyaikthanlaw Paya is a wooden monastery with very interesting wooden carvings, including a carved wooden throne.  It, too, was almost deserted, except for a few monks. The queen of King Mindon, Burma's penultimate king, fled here from Mandalay after his death in 1878.  I don't know why, but I suspect it had to do with his son and successor, Thibaw, killing off all his male relatives, as was traditional.

Further south on the ridge is large shed protecting a fairly recent large Buddha made completely of bamboo, very interesting and beautiful.  I walked to some other pagodas, or paya, further south along with ridge, and had good views out over the town to the west.  It was hot, though, and eventually I retreated to Kyaikthanlaw about 2:30 and stayed there until just after sunset, which was about 5:20.  The pagoda still wasn't very crowded as the sun set, though there were more people than earlier in the day.  I walked down the dark, covered staircase in the dusk and ate dinner again on the waterfront.

The next morning while waiting for a bus I watched a guy wear latex gloves (to my great surprise) while preparing betel nut packets, coating the leaves with a watery lime mixture and then sprinkling something on them before adding the chopped betel nut and wrapping it all up.  About 8:30 I left on a bus heading to Thanbyuzayat, about 40 miles south, a journey of about two hours.  After the town of Mudon, the halfway point, the road deteriorated and we had a bumpy ride past rows and rows of rubber trees on both sides of the road.  Thanbyuzayat was the terminous of Siam-Burma Railroad built by the Japanese during World War II with POW and local conscripted labor.  Something like 13,000 POWs and 80,000 to 100,000 Asians are thought to have died building it from October 1942 to December 1943.  (The Japanese invaded Burma in January 1942 from Thailand pretty much along the route I had taken from the Thai border and chased the British out of Burma by May of that year.)  This is the railroad featured in The Bridge over the River Kwai (in Thailand).  Just outside Thanbyuzayat is a well maintained Commonwealth cemetery with almost 3900 graves, mostly British and Australian, but also over 600 Dutch and a few Indians, including Muslims, Hindus and Gurkhas.  Each group has its own section of the cemetery, which is laid out in a great semi-circle.  The small headstones contain names, ages, dates of death, military insignia, and quotes that must have been chosen by surviving family members.  One British grave had a paper poppy flower wreath that must have been recently placed. The cemetery dates from after the war, when the bodies were brought from camps and remote areas along the railroad line.  The American dead were repatriated. 

I spent about an hour looking around and then ate some quail eggs (at least they looked like quail eggs) I had bought in the market in Mawlamyine before catching a bus back.   Maybe ten miles from Mawlamyine I got off to see a newly constructed reclining Buddha that is enormous, about 560 feet long.  Inside were scores of life size painted figures, including several scenes obviously depicting the horrors of Buddhist hell.  The life of Buddha was also depicted, as was a harem scene with a king cavorting with several half naked women.  I wonder if that was meant to be illustrative of one of the ways to find yourself eventually in Buddhist hell, although it looked like it might be worth it.  Nearby were a couple of almost vertical craggy hills with pagodas on top.

I caught a covered pick up with wooden benches in the back and was back in Mawlamyine about 4:30.  I took a motorcycle taxi to Kyaikthanlaw Paya and watched the sunset from there again.  This time I stayed until well after dark to see the tall golden stupa illuminated by electric lights, quite a beautiful sight.

The next morning I walked along the waterfront to watch the fishing boats, ferries, and all the other activity.  Moulmein was an important teak port in the 19th century, but seems pretty sleepy now.  Eventually, I took a motorcycle taxi about 12 miles north, first crossing the wide Salween over a modern bridge and continuing along a not very crowded road.  I saw yellowish white sheets of rubber, maybe two feet by four feet, drying on poles along the way.  I was heading for Nwa-la-bo Pagoda, but once delivered by the motorcycle I had to wait for over two hours before I could board a truck for the steep final climb to the pagoda.  There were over 40 of us sitting on maybe eight rows of four inch wide wooden planks in the open back of the big truck.  The climb was steep, about 1700 feet over twenty minutes.  You had to hold on as best as you could on the ups and downs.  At the top are three seemingly precariously balanced gold covered rocks with a little gold stupa on the top of the highest.  There are also great views of the countryside below, including the sea, the Salween, and Mawlamyine.   Except for four of us foreign tourists, the rest were all pilgrims, some of them applying some sort of gold attached to paper onto the rocks.

After about 45 minutes we all reboarded the truck for the steep descent, quite a ride with those friendly pilgrims.  I am happy to say the brakes didn't fail us.  I returned to town by motorcycle and had lunch.  I walked around the town a bit, passing the Judson Baptist Church founded by Adoniram Judson, an American missionary who established the Baptist Church in these parts.  In the churchyard is the grave of a one year old son who died in 1841 and a 40 year old granddaughter who died in 1911.  From there I walked past wooden houses along the bottom edge of the ridge in a very friendly neighborhood of Mon people.  I made it up to Kyaikthanlaw Paya for sunset again and then walked down after dark.

November 21-26, 2013: North from Bangkok

In late August Burma opened several border posts along the Thai border, enabling tourists to reach the center of the country overland.  So instead of flying, I decided to go overland.  By bus from Bangkok to the Burmese border at Mae Sot takes 8 or 9 hours, but I decided to make a couple of stops on the way.

On the morning of the 21st, after taking a city bus through Bangkok's dense morning traffic for well over an hour, I boarded a bus heading north to Kamphaeng Phet, about 200 miles from Bangkok.  We drove through the flat, fertile central valley of Thailand for about five hours, reaching Kamphaeng Phet about 3 in the afternoon.  Lots of rice growing on the way.  I took a motorcycle taxi into town and checked into a very nice little guesthouse, with friendly owners and a nice garden.  About 5 I walked down to the Mae Nam Ping (the Ping River), which flows south to join the Chao Praya River, which runs through Bangkok to the sea.  I walked along the wide river, maybe 400 feet wide, to the night market and ate there.  It was dark by about 6, with the trees full of noisy black birds settling down for the night. The market had all sorts of food, including eight types of insects and worms at one place.  Some of the grasshoppers were perhaps three inches long and there were some ugly black bugs perhaps an inch and a half or two inches long.  I was told the worms taste spongy.  Two booths away sushi was on offer.  I choose neither, but settled for pad thai. People in the little town of about 30,000 were very friendly.

The next day I rented a bike from my guesthouse and explored the ruins of temples dating back to the 15th century in and around the town.  In 1992 I spent almost two months traveling through Thailand and saw the ruins at Ayutthaya, Lopburi, Sukhothai, and Si Satchanalai, plus the Khmer ruins in the northeast, but did not visit Kamphaeng Phet.  The old city walls remain, made of laterite bricks and enclosing a long quadrilateral about a mile and a half by less than half a mile.  Inside are two wats (temples), also of laterite bricks, in ruins with chedis (stupas) and statues of Buddha.  The area is grassy and tree covered and very pleasant.  I seemed to be the only tourist.  Nearby was the city pillar, now encased in glass with offerings on tables in front, including bottles of liquor and two enormous scalded pig heads.  At a nearby altar women were tossing sticks from a holder, telling their fortunes, I guess.  I biked along the city walls, stopping to visit crumbling bastions and gates.  Trees grow along the wall tops.  I bicycled out one gate and to the ruins of about 40 wats in a forested area outside the walls.  This area, too, was almost deserted of tourists and I enjoyed bicycling around and then walking through the ruins of the wats.  Some were just piles of bricks, but others were quite interesting, with tall chedis and statues of Buddha.  One had the front halves of 68 elephants carved along it sides.  Another had very tall laterite pillars, maybe 20 feet high.  Laterite is a clay like substance that hardens when dug up and exposed to air.

About lunchtime I arrived at the air conditioned information center, where outside there were food carts and a busload of very friendly schoolkids.  From there I took another leisurely bike ride through the forest and the wats back to the city walls and rode along the outside and then the inside of the walls, again stopping at gates and bastions, before getting back to my hotel about 4:30.  I had left about 8.  Just before nightfall I biked down to the river and the night market, where I again had dinner.  I had worried about taking the bike, as it had no lock, but the guest house owner said not to worry.  There were few bikes at the market. Motorbikes, however, were everywhere.  An old man, perhaps even older than me, was selling ice cream cones.  I bought a scoop of rum raisin ice cream for about 30 cents, and then came back twice to get new cones, much to the amusement of the old guy and his family.  Who knew you could get sushi and rum raisin ice cream at a Thai night market?  The insects and worms didn't surprise me, but the sushi and rum raisin ice cream did.

The next morning at 9 I left on a bus heading further north to Tak, about an hour away, and then a minivan heading west over jungle covered hills on a road that rose to almost 3000 feet above sea level before arriving at Mae Sot, about five miles from the Burmese border.  But I immediately boarded a songthaw, or I think the more correct spelling is sorng-thaa-ow.  There seem to have been a lot more of these 20 years ago.  The word means something like "two benches" and they are vehicles with two benches in the covered, but open air back.  There were ten of us in the back and we headed south from Mae Sot on a road through the hills along a big curve in the border to the village of Um Phang, more than 100 miles away.  It took us over four hours on a road said to have 1219 curves.  We rose to over 4000 feet along the way, through beautiful jungle.  The ride was dusty in places, but enjoyable, with a friendly Thai woman and French woman among the passengers.  There were several police check posts, but we foreigners were not under scrutiny.  They checked only the papers of what I think were Karen refugees from Burma.  We did stop at a very large Karen refugee camp about halfway to Um Phang.  Houses with walls of some sort of fiber and thatched roofs covered the steep hillside. There must have been hundreds of them.  On that steep hillside, they looked like they would wash away in a heavy rain.

Arriving in Um Phang about 4, I found a very nice place to stay in that friendly village.  At about 1500 feet elevation, the night was cool and I slept under a sort of quilt.

Um Phang is in a little valley full of rice paddies.  Early the next morning I walked around town and then out into the countryside before breakfast.  I took another walk with three others up into hills to the northeast of the town in the late morning, to a small Karen village.  Um Phang itself is largely Karen, I think.  Walking through town on that Sunday morning, I passed a Karen church service in what seemed to be a home, with the pastor in a suit and tie.  Karens are largely Christian, I think, and live all along this part of the Thai-Burmese border.  Late in the afternoon I took another walk, this time south of Um Phang along the road and then back through the rice fields, as the harvesters were finishing up for the day.  The sky was cloudy most of the day.  Very pleasant weather.  I had hoped to go to a waterfall, Thailand's highest and widest, about 30 miles away, but it was expensive to get there, about $65.

The next morning I had a Thai breakfast, noodles and vegetables and sticky rice with pork, that Tim, the Thai woman who had arrived with me, insisted I have instead of eggs and toast at the guesthouse.  We left for Mae Sot about 10:30 in a crowded songthaw that got even more crowded as we headed north. Eventually there were more than 20 of us, including a couple of little babies on their mothers' backs, inside, several guys up on the roof, and several more standing up and holding on at the rear of the vehicle.  Quite a load, plus bundles and bags and boxes, on that often steep mountain road.  We got back to Mae Sot about 3 and Tim invited two Swiss tourists and I join her for some northeastern food, as she is from Surin in the northeast.  We had a good, but spicy hot, late lunch before finding a hotel.  Just before dark I walked through Mae Sot's extensive market along several narrow downtown streets.  Frogs, turtles, snakes, and what looked like pollywogs were on sale.  Who eats  pollywogs?  Or do you wait until they grow into frogs and then eat them?  The people were as interesting as the wares on sale. Many looked to be Burmese with the distinctive Burmese yellow face powder, often in swirls, and there were Muslims.  Mae Sot is somewhere between 500 and 1000 feet in elevation, so it was warmer than Um Phang at night, but still very pleasant.

The next day I didn't do much other than try to get some information on Burma.  The road on the Burma side of the border going west passes through a mountain range and is one way, changing direction every other day, with westbound traffic tomorrow, so I will cross the border and head west tomorrow.  I was tempted to cross the border today, but hotels are supposed to be something like three times the price across the border, and I only get to spend 28 days in Burma, so I will spend my first day getting some distance from the border.

November 18-20, 2013: Saipan to Bangkok

I'm off for another six months or so of travel.  First, after getting a visa in Bangkok, I'll head to Burma (or Myanmar, its official name, though I've read that the democratic opposition still prefers "Burma"), then to southern India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala states, the two southernmost), and later Sri Lanka, with a possible side trip to the Maldives.  That's the plan, anyway. 

Though Bangkok is almost due west from Saipan, my flights took me first northwest to Seoul (or rather Incheon, just west of Seoul), then south to Manila, and finally west to Bangkok.  A long trip, 16 1/2 hours in total, but it cost me only 15,000 reward miles and $12.  I left Saipan just after 2 in the morning on the 18th and arrived in Bangkok about 3:30 in the afternoon, local time, three hours earlier than Saipan.  On the way I had a fantastic view of the multi-channel, wide bulge in the Mekong called 4000 Islands in the far south of Laos.  I had been there in 2010.

I slept some on the first two flights, but was tired upon arrival in Bangkok.  I went to bed early and woke up the next morning about 4, though I didn't get up until about 5:30, before dawn.  Sometime after 10 that morning I arrived at the crowded Myanmar Embassy and was able to submit my application after about an hour, my passport with the visa to be picked up the next day.  I walked back to the river on a street that a motorcade escorting the visiting prime minister of New Zealand drove down and made my way to the river ferry and took it back upriver, but only as far as the pier for Wat Pho, with its huge, gold covered, reclining Buddha.  I had some pad thai (the standard Thai noodle dish) at a street side restaurant and then spent a couple of hours at the wat, flooded with tourists.  Lots of Russians in particular.

Leaving, I walked past perhaps a dozen big buses with their motors running and walked along the high white walls of the old royal palace, with the Emerald Buddha inside, through the large open parade ground to the north, and eventually to Thanon Ratchadamnown Klang, a very wide street (maybe 12 lanes wide) where there is an ongoing demonstration around the Democracy Monument at a big intersection. This has closed the street for several blocks, and in fact had made it difficult, and twice as expensive than usual, for my taxi to take me to my hotel the previous day.  I spent more than an hour at the demonstration, with a band followed by speakers.  The crowd blew whistles and clapped with hand held plastic clappers in lieu of actually clapping with their hands.  This demonstration, with all sorts of booths selling food and other stuff and with wide screens displaying the speakers, has been going on for days, calling for the government to resign.  Most of the signs were in Thai, but those in English were quite rude, obscene really, about the Prime Minister and her brother, a previous Prime Minister overthrown in a coup after similar demonstrations. It seems the opposition, based in the richer parts of the country (Bangkok and the south), keeps losing elections to a party based in the poorer north and northeast of the country, and then resorts to civil unrest to try to get the army or the courts to throw the government out.  I got back to my hotel just before dark.

The next morning I didn't do much, but after lunch I took the river ferry down the river to the Oriental Hotel pier and spent a couple of hours in the Oriental Hotel.  This hotel was Bangkok's finest in the late 1800's and now the old hotel is dwarfed by its new, high rise wings.  I looked around the old building, filled with interesting photos, mainly of the royal family around the turn of the 20th century.  The hotel claims Joseph Conrad stayed there in 1888, though I've also read that while he may have visited the hotel for meals, he stayed on his ship while in Bangkok.  Somerset Maugham did stay there in the 1930's.  I spent some time reading and people watching in the very cold new lobby, and then walked to the Myanmar Embassy to get my visa.  From there I walked back to the river and took the pleasant ferry ride back upriver to my hotel.  

June 16-20, 2013: Calcutta to Bangkok to Saipan

The morning of the 16th was sunny and hot in Calcutta.  As usual the little alley in front of my hotel was full of people, including a couple of guys soaping themselves up with water from a tap, others getting curbside haircuts, and occasionally someone urinating into a crevice into which I have not dared to look.  There are little shops along the alley, and on the road at the end of the alley wait yellow Ambassador taxis and human pulled rickshaws, with the rickshaw pullers in dhotis.  I took a taxi around 10 to the airport through relatively uncrowded streets on that Sunday morning.  I always enjoy seeing Calcutta's streets and streets of colonial era buildings, as decayed as they are.  We sped down Lenin Sarani (renamed during West Bengal's communist governments from 1977 to 2011) and then to Convent Street, passing through the former Wellington Circle, which they also must have renamed, though I saw no new name.  We passed by what must have been glorious palaces during the colonial era, at least one now converted to a school, but others looking derelict.

It took about 45 minutes to reach the airport.  It was hot when we were stopped at traffic lights.  The brand new airport, on the other hand, was wonderfully cool.  My Air Asia flight to Bangkok, which cost me only about $115, left shortly before 1 pm and was full of Indians.  I think there were two other westerners on board.  The views were excellent, though the blue sky was dotted with clouds.  We passed over Calcutta's drab buildings, which never seem to get painted, the green countryside beyond, and the the myriad waterways of the Ganges Delta before heading out over the Bay of Bengal.  Brown water from the Ganges made quite a smear far out into the bay.  Later we passed over Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, with the brown river water again visible far out into the sea.  Eventually we reached the mainland again and Thailand, passing over the beaches and the forested mountains before flying over the fertile valley of the Chao Phraya River in central Thailand.  The newly planted rice paddies were very green.  Nearing Bangkok we passed over houses with red roofs and looking orderly, painted, and clean in comparison to those of Calcutta.

We landed shortly before 5 after a two hour, 15 minute flight.  I waited for a bus, gave up, and then took a taxi to the hotel where I usually stay in Bangkok.  It felt quite warm in Bangkok.  There were lots of western tourists around, though considerably fewer than in the high season.

I had scheduled a series of medical examinations for the next day and so spent the day at Bumrungrad Hospital (where I had a cataract operation in 2010), getting a physical in the morning and having my eyes, skin and teeth checked in separate appointments during the afternoon.  To get there, I took Bangkok's Chao Phraya river express down the wide, interesting river to a stop near a metro station, and then took a crowded, but air conditioned, above ground metro train to near the hospital, the whole trip taking about an hour and a half and avoiding Bangkok's traffic.  I came back the same way in the late afternoon.  The river was filled with floating green clumps of vegetation in the morning, but by late afternoon only a few remained, stuck to the shoreline in places.

The next morning was again hot, sunny, and humid.  After breakfast I spent a couple of hours in an internet cafe and then about 1 pm, under now cloudy skies, took the Chao Phraya Express and then the metro back to Bumrungrad.  I had a periodontist appointment at 5:30 and spent the intervening time in the hospital's very comfortable waiting rooms, more like those of a fancy hotel than a hospital.  After my appointment I walked north a few blocks and boarded a klong (canal) express boat which sped down the narrow canal to its western terminus, about a ten minute walk from Khao San Road, jammed, as always, with tourists.  Walking down the wide avenue, with six lanes of traffic each way, to Khao San Road, I noticed no one in the hundreds of cars was honking his horn, unthinkable in India.  Also, there was almost no litter on the wide sidewalks.  In India, of course, there is always litter, plenty of it, and often it is very difficult to walk on the sidewalks crowded with stalls, vendors and much else.  On a hot and humid evening I walked through Khao San Road and watched all the activity on my way back to my hotel and dinner.

The next morning was cloudy and hot.  I made my way to the airport via taxi and metro in the morning and left on a flight to Hong Kong about 4, arriving just at dark, 7:30 local time.  My connecting flight to Guam left  soon after 11 that night.  I slept maybe a couple of hours on the flight and we arrived in Guam about 5:30 in the morning, local time.  My final flight to Saipan left about two hours later on a sunny morning, with cottony white clouds scattered above the ocean and the intervening islands, Rota and Tinian, which we flew over.  The sea below was glassy and reflected the morning sun's glare to the east.  Arrival in Saipan was at about 8.  Flames trees were in bloom all over the island.

June 11-15, 2013: Darjeeling to Mirik to Calcutta

June 11 was my last morning in Darjeeling and when I awoke between 4 and 4:30 I peaked out the window and could see that the sky north was relatively clear.  I managed to stay awake for about half an hour as the sky became lighter, but could not make out Kanchenjunga or any of the other snowy peaks.  I went back to sleep and when I got up about 7:30 clouds covered everything.  However, a little bit after 8 I looked out my window and could see snowy peaks to the north.  I went up to the roof of my hotel and could see Kanchenjunga as well as the double snowy peaks (called the Kabra peaks, I think) to its left.  Clouds eventually obscured them again, but about 8:30 I walked to the viewpoint north of Chowrasta and Kanchenjunga, surrounded by clouds, was again visible.  The sun was out and I spent about an hour at that viewpoint and another, with Kanchenjunga usually visible, though all the other peaks were hidden by the clouds.  The sun felt warm.  Besides watching Kanchenjunga come and go, I watched Tibetan women in traditional clothes and lots of other people out for a walk, and several macaques, including a mother and baby, walking along and sitting on a fern adorned branch of a tree.  Finally, Kanchenjunga seemed to disappear for good and I went to breakfast.

Soon after noon I left on a share jeep heading to Mirik, about 25 or 30 miles to the southwest.  From Darjeeling we traveled to Ghoom and then took a road that first headed east and then south.  We hit fog as soon as we left Ghoom and were enveloped by it for a good while while traveling at about 7500 feet elevation.  Then we started making a steep descent and got below the clouds on a curving road through a beautiful dark forest.  The tall trees were growing very close together, with almost no undergrowth except for  ferns, quite a beautiful forest.  I think the trees are Japanese cedars.  One of my guidebooks mentions them in the area.  Further down the sun came out and we started passing tea estates, with whole hillsides and several conical hills carpeted with tea.  We passed through a few little villages, too, and had great views east across the deep valley below to the ridge that leads to Darjeeling from Siliguri.  I could clearly see the town of Kurseong.

Shortly after 2 we arrived at Mirik, at about 5500 feet elevation and with about 10,000 people.  I checked into a little hotel, had lunch, and then walked up to a big red and yellow monastery on a hill 200 plus feet above town.  The monastery, built in 2000 (a monk told me), belongs to the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism, with photos of the Dalai Lama and the 17th Kagyupa (the one recognized by the Dalai Lama) on colorful thrones in the big main hall.  About 80 monks were sitting in the hall in four rows of about 20 monks each and chanting.  In the courtyard in front of the main hall their sandals were all lined up in a long row.  I'd never seen that before.  I listened until they finished, maybe a half hour or more after I got there.  Besides horns, drums, clarinets and even conch shells, occasionally the chants were accompanied by hand clapping and even the snapping of fingers.  Very beatnik.  There were also a few periods of complete silence, with a soft bell ending the silent meditation.  I listened and walked around a bit.  After they finished I walked to the front to see the altars.  The giant Buddha statue in the center held a big offering bowl, filled with packaged cookies and other packaged snacks.

I talked with a monk from Phodong in Sikkim until they closed up the multi-story main hall.  On the wall of the porch of the main hall is a wheel of life mural, as in many other monasteries, but this one includes a car, a couple of bicycles, a jogger, and soldiers with rifles, along with the usual scenes of the pleasures of heaven and the torments of hell.  After looking around I sat in the sun on a bench in the courtyard and watched the monks for a while as they did chores.  I walked around the area a bit and then walked back the way I had come. There is a lake, or rather a reservoir, right in town and I walked along the banks for a short distance until it became too dark.  The sun had been out pretty much until sunset.

The next day, too, was sunny and warm, though there were always clouds in the sky, especially to the north. After breakfast I walked around the lake on a trail, a distance of a little over two miles.  Japanese cedars stood along parts of the shore and there were good views of the monastery on its hill above the lake.  About 2:30 I took a share jeep about three miles back the way I had come the day before and from there walked back to Mirik, passing hills covered with tea along the way.  Besides the beautiful tea covered hills and a few stands of Japanese cedars, there were great views across the valley to the ridge leading to Darjeeling.  I could again see Kurseong and easily make out the road to Darjeeling, along which the toy train also passes.  I enjoyed the slow walk back, with lots of stops to enjoy the views. Eventually, school got out and there were lots of friendly uniformed school children on the road.  At one point I saw about 4 guys spraying the tea plants, with pesticide, I suppose. I walked by the tea processing plant about the time the women pickers were getting off work and saw dozens of them walking home with their empty baskets on their backs.  I eventually got back to town and correctly guessed what side street led down to the lake, finishing my walk back to my hotel on the lakeside path and getting back about 6.

The next day was also sunny and warm.  I had stayed up late the night before finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I had first read maybe 25 years ago, and didn't get out to breakfast until about 8:30.  On the way I noticed the sky was completely clear, so about 9 after breakfast I headed up the hill towards the monastery to see if I could see Kanchenjunga and its ridge.  Kanchenjunga and its ridge were almost cloudless.  The views were great.  Kanchenjunga and the two Kabra peaks to the left were visible as was the pyramidal Siniolchu peak to the right.  By far the clearest day I have had in almost a month and a half in the Himalayas and it happens on my last day in the Himalayas.

I enjoyed the views and walked to several places along the hill to see if I could get a better view.  Clouds began to cluster around the snow covered peaks, but Kanchenjunga and the two Kabra peaks remained visible.  After more than an hour I walked to the monastery.  The main hall was closed, so I walked to a chorten faced with marble and with a big prayer wheel inside.  A couple of elderly Tibetan women in traditional dress were circumambulating the chorten and occasionally entering it to revolve the big prayer wheel.  I found a spot to sit nearby in the shade with a good view of Kanchenjunga.  Soon a bunch of teenage and younger monks came down to the chorten, tucked their red robes into their shorts, and began a raucous game of soccer with a little yellow ball, maybe three inches in diameter.  They were quite good, and apparently oblivious to the danger they posed of knocking over the two Tibetan woman, who soon moved elsewhere.  They were fun to watch.  Kanchenjunga kept getting cloudier, but was still visible, but I had to leave about 11:30 to check out of my hotel at 12.

In mid afternoon I left Mirik by share jeep, heading down to Siliguri.  I was in the far back, but had good views of the green clad hills as we descended on a twisting road to the plains, passing farms and forests and extensive tea estates.   Under sunny skies there were good views down to the valley below, which separates the hills where Mirik is located and the ridge to the east leading towards Darjeeling.  I could see Kurseong and the road towards Darjeeling on the ridge across the valley.  It became much hotter as we descended, taking a little less than an hour to reach the valley floor, at maybe 1000 feet elevation.  We crossed the river coming down the valley and headed over the now gently sloping plains to Siliguri, which we reached about an hour and a half after leaving Mirik. 

Siliguri was sunny and hot.  I had a late lunch/early dinner and read a newspaper, which reported that temperatures the day before had been 9 degrees (5 degrees centigrade) higher than average the day before, with a high of about 99.  About 6 I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station in New Jalpaiguri, just south of Siliguri.  The cities are contiguous and the almost one hour ride was an interesting at twilight through busy streets and markets. 

The train station was hot and humid with a big crowd waiting for the train I was to take to Calcutta.  Just before 8 the Darjeeling Mail entered the station and I boarded for the overnight 350 mile trip to Calcutta, with only four scheduled stops on the way.  I had been able to book an air conditioned 3AC carriage rather than an non air conditioned sleeper, but it was hot inside as we waited for the train to leave, which it did shortly after 8.  Once the train got going the air conditioning functioned fine and the carriage was very comfortable.  The six of us who were to sleep in two tiers of three opposite each other sat on the lower bunks until about 10, when we pulled down the middle bunks.  We each were provided with two clean sheets, a pillow and a blanket.  You rarely get two sheets (usually just one, a bottom sheet) in Indian budget hotels.  I was very comfortable, though it took me a while to fall asleep.  Before going to bed I noticed a plain clothes guy with a conspicuous holstered pistol.  That afternoon, as I read in a newspaper the next day, a train in neighboring Bihar state had been stopped and held up by about 100 masked Maoist Naxalite guerrillas, who killed three, including a train guard, before being driven off by the trains' four remaining guards.  

The train was scheduled to arrive the next morning at 6, but in fact arrived shortly after 7.  The morning was rainy and I stayed in my bunk until just before arrival.  The rain was coming down very heavily at the station, so I waited until it was more of a drizzle and then took an auto rickshaw to the hotel where I have stayed the last few times I have been in Calcutta.  Calcutta was cloudy all day, but there was no more rain.  I had breakfast and then read newspapers in the hotel lobby.  The afternoon I spent in an internet cafe and then an air conditioned bookstore. 

The next morning was sunny until a big rainstorm hit about 10.  I again read newspapers in the hotel lobby before lunch.  In the early afternoon I walked towards the city center to look around, and in particular to see the renovation of the Great Eastern Hotel, opened in 1840, renovated in Art Deco style in the 1930's, and then fallen into decrepitude in the late 20th century (though Queen Elizabeth had stayed there in the early 1960's).  It is supposed to reopen in November, but from the looks of things the opening could be well after after.  It was too hot and humid to continued further downtown, so I returned to the air conditioned Oxford Bookstore and spent the rest of the afternoon there.  At dinner the man sitting next to me struck up a conversation. It turned out he was a lawyer, an advocate, as they are known in India.  He told me he handles all sorts of cases, except tax cases and very serious crimes like rape and murder, and that he goes to Delhi about twice a month for appeals.  He invited me to stop by his office and come to court with him, which I had to decline since I was flying to Bangkok the next day.  That would have been interesting.  He gave me his card and said to contact him the next time I was in Calcutta.