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.
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.
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