December 13-15, 2014: Pyin Oo Lwin and Kyaukme

I left Monywa by bus about 10 on the morning of the 13th, heading south and then east to Mandalay.  The road to Mandalay passed through crop land, with lots of already harvested rice fields as we neared Sagaing on the Irrawaddy.  The terrain was flat until we reached the pagoda topped hills of Sagaing.  The bus crossed the Irrawaddy on the big bridge at Sagaing and we reached downtown Mandalay about 1:30.

About an hour later I left Mandalay seated on a wooden bench in the back of a crowded, open air pickup with a roof over the back.  Others were seated on the roof.  A French family of four, with a beautiful blue eyed girl of about five, was in the back with me, and the Burmese woman also in the back couldn't take their eyes, and often their hands, off her.  She was very nice in return.  Her father told me she is used to it after four months in India. 

From Mandalay, at about 250 feet elevation, we headed east across flat land for about an hour and then began to climb into the hills.  We had some good views back towards the hazy plains as we ascended, along with a couple of stops for the driver to ply his overheating radiator with water from a hose. 

We reached Pyin Oo Lwin, a town of about 70,000 people a little more than 40 miles from Mandalay and at about 3500 feet elevation, about 5.  It is vastly changed from when I was first here in 1994.  It is now much more built up, with much more traffic.  It was founded in 1896 as a British hill station, to escape the heat of Mandalay on the plains, and named Maymyo ("myo" means "town") after its founder, Colonel May of the 5th Bengal Infantry.  After the railroad reached it, it served as the British summer capital. 

The next morning was sunny, but still chilly, as I walked from my downtown hotel, near the 1936 clock tower, to All Saints Church, built in 1912 as the regimental church for Maymyo.  It is a big brick church with an impressive steeple.  I stepped inside just as the Sunday morning service was coming to an end.  The priest was just intoning the lines about the "peace of God which passeth all understanding," which I remember from my youth as signalling the end of the service.  There only a few attendees in the large church, all Burmese but for two tourists. 

I looked around after the service.  Inside was a plaque with the names of British army units which had contributed to the church.  There was also a bulletin board with a photo of an army chaplain, in uniform, with his bride on their wedding day in 1919.  He apparently served many years at the church before his return to England.  Also on display is a copy of the 1925 Maymyo birth certificate of his daughter, along with a photo of her when she visited the church a few years ago. 

Outside the church I talked to a doctor who spoke very good English and was very interesting about the changes in town during her life.  Not too far away is the restored British Governor's mansion and office building, now part of a hotel.  The huge office building was closed, but for about two dollars I could stroll through the mansion, with an indoor pool, a bar, fireplaces, and a huge kitchen, no longer in service.  On the second floor are five bedrooms.  I was shown one of them and it was massive.  The flat screen television in the middle of the room seemed out of place among the period furniture, including a four poster bed. 

Downstairs are several mannequins, some with startling green or even red eyes, depicting several of the former governors, along with Colonel May, with accompanying photographs.  Outside are two old cars, both sedans, a black Humber and a silver Triumph, both inoperable, I was told.  The area is filled with wildflowers, with a large vineyard next to the office building.

In the afternoon I walked along a circular road through the suburbs that passed several old colonial buildings, several in bad shape.  One is now a church building, another a high school, and a third a government building.  I passed a couple of old colonial residences before I found Candacraig, the old colonial hotel, built in 1904 and formerly, if I remember correctly, a residence for bachelor officers, where I had stayed in 1994, enjoying a dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.  I remember I stayed in a room in the turret to the right of the entrance.  It now is all closed up and falling apart.  I peeked through the grimy front windows at the big staircase and at the former hall, with a fireplace, and dining room.  Outside four Burmese guys had just arrived to play tennis on the old tennis court.  I think they probably brought their own net.  I looked around a bit in the now overgrown gardens and then continued my walk, passing another old colonial hotel, now apparently a private residence. 

From that hotel I walked more than a mile to the Botanical Gardens, getting there between 3 and 3:30.   They were founded in 1915 by the district forestry official, with the aid, the pamphlet they gave me said, of Lady Cuffee, "the noted Kew Gardens botanist."  The 435 acres center around a lake, with several black swans on it.  There were quite a few people there on that Sunday afternoon.

I took a causeway across the lake to the orchid area, with few orchids, but many other beautiful flowers, and to the butterfly house, with displays of thousands of beautiful butterflies and other impressive insects, including some very large, fearsome looking beetles.  A walk in aviary had many birds in it, including several huge hornbills, flapping their big wings and eating fruit set out for them.  I spent quite a while watching them, as you could get quite close to them.  One flew right by my head. 

Nearby is a wooden walkway that takes you up through big trees.  By the time I had done that, the sun was down, so I quickly walked through a pine grove, a bamboo grove, and then along another wooden walkway, this one through a swampy area that led to a teak grove and then a collection of a hundred or more pieces of petrified wood, including one tree trunk maybe twenty feet high.  It was almost dark when I finally left just before 6.  Another tourist and I shared a horse carriage back to town.  Pyin Oo Lwin has many horse carriages, the carriages the shape of small stage coaches.

The next morning I walked to the train station, getting there about 8.  The signboard said the train was due "7:52, guess."  It arrived only a little late and left about 8:35, only about 15 minutes late.  I had been told the train, coming from Mandalay and leaving at 5, had derailed a few days earlier, arriving hours late.  My ticket, for a comfortable upper class seat, cost me 2150 kyat, a little over two dollars for a five and a half hour trip.  The ticket broke the price down as 2149.32 kyat for the seat and .68 kyat for life insurance.  That's about 2/3 of one tenth of a penny for life insurance.  I wonder what the payout is. 

The train had two upper class carriages, each filled with about 20 foreign tourists and hardly any local people.  There were also three ordinary class carriages, with a few tourists and a few locals.  I think most locals now take the faster bus. 

Leaving Pyin Oo Lwin, the train headed northeast into Shan State, Burma's largest.  The countryside was rolling at first, then hillier, with beautiful yellow wildflowers, along with a few violet ones, growing along the tracks.  A little before noon we caught sight of and then crossed the steel Gokteik Viaduct, built in 1903 by the Pennsylvania Steel Company over a deep river gorge.  It is 318 feet high and 2257 feet across.  It was the second highest railroad bridge in the world when constructed.  The train slowed to a crawl and you could lean out your window and peer down to the forested gorge and river far below, with no railing along the bridge.  (I suppose this is why you buy life insurance.)  On the other side are cliffs, with two tunnels through them.   A uniformed guard with a rifle sat on a large cement block at the end of the bridge just before the cliffs. 

From the viaduct, at about 2100 feet elevation, we climbed about a thousand feet and stopped about 12:30 at a station where we waited about a half hour for the train coming from Lashio, in the opposite direction.  There is only one train in each direction each day.  I enjoyed the opportunity to get off the train and wander around and watch the food sellers and others at the station. 

The train reached Kyaukme, where three of us tourists got off (the others were all headed to Hsipaw an hour or so further) about 2.  Kyaukme, at about 2500 feet elevation, is in a little valley surrounded by hills.  A local guy also on the train drove us to a hotel a few blocks from the train station.  It is a converted house, built in 1943. and I got a room in one of the front turrets, with a four poster bed, for about eight dollars.  The very friendly older woman who managed the hotel told me the house was built by her father in law.

After lunch next door, I walked around town, visiting the street market and then walking up to a monastery on a hill on the east side of town, with good views of the town and valley.  I walked back down to the market and then up another hill on the west side of town.  A long series of stairs, under a roof, led to a much bigger monastery on top.  The people in town are mostly Shan and Palaung.  The Shan are Burma's biggest minority group, with about 8 or 9 percent of the total population. 

December 10-12, 2014: Down the Chindwin River from Kalewa to Monywa

In Kalewa on the 10th, I didn't get up until about 7:30.  The morning air felt warm compared to the previous mornings in the mountains of Chin State.  I had hoped to take a morning express boat downriver to Mingin, but the previous evening had been told there were boats only at 1 and 5 in the afternoon, the latter going all the way to Monywa.

As it turned out, I enjoyed my morning in Kalewa.  At about 8 I watched the express boat heading upriver to Mawleik arrive, and then depart about a half hour later.  There was quite a bit of river traffic to watch.  I walked a bit through town, stopping at a tea shop for a breakfast of tea and not too greasy sweet rolls.  After breakfast I walked back to the riverfront and watched another boat being loaded and unload, with men and women carrying big bundles on their heads up and down the river bank, perhaps a 40 foot drop.

From the town center near the boat landing I then walked north on dirt paths above the river through clusters of wood houses on stilts clinging precariously to the eroded steep riverbank.  I passed friendly people living in very simple homes, with pigs rooting around.  Some of the paths were of wooden planks.  Eventually, I passed a few small stupas on little hills above the river.  After about 45 minutes, when I had reached what seemed the northern reaches of the town, with good views upriver to a bend of the Chindwin, I turned around and came back more or less the same way, arriving at the town center about 11:30.  I ate a good lunch in a simple restaurant overlooking the river and boarded the express boat for Mingin about 12:30.

The boat left soon after 1 with only about 30 passengers, though we made many stops on the way, at least 20, picking up and dropping off passengers on wide sand banks and steep dirt banks below villages or maybe just a house or two.  A couple of times passengers boarded the boat after arriving in a smaller boat that pulled alongside.  The riverside terrain was hilly and scenic, with cliffs in at least one spot.  Generally, we were headed southeast, but with many twists and turns.  At times we were going north.  The sky was a little cloudy.

We reached Mingin, on a high riverbank, at 5:30, just before dark.  Making my way with my backpack off the boat on the narrow plank leading to the shore was a little daunting, but I managed not to fall off into the muddy water.  The climb from the boat on the river up to the town was more than 40 feet.

Mingin seemed like a pretty town.  Several trees were filled with chirping black birds settling down for the night.  I  was directed one way to a guest house, and then back the way I had come to what turned out to be the government guest house.  A well dressed young man came out and said I would have to stay in the guest house just across down the street, above the river, and pointed it out to me.  He said it wasn't a very good one, and that certainly proved right.  He told me he was the District Commissioner and that if I had any problems in Mingin to come and see him.  He told me the boat downriver to Monywa was scheduled to leave at 4 every morning, but sometimes left at 4:30 or 4:45.

I walked over to the guest house, a large wooden building of two stories and inquired in the restaurant on the first floor.  A man told me a room was 5000 kyat, about five dollars, gave me a key, and pointed upstairs.  I found the rickety stairs leading up to a dark corridor and my room.  There were no lights and I examined my bare room with my flashlight.  It contained only a wood platform for a bed, with a "mattress" no thicker than a very thin bath mat, and not much larger, plus two thin blankets and a pillow. I suppose I have had worse rooms in my travels, but not many.  I had been thinking of spending a day and two nights in Mingin, but began to reconsider.  The toilets were downstairs and there was no bath room.  Maybe just as well, as the water in the toilets was very muddy.

I left my backpack in the room and took a walk about town.  It was now dark, with few lights on, so there wasn't much to see.  But there was even less to see in my dark room at the guest house.  I ate dinner at the guest house and then took another walk around town.  The lights had come on, so there was a bit more to see.  One man brought out his maybe ten year old daughter from their house to speak a few English phrases to me.

Back at the guest house the lights were on upstairs and some rooms had lights, but not mine.  I had a fluorescent light fixture, but no bulb.  I walked around a bit more outside and then read in the restaurant below my room until about 9, when I went to bed.  After a few minutes on that hard bed, I had pretty much decided I was leaving the next morning.

I awoke the next morning at 3:30, and not for the first time since I had gone to bed.  I went outside to check the express boat, and people were arriving with flashlights to board it.  The moon was up, brightening the river.  I got down to the boat just before 4 and saw that it was not the boat I had taken the afternoon before, but a bigger one with about 130 seats, all of them more comfortable bus type seats.  I suppose that this was the boat to Monywa that had left Kalewa at 5 p.m., spending the night in Mingin.

Quite a few passengers boarded, though there were still many empty seats.  I think it was more than half full, though.  We left at 4:40.  A cold wind blew into the boat and soon the plastic sheeting was lowered on both sides of the boat to keep out the wind.  It wasn't raised until about two hours later.  I may have dozed some, but did see a rosy dawn through an open door near the bow.  The boat made many stops taking on additional passengers.

Once the plastic sheeting was up, I could enjoy the early morning river views.  For the man in front of me it afforded the opportunity to chew betel nut and almost continuously spit copious amount of red saliva out the side of the boat, usually hitting the narrow walkway just outside the open windows.

From Mingin we had traveled northeast, following a big bend of the river before the river turned south.  Now heading south, the boat made a stop on a riverbank about 7 and the boat was swarmed by women with platters of food.  I bought a greasy piece of chicken, consisting of two wings and two thighs, for 2000 kyat, about two dollars.

From then on there were few stops as we sped downriver.  The sky was speckled with clouds early in the morning, but soon cleared up. The riverside scenery was less interesting than the day before, with few hills. About 8:30 three packed express boats headed upriver passed us.  I knew the three express boats that travel from Monywa to Kalewa every day are scheduled to leave Monywa at 4:30, and was surprised to see them so soon in our trip downriver.

By 9:30, under sunny skies, it was warm enough for me to take off my fleece and windbreaker.  The boat made good time and just before 11:30 I spotted the long bridge over the Chindwin just north of Monywa.  We slowed down as we passed below it, the river shallow there, with a sandbank taking up more than half the distance under the bridge. We continued slowly from the bridge to Monywa, zigzagging across the river to avoid sandbanks.  I noticed lots of dredges at work on the river.

The boat docked just after 12, much earlier than I expected.  Back in Monywa after leaving it eight days earlier, I had completed a loop that took me south to Pakokku, west to Chin State, north through Chin State, east to the Chindwin, and then down the Chindwin back to Monywa.  I wasn't sure that I would be able to make that loop when I started off.

A horde of taxi guys aggressively soliciting business swarmed onto the boat as soon as it docked.  I made my way up the steep bank and walked the 15 minutes or so it took to get to the hotel where I had stayed before.  Getting to my room, I appreciated the relatively thick mattress on the bed.  I ate a big Burmese lunch, with about ten plates, including very good fish, and two soups, in a restaurant I had liked during my previous visit, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in an internet cafe.  Still full from my big lunch, I ate some street side snack foods for dinner.  The vendors may not have remembered me, but were very friendly.  Back in the hotel I washed my dirty, dusty clothes and day pack and went to bed about 9.

I spent the next day in Monywa, a very nice town.  I spent the late morning and early afternoon in an internet cafe and then had another big Burmese lunch about 2.  The serving girls brought me an extra plate of a vegetable dish I particularly liked, a sort of stringy green vegetable with what looked and tasted like pine nuts.  For dessert they brought me a container full of hard sugar chunks, another container with some sort of crunchy corn nuts, and bananas.  In the late afternoon I walked down to the riverfront to watch all the activity and the sunset, walking back just before dark. 

December 4-9, 2014: Chin State - Mindat, Hakha, and Falam

I was awoken about 4 on the morning on the 4th in Pokokku by loud amplified Buddhist prayers that went on for an hour and a half, proving that Buddhists can be just as annoying as Muslims.  I got up about 6 and had breakfast prepared by Mya Mya.  I talked with her some more until about a quarter past 7, when she dispatched a neighbor to take me to the bus station on his motorcycle.  I watched the small bus (maybe only 30 seats) get loaded with cargo.  An already battered dresser was hoisted onto the rack on top and wedged between the metal bars.  On top of that some sort of metal rack was tied, along with bags and boxes.

We set off at 8 and I was given a roomy seat right in front, opposite the driver.  It is, i think, about 90 to 100 miles to Mindat in Chin State, and I was told the trip would take six hours.  We headed west on a sunny, cool morning, but about 8:30 we stopped and then turned back to pick up some other passengers.  On our way west again, we got a flat tire about 10.  Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the bus carried no spare tire.  The driver and his assistant pulled off the tire and removed its tube and then inflated it and two other tubes they had with them with a compressor located under the chassis of the bus.  They then deflated them and the assistant took off on a passing motorcycle.  He came back, having patched up one of the tubes, I imagine, and they replaced it in the tire.  The whole thing took about an hour, and then we were off again heading west.

The countryside was pretty, with some hills.  I saw quite a few bullock carts along the way. We stopped for lunch about noon and I ate some cookies and hard boiled quail eggs I had brought with me.  About 2 we stopped again, this time for about an hour and a half, at a tire repair shop where more work was done on the tire.  I didn't mind the stop, in a pleasant little village.  I walked around a bit and then sat on the main street, watching the people and bullock carts pass.

After what I hoped was the final tire repair, we set off again, still heading west.  By late afternoon we had risen to about 1200 feet elevation, by my altimeter (which hadn't been set to a known altitude since Katha, so could have been off a couple of hundred feet, or even more), in a pretty area with rice fields set against low hills.  We began to climb into the hills of Chin State, soon passing the Chin State border.  Chin State has only been open to individual tourists in the last year or two.  We rose rapidly on a fairly good road into the forested hills in the late afternoon, finally reaching the town of Mindat, at about 4500 feet (by my altimeter), just before 6 as it got dark.

The bus stop was opposite a gloomy looking wooden guest house, without any hot water.  I had been told of another one with hot water, so I got directions and started walking.  Soon a guy offered me a ride on his motorcycle.  The guest house was quite nice, though they seemed surprised to see me, needing to summon someone from somewhere else to deal with me.

I checked in and then walked the dark streets to a restaurant near the bus stand, 15 or 20 minutes from my guest house.  It was a small, dark place, but filled with local people, and I had a delicious dinner there:  rice, pork, fish, greens, sprouts, soup, and several kinds of vegetables, all served in individual little plates.  By the time I finished all of the other customers had finished and left.  One of the serving girls cut an avocado in half and gave me half, sprinkling sugar on it.  It was delicious.  The meal cost me all of a dollar and a half.

The people in the restaurant were very friendly.  The Chin look fairly distinctive from the Burmese.  They compose only about two percent of Burma's population.  (The Kachin in the north number even fewer, about one percent.)  Chin people also live over the border in the Indian state of Mizoram and in Bangladesh.

I walked back through the dark streets, with very few lights, to my guest house under a full moon and a sky speckled with clouds, quite a pretty effect.  The night air was already chilly and back at the guest house I enjoyed the luxury of a hot bucket bath.  The night was cold, and I slept under two blankets.

The next morning I was up after 6, just after it got light, and my thermometer measured 63 degrees in my room.  I was out soon after 7, walking up and down the main street of the town.  Mindat is situated on a long ridge, running mostly east to west.  The sun finally warmed the town up.  People were friendly and I saw several grannies with intricately tattooed faces, perhaps ten in all.  The Chin used to  tattoo the faces of their women, supposedly to discourage the Burmese from kidnapping them.  But the government put a stop to it in the 1960's, so now it is only old women with tattooed faces.  One I saw was also smoking what looked like a sort of corncob pipe.

I walked to the eastern end of town and then came back to a tea shop where I ate a breakfast of tea with condensed milk and some sort of chickpea fritters.  After breakfast I walked to a pagoda on a hill at the western end of town.  The Chin are about 90% Christian, the result of western missionary activity, but the Burmese government promotes Buddhism and a minority of Chin are Buddhist.

From the pagoda, and from elsewhere in town, I could see Mt. Victoria, more than 10,000 feet high, to the south.  There are views of hills in all directions from the town.   A young Chin guy who spoke passable English accompanied me up to the pagoda.  By then the sun was warm and I was in shorts, a shirt, and sandals.  He wore a leather jacket, a scarf, and a wool hat (with the Yankee "NY" on it).  As we climbed up, he remarked, "It's hot."  Well, yes, if you're wearing a leather jacket, a scarf, and a wool hat.

I spent some time enjoying the views and then walked back to my guest house.  Most of the homes and buildings in town are made of wood, and I passed a noisy school and a quiet orphanage.  At the guest house I encountered another tourist, a Belgian, who was spending five days in the town.  He had come to climb Mt. Victoria, but the guide fees are absurdly high here.  He was quoted $65 a day.  I was quoted $50 a day.  The high fees are an artifact of the days when only tourists willing to pay for permits, guides, and vehicles were allowed to visit the area, so I suppose they will come down in time.

About 2 I had lunch and then hung out in the little restaurant until about 3:30, watching a movie with a little kid, who soon fell asleep, and his older sister, if she was his sister.  The electricity cut out just at the climax of the movie, during the final battle on the Golden Gate Bridge between apes, made particularly intelligent after being used as test subjects for an Alzheimer's Disease drug, and the police.

I walked through town a bit more and climbed up to another pagoda and stayed there until after sunset.  A full moon rose.  It got chilly quickly.  That evening I had a much less satisfying dinner, the pork being almost all fat, great big chunks of it.  The local people must wonder why I leave the best part uneaten.  As I walked back to my guest house through the dark streets under a full moon, I heard a group of children in a nearby building singing "Feliz Navidad."

The next morning about 6:30 I walked to the bus stop.  My minivan headed north to Gangaw was due to leave at 7, but left closer to 8.  I enjoyed watching the early morning activity in town, with vehicles arriving carrying people and produce for the morning market.

The minivan was comfortable and I had a seat near the front, next to a friendly brother and sister from Mindat headed to Hakha.  The brother spoke some English and asked me if I knew Justin Bieber.  He asked me several questions about him, but I'm afraid my Justin Bieber knowledge is rather slight.  He also told me he didn't like Miley Cyrus, because she was "too sexy," not a complaint I would have expected from a guy who looked about 20.  Later he asked me when the expression "holy shit" is used.

From Mindat we headed east for about an hour, down the road I had come two days earlier, to the  town of Kyauk-Thu, beyond the Chin State border and at about 1500 feet.  There we stopped briefly and the sister bought me a coffee and gave me several of the very sweet little mandarin oranges that are common in Burma.

From Kyauk-Thu, we headed north through a very pretty hilly valley, with lots of rice being grown and harvested, along with patches of vegetables.  The houses were all of wood, and there were lots of bullock carts.  We stopped for lunch in the little town of Hti-lin at about 11 and reached Gangaw, about 800 feet in elevation, at about 1:30.  I had thought I might have to spend the night in Gangaw before heading back up into the hills of Chin State to Hakha, but several others from the minivan were heading to Hakha that afternoon, so I joined them.  My guidebook has virtually nothing on Chin State, with no information on hotels and transport.

We changed to another minivan and finally left Gangaw about 2:30 after stops to fill the tank with gas, buy betel nut for the driver, and so forth.  We drove north a few miles and then crossed a river and headed west through rolling hills.  We started to climb more steeply once we reached the Chin State border, passing a village with a sign post saying "Bung Zung"  (my map had it as "Ban Zone") soon after the border.  A mileage post (in miles, not kilometers) indicated it was about 70 miles to Hakha.

At first the road up into the mountains was good, and we sped along at about 20 miles per hour.  But it very soon deteriorated, and we slowed to about 10 miles per hour.  The scenery was marvelous, with views over ridges and ridges of jungle covered hills.  I noticed pine trees began to appear at about 3500 feet.  We saw few other vehicles and not too many houses as we made slow progress on the dusty road.

About 5:30 we stopped for dinner at the little village of Lam tok, at about 4000 feet elevation and about 40 miles from Hakha.  We all ate together at one big table from several different plates, including chicken, pork, and vegetables.  One meat dish I couldn't identify. One guy said it was a "monster."  Another said he thought it might be bat.

It was after 6 and dark by the time we finished and set off again for Hakha.  The driver kept his window wide open so it was cold and dusty inside.  The moon was soon up, but the sky was cloudy.  Nevertheless, I could see in the moonlight ridges and ridges of hills to the east, with banks of clouds or fog among them.  We came across few other vehicles on the road, maybe ten or fifteen over two and a half hours, and only a few dark wooden villages.

We rose to maybe 7000 feet elevation before starting to descend.  The lights of Hakha appeared below and we reached it, at about 5800 feet, at about a quarter to 9.  We stopped at a guest house on the outskirts of town where the others planned to stay, but they weren't licensed to accept foreigners.  The minivan took me to another guest house in an old wooden building near the town center.  The town looked pretty much closed up at 9 o'clock.  The guest house was fairly comfortable, and the manager gave me a thermos of hot water that somewhat warmed up my still cold bucket bath, but I was happy to wash off the day's dust and grime before going to bed.  My thermometer registered 63 degrees in my room before I went to bed at about 10:30, but I slept warmly under a comforter and two blankets.

I was up before 7 the next morning.  My thermometer had dropped to 55 degrees.  The town still was quiet and I saw the moon setting over hills to the west just beginning to be lit up by the rising sun.  I got back into bed until about 7:30 and soon after 8, the morning still cold, began a walk around town.

Hakha reminds me of a town from the Old West, with almost all buildings of wood and many of several stories.  The wide streets are paved, but dusty, with little vehicular traffic, and that mainly motorcycles, with the occasional truck.  Hakha is the Chin State capital, strung out over a valley in the hills.  The Indian border is only about 30 miles to the west, and Bangladesh about 40 miles further.

As I walked around town on a Sunday morning, I was struck by the large number of churches and other church affiliated buildings, of all sorts of denominations, mostly Baptist, but also Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Pentecostal, and others.  I walked by a big outdoor breakfast, with maybe thirty people seated at a long table, with big pots of rice and other food cooking alongside.  It was a wedding feast, the day after the wedding.  I talked to some of the folks there, including the mother of the bride, and was told the bride lived in Malaysia and the groom in the United States, if I understood correctly.

About 10 the streets were filled with people headed to church, usually starting, I was told, at 10 or 10:15.  I was invited to a service but declined, not wanting to be stuck inside for two hours or more.  Some of the older men had western style jackets, but made of brightly colored, mostly red, traditional Chin fabric, while many of the women were dressed up, at least one in very high heels.  The town did seem to get noticeably quieter after 10, though there were still people on the streets.  About 10:30 I stopped in at a friendly tea shop for a greasy, but delicious breakfast.

After breakfast I continued my walk around town, peeking in through the door of the Pentecostal Church.  The interior was filled with hanging Christmas decorations and many of the women wore white scarves on their heads.  Nobody seemed to mind my staring in, and several smiled and even waved.  Outside the church some young folks had gathered, seemingly more interested in flirting than the church service.

I wandered around some more and finally found my way to the Zion Baptist Church, with some bright poinsettias growing outside.  I stood outside and listened to what might have been a part of a sermon and then a hymn.  A Chin man also standing outside in a black western style suit struck up a conversation.  He told me his name was Bik and that he had spent nine and a half years in the United States, mostly in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he had an adopted father who was a Chin minister.  He told me there were about 2000 Chin in Battle Creek, and more in Grand Rapids.  He mentioned several other cities with lots of Chin people, including Indianapolis, with 10,000.

He told me he had worked as a sushi chef, of all things.  (I asked him about that several times, to make sure I had understood correctly.)  I asked him is he liked sushi and he said, "Not really."  He came back to Hakha four and a half years ago to get married, and now has a two and a half year old son.  He told me he hopes to go back to Battle Creek, as the education and health care is so much worse in Burma.

While we were talking and the service rumbled on, men in red robes came out and passed out, first, little bits of cookies, and, later, little plastic vials of what appeared to be grape kool-ade.  Bik advised me to hold them until he signaled, and then we consumed them.

After hymns, the service ended about noon, and people streamed out, not pausing for any socializing.  Bik headed home.  I wandered around some more, eventually heading back to the town center.  Bik spotted me and invited me into his home, introducing me to his mother and father.  We sat in a big wooden room and I was given a cup of thin coffee.  He was still in his suit, which he told me he bought in Hakha for $140.  He brought out a photo albums to show me photos of his life in Battle Creek and visits to other parts of the U.S.

I spent an hour or so at my hotel and then set out to try to find the bus station to buy a ticket for Falam, further north.  I found it and bought a minivan ticket for the next morning.  I found a fairly good restaurant for lunch, with a video of a Shania Twain concert in Chicago playing on the television.

Later in the afternoon, as I was again walking around town, I met an 80 year old man, who looked much younger, perhaps in his 60's, named Van To.  He invited me to his house and introduced me to his 32 year old wife.  We sat in his front room and talked.  He is a retired education official and has recently, in 2010, published a Chin-English grammar book.  He showed it to me and it looked very well done.  He told me he had 1000 printed and sent 300 to Dallas.

He was a very interesting man, having gone to the University of Rangoon from 1958 to 1963, majoring in Political Science, History, and Economics.  His children, of whom he had graduation photos on the walls of his front room, are now in Dallas, Australia, and Norway.  He told me that there is a Chin refugee trail from Burma through Thailand to Malaysia (getting there "by hook or crook," he said), where many Chin are allowed to stay hoping to get refugee status to move to the United States, Australia, or other places.  He said his son was the first to lead a group to Norway.  He told me that many Chin have moved to Mizoram in India, which they can easily reach across the border, where life is better.

He also told me that before the Chin became Christians, they worshiped "not evil," but things like stones and trees.  He had a picture of Jesus up on his wall.  After leaving his house, I walked around some more, but it was getting cold as it got dark.  That night the guest house manager gave me two thermoses of hot water, so I had a somewhat warmer bucket bath than the night before.  I went to bed about 9.

The next morning I was outside my guest house at 7 in wait for my minivan to Falam.  The town was busier than on the previous Sunday morning.  Shops were being opened.  As I had walked out of the guest house I had noticed a western bicycle parked just inside, and soon a European bicyclist appeared with it, ready to set off south, the way I had come.  He had arrived the afternoon before from Falam.  We talked a while before my minivan arrived about 7:45.  It took me to the place where I had bought my ticket, where I was placed into another minivan.  From there we went to a tire shop to fill up the tires with air and made several other stops before finally getting gong about 8:30.

We headed north out of town and just beyond the town reached a scenic spot where the driver stopped and said something.  A man stood up in the minivan and recited a somewhat long prayer, while some of the others occasionally murmured approval and all said "amen" at the end.

The morning was sunny and clear, with good views of the hilly countryside.  The hills weren't as densely forested as they had been before dark south of Hakha.  Along with lots of trees were brown grassy areas, though most of the hills were tree covered.  Unfortunately, I had a back row seat on the very bumpy road.  Fortunately, it is only about 40 miles to Falam from Hakha.  We passed several wooden villages as we traveled between 5000 and 6000 feet in elevation the whole way.

We arrived in Falam, at about 5100 feet (according to my altimeter), at 11.  I was the only passenger to get off there.  The others, it seemed, were all heading to Kalaymyo.  I was dropped off right at a guest house in the middle of the small town.  A big red Baptist church stood in a prominent position above the main junction of the town.  I went into a nearby tea shop for a late breakfast/early lunch of corn soup, with lots of big, fat kernels of corn, and fried bread, along with tea.

Afterwards I walked around the pretty little, mostly wooden town that clung to the slopes of its hills, with good views out over the countryside below.  I wandered along the main paved roads and several dirt lanes, finding a few old and very dilapidated brick buildings with chimneys with grass now growing out of them.  Perhaps they are relics of the colonial era.  I also found a profusion of beautiful red flowers, the same color as poinsettias, but different, with great big blossoms.  People seemed reserved, but friendly.  Back at my hotel I met two Americans, one just getting off a minivan from Kalaymyo while the other one has been here for three months teaching.

I walked around some more in the late afternoon, ending up at the town's main intersection, just below the big red Baptist church.  A uniformed traffic policeman was now stationed there, though there was very little traffic to direct, mostly motorcycles, though rarely did three, or even two, approach at the same time.  The intersection, however, was a bit of tricky one, sloping and a bit like the central section of an 8.  The traffic cop, equipped with a whistle, took his job very seriously, giving stiff armed commands to drivers, some of whom obeyed him and some who seemed to ignore him.  He paused to admonish one driver, stepping away from his post just before about four motorcycles approached at the same time.  A little wooden pavilion stood just above the intersection and I sat there to watch him.  He wasn't there for long, just for the late afternoon rush hour, I guess.

After he left, I talked with a retired headmaster of a school who stopped by the pavilion for a chat.  He told me Falam was something over 5000 feet in elevation and that he thought it had about 10,000 people.  It is interesting that it is old people, educated before the disastrous 1962 coup, who speak the best English, though younger people are now beginning to learn it again. After a dinner heavy with pork fat, I went to bed about 9, skipping a bucket bath as there was no hot water.

At 5:30 the next morning amplified loud music began blaring from a church, followed by a sermon that went on for almost an hour, proving that Christians can be just as annoying as Buddhists and Muslims.  The thermometer in my room read 59 degrees and the town was enveloped in fog.

The fog in town had cleared as I walked to the nearby bus stop just before 7.  I had booked a bus ticket rather than a minivan ticket to Kalaymyo, maybe 80 miles away, the day before because the minivan had seats only in the far back.  Originally, I had hoped to go to the town of Tiddim further north, but found you had to go to Kalaymyo first.

The bus was packed with people and cargo.  In fact, the seats in the back half of the bus had been removed to make more space for cargo, though people then sat on the cargo.  The roof, too, was filled with cargo and maybe 20 people.  I had the seat next to the window right behind the door, which was tied open.  People sat and stood in the aisles.  We got going soon after 7, but made several stops in town to load more people and cargo, so it was almost 7:30 before we left town.

Just north of town is a deep gorge, with a river at the bottom.  The bus stopped at the beginning of the descent into the gorge, at a very scenic overlook, with great views down into the gorge and across to the forested hills on the northern slopes of the gorge.  The driver said something and a man stood up and recited a prayer, with a chorus of "amens" at the end.  I hoped the prayer was not a complete substitute for checking the brakes and tires before our descent.

The overburdened bus descended the zigzagging, mostly asphalted road down the mountainside to the river, dropping more than 4000 feet.  Just before the bridge over the river the bus made a short stop, where we could stretch our legs.  It was cloudy at the bottom of the gorge, some morning fog or clouds above not yet having cleared.

As we made our ascent on the other side, I noticed one hillside with the leaves of the trees changing colors, with lots of red and yellow leaves.  The road was in good shape, mostly paved, and we passed several villages of wooden buildings.  We climbed up to pine trees again.  There was some fog along the way, but lots of great views over the forested hills.

About 10:30 we stopped in a village, at about 6300 feet, where we had a meal break.  Quite a few vans had also stopped there for a meal.  Vans seem to be the mode of transportation if you can afford them.  The rice and chicken and vegetables were good and the town friendly.  I watched a woman preparing betel nut, spreading liquid lime onto bright green leaves and then adding betel nut and other stuff.  A young women came out and said, "This is my mother.  Isn't she beautiful?"

After lunch we continued north, ascending to over 7000 feet before we began our descent and turned to the east.  We left Chin State and reached the valley floor, full of rice fields and with good views of the Chin hills to the west, at about 1:30 and reached Kalaymyo about half an hour later.  My altimeter gave the elevation as about 500 feet.

About 2:30 I set off from Kalaymyo, which seems to be the main town of the region (I've read it is about half Chin and half Burmese) in a small open air truck, with wooden benches in the back, bound for Kalewa to the east on the Chindwin River, maybe 20 miles away.  The road follows a river through low hills that flows into the Chindwin at Kalewa.  The ride through the hills was pretty, though the road often terrible.  On the way the truck had a flat tire.  In fact, the metal wheel appeared to have cracked.  But they did have a spare and we soon on our way again.

It took us almost two hours to reach Kalewa, where I was dropped off at a guest house right above the broad Chindwin River.  I wandered around the riverfront, asking about boats upriver and downriver.  I was headed downriver, but I hope to come back and travel along the upper Chindwin before exiting Burma for India.  At 5 I watched an express boat arrive from upriver and soon continue south, headed for Monywa, I was told.

I ate dinner just before dark in a gloomy little restaurant above the river.  The bucket baths at the guest house were of cold water, but bearable at this low altitude along the river, about 400 feet according to my altimeter.  It felt good to be clean and the night air seemed warm after the cold night air of the mountains of Chin State. The temperature in my room just before I went to bed at 9 was a balmy 75 degrees.

November 30 - December 3, 2014: Monywa and Pakokku

In Shwebo on the morning of the 30th, I relaxed in my room after two long days of travel, ate a late breakfast, and made it to the bus station about 11.  At noon I left on a bus headed southwest to Monywa on the Chindwin River, the Irrawaddy's biggest tributary.  The 65 mile journey took over three hours, in part because we stopped at a rice mill, where we all got out of the bus so big bags of rice could be loaded under the seats and in the aisle of the bus.  I took the opportunity to explore the mill, as nobody said I couldn't.  Inside big machines were husking the rice.  A big pile of unhusked rice stood in one corner, with stacks of big white bags of husked rice all around.

We also passed lots of rice fields on the first part of the journey, some already harvested.  The latter part of the journey, however, passed through more uncultivated land, almost scrub.

After arrival in Monywa, a city of almost 200,000 people, I walked along the wide Chindwin, with beautiful large rain trees along the raised river bank, affording lots of shade.  Scores of boats were on the river or docked on the riverbank.  People were friendly and a few old men greeted me in English.  One walked along with me to the end of the tree-lined portion of the riverbank.  He told me he walks this route, maybe a mile, every day, for his exercise. Some old buildings stood on the other side of the river road, and almost all the buildings looked fairly dilapidated.  I watched the ferry crossings, with many people crowded into little boats.  Two small hills stand on the other side of the river.  Sunset was at about 5:20, into the clouds just above the horizon on the other side of the river.

The next morning I walked to the river front again.  I hoped to take the ferry across, and then a motorcycle taxi 23 miles west to Hpo Win Daung, a complex of 492 Buddha chambers carved into limestone hills from the 14th to 18th centuries.  But the ferry fare for foreigners is 2500 kyat, versus 200 for locals, and I was told that on the other side I wouldn't be able to take a motorcycle taxi, but only a bigger vehicle for 20,000 kyat return.  However, a motorcycle taxi guy offered to take me on a longer route for 12,000 kyat total, so I agreed.  On his motorcycle we headed north to a long bridge over the Chindwin, crossed it, and then headed southwest towards the caves, a trip of 32 miles over almost an hour and a half.  There wasn't much traffic and the roads are fairly good.  The terrain was flat until we reached the hills at the end.  Along the way there were many patches of brightly colored sunflowers.  I didn't see any rice, but there were vegetable patches here and there, and lots of trees, including palmyra palms.  Near the hills we passed a huge open pit copper mine, all fenced in, with guard posts.

I spent about three hours wandering through the interesting caves, all man made and most very shallow.  Some had wonderful murals.  All through the site wandered mean looking macaque monkeys, with particularly red butts and groins.  They could be aggressive at times, too.  

Back in town in the late afternoon, I wandered around, visiting a big new pagoda, very golden.  Near the entrance vendors were roasting corn on the cob and some sort of brown root.  Big bundles of those long, thin roots lay all around.  I watched another woman grease a sort of griddle and then sift rice flour onto it.  As it formed a sort of thin pancake, she added shredded coconut and sugar and then wrapped it all up.  I bought a couple of them at 100 kyat (10 cents) apiece and they were crispy and delicious.

I spent most of the next morning in an internet cafe, a rare sight in the parts of Burma I have been traveling in this year.  After a good Burmese lunch of about ten dishes and two soups at a simple restaurant, costing all of 2300 kyat, I took a motorcycle taxi about ten miles south and then east to a colorful Buddhist pagoda called Thanboddhay Paya and spent maybe half an hour there looking around.  Then we went a further five miles east to Bodhi Tataung, reputed to be the  world's highest standing Buddha, 424 feet tall, made of steel and concrete.  Right in front of it is a big reclining Buddha.

You can climb inside the big standing Buddha and I did so, ascending 27 stories until just below his head.  There are about 16-20 stairs per floor, so about 500 steps in all.  The lower floors are decorated with wonderfully gruesome scenes of hell, while upper stories have much less interesting scenes of heaven.  The steel girders that hold up the Buddha can be seen inside.  Small windows are on each floor, but are dirty and, with the late afternoon glare, it was hard to see to the west, the direction the Buddha faces.  Still, I could make out parts of the Chindwin.

About 5 we headed back to town, getting there before dark.  The tree shaded rural road near the giant Buddha was particularly nice at dusk, with lots of vegetable gardens en route.  We stopped once so my driver could buy a liter of gasoline, sold in a recycled water bottle for 1000 kyat a liter.  At service stations gas seems to sell for about 875 a liter, but roadside vendors sporting a row of water or liquor bottles full of gas are much more frequently sighted than service stations.  I also had him stop at an ATM at a bank.  ATMs seem to have sprouted almost everywhere.  I saw them also in Myitkyina and Bhamo.  I brought lots of clean, crisp American currency but have had to use it only for the flight from Bhamo to Myitkyina.

The next morning at 9 I left on a bus south for Pakokku, a three hour trip.  Pakokku is on the Irrawaddy, just upriver and on the opposite bank from Bagan.  A big new bridge, the longest in Burma, now links the two.  On the way, we crossed the Chindwin via another long bridge.  The Chindwin flows into the Irrawaddy between Monywa and Pakokku.  The very full bus passed mostly through scrub land, with some vegetable patches, but no rice fields that I saw.

In Pakokku I checked into a rundown guest house right on the river, but now a backwater channel of the Irrawaddy, run by a grandmother named Mya Mya and her four granddaughters.  One of her granddaughters helped me buy a ticket for the next day's bus west to Mindat in Chin State.  I wandered through the very busy and interesting market to a restaurant for lunch.  On the way back I watched a woman pouring a watery dough into a sort of griddle made up of many little half circles.  They fry up into tasty little treats, and I've had them elsewhere.  This woman added tiny quail eggs into the cooking dough, frying them inside the dough.  I ate several and they were delicious.  I've eaten lots of hard boiled quail eggs in Burma, but these were the first fried, and fried in that sweet, crispy dough.

I wandered again through the fascinating market and then along the town's dusty streets. I found some derelict stupas in a monastery and later walked to the river, very low and shallow here, with the main channel now further east.

I returned to the guest house about 4 and spent the rest of the afternoon talking to a 72 year old German traveler and Mya Mya.  She was very interesting, telling me she was born in Myitkyina during World War II and later married, an arranged marriage, to a man, now deceased, from Pakokku.  She said that during the war a Japanese soldier gave her mother milk powder for her, because she reminded him of his own daughter.  She told me she had some Chinese and Shan ancestors, along with Burmese, and that she has now lived in Pakokku for 40 years.

She speaks very good English, having spent five years in a convent school in Maymyo (now Pwin Oo Lwin) after her father died (in the army, apparently fighting against one of Burma's many minority groups) and her mother remarried.  She told me she first started taking tourists into her hundred year old home in 1980.  Then tourists were allowed only seven days in the country.  Most would take the train from Rangoon to Mandalay, then a boat down the Irrawaddy to Bagan, and then a train or bus back to Rangoon.

She said the boat from Mandalay would arrive in Pakokku in the evening and spend the night there.  Some tourists didn't want to sleep on the boat, so she started a guest house and a restaurant for them.  She would have to wake them early to make sure they got back on the boat to Bagan, which left early.   She told me back then she charged five kyat per night (I paid 9000), but that the exchange rate was 13 to the dollar (now it is over 1000).  She also said that back then tourists could bring in a cartoon of cigarettes and a bottle of liquor, sell those once they arrived, and the proceeds would pay for their expenses during their seven days in Burma.  She was a very nice woman, a joy to talk to.

November 28-29, 2014: Down the Irrawaddy

I left Indawgyi Lake on the morning of the 28th, headed back to Katha on the Irrawaddy.  I would have happily spent another day or two, or maybe more, at the lake if I were certain I could overstay my visa for several weeks.  The lake is beautiful, and the people living around it very friendly.  Plus, there was a good group of foreign tourists at the guesthouse.

One other tourist and I caught the overburdened pick-up truck that came by the guest house about 7:30.  A friendly group of local folks was already on board, and the space below the seats was full of cargo.  The trip to the railroad station at Hopin was much quicker than on my arrival, taking about two and a half hours.  We made only one stop for more cargo, and the trip was much less dusty, with fewer big trucks stirring up dust along the way.  The fog was starting to clear from the lake as we left, but it was denser in the southern part of the valley, into which we headed.  From the hills between Hopin and the valley we had a great view of the fog filled valley.  The trip was bumpy, with my left side constantly bumping into the hard rail to my left.

On the other side of the hills a light haze covered the long valley running south through which the railroad runs.  I bought my train ticket for Naba, near Katha, for only 750 Kyat, about 75 cents, for an ordinary class seat, but a reserved one.  I ate an early lunch and the train arrived right on time, 11:45.  My seat was in the first coach behind the locomotive and a railroad employee, no doubt concerned I wound be able to find it on my own, led me to it.  The seat was made of wooden slats, but I enjoyed the pretty journey south.  The Burmese folks around me were friendly, the mother and daughter across from me eating sunflower seeds, very popular in Burma.  The ride was very slow at times over rickety rails, but the scenery of hills on either side of the train route, rice fields, and lots of trees was enjoyable. I saw lots of bullock carts.  We also passed through some jungle, in which I saw two very simple, palisaded army camps.  In another spot I noticed soldiers with rifles patrolling.  At another spot workers were working on the rails as we passed by very slowly.

It took about five hours to reach Naba, from where I took an open three wheeler on the terrible road through the hills to Katha, about an hour away.  It was nice to be able to see those pretty hills in the twilight, unlike my first trip through them in the dark.  Nearing Katha, we passed three working elephants, the first one with long tusks.

It was dark by the time we reached Katha.  I checked into the same guest house I had stayed in before.  After dinner, I walked along the waterfront as a quarter moon hovered over the Irrawaddy.  I took a cold bucket bath and went to bed before 9.

I got up the next morning sometime after 4 and was on the express boat headed downriver before 5, when it was due to depart.  It didn't leave until 5:30, which was fine with me, as it was still dark.  The boat was long, with room for maybe a hundred passengers, but there were only about ten of us.  The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east as we set off.  It wasn't as cold as I expected on the river in the early morning.  I did have on long trousers, a fleece, and a windbreaker.

The sun rose about 6:30, at first reflected as a streak on the water.  The scenery was hilly along the river.  The boat made several stops to pick up passengers from villages along the river.  Other passengers showed up on motorized canoes, which pulled up to our boat as it slowed, tied up to it, and transferred their passengers.

About 7:30 our boat pulled up to the shore and tied up.  For about half an hour a crew of about six women loaded big bags of something onto the boat, first bringing the bags on their heads down the riverbank.  They seemed a cheerful bunch.  Usually, it is men who load the cargo onto these boats.  While they were doing so, fog had gathered on the river, and our boat spent another hour and a half tied up waiting for it to lift.  It finally began to do so, and we set off again.

There was still some fog on the river, but soon it was gone.  Sometime after 10 we pulled up to the riverside again for more passengers and cargo.  A troop of women with plates of food boarded.  I bought a styrofoam box of rice with vegetables, chicken, and fish.

We continued down the river, with hills on both sides.  The scenery was much more pleasant than I had expected.  In lower Burma, the land along the Irrawaddy is flat and fairly featureless.  There were lots of boats on the river.  Often our boat would weave across the wide river, avoiding sandbars.

About 2:45 we reached the town of Male, after which the river narrowed and deepened, with forested hills on either side.  We passed more villages and simple settlements and after 5 I spotted the big new bridge downriver at Kyaukmyaung, the one I had walked back and forth across when I had visited the potters at Kyaukmyaung almost two weeks before.

The boat was continuing down to Mandalay, maybe three hours away, but I got off at Kyaukmyaung, as it was nearing dark.  Those of us getting off had to board a smaller boat that pulled alongside to take us to the shore.  We landed about a quarter after 5, just after the sun had set.  I took a three wheeler on the hour ride to Shwebo, but the air felt warmer than it had the night before between Naba and Katha.  On the trip south down the river we had passed the Tropic of Cancer, and I was back in the tropics.  In Shwebo I checked into the same hotel where I had stayed before.  I went to bed before 9 and slept ten hours.  

November 23-27, 2014: Myitkyina and Indawgyi Lake

On the morning of the 23rd I flew from Bhamo to Myitkyina.  I took a motorcycle taxi to the  airport about 7 in the chilly early morning air.  My backpack was barely checked (just an outside compartment).  The plane, with two propellers and seats for about 50 passengers, arrived from Mandalay shortly before 9 and we took off for Myitkyina about 9.  I had great views on the 20 minute ride north.  I could see the Irrawaddy to the west, first only in portions among hills and then the whole river once the terrain flattened.  I didn't see any boats on the river.

Once in town, a relatively big city of 40,000, I walked to the train station to check out trains south and then walked to the riverfront and had lunch at a riverside restaurant.  There was hardly any boat activity on the river.  I could see a bridge several miles upriver.  I spent some time in the restaurant after finishing lunch just to enjoy the river and then walked north, parallel with the river, to the Kachin State Museum, which was fairly interesting, especially the mannequins with typical clothing of the various ethnic groups.  Further north I came to a temple with two giant Buddhas, one standing and one reclining, built by a former Japanese soldier who was here during World War II and dedicated to 3400 of his colleagues who lost their lives.  As I remember, Myitkyina was recaptured by Americans and Chinese under General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell towards the end of 1944.  The Ledo Road led to Myitkyina from Ledo in northeast India and connected with the Burma Road, enabling supplies to be sent by road to Chongqing, the nationalist Chinese capital during the war.  In my hotel lobby there was a photo of trucks zigzagging up the road towards China.

I talked with a Shan girl at the temple and then headed back to town, where a big market had taken over a street near the river.  Motorcycles, however, made it a little perilous to wander through the market.  I ate dinner at the riverside restaurant.  Foreigners can travel north by road only about 30 miles from Myitkyina, to a spot where two rivers converge to form the Irrawaddy, but it is not a particularly scenic spot.  You can fly further north, to Putao.

I was headed back south, though, and the next morning I walked to the train station before 6 to buy a ticket to Hopin.  It took me only about 10 minutes and cost only 1750 kyat ($1.75) for an upper class seat.  The train left at 7:45, so I had time to walk to the riverfront, where small boats were bringing produce to the morning market.  I watched men carry big bunches of bananas and other stuff up the high embankment.  The sun rose over hills to the east a little after 6:30.  I ate breakfast at my hotel at 7 and made it to the train before it left right on time at 7:45.

I enjoyed the rocking ride as we headed southwest through a beautiful flat valley filled with harvested rice fields and with forested hills on either side.  In one area there was a big fog bank to the east, perhaps along a river.

The train took about four hours to reach Hopin, where I was led to a pick-up filled with cargo and with benches high up above the cargo.  These are the vehicles that take people to Indawgyi Lake across the hills to the west.  I boarded and we left about an hour later, with more cargo jammed in and about seven other passengers, an old man who sat on the roof of the pick-up, and about six women, most of them young, and all wearing conical straw hats.  I sat behind them in a row cleared a bit to provide room, though not much room, for my longer legs.  On the dusty road we fairly quickly reached the forested hills and ascended them, rising about 800 feet to the top of the pass, where there was a good view of the lake and its valley.

We came down to the valley floor and headed to the lake and I looked forward to an early arrival at the lake, but the pick-up made several stops in towns before the lake, taking a lot of time to unload and then load cargo.  We spent about half the time of the trip, maybe two hours, stopped while cargo was unloaded and loaded.  The road to the lake was very dusty, with road work going on at several places.  We must have crossed through the water of four or five streams where bridges were being built.  And the big trucks on the road churned up lots of dust.  The people on the way were friendly, with lots of people waving.

The pick-up finally arrived at the lakeside guest house after 5, where I was surprised to find four other tourists at this remote location.  The lake is beautiful, and the guest house had a porch facing the lake.  The rooms are simple and fairly bare, with hard wood beds covered with thin mattresses.  The toilet and shower are in a separate little building, with water pumped from the lake to two plastic cisterns on the roof.

I took a cold bucket bath in the shower room and then had dinner with the four others in a nearby restaurant, next to a small lakeside army post.  They told me that the night before, as they were finishing dinner at the restaurant, there had been a Kachin guerrilla alert, and that the restaurant had quickly closed.  The guest house owner had led them, running, not back to the guest house but to his lakeside house further down the lake, where they slept on the floor.  They said they hadn't heard any gunshots.  The sky that night over the lake was filled with stars, with Orion just rising over the eastern horizon.  The generator was turned off about 8 and we just watched the stars.  We all went to bed before 9.

The next morning I was up soon after 6.  To my surprise the sky was cloudy, with fog over the lake.  It was chilly, too, my thermometer registering 66 degrees in my room.  It was colder outside.  I sat on the balcony and watched the morning fishermen in their small boats on the lake in the fog.  Lots of birds could be seen, egrets, herons, cormorants, kingfishers, and others.

The others all left for Hopin at about 7:30.  Soon after 8 the guest house owner, who spoke almost no English, motioned me to follow him.  We headed to the village, Lonton, just down the road from the guest house and he led me past wooden houses and a big school to a house where a wedding celebration was taking place.  I had heard the loud music begin early that morning.  As we arrived the music was a Burmese version of "The Ballad of John and Yoko," with Burmese words.  The people at the wedding were Burmese, he told me, as was he, but he said there are also Shan and Kachin people in Lonton and throughout the lake area.

We sat at one of several tables under a tent with several others and were served a delicious meal, maybe the best I've ever had in Burma.  The chicken and rice dish was particularly good, with tender, shredded chicken.  There was also soup, salad, some crunchy fish pieces, another, spicier chicken dish, and lots of vegetable dishes.  Tea and an orange drink were also served.  People were very friendly and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The bride and groom and their two attendants mingled with the crowd and occasionally sat in a row of chairs at the end of the tent.  The groom wore a white tunic while the bride wore a beautiful blue traditional top and longyi.  Her hair was full of jewels.  Her attendant was dressed similarly, but in bright yellow.  They happily posed for photos for me, as did many others, including a woman who seemed to be the mother of either the bride or the groom.  At least, she seemed to be the hostess of the party.  We left after probably less than an hour there, each of us given a plate as a souvenir of the wedding.  I noticed a car decorated with balloons down a dusty lane near the house.

We walked back to the guest house and then I continued further north, passing the army post built on a low hill next to the lake.  It is surrounded with a bamboo palisade, with additional sharpened bamboo staves sticking out all along the palisade to ward off attackers.  It looked like something from the Middles Ages, or earlier, except for the cement pillboxes built into the hillside.  I walked along the road north for a further 20 or 30 minutes, past harvested rice fields, but the dust thrown up by trucks was unpleasant, so I turned back.  This road leads to jade mines near the town of Hpakant, so I suppose improving the road is a priority.  Lots of motorcycles overburdened with cargo came by, and almost everybody waved.

When I got back to the guest house the owner took me for a walk through the village, showing me his house and indicating which areas were Burmese and which were Shan or Kachin.  All the houses were of wood and some had thatched roofs.  Pigs and chickens rooted around and fish were on sale.  He led me to the house of a 17 year old girl who is about to begin a seven year medical school course of study next month in Mandalay.  She spoke pretty good English.  She served us tea along with fried shrimp and freshly cooked long skinny fish, all of which were delicious.  She told me her mother is a teacher at the school in Lonton while her father is the head of the village to the south, and that one of her parents is Burmese and the other Shan.

The sun finally came out about 11 as we headed back to the guest house.  I sat out on the porch by the lake until about 3:30 enjoying the wonderful views.  About five miles up the lake I could see the big monastery on an island covered with a big golden pagoda.  At night, all lit up, it is the brightest thing on the lake.  White clouds floated over the hills to the east and were reflected in the lake water.  Boats and birds came by, and people washed clothes and bathed in the lake water.

About 2:30 four tourists showed up, including one I had met in Myitkyina.  They had all spent the night in Hopin and were very glad to get to the lake.  I talked with them for a while and then set off on a walk through the village again before dark.  The people were great and I enjoyed seeing the rustic houses, some with hand operated water pumps and some with water buffalo in their yards.  One guy on a motorcycle stopped near me, paused and drew a deep breath, and then said "good evening" before starting up his motorcycle.

I got back to the guest house about 5 and sat on the porch until about 7, when I went to dinner with two more tourists who arrived after 5.  (The others had eaten soon after they arrived.)  We all went to bed before 9.

The next morning I was again up soon after 6 and the lake was again filled with fog.  About 8 the owner took me and four others who were awake to a little restaurant where we had a good breakfast of tea with condensed milk, a dark sticky rice mixture with shredded coconut and chickpeas, and several greasy, but tasty, baked goods.  Back at the guest house I sat on the porch as the four others left on kayaks that you could rent.  The sun came out about 11 again and about 12 I had lunch with two others.  The three of us rented a motorboat and about 2:30 were taken to the island with the monastery, about a half hour trip.  The lake was beautiful, with lots of birds scattering at our approach.  In the water near the monastery were many gulls, waiting for handouts from pilgrims.

We spent about an hour at the monastery, with lots of gold on its stupa.  Only a few monks were there, and only a few pilgrims came by boat from the shore close by.  The water around the island wasn't deep.  It looked about three feet deep and I was told that at the end of the dry season you can walk to the island.  The lake is said to be Burma's largest, and the island is a little less than half way to the lake's northern tip.  Our guesthouse was not far from the southern tip.

I enjoyed the late afternoon boat ride back, and then took another walk into the village.  I walked to the monastery in the village and talked to a 26 year old woman now living in Yangon (Rangoon), the former capital, who had returned to Lonton because her 23 year old nephew was entering the monastery, though only for a month.  His head was newly shaved.

The sky that night was again full of stars. We noticed that the army post rang what sounded like a sort of drum or wooden clapper every fifteen minutes or so, and we could hear the sound repeated further north.

That night felt considerably colder, and my thermometer read 64 degrees the next morning.  The lake, however, was less foggy than previous mornings, with patches of blue sky soon visible.  The guest house owner took us to the monastery for breakfast, a celebratory breakfast provided by the family of the young man becoming a monk.  As always, the people were very friendly.  The others left after the breakfast, as the sun came out early that day at about 9, but I hung around the monastery and watched a small procession of drummers with two monks being shielded with parasols held over their heads by other men.  I looked around the interior of the big wooden monastery building.  Several old women were sitting outside.  The monastery porch had a big wooden slit drum hanging from the roof.

From the monastery I walked to what was apparently a nursery school right across from the big school.  The very little children all gathered at the entrance and waved and posed for photographs.  They were very friendly.  When I left they all waved and said "bye-bye" and I felt a little like Dorothy leaving the Munchkins.

I took a dirt road from the main road heading west, away from the lake, following two women with baskets and accompanied by cows.  Soon they turned into their homes but I walked on as the road became a path through some trees and then past rice fields.  Men were harvesting the rice in one field.  A family passed me and I followed them as they climbed a sort of ladder over a fence and walked along the narrow dikes of harvested rice paddies.  They soon outdistanced me and I came across some cows apparently stunned by my appearance.  I saw the family reach their house on the far side of the rice fields, under some trees, and then I turned back and climbed another set of steps over a fence and onto a plank walkway that traveled over churned up, and no doubt often wet ground, for a hundred feet or more.  The planks were less than a foot wide, but sturdy.  The path was dry beyond and I continued west past more rice fields and a few simple houses that seemed abandoned.  I eventually reached boggy ground with water buffalo and egrets, only maybe a half mile from the wooded hills to the west.  I tried unsuccessfully to find dry ground to reach the hills, and then turned back.

On the way back I took some side paths and on one came across about five young women and two boys reaping rice with hand sickles.  I watched them and, as they were very friendly, climbed the fence to get closer to them to take some more photos.  One spoke good English and told me to wait while she climbed up the ladder to the open walled house on stilts nearby.  She came down with a Huawei (Chinese) smartphone to take a photo of me, first in the sunshine and later under the shade of a tree.  I stood and smiled but she indicated I should pose like the local people do, flashing double peace signs, so I did so.

It was about noon by now and they all took a lunch break from their reaping.  They all climbed up into the house and invited me in.  Inside was also a young mother with two young children, the oldest maybe three and very shy.  The infant seemed quite curious.  The English speaker told me they were all Kachin and all from the same family. They offered me lunch, but they didn't have much, so I declined and walked back to the guest house, getting there after 1.  I did have a big lunch at the nearby restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon on the guest house porch gazing at the lake and talking with the others.  Three more tourists arrived before nightfall, so the small guest house was full.

November 17-22, 2014: Katha, Shwegu, and Bhamo

On the 17th I left Shwebo, taking the train north.  I had bought my train ticket my first day in Mandalay.  The express train, such as it is, is scheduled to leave Mandalay (heading for Myitkyina and supposedly taking 16 hours to get there, but often far longer) every day at 4:30 in the morning, so I decided to catch it in Shwebo, where it is scheduled to arrive at 6:50, affording me a couple of extra hours of sleep.  I bought the ticket in Mandalay for $15, for an upper class seat, from the tourist agency at the train station.  Apparently, some tickets are reserved for foreigners.  I noticed the face value of my ticket was 9200 kyats, about $9.20.  (Just over 1000 kyat to the dollar.)

I took a motorcycle taxi to Shwebo's train station about 6:30.  The express train from Mandalay arrived at 11:45, almost five hours late.  It turned out it had left Mandalay more than four hours late.  I actually enjoyed my morning at the busy train station, with lots of friendly and politely curious people.  And I expected the train to be late, though not five hours late.  While I waited, two freight trains and two very crowded passenger trains came and went.  A man fell asleep on the concrete floor in front of me until awakened by a stern woman whacking him with a stick.  He raised himself sleepily and without complaint.  She yelled at him and then took his small plastic bag of possessions and flung it onto the carriage of the train at the station.  He slowly got up, climbed into the carriage, and sat on the floor next to his bag.

The station master (I think) was very attentive to me.  A couple of times he came over to me, asked to look at my ticket, and explained carefully which carriage and seat I had.  Just before the train arrived he motioned me to follow him to where my carriage would stop.  He spoke to another employee as we walked to the spot.  This employee later reappeared with a plastic bag containing a bottle of water and a can of Sprite.  The station master handed the bag to me and said, "A gift for you."  When the train arrived he saw me to my seat, which reclined and was padded and very comfortable.  Ordinary class seats are wooden benches.

The train left at 11:50 and I enjoyed the trip north through the green countryside on the rocking ride.  Burmese train tracks are so poor that carriages bounce up and down and rock left and right.  The scenery was largely rice paddies, with lots of trees among them.  I also saw quite a few bullock carts and we passed through towns and villages, making only a few stops.  We crossed the Tropic of Cancer on the way north.  I talked with a former sailor who had been to New Orleans and Portland, Oregon.  I ate quail eggs, banana chips, and cookies.

It got dark about an hour north of the town of Wuntho.  We seemed to be passing through forest just before I got off the train at Naba just before 8.  From Naba I took an open air three wheeler over the hills, the road rising only about 300 feet and then dropping 500, on a very bad road to Katha on the Irrawaddy.  In Katha, a town of about 12,000 people with an elevation of about 400 feet above sea level, I checked into a guest house on the waterfront.  Walking along the riverfront, I could see various boats on the river despite the dark, moonless night.  The river is about 30 feet below the bank.  The night air felt cool this far north and next to the river.  The cold bucket bath was tolerable, though, and felt good after the dusty ride from Naba to Katha.

At 5 the next morning I heard the daily express boat downriver to Mandalay blowing its horn and getting ready to leave.  I got up about 7 and walked along the busy waterfront.  After eating a breakfast of quail eggs and cookies I watched the express boat head upriver at 9 and then set out to explore a little of Katha.  In 1926-27 an English colonial police official named Eric Blair lived here and later (in 1934) published his first novel, under his pen name, George Orwell, set here and entitled "Burmese Days," which I read last year when I was in Burma.  Some buildings from his era and mentioned in the novel are still standing.  A girl let me into the yard of a deserted old colonial type house and nearby I found the deserted former two story house of the British District Commissioner, built in 1928 after Orwell had left.  It has a fireplace and a teak staircase but is falling apart.  I could peer inside through the broken windows.

I saw some other colonial looking buildings and found the church mentioned in the novel, now rebuilt after having fallen down a few years ago.  The friendly Anglican priest (he told me he has a congregation of 200) directed me to Orwell's former house, now occupied by a Burmese police official.  A truck marked "Police" was parked outside.

I ate lunch at a good Chinese restaurant with very friendly staff and then sat and watched the waterfront and river activity for a while.  I had asked where I could wash my dusty shirt and one of the women at the guest house offered to wash it for 20 cents.  I saw her take it down to the river and wash it in the water.  I didn't see her use any soap but I did see her pounding it on a rock with a wooden paddle and then hanging it on a rail along the waterfront to dry.  No buttons were broken.

A very fancy luxury tourist boat from upriver docked in the early afternoon.  I had found out where the old British Club, a major locale in the novel, was located and was walking there in the mid afternoon when a long train of about 20 pony carts, each with two foreign tourists from the boat, passed me by.

The former club is now quite derelict, though not as bad as the former District Commissioner's house.  I could peer through the windows of the upper story, now the offices of a cooperative association, I was told.  The club once fronted the river, but now the river has shifted and it fronts vegetable gardens, with houses on stilts beyond the gardens.  Some friendly uniformed school children were playing in front of and on the porch of the club.

I walked around to the former river side of the club, where the entrance to the lower story is located.  The big lower room is now a school.  The kids were in recess and a teacher was writing on the blackboard, which was mostly in Burmese, but with some simple English grammar sentences.  The teacher told me this was the former billiards room.  School resumed after recess, with a teacher using a long pointer on the blackboard and the kids reciting in unison.  The boat group showed up and I talked to an Australian among them.  They were traveling from Bhamo to Mandalay on a week's cruise.

I walked back to the riverfront and watched the activity before dark.  Just after dark a big ferry arrived, the slow ones that take days between Mandalay and Bhamo.  Stevedores began unloading cargo and I could see people camped out on the decks.  Later, about 8, they had finished unloading cargo and were now loading other cargo.  Great stacks of unloaded cartons of eggs stood on the riverbank.  Young men in flip flops or barefoot were carrying big boxes, two at a time, on their backs down the steep embankment to the boat.  The boat left soon after 8, headed upriver, I think.

The next morning I walked along the riverfront, noticing a congregation of hundreds of little chicks on sale in an enclosure on the street.  After a noodle breakfast I left on the 9 o'clock boat upriver, heading northeast, then southeast, to Shwegu, about a four hour trip.  On the wide river, with steep banks, we passed a few logging boats and made brief stops in two towns.  The boat, despite the wood seats, was fairly comfortable.  The long wooden boat had seats for maybe 100 passengers, but I think there were only about 50 of us.  I was the only foreigner.  You could get up and walk about.

In Shwegu, a town of about 15,000 people, I had a little trouble finding a guest house, until I asked at a restaurant and they dispatched a little boy to show me the way.  From the guest house I walked inland from the river, through a wooded area full of wooden houses, pigs, and dusty paths, eventually reaching a little stream that flows into the Irrawaddy.  Eventually, I reached the pottery making district.  Shwegu seems to specialize in making small pots for drinking.  I found several sheds where pottery was being fired under heaps of ashes.  In one shed two women were carefully stacking pots on a bed of rice husks preparatory for firing.

I watched them for a while, as they stacked pottery and brought in baskets of rice husks from a big pile outside.  Nearby rice was being cooked in bamboo sections over a small fire.  A man came out with a machete and cut away much of the bamboo until it was quite easy to peel.  He cut off a section, showed me how to peel it, and gave it to me to eat.  It was warm, sticky, and very good.  Some women watched me and laughed as I ate.  One showed me the fruit of a nearby tree that was used to flavor the rice.  I sat on a little wooden bench and ate it while watching some little children playing on the dusty path. They seemed to be having a great time, using little stones to play a game similar to jacks and later playing hopscotch and then a sort of jumping game, a little like jump rope but with a long string of rubber bands.  One little girl, maybe five, was particularly friendly, and mischievous.

Towards the end of the afternoon I again watched the two women stacking pottery.  They finished for the day and indicated they would resume in the morning.  In another shed nearby a woman was beginning to rake away the ashes, exposing the fired pottery and coughing from all the ash as she did so.  I walked to the riverfront before dark, and then back to the hotel.

The next morning I walked to the kiln shed which I had visited the afternoon before.  The two women seemed happy to see me again.  They had finished stacking the pottery and were now covering the big stack with rice straw.  A man brought them two big baskets of straw, carried on either end of a pole over his shoulders.  An English speaking guy showed up on a motorcycle and told me the two women were mother and daughter and that the firing would take three days.  The mischievous little girl showed up again and again was very friendly.  The motorcycle guy told me her mother and father were dead.

After the mother and daughter had finished covering the stack of pottery with rice straw, they covered that with basket fulls of rice husks.  Finally, the daughter covered everything with a layer of ashes from a pile in a corner of the shed, a very ashy affair.  The mother went outside to smoke a thick brown cheroot.  In a couple of other sheds women were either raking the ashes or pulling out the fired pots from the ash heaps.  There was a lot of ash in the air.  In another shed three or four cows had bedded down on the ashes next to the walls, perhaps for the warmth during the night.

The daughter having finished covering the pile with ashes, the two women placed straw all along the edges of the pile and then lit it in several places.  At first it was very smoky, but eventually settled down. They closed the doors and I watched the smoke seep out of the roof and walls.  A man showed me the area under a nearby house where wet clay was stored and where there were several potters' wheels.  He also should me a wooden pounder used to break chunks of dirt into a sort of powder to be added to water to make clay.   I again walked through the wooden house district until lunch at a Burmese restaurant about 11, with several dishes of often oily, but tasty food, including lots of vegetables and some chicken.

After lunch I walked for more than an hour upriver along the riverbank past wooden houses and friendly people.  I watched the river activity and saw boats full of logs coming down river.  I passed a very loud wedding celebration, with music blasting from giant speakers.  At one point from the high riverbank I watched a young woman apparently panning for gold, using a shallow wooden pan perhaps a foot or more in diameter.  She used a hoe to scrape soil and water from the river into her pan and then very expertly swirled the pan to remove the stones and dirt, leaving just a black silt, which she poured into a small container.  I watched her do it again and again.  Nearby, another woman was washing clothes in the river.

Eventually, I reached the ferry crossing to a mid river island.  I crossed in the small, canoe-like boat and then crossed the wide sand bank now exposed to an almost deserted temple called Shwe Baw Kyaung.  ("Shwe," by the way, means "golden.")  I explored the temple, filled with hundreds of little stupas, and then walked through the very nice village under trees next to the temple.  The village had electricity and hand operated water pumps.  Most of the children were at the two story, wooden school house and the village seemed quiet, except for the noise from the school.

After about two hours on the island I took the ferry back and walked back to town the way I had come.  On the way back I watched some men making and cooking rice noodles, first pouring the wet flour mixture through a sort of sieve bag into a pot of boiling water for a few minutes, and then scooping out the cooked noodles and cooling them in a pot of cold water.

I relaxed most of the next morning in my hotel before a Burmese lunch at about 11.  About 12 I walked down to the express boat landing and caught the boat coming from Katha and headed upriver about 1.  Again, it wasn't too crowded and I enjoyed the trip to Bhamo.  From Shwegu the river route took us first southeast past the island with the temple and eventually into a very scenic defile with forested hills and rocky cliffs on either side.  Leaving the narrows of the defile, we headed east, passing under a big bridge, and then northeast.  The river widened, with lots of sandbanks.  The boat cut back and forth across the river to avoid them.  We made a few stops on the way and eventually could see the high mountains, rising to about 7000 feet, to the east.  China lies just beyond the mountains.

We arrived in Bhamo, a town of about 25,000 people only about 20 miles from the Chinese border over the mountains, about 4:45.  I checked my altimeter and it was a 36 foot climb from the boat up to the top of the riverbank.  I found the hotel I was looking for, but its $10 rooms were all taken, so I took a $25 one.  It was very nice, with a flat screen tv and hot water.

The next morning I checked into a $10 room.  I had hoped to take the two day boat trip from Bhamo to Myitkyina, with an overnight stop in Sinbo, but foreigners are no longer allowed on that trip.  I have heard several explanations why.  One is that because of Kachin rebel activity.  (Shwegu, Bhamo, and Myitkyina are all in Kachin State, Burma's northernmost.)  Another is that there was a boat sinking recently that killed 23 people.  A third is that the river is too low.  Foreigners are also prohibited from taking the bus north to Myitkyina.  The only alternative is to fly, unless you want to backtrack downriver to Katha.  There was a flight to Myitkyina the next morning and after several hours I was able to secure a seat, at a cost of $54.  (My ticket had a price of 38,500 Kyat, crossed out, with $54 written above it, so it seems foreigners pay about 50% extra.)

I walked to the waterfront in the morning and again in the afternoon.  The people selling chicks, which I had first seen in Katha and later in Shwegu, were now offering their diminished flock of chicks in Bhamo.  They were very interesting to watch, especially when they tumbled all over each other to get water from a container.  The high waterfront riverbank is lined with huge rain trees, affording lots of shade.  I watched the express boat arrive from Katha and Shwegu about 4:30 and watched the sunset over the river just after 5.  For dinner that evening I found an Indian restaurant and had a delicious chicken biryani.  The bearded Muslim proprietor told me his grandfather had arrived from Hyderabad during World War II, and that both his father and he had been born in Bhamo.  He said he spoke Urdu, but didn't seem to know where in India Hyderabad is located.  

November 14-16, 2014: Mandalay, Shwebo, and Kyaukmyaung

My flight from Bangkok to Mandalay, where my travels in Burma had ended last year, left at about 11 and took an hour and a half, landing about noon, Burmese time.  En route I had great views of the hills and river valleys of northeastern Thailand and spotted the Salween River just after we crossed into Burmese airspace.  A bit later I spotted Inle Lake and we flew over the town of Taunggyi, northeast of the lake.  The plane made a big swoop over Mandalay and I got good views of the Irrawaddy (now often spelled Ayeyarwady) River, U Bein's Bridge, and the hilly, pagoda strewn city of Sagaing on the opposite bank of the river.

The airport is almost 30 miles from the center of Mandalay, but fortunately Air Asia had a bus that brought us there by about 2.  I spent the rest of the afternoon checking out travel information and then around sunset walked along the mile long southern wall and 230 foot wide moat of the Mandalay Fort.  Mandalay's streets are dusty and drab compared to Bangkok's, but the people were as friendly as ever.  It was dark before 6.

I did a few errands the next morning (there are now many ATMs, and you no longer need to bring lots of unblemished American dollars) and spent some time at the colorful street market.  A woman struck up a conversation and it turned out she lives in Cupertino, California and was back for her yearly month long visit to Burma.  She told me she was 62 and had lived in America since 1990.  I asked her why she emigrated and she said, "I won the lottery!"  She told me that 1988 (the year Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD won the elections, but were prevented from governing by the military) was the best year of her life, with lots of hope, but that now she thinks they all are corrupt and is disappointed with Aung San Suu Kyi.

I left on a 12:30 bus headed north to Shwebo.  The bus first headed south through town along the Irrawaddy, with good views of all the boats and other riverside activity and of the crops planted on land now exposed by the river's lower level after the end of the monsoon. It took us about an hour to reach the bridge over the Irrawaddy at Sagaing.  From there we headed northwest to Shwebo, with lots of trees and huge rice paddies, still green, along the way.  The bus arrived in Shwebo, a city of about 40,000, about 4 and I looked around a bit.    Shwebo was briefly capital of an 18th century kingdom and the king's palace has been partially reconstructed.  I wandered through what was left of the day's market and the people, as always in Burma, were very friendly.  Not too many foreign tourists make it here.  I didn't see any.  I did see several newspapers with pictures of President Obama during his two day trip to Burma November 13 and 14 for an ASEAN meeting, particularly photos of him hugging and kissing Aung San Suu Kyi.

Just before dark I visited a mostly run down temple, Shwe Daza Paya, said to be 500 years old.  The central hall, however, was very gaudily decorated and lit up.  The people were all very friendly.  Lots of thanakha, the wood that Burmese grind and then apply to their faces as a combination skin conditioner and decoration, was on sale on one side of the temple.  Shwebo is said to have the best thanakha in Burma.  In one corner of the temple compound was a tableau of statues of sleeping half naked women with a man with a sword standing over them.  I wonder what that was all about.

The next morning I spent about two hours wandering through Shwebo's extensive morning market, filled with very friendly people and all sorts of stuff.  I spotted an orange vegetable, looking like some sort of root but not a carrot, that I had never seen before.  I also visited the tomb of Shwebo's great king, who died in 1760 in a retreat, caused by the rains, from invading Thailand.  (His son in 1767 conquered the Siamese capital of Ayuthaya, resulting in the Siamese eventually moving their capital farther away from Burma, to Bangkok.)  The tomb seems a modern one, with some modern maps of the king's conquests and an inscription in English, quoting a "Capatain" Alves in "Dalrymple's oriental Reperton (sic), vol. I 361-2."

I had a late breakfast of noodles, vegetables, and chicken and then wandered around, finding the remains of the former moat of the city.  About 10:30 I boarded a vehicle, a sort of three wheeled motorcycle with a trailer with wooden benches open to the air, and headed to Kyaukmyaung on the banks of the Irrawaddy, 18 miles to the east.   There wasn't much traffic on the narrow strip of asphalt leading to the river.  I did see several bullock carts as we passed through the green, flat countryside.

I spent about four hours in Kyaukmyaung, a village specializing in making large amphorae, maybe five feet high, seen all over Burma and all sorts of other pots.  The potters seemed happy to have me wander into their dark sheds to watch them work.  It was fascinating to see how a potter grabbed a big chunk of clay, rolled it with his hands on a wooden board until it was maybe two feet long and several inches thick, and then slung it over his shoulder as he kneaded it with his hands onto the lower part of the amphora he had already formed, all the time using his feet, or an assistant's hands, to turn the potting wheel, which was set in the ground.  Some of the already formed amphorae had little pots of charcoal inside them to fire them.  Women brought baskets full of clay on their heads from the river, while elsewhere there were pits where clay had obviously been dug up.  Amphorae and other pots that already been fired and painted were to be seen all along the river for eventual transport on the river.  I watched several young women loading smaller pots onto a boat, each women with several stacked on her head.

There is a new bridge, only two years old, across the Irrawaddy at Kyaukmyaung and I walked across to the other side and back, watching the fishermen and boats from the bridge.  The river is quite wide here, maybe a half mile or more.  As I was walking along the bridge, one guy on a motorcycle stopped to say hello.  His motorcycle helmet resembled a World War II German helmet, and in fact had an eagle on one side that resembled the Wehrmacht eagle and on the other side a Nazi flag with swastika, with "Nazi" helpfully written below the flag.  Near the bridge men and women were asphalting a small portion of a road, the women carrying baskets of gravel on their heads and the men applying the asphalt from something like a watering can.

As I walked back from the bridge to the village center I passed a big truck being loaded with those big amphorae.  It took several men to heft one onto the truck, filled with amphorae and straw to shield them.  Back in Shwebo I went again to the temple I had visited the evening before.