January 25-27, 2015: Kuakata and Barisal

I left Dhaka on the 25th, but not until evening.  In the morning I headed back to the National Museum, taking a bicycle rickshaw through the once again very crowded streets.  It was Sunday, the start of the work week.  On the way we passed a demonstration of government supporters protesting the opposition transport blockade.  From the rickshaw, stuck in traffic, I took photos of the guys holding banners and they waved back.

It took about a half hour to get to the museum through all the traffic, and then I spent about three and a half hours there.  On the second floor, which I hadn't seen the day before, there is a good collection of arms, and some interesting furniture, including what may be the highest bed I've ever seen, with the legs below the mattress maybe four feet high.  Also on display is an 1823 marriage contract written in Persian with the following terms:  1) no second wife without the consent of the wife; 2) the husband may not be aloof from the wife for more than six months; and 3) the husband may punish the wife as long as there is no scar.  Also on display is an 1807 bill of sale for a six year old, sold for 13 taka.  Another document, described as a "self-selling deed," sold a husband, wife, and two children for 3 1/2 taka.  

I spent most of the time, though, in the two big rooms on Bangladesh's modern history, with lots of interesting photos and two films.  Several enlarged front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post are also on display, from March 1971, when the liberation war broke out, and December 1971, when it ended with the Indian invasion.  They were interesting to read.  Several Time magazine covers from the era are also on display, including one with Beverly Sills dressed up as either Queen Elizabeth I or Mary Queen of Scots, with the headline "America's Queen of Opera."  Another depicted Ted Kennedy with the headline "Could He Win in "72?"  There are also several photos of Edward Kennedy visiting refugees in Calcutta during the war.  The poster and record of George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh are also on display.  I seem to remember in one of his songs he rhymed, or tried to rhyme, "Bangladesh" with "mess," as in something like "Oh what a mess in Bangladesh."

The section ends with Mujib's death in 1975.  A film in Bengali shows him speaking to a large crowd.  Another very patriotic film shown on a huge screen describes the war, and seems to omit the Indians.

From the museum I took a bicycle rickshaw to a restaurant near my hotel, and then about 3:30 took another bicycle rickshaw with a Bangladeshi guy working at my hotel to Sadarghat.  He was taking a launch to Barisal, but helped me find a launch to Patuakhali, where I was heading.  I boarded the big boat and was shown to a small cabin on the third deck, which cost me 1100 taka, about $14.

Before we left, I stood on the bow to watch all the people heading to boats and all the other activity.  A small boat sold fruit and cookies.  I walked around a bit on board.  The lowest deck was full of deck passengers lounging on mats they had brought.  The cabins on the second and third deck were filling up.  Some had television sets.  I was told there were three launches headed to Patuakhali that night and five to Barisal.  There must have been 50 or so of them lined up along the river.  I later read that 40 to 50 leave Dhaka every day.

Our launch left just after 5:30, heading southeast downriver, and seems to have one of the first two of the night boats to leave.  There are only a few day boats, to ports near Dhaka.  The river was full of small boats rowing people across the river, and there were also cargo boats.  I again saw the Rocket, getting ready to leave.  I was glad to be leaving early, as it is dark soon after 6.  We had about a half hour of light on the river.  Sunset must have been at 5:45, for that is when the call to prayer started resounding from both sides of the river.  We passed smokestacks and several ships along the shore with welders at work.

We docked briefly just after dark to pick up more passengers and then headed downriver in the dark.  A moon a little less than half provided some illumination.  The landscape seemed urban for quite a while.  Dhaka is a city of something like 15 million people.

It was chilly out on the bow, but I enjoyed cruising down the dark river in the moonlight.  I got a few hellos and inquiries, but mostly it was too cold for the Bangladeshis out in the wind.  We passed under two bridges before the river widened dramatically, a mile or more wide, about two hours after we left, as we reached the south flowing Meghna River.  The launch's searchlight occasionally illuminated big clumps of vegetation and there were lots of little fishing boats sporting orange lights.  Some got quite close to our boat.  I could spot Orion and a planet, but the moonlight and haze obscured most of the stars.  We reached what seemed to be rural areas before passing a big city on the east bank, Chandpur I think, about 9:30.

I went to bed after 10 and made the mistake of looking under my mattress.  A dozen or more cockroaches scattered.  I didn't sleep all that well, though I was warm enough under a thick, but dirty, comforter.  About 11:30 I got up for a few moments and noticed two big launches headed upriver.

I was awakened the next morning just before 5 by one of the crew who said we were nearing Patuakhali, about 150 miles from Dhaka.  The launch had left the wide Meghna and entered narrower channels, though I suspect they, too, are fairly wide.  We docked in the dark just before 5:30.  In the chilly morning I took an electric rickshaw, sort of like a golf cart, with several other passengers (I had been the only westerner on board the ship) to Patuakhali's bus station, and left on a bus to Kuakata, 40 or so miles south of Patuakhali, about 6:30. 

I watched the orange disk of the sun rise over the foggy countryside as the small, cramped bus headed south.  Harvested rice fields and banana trees lined the good road, with mist rising off the fields.  After an hour of traveling we reached the first ferry crossing, where we waited well more than an hour.  There were two more ferry crossings after that.  All three ferry crossings had big bridges being built over the channels.  South of Dhaka is a maze of waterways and islands, as the massive Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers, coming from the Himalayas through India, break up into myriad channels on the way to the Bay of Bengal.

The bus reached Kuakata, on the Bay of Bengal, about 10:30 and I checked into a fairly nice, but almost deserted, hotel, getting it for just over $10, a steep discount.  Kuakata is turning into a holiday resort, but has a long way to go.  It seems it is not very busy in the winter.  My room had a television set and I was able to watch India's Republic Day parade, just starting, with President Obama as the special guest, the first American president to be invited.  It was rainy in New Delhi, at least at first, and looked cold.  I've watched these parades before, in 2012 with the Prime Minister of Thailand as guest and in 2013 with the King of Bhutan as guest.  The cameras were often on the Obamas as the military hardware and civilian floats passed by.

After the parade ended I had lunch and then started walking along the wide, long, gray sand beach about 1:30.  A few Bangladeshis were hanging out on the beach, but only right in front of town,  The rest of the beach was almost deserted.  A score or more fishing boats were anchored off the beach at the town, in what seemed shallow water.  The water seemed a bit murky, no doubt still carrying lots of silt.  I would guess the beach is about 500 feet wide.

I walked east along it for almost four and a half miles, over about two hours, going as far as I could, until I was cut off by a stream or inlet.  Trees lined the beach for the most part and fishing boats were resting on the sand at several places.  A couple of times I could hear calls to prayer inland, so there must have been villages.  A few motorcycles came by on the sand.

I passed some mangroves on the way and at the inlet at the end there were lots of mangroves, their tangled roots all very interesting.  I wandered through the mangroves and had some good views up the inlet.  A boat man offered me a ride across, but I needed to turn back.  I started back after 4, spending some time looking at the patterns made of very small balls of sand by very small crabs around their holes.  I passed quite a few dead or dying jelly fish on the beach and watched men and boys pulling in large fishing nets.  The sun disappeared into haze soon after 5:30 and I heard the wailing from the mosques about fifteen minutes later.  A half moon was out.  I got back to town about a quarter after 6, just after dark.

The next morning I took a short walk along the beach under hazy sunshine.  After an omelet and paratha breakfast I left on a bus at 10:30 bound for Barisal, 65 or so miles north.  The bus was slow and crowded, with passengers on the roof, but I had a decent seat and enjoyed the trip.  This is a conservative area, with lots of men in skullcaps and lots of veiled women.  Many of the men sport orange beards or hair, dyed that color with henna.  It seems to be much more prevalent in Bangladesh than in India.

With the three ferry crossings, it took us three and a half hours to reach Patuakahali.  There was one more ferry crossing on the way to Barisal from Patuakhali, and it was a particularly wide one, with no bridge under construction.  Just south of Barisal, a city of more than 200,000 people, there is a brand new bridge, eliminating a fifth ferry crossing.  We arrived there about 3:30.

After getting a hotel I walked around town, spending most of my time at the river front.  There were several big launches and I got lots of open mouth stares.  People were friendly, especially when I bought a sort of rice cake cooked by woman in a red sari on the waterfront.  I walked back and forth and saw the Rocket arrive just before 6 on its way to Dhaka.  I checked the departure time for the Rocket coming from Dhaka for the next morning and then watched that evening's Rocket depart at 6:30.  It had filled up in Barisal.  Some were taking it only as far as Chandpur, about halfway to Dhaka, where they could catch a train for Chittagong. 

January 20-24, 2015: Dhaka

The morning of the 20th was sunny and hazy in Yangon (Rangoon) as I made my way by taxi through the very slow, dense traffic to the airport.  My visa overstay was no problem.  I just had to pay $3 a day for the 39 days I overstayed, a totel of $117, still much cheaper than having to fly to and from Bangkok to get a new visa.

The Biman (Bangladesh's national airline) flight left a little before noon and was not full.  The plane headed northwest, flying over the hills of Burma's Rakhine and perhaps Chin states and then over clouds below.  We landed in Dhaka about 1 p.m. local time (a half hour earlier than Burma) after a flight of an hour and 40 minutes.  The clouds hovered just above the ground, like fog.  Just before landing, a flight attendant announced the temperature in Dhaka was 15 degrees, which is 59 degrees Fahrenheit.  I thought she must have been mistaken, but upon landing I found out that it was quite chilly.

My visa on arrival cost me $51, with no questions asked about a ticket out of the country or funds.  Outside the terminal, all the Bangladeshis had coats on and many had scarves.  To get to a hotel I boarded what in India is called an auto rickshaw and what in Bangladesh is called a CNG (because it runs on compressed natural gas).  The Bangladesh versions are painted green and, unlike the Indian ones, have bars, resembling a chain link fence.  Sort of a cage on wheels.

I headed to a hotel in Dhaka's old city and it took more than an hour to get there, the driving reminding me of the 1970's movie Death Race 2000 (which I've never seen but only heard about), in which one of the objects of the race is to kill pedestrians and other drivers.  My driver weaved in and out of traffic with deathless (I'm glad to say) abandon.  We didn't kill anybody, though, or even seriously injure anyone, so no bonus points for us.

On the way we passed the office of the Prime Minister and the colonial era High Court building.  When we reached the narrow streets of Old Dhaka, we slowed to a crawl amid a jumble of bicycle rickshaws, CNGs, trucks, and a very few cars and motorcycles.  There were masses of pedestrians, too.  The hotel was a disappointment, but I checked in, getting a room (Room 806 on the seventh floor) for 360 taka (about 77 to the dollar) with no hot water.  The view of the congested street below from the balcony at the end of the hall was great, though.

I took a walk along the very congested street below and at the nearest intersection found myself among dozens of shoe sellers and probably tens of thousands of shoes, all displayed on the street.  It seems Bangladeshi men like dress shoes with very pointed toes.  People were very friendly, calling out hello and asking where I was from.  I walked through a tumultuous street side bus stand, checked out another, nicer hotel, and then walked to a restaurant where I had a good dinner of half of a small chicken, nan (bread), and a lassi for 200 taka.  Back at my hotel it was cold and noisy.  I slept okay under a sort of comforter, but the water, and the air, were too cold for a shower.

I heard the call to prayer before 6 the next morning.  When I got up about 7, my room temperature was 66 degrees.  Outside it was foggy and chilly.  The street below was almost devoid of people, but not of the previous day's garbage.  I had a television in my room and was able to watch the State of the Union speech live on CNN before packing up and heading to the nicer hotel.  It was more expensive, 1200 taka a night, but cleaner and with hot water.

I ate breakfast there and then, in the hazy sunshine that had just broken out, walked towards Old Dhaka about 11, encountering a small demonstration of government supporters with red flags and banners.  The current government is headed by Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League.  The opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) has been disrupting transportation to try to force a new election, and the demonstration I saw was protesting the BNP's disruptions.

I made my way through the incredibly congested streets of Old Dhaka towards the 1819 white Church of St George, which was closed.  The congestion, though, and the shops, were fascinating, with lots of friendly people.  I saw lots of police, too, armed with rifles, but seemingly relaxed.

Near the church is a warren of very narrow streets called Shankharia Bazaar, or Hindu Street, filled with Hindu artisans whose families settled in this area 300 years ago. I saw lots of clay statues of Saraswati, Brahma's consort and the goddess of learning, in various stages of construction.  Some of them were very pink.  Wedding hats, looking something like crowns, and conch shell bangles were also on sale, along with drums, guitars, and much else.  At several spots I saw women pumping water from street side hand pumps into metal jugs. 

I eventually made my way to the Ahsan Manzil, or Pink Palace, a huge rajbari, or mansion, built about 1870 by Dhaka's most prominent zamindar, or landlord.  Lord Curzon, the Viceroy after the turn of the 20th century, used to stay there when he came to Dhaka from Calcutta.  The zamindar's family fortunes declined after 1915 and eventually the building was taken over by squatters, falling into disrepair.  The building was restored in the 1980's, with period furnishings.  The lawn outside, fronting the river, however, is full of trash, and the building is still a little run down. 

The huge rooms include a ballroom, a sitting room full of plush chairs and sofas, and a dining room with a long table with 38 chairs around it and 34 plates on it.  The photos are interesting, and there is a big skull of an elephant, apparently one of the favorites of one of the zamindars.  On one wall is a list of the zamindar's charitable works up to 1901, including their cost.  The two big ones are the funding of Dhaka's first water works, with over four miles of piping, and first electrical works, both in the 1870's.  Others included things like sending people to Mecca for the Haj and sending money to France to help with a cholera outbreak.  (I like the idea of someone from the future Bangladesh sending money to France for a cholera outbreak.)

Leaving the pink palace, I spent some time on the Buriganga River waterfront just in front of the palace. The river and the riverfront were hives of activity.  Scores of big passenger boats, called launches, were lined up on the bank, bound for destinations all along Bangladesh's rivers.  Some looked fairly nice.  I boarded one and looked around.  Like most of the others, it had three decks, with private cabins on the top two decks.  In was now late afternoon and thousands of  people were making their way to the launches, which generally depart in the early evening.  The river was full of cargo vessels and rowboats ferrying people across.

I made my way to the Sadarghat boat terminal and jetty and walked along the bustling jetty full of people and their belongings, plus lots of vendors, in front of the line of launches.  I was standing at one end of the long jetty, which runs parallel to the riverbank, when one of the famous Rockets came down the river and tied up.  The Rockets are paddle wheel passenger boats built in the early 20th century and still in service.  It was interesting to see its paddle wheel, on the side of the vessel, but the Rocket looked quite inferior in cleanliness and comfort to the newer launches.  Nevertheless, I saw five foreign tourists board it, heading to Barisal or perhaps further.  They used to run all the way to Khulna.

I got lots of curious stares from the crowds on the jetty.  Sometimes three or four guys would come up close and stare intently with open mouths, something I remember from traveling in India in 1979, but haven't noticed in my recent trips to India.  About 5:30 I took a bicycle rickshaw to the restaurant I had eaten in the night before, and after dinner walked back to my hotel.

The next day was warmer.  The sun was already out when I left the hotel about 9:30.  I took a bicycle rickshaw through the heavy morning traffic to Lalbagh Fort in Old Dhaka.  It was an enjoyable ride, past the Kaaba-like modern downtown mosque, the High Court, and the red brick Curzon Hall at the University of Dhaka.  I arrived at the fort about 10 and spent an hour and a half there.  Construction began in 1677 under a son of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, but the fort was never completed.  Inside are only three late 17th century structures, recently renovated:  a three domed mosque, an audience hall, and a mausoleum.  The lawns were refreshingly free of garbage, or nearly so, and flowers were planted all over.  I wandered around in the hazy sunlight.  In one corner of the fort, near a big gate, four guys were playing carrom. I watched for a while and they invited me to try a few shots, at which I failed miserably.  Then one guy left and they invited me to take his place.  I started off the game and my first two shots were excellent, scoring several markers.  They were as surprised as I was.  I soon reverted to my previous form, though.

Leaving the fort, I spent the day wandering through Old Dhaka.  I walked to a old mosque, which was closed, and then took a bicycle rickshaw through the crowded streets, getting off near some narrow lanes that led to the remnants of 17th century buildings, a palace and a caravansarai.  People were very friendly.  One guy invited me to sit down in his shop and another guy brought me a bottled fruit drink.

I took another bicycle rickshaw to a 1781 Armenian church, though part of it may be a century older, with dozens of interesting old gravestones in the courtyard.  Many of the dead had been born in Persia.  The Armenians came to Dhaka in the 17th century.  The caretaker's son, a Hindu, told me there are only nine Armenian families left in Dhaka, and they only have church services twice a year, at Easter and Christmas, when an Armenian priest comes from Australia. 

From the church I walked to a small mosque covered with English and Japanese tiles, including some depicting Mt. Fuji, and then, about 2:30, made my way to Nana Biryani, a place with no English sign, but the best chicken biryani I have ever eaten, with a sauce of caramelized onions and moist, hot rice.  The waiters were all very friendly, including an old man who kept nodding approvingly at me.  They brought me a fork and spoon, but I ate with my right hand, like everybody else.

After lunch I walked along a street specializing in motorcycles and bicycles.  As in India, shops selling the same things are clustered all together.  Walking north I made my way out of Old Dhaka and to the old section of the Unversity of Dhaka, full of colonial era brick buildings collectively called Curzon Hall.  From there I walked east along the very busy streets, getting to my hotel before 6.  After my late lunch, I wasn't very hungry that evening, and settled for a couple of boiled eggs from a street vendor.  He sprinkled some sort of delicious stuff on them.  I also had a parata from another vendor.

The next morning was a Friday and the streets were relatively quiet.  A newspaper reported the high temperature the day before has been only 20 degrees, or 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Under the hazy sunshine I walked to the nearby bus stop and about 10 took a bus east to Sonargaon, crossing a river on the way, about a 45 minute trip. Sonargaon was an eastern capital of Bengal at various times until the Moghuls in 1608 made Dhaka their capital of Bengal.  (In 1717 the capital was moved to Murshidabad, now in India's portion of Bengal, and, later, by the British, to Calcutta.)

There is not much left of the former capital, now a semi-rural area.  From the bus stop I took a bicycle rickshaw about a mile to Sadarbari, a rajbari (that is, a mansion built by a zamindar during colonial times) that incorporated part of a 500 year old mansion.  Unfortunately, it is now under reconstruction and closed to the public.  The nearby museum was mildly interesting.

I walked about a half mile further north to Painam Nagar, a street lined with mansions, about 50 of them, built by Hindu merchants between 1895 and 1905.  Most of the owners fled at Partition in 1947, with the rest leaving in the anti-Hindu riots in 1964, leaving the mansions in care of tenants who let them deteriorate.  They are now mostly abandoned, with a few squatters, and make quite a fascinating sight:  a long row of derelict mansions, some perhaps four stories high, along both sides of a single street.  Being a Friday, there were quite a few Bangladeshi tourists around.  I saw only two other foreigners.

From Painam Nagar I walked about a mile west on rural lanes to a small, single domed, brick mosque dating from 1519.  It was locked up, but I could see into the small interior.  Outside, there are some interesting designs on the brickwork.  To and from the mosque, I passed quite a few men and boys in white robes and skullcaps, just having left other mosques after mid-afternoon Friday prayers.  People were friendly and curious and I enjoyed the rural walk.

I made my way back to the bus stop, first walking and then hopping on a bicycle rickshaw, and left by bus for Dhaka about 3.  Back in Dhaka, I walked to Haji Biryani, a small restaurant in Old Dhaka famous for its single dish, mutton biryani.  It was good, but greasy, and not nearly as good as the chicken biryani I had eaten at Nana Biryani the day before.

After my early dinner, after 4, I walked again to Curzon Hall at the University of Dhaka and then further north to the High Court building, now derelict but still in use, originally built a century ago to be the residence of the Governor of East Bengal.  In the early 20th century the British under Lord Curzon decided to divide Bengal into two provinces, and then several years later rescinded the move after protests by Indians.

Near the High Court I met a university student who told me he was majoring in English literature and was particularly interested in Robert Frost and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He walked me back to my hotel.  On the way, we passed a small Communist Party rally on a street closed to traffic.  The middle aged speaker, with maybe a couple of hundred people listening, seemed to be making quite a forceful speech.

The next morning, a Saturday, part of the Bangladeshi weekend, the streets were again less crowded, though not uncrowded.  I walked to the Liberation War Museum in a small colonial era building, and ended up spending more than two hours inside.  It contained photos and maps and newspaper and magazine stories and was very interesting, chronicling the history of East Bengal but with a major emphasis on the struggle against domination by West Pakistan after Partition.  One interesting item on display was a copy of a memo from Kissinger to Nixon discussing the 1971 revolt against Pakistani domination.  Some of the photographs on display were very gruesome.  The Pakistanis reacted brutally, killing, torturing, and raping.  Ten million fled to India and perhaps a million died.

From the museum I walked to nearby Surhawardi Park, formerly the Ramna Racecourse, where Bangladesh's founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, made a fiery speech in March 1971, after his East Pakistan based party won a majority in the 1970 Pakistan elections, which the military government then disregarded.  Sheikh Mujib was arrested and in late March the Pakistanis began their reign of terror, sparking the war for independence, which was achieved in December 1971 after Pakistan attacked India in the west and India intervened, defeating the Pakistanis in about two weeks.  The surrender was signed at the Ramna Racecourse. 

There is now a derelict large memorial where the racecourse once was.  A large fetid pool fronts a cement wall with a frieze depicting Sheikh Mujib (who later, in 1975, was assassinated with most of his family) and other figures.  There is trash all around on the dusty, dead grass lawns.  A little north is a brick wall, with garbage all along it, and in front of it a cement stand with an eternal flame.  The plaque doesn't explain who or what the flame memorializes, but says it was dedicated in 1997 by Sheikh Hasina, Sheikh Mujib's daughter, who with one sister survived the slaughter of her family because they were out of the country, and is now head of the Awami League, the party established by her father, and prime minister, as she was in 1997.  Also at the dedication were Arafat, Mandela and the president of Turkey.

I next walked to the nearby National Museum in a huge, fairly modern building.  I didn't get there until about 3, and it closed before 5, so I only had time for one of its two big floors.  It is a very good museum, with some excellent Hindu sculpture, mostly from the 10th and 11th centuries, found south of Dhaka.  I wonder where the stone came from.  Bengal was just about the last stronghold of Buddhism in India, until about the 12th century.  A Hindu dynasty then ruled for about a century before the Muslims arrived and took over about 1200.

Outside the museum a loud, but sparsely attended demonstration was in progress.  Bangladeshis seem to favor fiery, bombastic speakers. In front of the speaker, a chubby, middle aged guy with long hair, a beret, and a shirt resembling the national flag was painting a long sheet of white paper with black and, mostly, red paint.  I listened for a while and then walked back to the park, now filled with people at the end of the afternoon. Men and boys were playing cricket and soccer, but most people were just sitting or walking around.  There was a tremendous amount of trash on the ground and metal roofing material was strung along one side of the memorial pond.  I ate dinner on the way back to my hotel.

January 17-19, 2015: Mandalay to Yangon (Rangoon)

Mandalay's streets were wet from overnight rain on the morning of the 17th.  Clouds filled the sky all day.  I had to get to Yangon for my flight to Dhaka in Bangladesh.  There are all night buses from Mandalay to Yangon, but I dislike traveling at night.  I wanted to take the train, a 385 mile trip.  (It is 343 miles from Mandalay to Myitkyina and 178 miles from Mandalay to Lashio.).  Trains leave every day at 6 in the morning and 3 and 5 in the afternoon for the 14-15 hour journey to Yangon.  Again I didn't want to travel overnight, or leave at 6 in the morning, so I took the 3 p.m. train as far as Thazi, less than three hours from Mandalay. 

The long train, with thirteen carriages, left Mandalay under dark clouds.  Soon it was lightly raining.  It rained harder while we stopped at Kyaukse at 4, but soon stopped.  The train arrived in Thazi before 6 and I walked through the puddle filled streets to the little hotel where I had stayed three days before, and before that on Christmas Eve (plus another three times in 1994).  It rained again about 8 or 9 that evening, but this time there was no monk or priest wailing on a loudspeaker all night. 

The next morning at 8:50 I left Thazi on the train, another long one, that had left Mandalay at 6.  My ticket for the more than ten hour journey cost only about $6.25.  It was raining as we left, but soon stopped.  My upper class carriage was uncrowded and comfortable, and I enjoyed the long train journey.  I noticed the train tracks crossed over a very wide road, maybe 16 or 20 lanes, at Naypyitaw, the capital.  I think it is the road from the airport. 

The sun came out in the afternoon, a welcome sight after four days of cloudy skies.  The countryside became greener as we headed south, with lots of vegetables and even some newly growing rice.  In several southern towns there were enormous dilapidated wooden warehouses, often several of them, near the tracks.  They looked empty, with ugly rusted metal roofs.  I suppose they once held rice and other commodities.  They must have been much nicer with tile or thatch roofs. 

The sun disappeared into clouds over the horizon about 5:30 and it got dark between 6 and 6:30.  I got off the train not at Yangon, where it was scheduled to arrive at 9, but at Bago, where it arrived just after 7, only a few minutes late after a thirteen hour journey from Mandalay.  Just before reaching the station, I could see Bago's golden Shwemawdaw Pagoda, the tallest in Burma at 376 feet, all lit up.  I checked into a decent hotel I had stayed in during my 2013-2014 trip to Burma and had my first cold shower in a while, bearable at Bago's low elevation and latitude.

It was cloudy the next morning until about 10.  I wandered through Bago's interesting streetside market and spotted several whole ducks, plucked and with slit throats, on sale.  I left Bago at 10:45 on a slow train coming all the way from Shwenyaung, north of Inle Lake.  In fact, this is the same train that travels from Kalaw to Thazi.  There were few passengers.  Traveling very slowly once it reached Yangon, it took two and a half hours from Bago to Yangon's big train station. 

I checked into a hotel, ate lunch, and then looked around.  I enjoyed being back in Yangon, and wouldn't have minded a few days there.  I walked past the old colonial buildings in the center and noticed that one had been completely renovated, by a bank, and another was being renovated.  Plenty of others, though, are in varying states of disrepair.  I noticed the large, white Immanuel Baptist Church had a sign with the times for services in English, Myanmar, Chinese, Telugu, Kayin, Shan, Mizo, and Lisu.

I walked to the huge Secretariat, the government center of British Burma, built in 1889.  I had seen a photo of President Obama visiting it in November and wondered if it had been renovated.  It is still a massive ruin for the most part, though it seems an inner courtyard may have been renovated.  Tourists aren't allowed inside, unless, I guess, you are President of the United States.  Aung San was assassinated in the Secretariat.

I walked through the street sellers all over the main streets and came across an English language street tour, which I followed for a while.  The air felt humid and it was warmer than Mandalay.  I broke off the tour at the Strand Hotel and sat inside for a while, until past dark, before making my way back for dinner and my hotel.  The newly renovated bank building was covered with strings of lights.  The city hall next door was also lit up, as was the golden Sule Pagoda down the street.

January 13-16, 2015: Inle Lake to Mandalay

I left Nyaungshwe, just north of Inle Lake, on the 13th, but not until almost 4 in the afternoon.  I spent time in an internet cafe and had a final crepe and guacamole lunch at Inle Pancake Kingdom.  I left on a huge modern bus, coming from Taunggyi and headed to Lashio.  Several other tourists boarded it heading for Hsipaw, but I was the only one for Kalaw.  It took only about an hour and a half to reach Kalaw, arriving as the sun was setting.  I checked into the same hotel I had stayed in before and headed out for a dinner of Shan noodle soup.  At 4300 feet elevation, Kalaw felt chilly.  My thermometer registered 64 degrees in my room just before I went to bed.

The next morning it was 61 degrees in my room when I got up.  This morning was Kalaw's five day market, and after breakfast I spent about an hour and a half wandering through it, under mostly cloudy skies.  I never seem to tire of these markets.  I recognized two of the young women chicken butchers I had watched in Nyaungshwe.  There were fewer tourists than at the five day market in Kalaw ten days earlier, when I was previously there.  Burma seems to get a particularly large influx of tourists who come for two or three weeks over the Christmas-New Year holidays.

I got to the train station after 11 and at 12:10, only 25 minutes late, left on a train bound for Thazi.  The ordinary class carriages were packed, as was the sole upper class carriage, where I had my seat, with local people returning home from Kalaw's five day market.  Beside myself, there were only two other foreign tourists in the upper class carriage.  It was full of boxes and bags and bundles of all sorts of stuff from the market.

Thazi is northwest of Kalaw, but the train first headed south through the hilly countryside, with lots of pines.  A few small rice terraces, already harvested, appeared here and there among the forest.  I think the train began to turn northwest about the time we reached our first stop, at the village of Myindaik, about a half hour from Kalaw.  We spent about 40 minutes there, waiting for a train coming up from Thazi, but it was a very interesting stop.  The platform was filled with hill tribe vendors, a very colorful scene.  Besides fruit and vegetables on sale, several ladies were selling flowers, carrying big bundles of them in their arms and on their heads.  I enjoyed walking around and was able to buy a chicken, vegetable, and rice lunch, packed in a styrofoam box, for the train ride.

We reached the summit, at 4608 feet, soon after leaving Myindaik, and I enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery as we very slowly descended.  We had some long views down valleys towards distant forest covered hills.  I think this may be the prettiest train journey I've taken in Burma.  The stops were very interesting and picturesque, too, often with small, colonial era stations of brick with chimneys in small villages.

At one point the terrain was too steep for the train tracks to curve, and our train simply backed down a lower set of tracks, dropping from 3237 feet to 3031 (so said the signs), before again reversing itself and heading down a still lower set of tracks, the three sets of tracks forming a zigzag.  There was another, shorter, zigzag about a thousand feet lower. 

By about 4 the long views over the hills had disappeared and we were traveling through forest, which we emerged from more than an hour later into a sort of rolling plain at about 1400 feet elevation, reaching the town of Yinmabin.  Heading west from Yinmabein, we again descending through hills, much drier ones, at dusk.  We very slowly crossed a long and high viaduct, with no guardrails, just before dark.  It was dark soon after 6.

We were soon in the flatlands, reaching Thazi, at 700 feet elevation, at 7:40, forty minutes late.  I checked into the same little hotel I had stayed in three weeks before.  At this lower elevation, my room was a very comfortable 79 degrees when I went to bed, almost twenty degrees warmer than my room had been in Kalaw, at 4300 feet, that morning.  Unfortunately, a Buddhist monk wailed away all night on a loudspeaker, stopping only about dawn.

I left Thazi the next morning before 10 on a pickup headed to Meiktila to the west and about 11 left on a very crowded small bus, with folks on the roof, heading north to Mandalay.  The sky was overcast all day.  We arrived in Mandalay about 2:30 and I checked into a hotel I have stayed in a couple of times before.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at travel agencies and the government tourism office.  I had hoped to be able to travel on the upper Chindwin River and then leave Burma into India.  You are permitted to do so, if you get a permit, but the price of the permit seems to have jumped from $50 to $150 since I was here in November, and I was told I would have to wait a week for my permit, picking it up in Mandalay.  Plus, there are difficulties getting a permit because of my overstaying my visa.

I walked along the southern moat and wall of the palace in the late afternoon, but they were much less scenic under cloudy than under sunny skies.  There are fewer tourists here than when I was here a little over three weeks ago, just before Christmas, but there still are quite a few tourists.  At 244 feet elevation, Mandalay felt warm, and I enjoyed being able to walk around at night without a jacket.

The next day, too, was cloudy, with a few drops of rain.  I finally decided to give up the Chindwin and the land crossing to India, at least for this year, and fly from Yangon to Dhaka in Bangladesh.  My ticket, on Biman, Bangladesh's national airline, cost only $185.

January 8-12, 2014: Inle Lake

I left Pindaya about 8:30 on morning of the 8th on a bus heading south back to Aungban.  After the hour or so trip, I almost immediately left Aungban on a not too crowded pick up headed east to Shwenyaung, again retracing the route I had taken earlier.  We reached Shwenyaung about 11, and then it was a three wheeler for the last seven miles south to Nyaungshwe, the main town for Inle Lake.  At the entrance to the town foreigners have to pay a $10 Inle Zone Entrance Fee.  (I had also had to pay a $2 fee to enter Pindaya.)  A sign at the entrance to the town said the elevation was 2950 feet.  Burma seems to almost always use feet, not meters.

I checked into a hotel on a busy canal and got the first question I have had about my expired visa.  My 28 days expired December 12, but not once since then has anyone questioned me about it, even though I went through several police checks near the Chinese border.  You are allowed to overstay your visa, and pay a $3 a day fee, but I have heard different accounts of how long you are allowed to overstay.

I noticed lots of tourists in town as I walked to lunch at a restaurant called the Inle Pancake Kingdom, with a convincing sign asking, "Are you tired of rice?"  Nyaungshwe is much changed from when I was last here in 1994.  There are now several multi-story hotels and it now seems a town largely devoted to tourism.  It is still a small place, with only about 10,000 people.

After my tomato, onion, cheese, avocado crepe, I walked to the museum in the former palace of the local Shan sao pha, or "sky lord."  The big brick and teak building was built between 1913 and 1923.  The beautiful building is now much run down, but still very impressive.  It is once again a museum of Shan culture.  The military governments, in order to de-emphasize Shan culture, had for a while turned it into a Buddha museum.  The big throne room and conference rooms behind the throne room have high ceilings.  Besides the building itself, the best part of the museum was the collection of old photos.  Among them was one of a very bored looking Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII and Duke of Windsor) sitting with a group of Shan and Kayah chieftains, in about 1922, I think.

The bespectacled last sao pha, who ruled from 1927 to 1959, was the last of 33, dating from the 14th century.  He was also the first president of Burma, from 1948 to 1952.  He was one of the signatories of the Panglong Agreement.   The Panglong Agreement is on display, as are old, very elaborate formal clothes of the sao phas and their chairs and sleeping couches.

The layout of the palace is very interesting, with a dining room at the back behind the conference rooms and with sleeping quarters off to the sides.  The first floor was used for offices, with the palace quarters on the floor above.  After walking around inside, I wandered around outside, walking around the building.  I walked off a path into the dirt and grass to take a photo and afterwards noticed what look like a recently shed snakeskin where I had been standing to take the photo.  I then noticed several snake size holes in the ground and decided it was time to get back on the path.

Afterward I walked some more around town.  There are several modern looking monasteries, where child monks were chanting near the end of the day, but there really isn't much to see in town.  The sky had clouded up during the afternoon, and that night about 8 there was a short, but heavy, rainstorm, followed by another about an hour later.  I later heard that it rained several more times during the night, quite unusual in this dry season.

It rained briefly again the next morning about 6 or 6:30, but the cloudy sky seemed to be clearing, at least to the west, when four of us left a little after 8 on an all day Inle Lake boat trip.  These boat trips are the main way tourists see the lake, and there must have been well more than a hundred boats full of tourists on the lake that day.  Fortunately, the lake is big, though there are places where the boats cluster.  The boats are generally about 30 foot long canoes, with a noisy motor at the rear.  Tourists are provided padded wooden chairs, which are quite comfortable.  You also get blankets, but they weren't necessary that morning under cloudy skies.  With clear skies all night, the lake is much colder early in the morning.  In that respect, we were lucky with the cloudy skies.

It never rained and I thoroughly enjoyed the day.  We boarded the boat on the canal right next to my hotel, briefly traveled west to the main canal leading south to the lake on the west side of town, and headed first down that wide canal and then a narrower one through reeds to the lake.  We reached the lake and headed across for only a short way before turning into a channel leading to the village of Kaung Daing, near the lake's northwest shore, where a five day market was taking place.  The market was very interesting, with lots of friendly hill tribe folks, including several women smoking big cheroots, and lots of tourists, too.

After a bit more than a half hour at the market, we reboarded our boat and headed south under cloudy skies down the long, narrow lake, though the lake is at its widest, about four miles, at its northern end.  The people living along the lake are predominantly Intha, and we spotted several Intha fishermen in their conical hats fishing on the lake.  They use conical fishing nets, about ten feet high, made of wood and some sort of netting material.  I'm not sure quite how they use them.  Even curiouser, they paddle their boats while standing on one foot at one end of the boat and paddling with the other foot wrapped around the paddle. They make quite an odd wiggle as they paddle.  It is a fascinating thing to watch.

After about 45 minutes on the lake we reached the village of Ywama, set among reeds, where we stopped at a silversmith shop, built above the water on high stilts, to watch silversmiths pounding silver after using a bellows to heat and soften it.  Nearby was another shop, this one for textiles, where we also stopped.  Inside about six Padaung women, the ones with copper rings around their long necks, on display, some of them weaving on hand looms and others just sitting around.  These lake tours are certainly commercially oriented in part, but without a lot of sales pressure.

About 11 I talked the others into paying a little more to head up a canal to Inthein.  The half hour trip west up the canal led first through reeds and then through trees.  Along the way were several less than a foot high bamboo dams, with openings in the center for the boats to pass.  Many tourist boats were returning as we were heading to Inthein, which also held its five day market that day.  We arrived about 11:30, and there were still dozens of tourist boats docked there.  The market was wrapping up, as they usually are over by about noon.  We walked around the market a bit and then explored the overgrown, crumbling stupas at the far edge of the village.  In places stucco figures of animals and gods are still intact, or partially intact. 

A long covered stairway, lined with an amazing amount of handicrafts for sale, led up a hill to another complex of more than a thousand dilapidated old stupas, said to date from the 17th and 18th centuries.  Some have been restored, but most have not, though I suppose in time this will become like Pindaya.  With trees and bushes growing out of them, and their steeples leaning at various angles, the ruins are very appealing now.

We spent well more than an hour among the stupas, and then had lunch in the village before leaving between 2 and 2:30.  We headed back down the channel to the lake and then further south down the lake through reeds and open water, passing villages full of houses on stilts, to the village of In Phaw Kone.  Along the way we passed some big resort hotels on the lake, and lots of substantial wooden houses, often of two stories on stilts, of the local people.  Nothing like that was here in 1994.  There are also lots of electricity pylons made of weathered wood, something I've never seen anywhere else.  Lots of birds, especially gulls, were on the lake.

In In Phaw Kone we made two more shop stops, first to see iron workers heating iron and then pounding it into swords.  Three men would pound the red hot metal until it cooled and changed color, whereupon it was briefly dipped into a trough of water.  This continued as the metal became longer and thinner.  Lots of swords were on display for sale.  Another shop was full of looms, spinning wheels, and the like, with men an women at work on the looms and spinning wheels. It was all fascinating to watch.  Besides textiles of silk and cotton, they make textiles of lotus fibers, which I had never heard of before.  They showed use how they draw out the very thin fibers from the green lotus stems, and then wind them together into thread like silk.

From In Phaw Kone we headed back north to Tha Lay village and the Phaung Daw Ol Paya, a particularly large pagoda.  It seems to have been completely rebuilt from the original, but in the same style, judging from the photos inside.  Also inside, in the place of honor on the altar in the center of the building, are five gold blobs, a foot to two feet high.  They are five ancient Buddha statues that have been transformed by the application of gold leaf by devotees.  Men were doing just that when we were there.  Only men are allowed near them.  Women have to content themselves with kneeling outside the altar enclosure.

By now the sky had almost completely cleared.  We headed north and then a bit east over the blue lake under the blue sky, with high hills on either side.  We reached the floating gardens, acres and acres of fruits and vegetables grown by the Intha on floating beds of vegetation.  We traveled down some narrow passages with floating beds of vegetation on either side of us.  A few simple shacks of bamboo walls and thatched roofs stood on stilts among the gardens.

Eventually we emerged from the floating gardens and docked at Nga Hpe Kyaung, the jumping cat monastery, where the apparently bored monks have taught their cats to jump through hoops.  No cats were jumping while we where there, at the end of the afternoon.  Several were eating out of bowls of rice, though.  I didn't know cats ate rice.  I thought they were strictly carnivorous.  I remember visiting this monastery in 1994, out on the lake in the middle of the water.  Now the gardens are quite close to it, and one side is completely given over to handicrafts for sale.  There are some gilded Buddha images and altars inside, though they were a little hard to see inside in the late afternoon gloom.  The views outside, however, of the gardens and the lake and hills in the late afternoon sun, were spectacular.

The sun set just as we were leaving, about 5:20 or 5:25.  It quickly disappeared behind the high ridge to the west.  At dusk, under the now clear sky, the lake became quite chilly, especially as we were speeding along it in a boat.  Birds and a few fishermen were still out, and other boats were either also heading back to Nyaungshwe or heading out to villages along the lake.  I put my fleece and windbreaker back on, and wrapped a blanket around me, and was warm enough.  We reached the main canal at the northern end of the lake a little before 6, and were in Nyaungshwe, three and a half miles further north, about 15 minutes later, just at dark.

The next morning, under clear skies, was much colder than the previous cloudy one.  This was the day of Nyaungshwe's five day market, and the canal outside the hotel was very busy.  About 20 or 30 big baskets of tomatoes had been unloaded from boats and were being carried two at a time on long poles by two men.  Some of the tomatoes from one basket spilled into the canal and then were scooped up with smaller baskets.  Close to the market in the town center the canal was packed with dozens of empty boats jammed together like sardines.

I spent about three hours wandering through the very interesting market.  It was very crowded at first, hard to walk through.  My head kept scraping against the canvas and plastic sheets strung up for sun protection, built at a height suitable for local folks, but not taller foreigners.  Later I noticed the top of my cap was filthy, so I guess it was good I was wearing it.  Better my hat than my hair.

I soon gave up walking through the crowded market interior and found a spot where I could stand and watch, near chicken and fish sellers, mostly women.  I watched young women and old women expertly cutting up large chickens.  The fish sellers were squatting on the pavement, with their fish on leaves or plastic.  When one sold all her fish, she got up and left.

Eventually, the crowd thinned out a bit and I could walk about some more with less difficulty.  I saw plucked ducks for sale, and much else.  Later I came back to the chicken sellers and one of the young women was now cleaning chicken intestines, using a sort of metal implement to thread out the chicken shit and then washing the intestines in water.  She dumped them into a bowl, and I saw several women buy a big bag full.

I left about noon and headed to the Inle Pancake Kingdom for a vegetarian lunch.  Besides a crepe with avocado, tomatoes, onions, and cheese, I had a bowl of guacamole with rice crackers.

From about 2 to nightfall I took a walk, first heading north about a mile and a half out of town along a tree shaded road to Shwe Yaunghwe Kyaung, an old teak monastery on stilts with two large oval windows at the very front.  Two child monks were sitting in one of the windows.  I looked around inside, with a golden Buddha and some beautiful wooden chests covered with gold and jewels, or colored glass, for all I know.  When I arrived most of the young monks were watching a movie on tv in an adjacent building, but at 3 a monk rang a gong and the monks began to gather and chant in front of the golden Buddha in the old, teak building.

I walked back to town, and then through town along the main canal, and then out of town to Namthe, a little village just about ten minutes walk from town.  A very modern looking 26 foot high standing Buddha is just outside the village.  It is said to be 700 years old, but looks more like seven.  Instead of spending much time with the Buddha, I sat on a wooden pier on the canal in the late afternoon sun, until the sun disappeared behind the mountains.  Lots of noisy boats sped by, with the local people often waving to me.

The next morning was again clear and very chilly.  I sat for a while in the sun on the balcony of my hotel after breakfast.  About 10 I rented a bike and biked first to the museum in the former palace of the sao pha, to take some photos of it in the morning sun.

From there I biked out of town to the southeast on a good paved road and soon reached an open air sugar cane factory, with ten or fifteen men working there. I stopped and watched for about half an hour, and the workers seemed to enjoy having me there.  Sugar cane was fed into a grinder that removed the juice, which eventually flowed through pipes into big vats with a fire underneath.  A man kept feeding the fire with dried sugar cane stubble.  The vats, about six of them, steamed and bubbled and were quite a sight.  It was all very interesting and primitive, though the grinder and a pump were run by small motors.  Nearby were about ten 55 gallon drums, several filled with liquid with scum on top.  One of the workers encouraged me to stick my finger in one and then lick it, and I instantly obeyed.  It was very sweet.  Besides the workers, a woman and her very shy son were there.  He would surreptitiously look at me, and then bury his head in his mother's lap if I looked at him too long.

From the sugar cane factory I biked further south on a good road, stopping here and there to watch things.  A solitary young woman was swiftly cutting sugar cane that towered above her, maybe 15 feet high.  With a machete she quickly cut it at its base, cut off the thin top half, and then stripped the long cane of it leaves.  Others were raking up cane debris.  There are other sugar cane factories along the way, and I passed the turn off for a fancy lakeside hotel where Mick Jagger is supposed to have stayed.

About noon I reached the lakeside village of Maing Thauk, about seven miles from Nyaungshwe.  I parked my bike and headed up a hill to monastery with a gold stupa, a climb of about 500 feet over a half an hour.  Near the monastery I came across some road builders at lunch.  While I was examining their work, one offered me a long bar of sugar, one of about 20 they had in a bag.  It was very hard and, not surprisingly, very sweet.  The view from the hilltop was disappointing.  The sky was hazy in the middle of the day and an electricity pylon was situated right in the gap in the trees in front of the stupa.  A nice touch.

On the way down I watched the road builders for a while.  A man was cracking big stones into smaller ones with a sledgehammer.  Women were carrying wet concrete in metal pans and then pouring it over the rocks laid out in the road bed.  This is a concrete not an asphalt road, leading up to the monastery.

When I got down the hill, I biked the short distance to the head of the canal that leads to the lake.  Alongside the canal a quarter mile wooden walkway, about five feet wide, on stilts leads to the part of Maing Thauk village that is on stilts over the water.  Walking along the wooden walkway, I had beautiful views of greenery, water, and simple huts.  At the end, among the houses on stilts, is a restaurant where I had a late lunch, about 3:30 to 4, and a very good one, a fish soup, with a whole fish, for about two dollars.  The views from the restaurant were great, with boats passing by.

I had been paddled to the restaurant from the end of the walkway, and after lunch took a half hour tour of the village, in a small boat paddled by a middle aged man.  All the houses are on stilts, as are all the outhouses, made of bamboo walls with blue PVC pipes running down into the water.  Most of the houses have bamboo walls, while some have wooden walls.  After the boatman dropped me off on the walkway, I watched him paddle away, using his leg to paddle while standing.  

I enjoyed the walk back along the wooden walkway, with the golden stupa of the monastery on a hill in front of me.  At quarter to 5 I started back on my bike, as the air was getting chilly.  I had planned to stop at a winery just off the road, but didn't pass it until 5:15, just before sunset.  I did stop at the sugar cane factory for about ten minutes.  Only three guys were still there, one cooking dinner in a metal pot on an open fire.  The works had all been cleaned up, more or less.  Some of the big vats were still steaming.  The ten 55 gallon drums were now all full of liquid sugar.  I got back to town about an hour after leaving Maing Thauk.

I took another bike ride the next day, getting a later start, leaving town heading west over the main canal a little before 11.  I continued west on a tree shaded lane until turning south at the base of the hills.  There were some rises as I pedaled right along the base of the hills.  I climb one small hill with a pagoda for a hazy lake view, passed a hot springs, and reached the village of Kaung Daing, about ten miles from Nyaungshwe.  I pedaled a bit further, to another pagoda on a hill right next to the lake, and then two Norwegians also on bikes and I chartered a boat to take us across the lake to Maing Thauk, about a twenty minute trip across the blue lake. We passed several leg rowing fishermen on the way.

We ate lunch at the same restaurant where I had eaten the day before.  I again had the fish soup, and also had a big avocado and tomato salad, also delicious.  After lunch, as we were walking along the wooden walkway with our bikes, we were met by dozens of school kids just getting out of school.  We had to pause to let them all pass.  When they reached the end of the walkway, there must have been quite a traffic jam until their parents came to pick them up in boats.

I biked back towards Nyaungshwe, passing some cane cutters along the way, and reached the winery turnoff about 4:30.  I walked up the hill to the winery and for two dollars tasted four of their wines.  I sat at a table outside with four others as the sun sank in the sky.  Quite a few people had gathered there at tables inside and outside. The wines weren't all that good, and the red one was pretty bad, but it was a nice way to end the afternoon.  The lake was quite far away.  The winery is only thirteen years old, and has 20 hectares of vineyards next to the winery, with another 55 hectares nearby, to the north.  The sunset was at about 5:30.  I headed back maybe ten minutes later, reaching town about 6, at dark. 

January 2-7, 2015: Kalaw, Taunggyi, and Pindaya

I left Loikaw a little after 8 on the morning of the 2nd on a small bus heading northwest to Aungban, almost a hundred miles from Loikaw.  The bus at first retraced the route I had taken to Loikaw from Taungoo, skirting the big lake north of Loikaw and south of Inle Lake and rising from about 3000 feet elevation at the lakeside to 4000 feet and more in the hilly terrain further north.  The bus traveled slowly, with lots of stops for passengers to embark and disembark, but I enjoyed the journey.  Rice fields and other crop land were along the route, and we often passed the railroad tracks.  I had considered taking the train to Aungban, but it was scheduled to leave at 5:45.  We drove through a village market with dozens of Pa-O women in black clothes and their distinctive orange and black headscarves, wrapped around their heads like turbans.

About 11:30 we made a half hour lunch stop in Pinlaung, where I had a big lunch with a surprising amount of chicken (usually you just get maybe three little pieces), a bean and chicken soup, and a solitary vegetable dish.  The bus was all local folk but for me.  Videos were shown, the Burmese movies almost invariably with what I suppose are heart rending hospital scenes where one young lover stares down at his or her comatose lover.

North of Pinlaung the road rose to around 5000 feet through flatter, but still hilly, terrain with lots of cropland.  Just after 2 the bus had to make a brief stop as the train from Loikaw, with maybe five carriages, crossed the road.  About ten minutes later we arrived in Aungban, just about the same time as the train which had left Loikaw two and a half hours earlier.

Aungban is at about 4300 feet elevation and, after about a half hour wait, I took a pickup from there west to Kalaw, only about five miles away.  I checked into a hotel and then looked around the small town.  There were lots of foreign tourists around.  I walked past some beautiful pinkish purple flowering trees and bright red poinsettias to the old train station, where a sign gave the altitude as 4297 feet.  A couple of blocks away an electronic sign on a clocktower gave the elevation as 4315 feet, but Kalaw is not a completely level town.  I walked around some more and returned to the train station after 5 to see the train, with one upper class carriage and three ordinary class carriages, from Loikaw passing through on its way to Pyinmana.  Once again in Shan state, I ate Shan noodle soup and tea salad for dinner.

I took another walk about town the next morning and got to the train station at about 11.  Two trains were due to arrive about 11:30, one going east and one west.  I planned to take both eventually.  They arrived about noon, and after they left I headed south out of town for a walk in the pine covered countryside.  I passed several colonial era houses, constructed of brick and with chimneys, before reaching a big modern Catholic church, with the grave of an Italian priest just outside.  The priest had been born in 1907 and died in 2000 after arriving in Burma in 1931.  A big military enclosure is just beyond the church.  I was told the military confiscated lots of land for an officer's training school, here in the cool hills.  The Shan have been particularly resistant to the Burmese military.

From the church I walked to a hotel, partly in an old colonial bungalow, where I read the Burmese English language newspaper.  Interestingly, it seems all the Burmese language newspapers have titles in English, in Roman script.  Everything else is in Burmese language and script.  From the hotel I walked to Shwe Oo Min, a cave with golden stupas outside and Buddha statues by the hundreds inside.  Unfortunately, a pile of garbage, including lots of plastic, was being burned right at the cave entrance.

Further on I walked along part of the local golf course and paused to watch the play on one green.  The greens were green but the fairways were brown.  The golfers were all men (the Burmese military, I've read or been told, like to play golf) while the caddies were almost all young women.  From the golf course I walked to a pagoda on a hill with a 500 year old bamboo Buddha, all covered in gold, before getting back to town about 5.

The next morning was Kalaw's five day market.  It seems most towns and villages in the area have a particularly big market every five days in addition to the ordinary daily markets.  Lots of hill tribe people had come into town for the market.  I saw orange and black Pa-O headscarves in addition to other distinctive tribal dress.  It seems the fashion for many tribal women is to use what seem to be terrycloth towels for headscarves, usually wound up elaborately.  

About 11 I made my way to the train station.  My train arrived about an hour late and left about 12:30, heading east.  Traveling through scenic pine covered hills, it reach Aungban after about a half hour.  The train continued east through much flatter, but still rolling countryside, with lots of agriculture and many pines.  Two young parents and their four month year old baby sat facing me.  They were very careful and caring with him.  We passed the Heho airport at about 3800 feet, and then made a steep descent down a forested gulch along a dry creek bed.  Near the end the train made a wide loop, crossing under a trestle it had crossed over a few minutes before.  We reached Shwenyaung,on the flat lands further east, at about 3000 feet elevation, about 3:30.

All the other foreign tourists on the train headed to Nyaungshwe, seven miles south and the main town for visiting Inle Lake, but I took a pickup heading for Taunggyi, twelve miles further east.  Passing quite a few army bases on the way, the crowded pickup, with several people on the roof, zigzagged up the road that climbs the ridge to Taunggyi, the Shan state capital at about 4500 feet elevation.   I had been able to spot Taunggyi on its ridge on the train from Kalw.  Taunggyi is a relatively big city, with about 150,000 people.

The next morning about 9 I walked to the Flying Tiger Cheroot Factory, where about eight women were making cheroots in an upstairs wooden walled and floored room.  I spent about half an hour there watching them, and they seemed to enjoy having me there.  One woman gave me a little tour and the others happily posed for photos and seemed to enjoy looking at them afterwards.  Each woman had a basket-like tray with tobacco leaves, loose tobacco (mixed with other stuff), paper filters, scissors, and the other paraphernalia of her trade.  I watched a couple pulling out dry but still green tobacco leaves, about six inches in diameter, count out 30 of them, and then trim them altogether into leaves perhaps four inches in diameter. 

There were baskets full of leaves, one stack of baskets about ten feet high, and piles of maybe eight or ten inch long paper filters, made of newspaper.  Other women had already cut their leaves and were using a small wooden roller to roll the loose tobacco into a leaf, with a paper filter at the end, then rolling it all up tightly.  The paper filter and maybe some of the leaf was then trimmed.  The non-filter end is then pinched in.  I timed one woman and it took her 22 seconds to make a cheroot.  They are bound together in 50 cheroot packs.  I also saw one woman, just getting started after cutting her leaves, go to a large wooden box in the corner of the room and taking a shovel to scoop the loose tobacco onto her basket-like tray.

Afterwards, on the way to Taunggyi's five day market, I paused at a fire station to look over a bright red 1962 Toyota fire engine.  It had a wooden seat and a siren that required hand cranking.  The hoses looked decrepit.  The market was full of interesting people and stuff, and I didn't see another tourist there, quite unlike the market in Kalaw.  There were lots of hill tribe people, though.  I spent about two hours wandering around.  The market spilled out from a central area into the adjacent streets.  Among things I hadn't seen or noticed before, peanut oil and resinous pine were on sale.  Young women were pouring peanut oil into used plastic water bottles.  A man was slicing off pieces of very fragrant resinous pine.  He gave me a piece.  As usual, the people were very friendly.

I passed up the lunch stands in the market (in one I saw woman with a soup with a solitary chicken claw in it) to have lunch in a nearby restaurant.  A high school teacher from the town of Mong Hsu, 200 miles northeast of Taunggyi and near the Salween, or Thanlwin, River, joined me to practice his English.  He told me he teaches English, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.  He said he was in Taunggyi for business and that it took him ten hours of driving to get there.  Foreigners are not allowed more than a few miles east of Taunggyi, because of insurgency and heroin cultivation, I think.  If you want to get to Kyaingtong (also known as Kengtung), where foreigners are allowed, near the northern border of Thailand, you have to fly, or enter from Thailand.  I stopped by the market again after lunch and then spent much of the rest of the afternoon in an internet cafe.

The next sunny but chilly morning I ate a delicious dim sum breakfast in an open air cafe just across from my hotel.  The dumplings were served in little round wooden containers.  They were heavy on pork and eggs and very tasty.  Afterwards I walked to the Shan State Museum, with hill tribe clothing, drums, and other stuff on display.  There are also some very interesting photos, including photos from the 1947 Panglong Conference.  At this conference representatives of the Shan, Chin, and Kachin agreed with Aung San, representing the Burmese dominated interim government just before independence in January 1948, to join the interim government, with certain rights reserved for the "Hill People," as they are called in the Panglong Agreement, also on display.  Under British rule, the British had directly ruled the lowland Burmese areas, while the hill regions were autonomous, left mainly to govern themselves.  The military governments after 1962 routinely suppressed the minority hill peoples, so the Panglong Agreement is a rallying cry for them.

I walked back to my hotel, passing a gold painted statue of Aung San in a little park on the way.  About noon I took a taxi to the bus stand and at 1:30 left on a small bus headed for Pindaya.  The bus zigzagged down the ridge the way I had come two days earlier, with good views of the wide valley below, though I couldn't see Inle Lake.  The bus headed west, more or less paralleling the train tracks upon which I had traveled two days before.  I saw the trestle at the railroad loop, as we began our ascent through the forested gulch, rising from 3000 feet at Shwenyaung to about 4000 after climbing through the ravine. We soon had a breakdown, though, which required about 40 minutes of repair.  Fortunately, it was at a scenic spot, with views of the valley below. 

Reaching Aungban, the bus turned north and traveled through intensely cultivated rolling hills at about 4000 feet elevation.  I saw some rice growing, and much else.  I also saw people threshing rice by hand.  Vehicles crowded with Pa-O and other hill tribe people passed by.  Nearing Pindaya the hills became particularly scenic. 

The bus reached Pindaya, a town of only about 5000 people, just after 5.  The sun had already set beyond the high hills just west of town.  Pindaya is on a small lake, at about 4000 feet elevation, with an important Buddhist cave complex southwest of town, about 500 feet up the ridge just west of town.  I walked around the lake before dark.  The cave complex, now with elevators to help people ascend the last part, was soon lit up like a casino.  Colored lights soon came on all around the lake.

Mornings are chilly at these elevations at this time of year, and the next morning I didn't get started walking to the Pindaya Caves until after 9:30.  I walked first along the west side of the lake, then to the southern end of town, and then along a road lined with huge banyan trees, with huge stacks of watermelon for sale underneath the far spreading branches.  A covered stairway took me up about four hundred feet.  (A road zigzagged just south.)  I skipped the elevators to take the final 130 steps to the cave mouth, where I arrived about 10:30. 

I had visited these caves in 1994, stopping on the way from Thazi to Inle Lake, and I remembered them as somewhat romantic, old stupas and statues of Buddha in a long, high cave.  The cave is still impressive, something like 490 feet long, with a turn to the right, and 150 feet high at its highest.  But the atmosphere of the cave has completely changed.  The floor is covered with what seem to be bathroom tiles, and all the stupsas and statues are heavily restored, or rebuilt, all looking new.  Many are newly built.  Almost everything is gold covered, and every statue and stupa seems to have names and dates inscribed, mostly in Burmese but many in English, on tablets under them.  I didn't see one date before 1999.  Among others, one had the names of a family from Venice, California and another the name of a Thai drug suppression unit.

There are supposed to be something like 9000 Buddhas, some centuries old, though you wouldn't know it.  Colored lights illuminate portions of the caves and statues, and it all looks like a Walt Disney Buddhaland, but without the good taste.  I kept expecting "I'ts a Small World" to break out on loudspeakers.  There a few stalactites and stalagmites and pools, and a few small "meditation caves."  It was all bizarrely interesting, but a disappointment compared to what I remembered.  I think there were more foreigners than local folks wandering around inside, almost all of them having arrived on a day trip from Inle Lake.

After about two hours inside, I walked to a 40 foot high sitting Buddha further along the ridge and then came back to the Pindaya Caves.  The views are good.  I could see the town of Pindaya, the lake, the countryside all around, and a forest of stupas just below the cave, near the foot of the long covered stairway I had ascended.  I sat and enjoyed the view for a while.  Just inside, in a little area decorated with Buddhist altars just in front of the cave mouth, a group of men were watching a television broadcast of a welterweight boxing championship from the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

I took the elevators down, then walked down the long stairway, passed through the banyan trees and watermelons, and reached town about 3 for a late lunch.  Later in the afternoon I walked along the lake to an old wooden monastery near the lake's northeastern end.  It was much more interesting than the Pindaya Caves.  The interior was filled with about fifteen old wooden altars, carved and decorated with gilt.  A monk, his head covered in his red robe, was asleep in the middle of the floor.  Next door a big, ugly, modern hall was full of reciting child monks.  An older monk came in and several monklets sitting together scattered to their original, well-spaced positions.  The older monk, himself maybe a teenager, went up to them one by one and slapped each one on the side of the head.  No one complained.  I sat by the lake until sunset, which was just before 5.  I walked a bit more in the quickly cooling evening air, stopping to watch a bullock cart with a water container on it being filled by buckets of water drawn by hand from a well, or something looking like a well, right next to the lake.

December 29, 2014 - January 1, 2015: Loikaw

On the morning of the 29th in Taungoo I was up at 5 and at 5:30 the kind manager of my hotel drove me to the bus stand for Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State, Burma's smallest and least populated state, with less than 300,000 people.  The small bus, with about 40 seats, left at 6:15, just as the sky was getting light.  The driver and his attendant were friendly Kayahs, as most of the passengers seemed to be.

Kayah State, wedged against Thailand's northwestern border, has only recently been opened for individual travelers.  It is generally east of Taungoo, but we had to travel north to access the newly paved road across the hills.  The video at the front of the bus played Kayah Christian music videos as we headed north.  A woman sang "O Holy Night" and a rock group played Christian rock music.  Later in the trip there was a pretty terrible movie and a music video featuring several songs sung by a tall albino with very white hair.  I was later told he is a very famous Kayah singer.  At the front of the bus, above the driver's head, "'I'm nothing without Jesus'" was painted.  The Kayah, like many of Burma's minority groups, are predominantly Christian, as are the Chins, Kachin, Karen and others.  Shan, Rakhine, and Mon, however, are predominantly Buddhist.

The sun rose over the hills to the east and we reached Naypyitaw's big, fairly modern bus station after about two hours.  We headed further north, passing a huge new modern stadium, built for the ASEAN games held in Burma in late 2013, and other big buildings. Nearing Tatkon, north of Naypyitaw, we finally turned onto the newly paved road that crosses the hills about three hours after leaving Taungoo.  Now heading southeast, we climbed rapidly on a narrow but well paved asphalt road into lovely wooded hills.  Soon we were in Shan state.  The bus went up and down over ridges, some parts of the road quite steep, rising to about 3000 feet, then descending to about 1500 feet.

About 10:30 we had a half hour meal stop at a little village where the road turned northeast.  We soon had a view of a reservoir in a wooded valley.  It must be a relatively recent one, as the electricity pylons near it had no wires.  We climbed to about 5000 feet elevation before descending to a river near the reservoir and crossing it on a large new bridge.  Heading further east the hills became much less forested and much more cultivated.

About 2 we reached the north-south road just south of the town of Pinlaung and turned south, heading southeast to Loikaw.  This is a much poorer road, a thin strip of bad asphalt that is dusty and more heavily trafficked than the road we had been on.  The landscape was dry but heavily cultivated. Eventually we had good views of the long blue lake (about 25 miles long, north to south, but much narrower, at its widest less than five miles) south of the more famous Inle Lake. Hills rise beyond it to its east and dry, harvested rice fields lay in front of it.

We stopped in a couple of small towns and drove right along the lake near its southern end, where my altimeter registered about 3150 feet.  South of the lake we soon reached the Kayah state border, crossed the river that flows into the lake, and shortly thereafter reached Loikaw just before 5.  Loikaw is in a wide flat valley, at about 3200 feet according to my altimeter, with hills in the distance.  Loikaw is a spread out town and on the way to my hotel in a taxi I spotted walking along the street the 70 year old German guy, Peter, that I had met in Taungoo.  We had dinner together that night in a restaurant on the river that runs through town.

The next morning after breakfast at the hotel the two of us left about 7 in a hired open air three wheeler heading south to Phruso to see the market.  The trip was cold in the morning air.  The countryside was relatively flat, with hills in the distance.  We passed through the town of Demoso about halfway to Phruso. The  terrain began to rise just before Phruso and I could see hills bunched up just south of town.  We reached Phruso (also spelled Hpruso, and with several other variations I've seen) about an hour after leaving Loikaw, but there was no morning market.  Disappointed, we did visit a big Catholic church, but there wasn't much else to see in town.

We headed back the way we had come, passing again through Demoso and again passing a reservoir just south of Demoso with fishermen in boats on it and hills to its east.  Just south of the reservoir we turned off the main road and headed southeast, reaching after about three miles a small pond called Umbrella Lake. Gas seeps out from under the shallow lake, creating minature mud volcanos that look like the tops of umbrellas.  One had formed and it indeed looked very like an umbrella.  It had a hole at the apex.  Others were forming and you could spot gas bubbles now and then.  Our driver told us they last a day or two.

The area around the pond was very scenic, with cows munching rice stuble in front of not too distant hills. Women were collecting big bundles of rice straw, from where it had been threshed, I suppose, and carrying it a hundred or so feet away to a place where it was spread out on the ground.  I suppose that is to dry it before storing it for animal feed, but that is just a guess.

From Umbrella Lake we headed southeast and then south a further seven or so miles to a scenic spot called Seven Lakes, with seven little lakes huddled against some low wooded hills.  Some of the leaves on the trees on the hills were turning color, red and yellow.  From there we headed back for Loikaw, reaching it about noon.

After lunch I took a walk around town.  I first walked to the former palace of the sao pha, or local prince, only a couple of blocks from my hotel.  It is an impressive wooden building, now a monastery.  Inside are photos of it over the years, along with photos of several of the sao phas, and the lovely young wife of the last one.  The palace was built in 1912-1916, and there are some wonderful photos of it at that time or soon after.  By 1994 it was in ruins, and there are photos of it then, too.  In that year the descendents of the last sao pha, his son and daughter, I think,  gave it to the monastery, which apparently completely rebuilt it in 2002, with some changes from the original.

I climbed the stairs and wandered around inside, listening to about seven child monks reciting in the big hall in the back.  Three or four others were reciting on a side balcony.   From there I walked to a nearby gaudy monastery called Taung Kwe set atop several almost vertical limestone outcrops right in town.  I was surprised to find an elevator at the back that took me to the top.  The views over the town and the surrounding plains were good, but the buildings not so impressive.  From the top I could see other pagodas on hills southeast of town.

I then walked to the railroad station to check out the daily train (leaving at 5:45 in the morning) heading north, and from there along the river to Loikaw's downtown, such as it is.  The local people seemed shy, but friendly.

After breakfast the next morning I walked again to the palace converted to a monastery. The young monks chanting in the main hall seemed to welcome the diversion I presented.  Later I headed north through town in search of the state museum.  I walked north across the river, then past a lake, one of two in town.  I spent a few minutes walking through the work in progress called Kayah Landmarks Park, with cement representations of Taung Kwe, Umbrella Lake, Seven Lakes, and a massive hydroelectric site.

It took me a while to find the museum.  Finally, a government worker took me the last few blocks on his motorcycle.  They had to unlock it for me (later a group of monks joined me) and it was fairly interesting, with mannequins sporting the clothes of each of Kayah's nine different tribes, including the Padaung, whose women wear a massive set of heavy metal rings around their necks, which depress their shoulders and upper rib cages.  I've read that can weigh up to fifty pounds.  In some cases their long necks can no longer support their heads without the rings.  The museum had some good photos of them, and displays of the rings, plus other stuff, such as metal drums and guns fashioned out of metal and wood.  Also on display were two of the largest cowbells I have ever seen, made of iron and hard wood. They were about a foot long and quite heavy.  Several other cowbells were on display.  I guess the Kayah have a fever for cowbells.

I bought some cookies and water from a simple store for lunch and walked to the two big Catholic churches, one built in the 1930's and an even bigger one built just a few years ago.  The friendly head priest spotted me looking around and invited me into his office for coffee and cookies.  He spoke good English and was very interesting about Loikaw and the Kayah.  He told me there are five Catholic parishes in town.

From the churches I started walking out of town to some traditional Kayah poles set together in a sort of outdoor museum northeast of town.  I asked directions from a guy on a motorcycle and he gave me a lift there.  Some of the poles are quite high, maybe 30 or 40 feet, and there must have been 40 or 50 of them all together.  Many have emblems on top.  He told me each village has a distinctive pole, but didn't really know much about them.

While I was there, a very friendly little girl, maybe about 7 or 8, in a very frilly orange dress and with yellow thanaka all over her face, came over to see me.  She skipped all around and happily posed for photos. She had two older sisters, maybe young teenagers, who were much more shy and kept their distance, except when one came to get the young sister.  A brother a little older than the youngest sister soon showed up, and eventually the two older sisters gathered their courage and came over.  I even got them to submit to a few photographs, which they seemed to find hilarious.

t took me about an hour to walk back to the hotel from the poles, but it was a mostly pleasant late afternoon walk.  Peter had flown to Yangon that afternoon, but I had dinner with another German who had arrived that morning and who had traveled extensively in northeast India, where I plan to head after Burma.  That night was New Year's Eve, but I went to bed about 10:30.  I did hear some fireworks now and then, and a whole bunch of them at midnight.  Soon after midnight it was very quiet.

I spent a good portion of the next day in an internet cafe.  They have been few and far between in the places I have traveled in Burma this year.  Until this one in Loikaw, I hadn't found one with a connection for almost three weeks.  Wifi is taking over, though often the wifi connection is bad, I've been told.

I had a late lunch on the river and then about 3:30 set off for the pagodas on the hills southeast of town. Without too much difficulty I found the right path, passing a surprisingly friendly bunch of about ten pink clad young nuns with shaved heads.  They waved as I approached and posed for photos.

I walked to the pagoda furthest south, with reputedly the best view, about a 45 minute walk.  It is set upon a hill, a steep climb, though only about 300 feet above the town.  The views from the top of the town, the other pagodas, and the surrounding plains and hills were very nice.  Just to the southwest is a huge new modern building, the Loikaw Institute of Technology.  A very good speaking Kayah guy also at the pagoda at sunset told me the institute has no computers.  Sunset was just before 5:30.  Reaching town just after dark, I passed by the Taung Kwe pagoda all lit up with strings of multi-colored lights.

December 25-28, 2014: Naypyitaw and Taungoo

In Thazi on the 25th, I walked to the train station about 8:30 on a sunny Christmas morning.  I bought an upper class ticket to Naypyitaw, the new capital, for about two dollars and the train from Mandalay arrived right on time, at 8:52.  I enjoyed the train ride south.  There were both cropland and scrub land to be seen, with hills in the hazy distance to the east.  I saw bullock carts and people threshing rice.  I ate some quail eggs and then ordered lunch about 11 from a white coated attendant from the dining car, which was in front of mine.  It arrived on an actual plate, rather than in a styrofoam box, and was very good. 

The train arrived at the huge new Naypyitaw station at noon, only ten minutes late.  Few others got off, and the lack of people made the cavernous station seem even bigger than it is.  The station appears to be out in the middle of nowhere and is in fact miles from the city center. 

In 2005 Burma's military government relocated the capital from Yangon to this barren expanse about half way between Yangon and Mandalay.  The name translates into "Royal City of the Sun."  While government offices have relocated here, foreign embassies are still in Yangon.  Naypyitaw is built in a ridiculous grandiose style, which is the reason I wanted to see it. 

At the train station I hired a somewhat English speaking motorcycle taxi driver to take me to a hotel.  From the station we drove west over a small range of hills on a deserted multi-lane divided street and cruised through what is known as Hotel Zone 2, full of widely spaced big hotels in a hilly area.  Eventually, the motorcycle driver and I agreed to take a tour of the city before checking into a hotel.  With my backpack wedged into the slot between the driver and the handlebars he drove me around to see some of the sights of the capital. 

We first headed south several miles on a divided eight lane road through hilly, mostly deserted countryside to Uppatasanti Paya, a huge pagoda built by General Than Shwe, the venial former military dictator, and his wife.  Along the way we passed walled compounds with gates and military insignia at the entrances.  I couldn't see anything but trees beyond the walls.  Most of the land on the way was farm land or scrub.

The pagoda is 321 feet high, one foot lower than Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.  An elevator took me and some Burmese up to the platform on which it rests.  Apparently shoddily constructed, the exterior was covered with scaffolding and undergoing repairs.  The cavernous interior, however, was impressive, with a huge central altar and carved stone walls illustrating Buddha's life.  I think there were a hundred or so people praying or milling around inside, with no other foreigners but me.

I eventually walked out into the bright sunshine and down the long flight of stairs on the east to the elephant pens opposite the stairs.  In the pens were five white elephants, held sacred by the Burmese.  They are albinos and actually look more pink than white, though their sparse hair is clearly white.  Elephants are expensive to maintain, and white elephants, being sacred, were never put to work.  Hence the British came to use the term "white elephant" for something extremely costly and without much use. 

I had seen elephants with some patches of white before, but these were the first completely white elephants I had ever seen.  I spent quite a while watching them.  There seemed to be two white males in a pen by themselves, a white female and a white calf in another pen, and a white female and a normal colored calf in another pen.  Another normal colored calf was chained next to one of the pens.  The contrast between the normal gray colored elephants and the white elephants was quite startling.  I watched them eat and move around, and enjoyed it. 

Back on the motorcycle we headed to the grandiose Parliament building.  Our eight lane divided road became a twelve lane divided road, and then a sixteen lane divided road.  The dividers are wide, maybe 20 feet in width, and grassy, with palms and other trees planted on them.  In places dirt from the adjacent fields had blown onto some of the lanes, and young women with brooms were sweeping the dirt off.  The streets were almost barren of other vehicles.  Some intersections were roundabouts with huge concrete lotuses in the center.

Nearing the Parliament the sixteen lane divided road became an undivided twenty lane road.  We passed a reviewing stand for the annual January 4th independence day parade, stopped at a check point, and then reached the huge gated Parliament building.  A high fence stands in front, with two bridges leading to the building.  The building faces east and so was back lit by the afternoon sun.  It also looked deserted.  Christmas is a national holiday in Burma.  My driver told me tourists can enter, but you have to apply three days in advance.

I took a couple of photos of the distant, back lit building.  A guard came out from the gate, but had no objections.  We spent maybe ten or fifteen minutes there.  One or two cars came by.  I took the opportunity to walk across twenty lanes of road without worrying about traffic.  The road, from well before the reviewing stand, was lined with all sorts of flags, some from countries, but others seemed to be from businesses. 

We headed back the way we had come and stopped at the reviewing stand, being spruced up by workers who seemed amused that I was there.  The Independence Day parade was only ten days later.  We headed next to a waterpark, which was uninteresting and very poorly built. 

On our way back to Hotel Zone 2 we took a different route, passing a subdivision of big two story houses that the driver said were for generals.  We passed about eight or ten commercial buildings of the same design in a row, banks and construction companies among them.  We passed some more apparently well built homes and I saw a sign for a mall.  But I saw nothing that looked like part of a busy capital city. 

My driver took me to the Jade City Hotel, where I got a very nice room, probably the nicest I've had in Burma, for $20.  The main hotel building was nine stories high (with $30 rooms), while my four story block was next door.  Next to my building another nine story building was being constructed.  However, I think I was the only customer. 

From my hotel I took about an hour walk before dark along the wide divided street in front of my hotel, passing several other widely spaced big hotels and others under construction.  The area was hilly, with only hotels and scrub.  Few cars came by.  In front of the Great Wall Hotel, with a crenelated roof,  the manager was taking an evening stroll and I talked with him for a while.  He told me he had no guests that night, one reservation for the next night, and four for New Year's Eve.  He told me he did have 42 guests for three days in November during the ASEAN conference.  He told me Hotel Zones 1 and 3, further south, get most of the customers because Hotel Zone 2 is too far north. 

I was the only one eating in the big dining room in my hotel that night.  The big lobby was empty.  Four or five young women sat behind the reception desk, most of them looking at their phones.  Smartphones are not quite as ubiquitous in Burma as elsewhere, but they are not rare.

The next morning after 7 I took a motorcycle taxi through the hills to the train station, about ten minutes away.  The early morning air was chilly.  According to my altimeter, my hotel was 800 or so feet in elevation.  The train station was lower, 400 or 500 feet.  I bought my upper class ticket for Taungoo, for about $1.65, and then checked out the old locomotive on display in the vast entry hall of the station.

My train, starting from Naypyitaw and heading to Yangon, left promptly at 8.  It wasn't very full, though a lot of people got on at the Pyinmana station about 25 minutes later.  Heading south, we passed harvested rice and other crops, and villages and towns.  The land was flat, with hills to the east. 

The train reached Taungoo about 11, at about 19 degrees north latitude, which should be as far south as I get in Burma this year.  From the old, run down station, quite a contrast to Naypyitaw's, I took a motorcycle taxi about a mile and a half south to a guest house on the southern edge of town, with harvested rice fields just to its east.  I checked in and ate a big lunch before setting out about 1 on a path through the rice fields to a nearby village. 

I strolled through the narrow, dirt, tree shaded lanes of the village.  I watched some young men constructing house walls from strips of bamboo and some young and older women making cheroots.  The women brought out a little bench for me to sit on while I watched them at work.  From big flat baskets full of tobacco and other ingredients unknown to me, they quickly stuffed some of the material, along with a filter made of rolled up newspaper, into a tobacco leaf, which they rolled up.  They trimmed the filters and parts of the cheroot with big scissors, working very fast, making a cheroot in well less than a minute, perhaps in about thirty seconds.

From that village I walked on a path further east, passing through farmland and other, much smaller, villages.  To my right a slow stream maybe a hundred feet wide flowed.  Not only vegetables but also patches of flowers grew along the way.  In the furthest village I reached I saw a huge sleeping sow, which must have weighed hundreds of pounds, with nine piglets.  Eight were about two feet in length, but one, the runt of the litter, was only half as long.  Apparently already having eaten, the piglets all slept huddled together.  A villager led me to another huge sow in a pen, with eight much younger piglets, perhaps newborn.  They were maybe a foot in length and all struggling against each other to feed from their mother.

The next morning I had the big breakfast provided by the guest house, with more than twenty dishes, including samosas, pancakes with honey, lots of fruit (papaya, watermelon, apples, oranges, and bananas), and all sorts of local starchy dishes, some sweet and some savory. 

After breakfast and sitting around until almost noon I strolled into town with a very tall German tourist, who was well over six and a half feet tall, named Felix.  On the way we passed several little girls, perhaps about six or eight years old, all dressed up like Burmese princesses in preparation for a week or two in a nunnery, where they get their heads shaved.  I have been told that this is a Buddhist rite of passage here in Burma for both boys and girls.  They looked a little scared.  At times they were carried by their fathers.  Their mothers and other relatives, all dressed up, were sitting in the back of a pick up.  The adults were all very friendly and invited us into a compound where two persons in an brightly colored elephant suit danced.  Eventually, they all headed off in their vehicles, to the monastery I presume, while we continued on our way to the town center.

We walked through the train station and a couple of monasteries before reaching a lake where we had lunch.  Taungoo was the capital of a Burmese kingdom founded in the early 16th century, but it seems nothing remains.  What remained of the palace was destroyed in World War II.  We did see many colonial era buildings, now falling apart.  An old mosque, quite impressive, was all boarded up, with a high wall around it and trees growing on the building.  I noticed that one wooden shutter in a window was covered with termite residue.   

Another impressive two story mansion was roofless.  We could walk into the former rooms, overgrown now with bushes.  Trees grew on the tops and sides of the walls.  I wonder how the trees managed to root on the vertical walls.  Inside, you could see where the second story wooden floor beams were once inserted into the brick walls.  The building had very high ceilings.  Along the wall between the mansion and the street, three elephant statues stood guard, their front feet outside the wall and their back feet inside.  Later on, we came across another abandoned large mosque.  Much of Burma's Indian population, along with many Chinese, were forced out in the 1960's.  The people were very friendly to us, and astounded by Felix' height. 

At nightfall I headed back to the hotel on a motorcycle while Felix continued to walk around.  On the way back I found a hotel I had been unsuccessfully looking for, with information on a bus to Loikaw, where I wanted to go next.  A German guy was headed there the next day.  He had been in Loikaw twice before and I had dinner with him.  It turned out that this was his 24th trip to Burma and he has been all over.

I had the splendid breakfast the next morning over the course of about two hours.  Felix was heading towards Bagan that day and I moved to the hotel where the manager could get me a ticket on the next day's bus to Loikaw.  After lunch, about 2:30, I started off on another walk along the rural route I had taken two days before.  Women were picking big bunches of flowers from the flower patches.  I also watched some of the folks working in the vegetable patches along the river.  The kids and adults were very friendly along the way. 

I didn't walk as far as on the first day.  I turned back after watching a man and his wife working on a big pile of red, dry flowers.  The man, thin, muscular and bare chested, wearing a longyi and a conical hat, was sifting the flowers with an almost flat straw basket about a foot wide.  His wife, fat and ugly, with a big wad of betel nut in her mouth, was meticulously sifting with a similar basket what appeared to be very small seeds from the flowers. 

On my way back, while talking with some friendly kids, a young guy came running through the fields up to me and said, "Come see my vegetables.  Very beautiful."  It was getting late and I politely declined and continued back towards my hotel.  I did stop to watch a guy watering his vegetables right next to the path, using water cans which he filled from a pump.  I got back after dark, a little after 6.