Bagan, Myanmar

Bagan, Myanmar

Steph, Poul, and myself took advantage of the noon check out time and wandered into the Ban Cherry Guesthouse and booked rooms. It is by far better to call ahead to make a reservation to any guesthouse anywhere in Myanmar because Internet connections are sketchy or periodically turned off by you know who along with frequent power outages. Cherry Guest House;  No. 278/3000, Maha Bandoole Garden Street (Barr Lan), Upper Block, Kyauklada. Mobile Ph. # 095340623, 098526399. Bagan is somewhat spread out along the banks of the Irrawaddy and there are a lot of foreigners of every expense level. When it comes to a bed and a bathroom I’ll pay down. Bagan is broken into two, old Bagan and new Bagan. We wandered around looking for a place to eat and wash the daily dust out of my mouths. At dusk one can see particulates in the air and headlights.

The following morning I rented a bike from Cherry and took off about 6 am for the sunrise and to catch the morning light on the red brick pagodas. Other pagodas have been painted gold for your touring enjoyment and they light up like candles in the morning light.

I wandered through the sand back roads where I searched out the tallest Pagoda with stairs before the sun crested the horizon. Once up the stairs with a few other spectators I noticed a viewing tower in the foreground that was considerably higher than where I was in the scheme of things but photos turn out better the closer to the pagodas rather than afar.

To the west pagoda spires speckle the land sticking out of the mist with only a few massive pagodas catching early light.

Beyond the horizon hot air balloons rise with the light and heat and fly over-head close to the spires.

The land in between the pagodas is farmland of hay and dry rice bracketed by dirt roads and Tamarind trees. Locals drive their oxcarts down the dirt roads with a few straggling bikers such as myself saying hello and sliding around in the sand. Most of the pagodas I went to in the morning, I was the only person there. Solitude and peace and quiet can be found.

I stayed for a few days taking in some of the local artists works and enjoying the local food. An artist I enjoyed spoke English and showed me about his gallery. His information is as follows: Address, Bagan Nyaung Oo (Main Rd.) Ngar Myet Hnar Qtr. Nuang Oo. Tel: 0925620885. E-mail: shwemudra@gmail.com.

I booked a bus to Pyay, home of a 4th century walled city and palace of the Pyu people (Pre-Burmese). Very interesting city, museum and archeological site; the Sri Ksetra, Pyu Cultural Heritage Region.

In the foreground is a water tank that the monks used to bath in.

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Mandalay To Bagan

Mandalay To Bagan

We decided to stay two nights in Mandalay before heading southwest to Bagan by boat. After an after midnight nap followed by a leisurely breakfast on the roof the Golden Dream. After turning in all my laundry I took a minivan to a series of palm sugar industries including palm wine and whiskey. It was strong stuff. There was a large diameter petrified forest we stopped in at from long ago when there were trees in the now arid area. Today it’s a dry place with Tamarin trees lining the one lane highway, concentrated around the villages and down creek beds. We got back in plenty of time to go to a travel agency, book tomorrows boat and head out to a wooden bridge by motorcycle taxi. When we got there, there were lots of tourist buses and people of all walks of life, especially around sunset.

The Golden Dream made a special effort to make us breakfast early to catch out taxi to the Irrawaddy boat jetty. There weren’t many people on board, maybe half full and almost everyone migrated to the upper deck before it got hot. The sun was on the rise and we pulled off the dock.

We heard it takes various lengths of time from 9 to 18 hours so we were prepared for a long haul. It turned out this was an express boat with no stops and even though we touched down a few times we never stopped forward progress and had a very scenic ride into Bagan. By early mid-day the upper deck had gotten too hot and most of the people on board found a purchase of shade to continue reading their books or chatting quietly amongst themselves and looking up periodically to take in the view. The crew took our order for lunch for a few thousand kyat and there was a refrigerator with an assortment of cool beverages.

We wove through some the other boats coming upstream but primarily stayed port to port when the captain could. Again a lot of logging barges some with wood on top and then the delivery vessels had the wood sunk and tied under pontoons because the logs are too heavy to lift without proper equipment. These type riverboats carry about 20 trees to a mass station where they are lifted on to barges or shore to dry out. Many of these vessels tie themselves together stern to bow and use a shallow draft riverboat tug to get up river. Bamboo floats are seen being towed and a few people live on the float keeping it together and take the bamboo to an industrial shipping point for manufacturing, resale distribution, international shipping and most importantly money.

We pulled into Bagan at sunset and took a horse and buggy to a guesthouse before we searched for cheaper accommodations. Eden guesthouse was $20/night with attached bathroom and the Ban Cherry Guest House was $7/night with bathrooms down the hall. We spent the first night at the Eden just to have a place and checkout is at noon so we had time to make the change the next day.

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Katha By Boat To Mandalay

Katha by Boat To Mandalay

We got up early and paid with kyat and boarded at 515 a.m. The ‘Fast Boat’ was sparsely loaded as we began our journey down river and we got a whole two person wood bench each as we left the silt beach at 530 a.m. and still in the dark.

It may be a fast boat but within an hour we had grounded with speed on a sand bar. We sat for 2 hours waiting for a tugboat to pull us this way and that up river while many locals showed up and jumped in the water. It was about a foot deep the length of the boat. There was a patch of grass holding to the river floor 10 meters off the bow. Could have been a signal. All other boats went far to port where went once we were freed.

I got up and took a look around the boat. There was a man sleeping over the engine in the blistering sun and behind him sat a two-pronged propeller with rock bent blades and one entirely missing. It didn’t bode well. The toilet emptied into the river. As we traveled down river the locals would grab a cup, rinse it out and drink out of the river, something that if you and I did we would go straight to the hospital and suffer severe weight loss and probably amebic dysentery.

Once we were free from the sand and heading down river the captain honked at the banks for more passengers. On shore someone would waive a t-shirt and the captain would pull over. Sometimes the locals would sell goods along the boat side or come on board if there was time and sell water, soft drinks, platters of dried fish, rice and chicken in Styrofoam boxes. Beer was very expensive so BYOB and save hotel fare. The boat filled up with people, furniture, and bags of rice in the isle. Many times people could be seen washing their teeth and doing laundry.

There were hundreds logging boats and barges carrying tropical hardwoods heading down stream for extraction by bigger ships and shipped to foreign powers. I don’t know how much is legal or illegal but at the rate they are decimating the forest one should wonder. The 40’ x 3’ in diameter are being loaded along the shoreline with heavy equipment including cranes with hundreds of trees on each barge. I didn’t see any tops or bottoms of the trees just the prime cut. Dump trucks are being loaded by hand baskets usually by women, children and the elderly. They get paid about $2/day off of a barge load of sand and put on trucks to head into the interior most likely for road construction.

After numerous stops for passengers we realized we were not going to arrive at 7pm, more like midnight. I had a quick look in the wheelhouse and saw no instruments, not even a depth finder. Driving at night for the boat captain was going to be complicated with no running lights due to generator inconsistent failure. We traveled down river in the dark and the captain did a great job of dropping people off and avoiding further delays, all in all a great trip.

When we arrived it was midnight and we grabbed a tuk-tuk to the Golden Dream Hotel for one night and off to Bagan by boat the next day. A different kind of boat.

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Mandalay to Katha Town

Mandalay to Na Pha by Train and Katha Town. Burma Myanmar.

The train was a bumpy ride that was supposed to leave at 420pm and arrive at 7am. We boarded and the ticket master had his head in the window having a laugh with his buddies. He saw us and made sure we found our seats. On the one hand it was very nice but it was also a bit weird. The train chugged south out of town of course circling around and heading north. The train swayed left to right and back continually on a British gauge that is thinner than what we use in the States. I fear not much attention has been to sustainability such as maintenance maybe since the British left. The train bucked to the point I had to hold the arm rests to stay in my seats. Even if we had been in sleepers we probably would have been thrown clear of our beds. We were in the day car where most of the seats didn’t recline anymore and sat at a funny slope as to vibrate us oddly uncomfortably out of our chairs constantly readjusting.

The train traveled along small rail side villages and sunflower croplands until the sun dropped over the horizon. Old train engines sat idle on sidetracks gathering dust in preparation to grow plants out of the windows.

After a few hours your seat gets sore. I got up to stretch my legs and stood near the bathrooms just to get off my backside. While standing there I noticed something rolling across the floor as the train listed one way and then the other. It turned out to be a mouse scurrying between the rows of chairs and then there were more. This is an adventure, so things are the way they are. A woman stood up across from me as I returned to my seat and she noticed a bedbug on her white-sheeted chair cover. She immediately stripped off her coat and shook it violently and her blanket and any other loose clothing she had on. Then I noticed bedbug on Poul’s elbow and another on Steph’s chair when she got up. The Burmese have yet to figure out what to do with garbage.

The train bounced along, rosters crowed, mice wandered from local baskets of food to crumbs left behind, and bedbugs had their victims, all in all a fairly uneventful journey. Eventually I did doze off and my Burmese neighbor woke me and explained that the next stop was Na Pha. I grabbed my bag as the train slowed. It was 430 am, the train was 230 hours early. The only thing I learned was, don’t go by arrival schedules. Departure times are fine but for arrivals you have a four-hour window.

A tuk-tuk driver approached the three of us as we got our senses and some bearing. The Irrawaddy River and the town of Katha is approximately16 miles away from Na Pa and over a mountain pass. I would have liked to see the countryside. The road was full of jarring potholes, rickety wood bridges, dry riverbeds and the ride was chilly in the morning fog. When we arrived at Katha all the guesthouses were full, so we dropped off our bags and went for Roti, Dahl and sweet tea. There is a large military presence in Katha and the further north one travels the more military. The military follow tourists and seem to know where they go all day. They say it’s their job to protect you but that’s not what’s going on. They still don’t want you to know anything. You can feel their presence just like before, ‘the walls have eyes and ears.’ Freedom of speech is again under pressure. Many arrests as of late.

We checked in around 9am when the others were heading on their way. Most of the people leaving were military. When we checked in and some remained across the way in another room. This was very similar to the times I’ve been here before. I wasn’t surprised. After a nap I got up and went out to the edge of the Irrawaddy and looked out over the river. I noticed a Burmese man standing nearby. I returned to the guesthouse and so did he. I went to my room briefly and went back across to the river and there he was again. I was up for some ‘cat and mouse’ so off I went with no direction in mind just to see what would happen. They knew where I was all day. My Burmese is rusty but I got enough of it to know they knew. Like I said, the secret police have assimilated into society and locals are still afraid of them.

We stayed one night before getting on a ‘fast boat’, not to be confused with an express boat or a slow boat. In the middle of that night the military man across the hall went to the bathroom down the hall then on his return he turned off the power to my room so the fan wouldn’t run and keep the mosquitos off of me. He giggled as he did it. I got up a few minutes later after he closed his door and turned out his light. I went to the bathroom down the hall and on my return I turned my power back on quietly and went back to bed watching through the ceiling screen for lights, listening for doors and footsteps. The rest of the night was eggshells.

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