Myanmar/Burma Yangon to Kalaw

Upon arriving in Myanmar you immediately notice some informational inaccuracies, you CAN get visas on arrival contrary to the information commonly disseminated on the Internet, but they are only available for holders of the passports of certain countries, or business and diplomatic purposes. The other is that even though he country is under the rule of a military junta, or as they like to be referred to, the authority, there is not a feeling of overbearing presence of the military. They are everywhere and the bases are as prevalent as restaurants, but it is such a common sight that they melt into the scenery rather than loom over it. The military presence is felt in other ways, as I will explain later. On the ride from the airport, Siobhan mentions that she gets a much better feeling about Yangon than she did about anywhere else we have been on this trip. This will change. Retrospect will change the feeling again. We get to the hotel which is near the Sule pagoda, and settle in. The room is a little dated and the kettle resembles a nuclear device, but once the workings are understood, it operates as it should and everything you'd want in a room is there. Internet is painfully slow, and this is a fact all over the country. Some places it's so very slow it might as well not exist. The frustration this creates brings me to another thought. 20 years ago, the Internet was the domain of computer geeks and mobile devices did not exist. You still had to use the phone to talk to people, and you had to bring your files with you if you wanted to work when you travelled. Now, on one device, you can talk face to face, take pictures, work, and listen to music all at the same time. These devices have shortened our attention spans and tolerances to the point where if you can't send a message across the world in a matter of seconds, an uncontrollable rage builds in you, and it's directed at the internet and the country you are in. Quite unbelievable is this technology, Star Trek stuff really, and it's taken for granted that the world is connected to you and you to it. There are some parts of the world where the internet speeds are still comparably slow, but the locals are still quite pleased with it because they don't have the speeds that we do, but they do have internet, and that is mostly good enough for them. For some of these countries, the technology didn't exist until very recently and is heavily monitored and controlled by the government. In more than one country, Google and YouTube is banned, and in its place are authorised, severely censored versions. What I am getting to is this; try to understand that what you hold in your hand,likely right now, would be considered witchcraft not so long ago, and is still a novelty to some, and the fact that you have worldwide access to it is a truly remarkable thing. Be patient. Your world will still exist even if you can't get to Facebook right away. I have digressed. Once outside the hotel, which is right next to the former city hall, you notice the whole area is a bit run down. The pavements, or sidewalks as we north Americans call them, are in dreadful disrepair to the point where enormous holes open up in front of you at quite random intervals, making walking down them feel like a live action version of the 80's video game Pitfall. Made myself feel pretty old for a second there. We try to find a restaurant, turning right off the street where our hotel is, and into the unknown wilds of Yangon. The city is not really set up for western tourists, apparently there were only 600 000 tourists last year to Myanmar, less than rode the London Eye last year. The restaurants are many, but the signs in English are very few, and as I can't read the Burmese Unicode language, we are forced to keep walking until we find one that has some acknowledgement of our failings, a sign at least partially in English. We happily scamper in, they could have been serving scabby dog on a stick, but because it said scabby dog on the menu that I could read, I would have ordered it. Fortunately there was a truly lovely noodle dish and the tom yam soup was second to none. The bathroom which was located at the back of the kitchen looked like some rectal apocalypse had happened, so I felt it very, very important, immediately after concluding my business, to burn my hands off my arms. I found the alcohol wipes shortly before it came to that. One glaring cultural difference is obviously the importance of hygiene. They think that so long as they have cleaned themselves, it doesn't really matter about the condition of the surrounding area ie. cleaning the toilets or floors or walls or whatever else has gotten impressively soiled over the years of continual bodily functions. We, in the west, feel that the spread of disease doesn't end with a quick wash of one's backside. The important thing to take away from this is that the food was delicious, and we eventually made our way back to the hotel. As we walked down the perilous sidewalk we noticed the large number of restaurants with signs in English, English menus and western food, and realised that had we turned the other direction out of the hotel, we would have been immediately greeted by all manner of familiar food and even made to look like familiar restaurants. Sigh. We needed some things for the little boy, so I ask for directions to a store that sells milk. I am sent to a little shop that sells mouthwash from 1975. Not exactly what I need, so I ask the shopkeep where I should go. I am directed to Ruby Mart, a large department store, which I had no idea was there from looking from the outside. Most of the buildings are in dire need of repair and basic upkeep, unless it is a religious building, so to hide a 4 floor departments store here is quite a feat. Inside, the shop feels like the retail equivalent of Kathmandu. Loud, wholly inappropriate music is playing from the entertainment section, the aisles are really just too small for anyone western to get through (read fat), and the aisles, so helpfully marked with the contents, don't really contain those things, but if you look for it, it is there. Breakfast cereals are next to makeup are next to dog toys, but if you look, it is there. Feeling like I have achieved the impossible, I have foraged in this unforgiving land and found what I need to help my family survive. The truth is that the locals are really very friendly, very helpful, and very eager to practice their English by speaking with you. Irrelevant. I have conquered. Returning with the booty, we prepare for the plane to Heho airport the next day. The flight is on a little twin engine prop plane, which has Siobhan chanting her Hare Krishna mantra almost immediately. The takeoff was smooth, the flight was very smooth, and the landing was as smooth as a little plane like that can manage. It seemed a little odd to us that on a plane that clearly held dozens of passengers, only six were on it, including us. We know that we are not encouraged to take airplanes as the money goes to the regime, but the bus was out of the question due to serious safety issues. On the road from Heho airport to Kalaw, our taxi driver speeds and overtakes "slow moving" trucks, cars and motorcycles, making Siobhan very nervous, and making me want to assuage her fears by telling her that it's safe enough, we're not going to fast, the driver knows what he is doing. A bus overtakes us, beginning a diatribe about bus legalities, and what they can and cannot do in England. She gets cross, feeling that I am minimising her fears, not supporting them, and I suppose I am just trying to make her feel better. I'm failing. When she gets upset about safety, she sees danger everywhere. An uneasy silence descends on the taxi, as we try to calm down and stop arguing. Then we see it. A bus has crashed through the concrete bullards at a hairpin turn and ended up over the cliff and down the mountainside. There are people crying, the military are there, but no emergency vehicles yet. The military presence is likely accidental, as there are military personnel everywhere, so he was probably just passing by. There are bystanders and rubberneckers with cameras. We drive slowly past, the taxi driver trying to get an eyeful as well. This has done nothing to make Siobhan feel safer, and naturally reinforces safety fears about drivers and buses and speeding and fiery death. When we get to the hotel in Kalaw, which is really lovely, nestled in the mountains and amongst a blanket of green, with cool, clean air, and very friendly staff, the Nature land 2 if anyone cares, Siobhan trys to find information about the crash, but only finds info about a peculiar sight we noticed. On large trucks and buses, a person hangs off the left hand side, sometimes at the front and sometimes the side exit on buses. Why would they do that, you ask? I shall tell you. When cars were introduced to Burma, they were right hand drive and folks drove on the left side of the road, due to the British influence and at the time, rule. When the junta took over, they decided to do away with almost all things British, and literally overnight announced the they were now to drive on the right hand side of the road, making it fantastically dangerous to drive and even more dangerous to overtake, which they do at every opportunity. So dangerous that they can't see if cars are in the oncoming lane and and can't overtake safely, so drivers require someone hanging out of the vehicle to let the driver know if they feel it is safe enough to pass. No real knowledge of the reaction time of the driver, and the driver is completely reliant on this lookout man, who may make bad decisions about the amount of time required to pass a vehicle given the speed they are travelling at, the distance between the vehicles, and the estimated speed of the oncoming vehicle, all of which is hard enough hen you are driving and overtaking by yourself in your sensible country. We had initially planned to take an overnight bus from our next stop in Inle Lake to Bagan. 10 hours in the dark, with nothing but the constant fear of crashing and burning to lull us to sleep. Siobhan tries to find out if it is a relatively safe ride, not too many twists and turns, maybe not too many accidents on that stretch of road. It is the ride from hell, apparently. A plane is just too expensive. We decide to get a taxi for the 5 1\2 to 6 hour ride. I'll tell you how we fared next report.