A week with Children's Action For Development

PHOTO ALBUM - Phnom Penh & Children's Action for Development

From Battambang, we moved onto Phnom Penh, the bustling  capital of Cambodia.  For a city that was completely abandoned only 30 years ago, there is definitely plenty of life there today – lots of traffic, a lively and trendy riverfront, and restaurants with red Angkor Beer signs lit up everywhere. We had a lot of fun here – happy hour on the river (where we met an actual Australian crocodile hunter), a day at a fancy hotel pool, and dinner with a high school friend of mine, Rebecca Van Elk, who is on her own tour of the world.  Go figure – the first time we see each other in 12 years is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia!

Two of the main tourist sites in Phnom Penh are very sobering, however.  In the late 70’s, the Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian government and evacuated the population from all the major cities into the countryside.  They had a vision of a completely agrarian society, and turned the population of Cambodia into slave labor in the fields.  Over the 4 years of their rule, around 2 million people were killed - either murdered by the Khmer Rouge cadres,  or having died of starvation and disease.  In Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge turned Tuol Sleng school into a prison, and around 17,000 people went through this prison over the 4 years the Khmer Rouge was in power. Only 7 people survived. People were tortured repeatedly for their ‘confession’ (usually having to do with conspiring against the Khmer Rouge or with the CIA), then once they confessed they were executed.  The people slated for execution were taken to Cheong Ek, a farm area about 13 km outside of Phnom Penh, where they were killed and buried (sometimes before they were dead).  Today they’ve turned the prison into a museum, and the “killing fields” have been turned into a memorial.  At the killing fields there are still exposed human bones that slowly come up from the ground as it rains and there is a tactful monument housing about 8,000 human skulls from those who died there. We went to visit both, and I can say it’s hard to describe the experience – it was haunting, sobering, and incredibly thought provoking.   Sadly,  I never even knew this part of history, which has had such a huge impact on this country, had happened before we went on this trip.  

After Phnom Penh, we went back to Battambang to spend a week as volunteer English teachers with an NGO we came across the first time we were in there.  Brian and I attempting to teach English is scary for a couple reasons – 1)we aren’t teachers, and 2) our own English has digressed markedly since we’ve been in Asia.  When trying to communicate with locals in English, we’ve started to find they understand us much better when you just get to the point of what you want – all the little ‘filler words’ we use really just get in the way (ie, “Where is toilet?” or more often, “Toilet?”). Unfortunately, it’s become a bad habit…we catch ourselves leaving out the ‘the’s’ and the ‘ands’ when talking to each other every once in awhile, too.  However, the NGO, Children’s Action for Development (CAD), was just very excited to have volunteers, even if they weren’t actual teachers, and even if it’s just for short term. We’re actually quite excited we stumbled across this NGO – it’s an organization that’s working to improve the quality of life within the community through education of disadvantaged children, outreach to parents, skills-training, and providing income opportunities.  It’s entirely based within the community they’re working in – the director and all the CAD staff are all volunteers from the local villages. These villages are pretty poor,  and the kids that they are taking into the program generally come from families where the parents have abandoned them (it seems many go to Thailand to find work and leave the kids with grandparents or neighbors), a parent has died, or the parents have pulled the kids out of school to help earn money.   It’s an NGO that is definitely doing good things in the local community, and has the potential to really improve the quality of life within in the community for future generations. Being locally-based, though, they don’t have the advantages the internationally-based large NGO’s have, which is mainly the fundraising capability and attracting volunteers from western countries. While we hope that we made at least a little impact with the children during the week we spent with CAD, we also realized that we can make a much bigger impact for this organization by helping to get them publicity in the US. We figured our blog was a good start…it’s worth a look to check out www.cadcambodia.org.

The week we spent working with CAD was a lot of fun, and completely exhausting. We stayed in Battambang city, and rented bicycles to cycle the 14 km each way to the village every day. We started our day at 8:30 in the “Smiling Child Library”, which is an informal education center to help kids who are behind in school catch up so they can get back into public school full time.  They have a reading time in which we made ourselves available to help them with pronouncing English words or just to read to them (there are some scary Cambodian folklore stories out there), and we’d help teach an English class (under the direction of the teachers, who were quite good with the kids), as well. After the Smiling Child Library closed at 4, we’d go watch the CAD football (and by football, I mean soccer) practice from 4-5, then go help teach English till 6 at the after school  program they have at the local school. Then we’d ride back to the hotel, get showered, and grab some dinner. We’d go to bed exhausted every night…not only was hanging out in the 90 degree heat and humidity tiring, but the kids seem to have an endless amount of energy, as well. It was even more tiring on the weekend – they have computer skills classes for the older kids, but a lot of the younger kids also come to hang out at the CAD office since it’s open. Our job mainly became to entertain the younger kids so they’d stay out of the way of the older kids actually trying to do some work.  I am still questioning how it’s possible to have so much energy for such a sustained period of time….after this week, we have a whole new level of respect for anyone who works with kids all day. Although I complain about how tiring the week was, it was also one of the most fun and educational (for us…hopefully for them, too!) times we’ve had on this trip.

A couple highlights from the week -

·         We rode our bikes to and from the library every day, and also made a trip by to the local market for lunch each day. We must have heard “hello” (or more like, “hel-LOOO!!!!”) at least 10 times each trip. The longer we were there, the more kids recognized us, which meant even more “hellos!”  It definitely makes the ride go by a little faster when you spend half of it smiling and waving. 

·         Towards the end of the week, the kids started teaching us Khmer words, as well.  There are so many subtle differences between words in their language that they hear very distinctly, but we just cannot. Just as they have a trouble pronouncing certain sounds we make in our words (“Brian” is really hard for them to say), they make sounds for their language that we just cannot imitate. There were more than a few times that we’d be trying to say the words they were trying to teach us, and they’d just burst out laughing. A couple times, I’m pretty sure that in our butchering of their language,  we accidentally said some naughty Khmer words.  Due to file sizes we are having difficulty, but we hope to post some videos of us failing a Khmer pronunciation lesson given to us by the children.  Stay tuned.
·         We actually did learn to count pretty well in Khmer…one of the more advanced girls was teaching us  “The  ---  costs 1000 (or whatever price) riel (Cambodian currency). She started using fruit as an example.  This information turned out to be enlightening because if her prices were accurate, we found out that we paid about 4 times more than we should have for a half kilo of oranges at the local market.    

After our week working with CAD in Battambang, we needed some time to unwind…and what better place than back at the beach? We are currently in Sihanoukville, which is on the southern coast of Cambodia on the Gulf of Thailand. We figure this is also the perfect place to celebrate our 5^th wedding anniversary in a couple days…we got married looking out over the Gulf of Thailand, so it seems appropriate to celebrate our anniversary on the Gulf of Thailand, as well.   Although so far, the weather hasn’t really been cooperating for laying on the beach, we’ve been finding alternative ways to relax. The other day we watched a movie (pirated, of course) in our own little private theater  (you can rent a private room here complete with a large flat-screen LCD TV and comfortable couches) and enjoyed some tasty BBQ fish on the beach for dinner. We’re looking forward to more of the same the next couple days (maybe with a little sun added in!).  After Sihanoukville, we plan to spend a few days checking out a couple more towns near the coast, Kampot and Kep, and then it’s on to Vietnam!

The Wrath of the Travel Gods

PHOTO ALBUM - Siem Reap & Battambang

After our flight back from Yangon to Bangkok on February 28, we spent three days catching up with blogging, emailing and talking with family; buying toiletries, more malaria prevention medicine, and good books; and consuming the excellent Thai food which we missed during our time in Myanmar.  Also, because we had just spent almost a month keeping our US dollars in perfect condition, Elise needed some time to stop having dreams about her grandfather, Max, rejecting the $10 bill she was trying to give him, and the desperate search to find $10 in a combination of bills that are unmarked, not torn, minted post 1996 – with big heads, and with serial numbers that do not start with ‘CB.’

To get to Cambodia, our plan was to take a bus to Aranyaprathet – the town on the Thai side of the border – and spend the night to break up the journey accross the border to Poipet and then on to Siem Reap.  The bus driver, however, told us not to get off at the Aranyaprathet bus station and instead dropped us off near the Cambodian border at a travel agency that was willing to sell us an overprice Cambodian visa (you can walk 250 meters past Thai immigration and buy one for almost half that price).  I had woken up that morning not feeling very well and now we were faced with the fact that we would either need to backtrack or go across the border and all the way through to Siem Reap that day.  It was later in the day that we would have been if we had planned to go the whole way, but we decided to push on.  After a relatively smooth border crossing and finding some travelers to share a taxi, we were on our way.  The gamble to push on paid off because the once horrible road to Siem Reap we had heard about is now a nice brand-new paved highway and the trip from the border now takes less than two hours.   Even better (or worse depending on how we look at it), I got really sick the next day and ended up laid up in bed with a 101 degree fever – so being in a nice comfortable room with A/C and cable TV in Siem Reap a night early worked out for the better.

The travel gods apparently had decided that our year-off was going too smooth and perfect so far, and therefore decided to throw us this curve ball with my sickness which unfortunately had an effect on our tour of the Temples of Angkor – widely considered the 8^th Wonder of the World.  The Temples of Angkor is one big archeological site of many temples built in the jungle by “god-kings” in the 9^th to 13^th century.  During this time, there were societies with over a million people all prospering off of the resources of the Tonle Sap lake – a huge fresh-water lake that fills by overflow from the Mekong river in the wet season. 

I woke the next morning after spending our entire first day in Cambodia in bed and took my temperature.  It was normal.  Of course I still didn’t feel great, but since I was apparently “normal” and someone with a tendency to “man-up” and push through feeling sick, we decided to take a tuk-tuk tour of the temples for the first day.  After half the day seeing some of the amazing sights in the near 100-degree heat, the travel gods decided that I was not yet ready to enjoy myself.  So I spent the afternoon back at the hotel - followed by the entire next day - feeling horrible again.  Finally I started to get an appetite back, feel much better, and we were able to enjoy the remaining 2 days of our 3-day visitors pass to the Angkor temples. 

One of the main tourist attractions is to get up early and watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat.  The problem was that it wasn’t until the very last day I felt good enough to get up for that.  Elise and I got up at 4:30am and took bicycles in the pitch dark and rode the 6.5km to the temple.  About half-way there, we noticed flashes of lighting.  I cursed the travel gods again.  They apparently didn’t appreciate the cursing because at about 6:10am – right at the time the sun was supposed to be rising over the magnificent temple – the winds picked up and the skies opened and unloaded on us.  We spent the early hours of the morning huddled inside the ruins waiting for the heavy rain to stop so we could ride our bikes back and take a nap before touring the temples in the afternoon.   I hear that the sunrise over Angkor Wat is incredible…but it just wasn’t in the cards for us this time.  Though it didn’t work out perfectly, touring the temples was very impressive and incredibly worth it.  The size and artistic details left by a society of centuries ago is very fascinating.  Also, thanks to Elise for taking care of me, bringing me food, and putting up with my grumpiness because I felt like crap.  She did, however, get to enjoy several 1-hour massages during the downtime of my sickness…    

We next headed to Battambang – Cambodia’s second largest city.  We took the boat through rivers, floating villages, and the Tonle Sap lake.  This boat ride turned out to be very cramped, very loud (the motor was right behind us) and took 9-hours because the water was low enough that the boat dragged along the bottom in many instances.  Probably not worth the time and cost in our opinion, but it was nice to see the villages on the way.

In Battambang we took a cooking class from Nary’s Cooking School.  We went to the market to buy food to make Fish Amok, Beef Lok Lak, and fried spring rolls – Cambodian specialties.  Nary and her husband did a wonderful job.  They run their cooking school from the kitchen in the back of their small restaurant.   We ate like kings and queens that day.

The main sights around Battambang are temples and villages around the city.  We hired a tuk-tuk driver to take us around for the day.  We had a great driver, Bannak, who spoke great English, making the tour a lot more meaningful. We saw how rice paper for spring rolls, bamboo sticky rice, and fish paste were made, heard the legend of the history of Battambang (means “lost wooden stick”), visited the Banan temple, and – most importantly –he took us to the bamboo train station. 

The bamboo train is a unique Cambodian experience.  Using old French-colonial railways, locals have created a “train” which is a simple platform made of nothing more than a couple wheels and axles, a platform made of bamboo, and a small lawn-mower size engine.  It is ingeniously simple, questionably safe, and actually used to transport locals and their goods from village to village.  You sit on the bamboo train and the “Engineer” tilts back the engine so that there is tension in the drive belt.   Off you go -  speeding down the old railway tracks that zigzag and squiggle after years of settlement and neglect – while wondering if the bamboo train is going to fall apart and throw you off the tracks.  Even more ingenious is how it is handled with two bamboo trains come head-on to each other and need to pass:  the train is disassembled by simply lifting the platform off the axles.  The axles are put to the side while the other train passes, then the whole thing is reassembled in less than a minute.  Word on the street is that Cambodia will begin to rebuild the train tracks for a new real train in the next couple months so the bamboo train experience will soon be a thing of the past.  We feel fortunate that we were one of the last tourists to experience (and survive) the bamboo train.    

Next we moved on to Cambodia’s capital and largest city Phnom Penh.

The Perfect Beach

PHOTO ALBUM - Mandalay, Mawlamyine, Hpa-an, The Perfect Beach

Our final stop in Myanmar was the beach. Unfortunately, to get to the beach involved having to obtain a permit in Yangon to visit this area of the country. In 2008,a cyclone hit the river delta you go through to get to the Bay of Bengal coast, and ever since they've required foreigners to obtain a permit to travel through that area. To get the permit, we had to copy a letter they gave us stating that we promised not to participate in any political activity while at the beach. Not a problem, as we’re not sure what “political activity” was available for us to partake. We shouldn't have bothered, since the permit was never checked, but it was interesting how the bus operators took our passports to checkpoints a couple different times on the bus trips (this was not typical on any other bus trips we took).  It was also interesting to observe that each time our passports were given to a government official for processing, some “tea money” (not much different than a bribe) was given to the official by our bus attendant.  

After a 6 hour ride on another bus with leg room meant for elementary school children, we arrived at the beach, not really knowing what to expect. We were more than pleasantly surprised. For 2 ½ days, we had 9 miles of endless, fine sand, clear blue seas, and virtually no one around. It was quiet, the perfect air temperature, and there was a constant breeze that kept us from ever getting sweaty when we basked in the sun. And again, no one was there. We stayed in brand new, well-kept room just a hundred yards off the beach. Breakfast was brought to our balcony every morning. Every night for dinner, we'd go to the guesthouse restaurant, sit at a table literally on the beach, watch the sun set, and eat the most delicious BBQ'd fish (fresh from the sea) that was made by our own personal chef, since, again, no one else was around. We even got a personal conversation with the chef every night after dinner.  We couldn't have asked for a better way to end our visit to Myanmar.

You might have noticed we haven’t yet provided the name of the perfect beach in our blog.  Since we liked it without people there, we decided to do our part to leave it that way. If you want to go, send us an email...and if we like you, we just might let you in on the secret...

Yes, that is an ox-cart.

Buses, Boats, Bikes, and Hikes

After Mandalay our goal was to fit in one more area of the country – the southeast – prior to heading to the beach for a few days.  Because our visas were running out and we have no choice but to catch our flight to Bangkok on February 28, we were trying to cram these two final locations in to relatively few days.  This meant long bus rides and some very tiring travel…but we expected it to be worth it.

After a 10-hour overnight bus from Mandalay to Yangon arriving at 5am, we struggled our way around the bus station trying to figure out how to book a ticket for Mawlamyine – Myanmar’s third largest city.  After a lot of trying to understand broken English and several points in the wrong direction, we found a bus that was leaving at 7am for another 8-hour trip.  At 3pm we arrived in Mawlamyine thoroughly exhausted.  There is not much to Mawlamyine that we could see – it may have had its hay-day in the British colonial days, but now it is a run-down place with not much going on.  We stayed at the Breeze Guesthouse which is right on the Thanlwin riverfront.  The riverfront was gorgeous even though it was lined with crumbling ugly buildings with not much activity.  Should the political situation in Myanmar ever change to warrant foreign investment, I’m telling you that this is one of many places in Myanmar to buy real estate…

 The main reason for heading to Mawlamyine was because it was the origin of a much-recommended ferry ride to Hpa-an.  It was a five and a half hour slow-boat up the Thanlwin river through jungle, villages, and limestone cliffs.  It was a very beautiful, relaxing ride, even worth the $2 ticket that went straight to junta.  We arrived in Hpa-an just before dinner and finally got a good night’s rest.  The next day we planned to rent bikes to ride to and then hike up Mt Zwegabin, a 722 meter high peak with a monastery on top.  The Lonely Planet guidebook states this about Mt Zwegabin: 

“Climb the steps of Mt Zwegabin,  11km south of town, for gods’-eye views, an 11am monkey feeding session and free monastery lunch at noon…take a map and bike and DIY.”

We, however, don’t believe that the Lonely Planet writers actually made the journey and recommend that it change its description as follows:

“Rent a bike, take a map, and ride to Mt Zwegabin, 11 km south of town.  Make sure that you leave before dawn because if you don’t you will miss the 11am monkey feeding session and free monastery lunch at noon because this is a brutally hot and sweat-drenching challenge.  After a very steamy bike ride (and the hand-drawn map will likely get you lost a few times), prepare to climb thousands of steps up a sheer limestone mountain.  Take lots of water and prepare to have to stop a lot.  Imagine Stairmaster on the hardest setting while in a sauna and add the blazing hot sun and some mosquitoes.  Make sure to save time for a beer station stop on the ride back, because you’re going to need it.”

But as always, in hindsight it was very worth it.  The views were amazing, and we did not see another tourist the entire day – only a handful of locals and a gaggle of monks.  By the way, the gaggle of young monks clearly took some “hard-core” points away from us  - they were climbing the mountain barefoot.

The Moustache Brothers

After Inle Lake, the next stop on our itinerary was Mandalay. We had planned two nights in Mandalay, which is roughly 3 days since we'd be leaving on another overnight bus...unfortunately Brian spent all of day 2 in bed trying to sleep of the first illness of the trip (an apparently successful remedy, as he was up and moving again the next day). As a result, I ended up exploring most of the sights we had planned to see in Mandalay on my own, which basically consisted of me renting a bike and heading to see a beautiful teak monastery and a very golden Buddha, while making trips back to the guesthouse every couple hours to make sure Brian wasn’t getting any worse and making 'take away' soup runs (which means your soup comes in a plastic bag).  Neither one of us were overly impressed by Mandalay, it felt like just another big city with less character than Yangon. I would say that I could've totally skipped Mandalay if it weren't for the Moustache Brothers' performance I went to see.  Brian was very disappointed that he was sick and had to miss the show.

The Moustache Brothers are a comedy/vaudeville (Burmese style) team that, in a country where no one speaks out about the government because of fear of the consequences, will call the junta out for exactly what they are - a good ole' boys club that's living the good life at the expense of the citizens of Myanmar. They've paid for their openness - Par Par Lay ("Moustache Brother Number One!") has been arrested 3 times since 1996 (and as recently as 2007), and 2 of the 3 brothers served 6 year sentences after cracking jokes about the government in Aung San Suu Kyi's home.  They used to tour the country, but now they are restricted to nightly performances in their home, and only in English. Supposedly their 84 year old mother stands guard in case the "KGB" comes (“she gives the signal, we run, and they arrest the tourists instead!”).  The performance took place in a single-car garage sized room; they had a platform set up in the middle and about 25 people were seated around 2 sides of it.  They had a microphone in the room, and a old-school boombox (tape-player only) for music. When I came in, I was greeted by Lu Maw ("Mustache Brother Number 2!"), who appears to have the best English and thereby runs the show. When I was asked where I was from and said the USA, his response was "Ah...USA....Obama. Obama black skin, I black skin...I like Obama." (It sounds funny with a heavy Myanmar accent). The show was great - in between jabs at the government and jokes about how everything in his house is from China and costs $3, the whole family (the brothers, wives, and sister) performed traditional dances from around the country and demonstrated different kinds of dress (styles of longyi wear, hat wear, etc). I didn't think to bring my camera, and I totally regret it - they encourage photography, and asked that everyone post pictures on their blogs and on Facebook, because the more attention they get outside of Myanmar, the less likely the government is to shut them down and arrest them again. The first arrest of 2 of the 3 brothers in 1996 was alluded to briefly in the movie "About a Boy" starring Hugh Grant, and Lu Maw said publicity from that minor Hollywood sound bite is probably why his brothers only served 6 years and the punishment was not worse. Although I have no pictures, I give big props to the Moustache Brothers on our blog so they can continue spreading the word about what’s really going on in Myanmar. At the end of the day, jokes are jokes, but I'd venture to say, based on some of our own observations, these aren't far from the truth.

Here are a couple jokes I can remember:

 "My teeth hurt so bad, and I know I need to go to the dentist, so I go to Thailand and find a dentist there. The dentist finds out I'm from Burma, and asks why I come all the way to Thailand, are there no dentists in Burma? I say there are, but in Burma I can't open my mouth."

"Please, tourists, I beg you, do not steal while you are here, or try to cheat the people of Burma. The government doesn't like competition." 

Sadly, neither one of these jokes seem like they'd be out of place on Letterman or Leno...but in Myanmar it's enough to get you in jail.

The World's Longest Teak Bridge (1.2km) - Amarapura (near Mandalay)

Burmese Days On The Trail

PHOTO ALBUM – KALAW & INLE LAKE

After the cramped bus ride from Bagan, we spent two laid-back nights in Kalaw stretching our joints and enjoying the cool weather.  We booked a trek through a local trekking agency (Sam’s) along with several other travelers we met.  We were to walk the 45 kilometers from Kalaw to Inle Lake in three days/two nights.  We had a group of five –Tom (Belgium), Celine (Holland), and Caroline (England), Elise, and me – who would be let by a two guides and a cook through the mountains visiting and staying in the villages of three different tribes along the way. 

This trek turned out to be an incredible experience. 

Our lead guide, San Mya, is 19 years old and a native from a village in the mountains in this general area.  She spoke very good English and was well-networked in the villages even of the different tribes – speaking their languages and translating for us appropriately.  The trek followed mountain ridges and rolling terrain through forests and farmland of rice, ginger, chili peppers, onions, potatoes, and many other crops.  The weather reminded me of warm days and cool nights of the Colorado Rocky summers. 

Itinerary:

Day 1 – Leave Kalaw

Lunch Village:  Lupin (Danu Tribe)

Night Village:  Kyuksu (Pa-O Tribe)

Day 2

Lunch Village :  Kone La (Danu Tribe)

Night Village :  Park Tupork (Taungtu Tribe)

Day 3 – Finish at Inle Lake

Because of the political situation of the past two decades, the tourist industry has not really developed in Myanmar like other nearby countries, so our trek through these villages felt like we were rare visitors rather than just another tourist.   We were welcomed wholeheartedly everywhere we went.  Numerous comments were made on how tall we are and how beautiful the girls were.  Myanmar women are beautiful themselves – but  from their perspective it is clear that there is nothing more beautiful than blond hair and being taller.  Twice we were invited into monasteries where the monks brought out all of the food, treats, and tea they have on hand for special guests.  Chatting - and in one case observing (in reality distracting) a large group of young boy monks during their 2-hour spiritual reading session – went on for over an hour in each case.  Our incredible guides cooked unbelievable meals and we were fed so much food that I was never hungry despite walking 15km per day. 

The first night, we were invited to chat with a group of mostly younger girls and women of the village.  The entertainment of the night consisted of dressing the Elise, Celine, and Carolyn up in the traditional Pa-O tribe’s formal outfit.  With the benefit of having a good translator with us, everyone was always interested to learn what countries everyone was from.  They also always wanted to know who in our group was married –only Elise and I.  In villages where the average woman has kids before age 18, there was always an amusing reaction when it was learned that Elise and I not only were married, we were over 30 years old but did not have children.  Despite that initial cultural shock, we were asked several times to come back and visit their village again with our children some day.  That would definitely be a unique experience.   The second night we stayed in a monastery and the final morning were blessed by the monk wishing us a long and happy life and good jobs. 

On the final day of the trek we descended into the valley towards Inle Lake – a large lake and water-world of floating villages, floating gardens, leg-rowing fisherman, and lots of agriculture, surrounded by picturesque mountains.  We entered the lake at Taungbogyi and had a one-hour boat ride to our guesthouse in Nyaungshwe.  The following two  days were spent relaxing our sore legs and continuing to enjoy the company of the members of our trekking group. 

The Queen Inn (our guesthouse) was amazing….excellent breakfasts in the morning (unlimited banana pancakes) followed by pots of tea while we hung out and talked, random appearances of lassis or lemon juice in the afternoon if you happened to walk by the reception, and a very helpful owner who had some great advice on activities around the lake. Elise and I also took an interesting trip around the lake by bicycle:  rode south from Nyaungshwe to relax in some hot springs, then loaded our bikes on a boat to be ferried across the lake, then back to Nyaungshwe through some beautiful agricultural and mountain scenery in the late afternoon sun. 

“Two-Thumbs-Up” to the Kalaw and Inle Lake region of Myanmar!

Pagodas, Temples, and Buddha’s...and More Pagodas, Temples, and Buddha’s

PHOTO ALBUM - Bagan

From Yangon, we took an overnight bus to Bagan.  It was a much nicer bus than I expected – air-conditioned, with reclining seats, and even a movie. Although it was entirely in Burmese, it was actually quite easy to follow...I enjoyed the snippets of American TV theme songs that kept popping up - including, of all TV theme songs, South Park. According to the guidebook, this was supposed to be a 12-14 hour ride, meaning we’d leave at 6 pm and arrive at the respectable time of around 7 AM the next morning, give or take an hour. Instead, we arrived in Bagan at 3:30 am. Turns out a brand new toll-road leaving Yangon was built which obviously allows for much higher speed travel, and the bus operators have not adjusted the schedules.  Although 3:30 am was not an overly convenient time to arrive, we found a guesthouse willing to let us into a room around 5 am without paying for the previous night, so as always...it all works out in the end.

The reason to go to Bagan is to see the amazing number of temples and pagodas that were built in a relatively small area. The guidebook says that there are over 4000 temples/pagodas, and we only saw a fraction of them while we were there.  According to one of our 'guides' (ie, sand painting salesman), back in the day (11th, 12th century timeframe) the ruling dynasty would just built pagodas and temples upon pagodas and temples, probably to show their wealth, and then the following dynasty would build more to show them up, and the following dynasty even more. The result today is a breathtaking number of pagodas and temples spread out over arid farmland, with mountains and a river in the backdrop. We explored by bike, by horse cart, and by foot...some of the pagodas you can only walk around the lower level and see the ancient paintings on the walls and the Buddha statues (SO many Buddhas...each temple seems to have at least a few, and some seem to have hundreds). My favorites were the pagodas you could climb up the narrow, steep stairs to the top (the human species clearly used to be smaller in size than today), and then relax in the shade of the top of the pagoda and enjoy the view for awhile.

As with most tourist draws, the people who live in the area make their living as part of the tourism industry. It seems as though everyone in Bagan is a horse cart driver, a lacquerware artist, or a sand painter, and they all hang out in front of all the more popular pagodas to give a tour of the pagoda and then invite you to look at their wares. They are actually quite effective sales people...Brian and I are generally not souvenir shoppers, but we spent way more than we intended our first day in Bagan (even though they always ‘make us a very good price’). Our favorite guide/sandpainter was a university student we met while we had our map out on the side of the road (making us the perfect target). He is an English major at a school in Mandalay who sells sand paintings when he is home from school (this may or may not be true, but we liked him a lot so we gave him the benefit of the doubt).  He got us away from the more popular temples to a few more remote pagodas and monasteries...we had a pagoda entirely to ourselves at sunset, which was pretty awesome. Naturally, we added a couple more sand paintings to our collection (we apologize to our families if you don’t need any more artwork on your walls come Christmas...).

After Bagan, it was on to Kalaw, where we planned to arrange a 3 day trek to Inle Lake. Kalaw is around a 10 hour bus ride away from Bagan (to travel approximately 120 miles, to give you an idea the state of the roads we were on). Unlike our bus from Yangon to Bagan, this bus was more like a school bus in which they probably crammed 45 people in a space made for 30. If you didn’t reserve your ticket early enough, you got to sit on a plastic stool in the aisle; it was actually quite comical to look around the bus and see how they managed to fit everyone in it. Luckily we got two seats, but given that my knees were resting against the seat in front of me, I don’t know how anyone taller than me was fitting into the tiny rows (well, I do...Brian had me pretty smushed against the side of the bus, but it was really the only way his legs fit). If there is one thing I’m learning on this trip, it’s that sometimes you just have to say, “it is what it is” and just enjoy the adventure for the sake of it being an adventure.

Current events:

I'm going to shamelessly use this blog to announce the arrival of our brand new nephew, Jack Ganger, born on February 28th. 9 lbs, 1 oz, 20 1/4", and a full a head of hair. Congrats to my brother and his wife!