Travel – Page 22 – Where is Phil now?

The temples of Bagan – day 3

Day 77, Wednesday 21 March 2012, Bagan

Back to using MS Word, not that I disliked BlogDesk, I just realised I lost my own original copy of the blog… I may go back to it yet.

Mike was feeling unwell this morning so we hung around the hotel for a while to see if things would improve, around mid-morning the power went out which knocked off the fan and air con, didn’t do much for Mike feeling lousy but was a good reason for me to go out. I had sort of arranged with Giovanni to ride out to Old Bagan with him, do a couple of the temples that neither of us had seen and then go our separate ways.

Our first stop was LokaHteik Pann, one of the big temples on the way to Bagan.

This temple had steps right up the outside which was quite unusual for the area but great for the views…. A tour bus full of Burmese arrived as we were there, they were escorted to the top and back down again and back onto their bus, all quite normal tour bus behaviour.

When we got to the bottom I ventured off into one of the other buildings and found this stunning example of a reclining Buddha, probably 20 metres long, the Buddha was only lit by the three doorways it was just awesome and I cannot believe the tour group did not stop to see it. It was the most beautiful one I have seen in Myanmar.

Next was Sulameni Pagoda, which had been extensively repaired with assistance from the Korean government, and this was subtly noticeable in the site. We were here at mid-day again, which sucks photographically, but does mean very few other tourists and more time to look at the detail. This temple had some stunning art work inside, a lot of which was in original condition, or if it had been repaired it had been done very well – so maybe good on the Koreans for being subtle. I was faffing about admiring the art and taking photos and found Giovanni sitting around outside. I said how much I loved the murals, and he said “I am Italian, we have great murals” . I had to laugh, I guess when you are used to Michaelangelo , the works here are very crude…. plus a wall with 999 Buddhas is probably not that interesting ! I still loved it. (apologies, just saw that this image is wonky !! and i cannot be stuffed fixing it !)

We went our separate ways from here with Giovanni going back to the temples in Old Bagan and me heading out to the southern area. My first stop was Dhamma Yazika pagoda, which was an odd 5 sided pagoda built in 1196, quite different to the others in Bagan. It has also had extensive renovation and is quite well visited by local worshipers.

This was the most southern point on my travels and for me the last place that was ‘fun’.

[rant warning] I like temples, I mean I really do like them, not for any religious reason as I am a confirmed non-believer, but I like them as sacred places and respect their reason for being. I like to spend time looking through them at my own pace, looking at what I can (I respect all the rules and never go across barriers) and in the order that takes my fancy, and often this is in the “wrong” order – but I don’t care. What pisses me off is being followed or ‘guided’ around the sites by souvenir touts, at the next temple I went to the ‘guide’ got quite annoyed as I was not going where he wanted nor at the pace he was dictating, I chose to stop and look out at the view, or look at the images that were ‘uninteresting”. it got worse as I went around the southern temples so I rode off in a huff and it ruined my day. Well not really as it was still freaking awesome ! [end rant]

Stupidly I did not get the name of this white pagoda, but it is stunningly beautiful and you cannot get inside without the guide. This was the first locked pagoda I have come across in the 3 days of touring Bagan, I can understand why they are locked (sort of), the murals here are great and it appears few people come here. And I am sure the guide is trying to be helpful, but not speaking anything but Burmese and speaking through a mouthful of betel nut was next to useless. He also got grumpy as I was wandering at my own pace, but at least I could take photos…

I loved this nat image.

I left there a wee bit frustrated and rode off hoping to find some more obscure pagodas down the dirt roads.

I got to Nandamannya Pahto which had some stunning mural work, but this one I was not allowed to take photos, though the betel nut chewing incomprehensible guide was willing to sell me some art works showing the murals.

I just got the hump(not visibly – bad loss of face and offensive in SE Asia!) , got on my bike and rode back to the hostel. I met an American guy who was heading in the opposite direction to me and he said it just got worse…. and damnit my bike was awesome all day !

I guess most of you (if you have made it this far – maybe not ! are sick of temple photos anyway)

I had a wee lie down and Mike was feeling a whole lot better for not going out today. Giovanni and I caught up again later on and went out for a final ride around town to look for a sunset, we headed down to the river and found these monk trainees kicking a ball around at the back of the monastery.

Then went down to the river for sunset.

The three of us left reconvened for a final meal at Weatherspoons and I spoiled myself with a big burger – a massive protein hit. It was damn good… while we there we watched the owners kids counting spaghetti sticks, we asked him why and he said he imports his spag from Italy, it was expensive so he wanted to make sure all his customers got the same amount per meal, rather one getting too much and another not enough. Awesome.

Giovanni was on the 5 am direct bus to Inle and Mike and I were on the indirect at 7.00 so it was an early night.

I loved Bagan !!!

Mt Popa

Day 75, Monday 19 March 2012, Bagan – Mt Popa

At dinner last night we discussed the possibility of joining Bob, Paulo and Giovanni on a trip to Mt Popa, about an hour and half drive from Bagan in a hired van. Mike and I decided to go ahead so agreed with Bob over breakfast. The total cost for the van was 35,000 Kyat and worth it split five ways, under $10 NZ a head.

Mt Popa is known for the Popa Taungkalat monastery on its peak and the the 37 nats (spirits) that live on the mountain. Me Wunna is the main nat.

The van left town with the five of us on board soon after 9.00 and we had a mandatory tourist stop (which wasn’t on our plan) at a jaggery making place. Jaggery is a sugar like substance made from the sap from the seed of a Toddy palm tree. It was actually quite interesting to see how it was all made using the primitive technology that is available to the Burmese villages where there is no electricity,this farm had sixty palm trees. They also make peanut oil from grinding peanuts using a bullock drive pestle and mortar and “whisky” which is basically pure fermented sugar alcohol.

Alcoholism is a big killer with young men frequently drinking themselves to death on the cheap locally produced fire water.

After our local tourism show we set off on the real journey to Mt Popa.

After an hour or so of driving and soon after we hit the low hills our driver stopped for us to take a photo of the view of Mt Popa and the temples. It was a wow moment ! none of us had any idea of what to expect, i was thinking a monastery on a hill, but nothing like this. Another foggy/smoggy/dusty skyline, everyday in Myanmar was the same, it is the time of year, little wind and no rain to blow away the dust and the constant fires from burning off old cane and corn fields as well as the destruction of forests, cooking and dirty old cars.

Sadly it is ‘the” place to stop so the local villagers had the young girls out selling souvenirs, so sad they are not at school.

It was another half an hour to the temple entrance and there were a lot more tourists here than i expected, the whole village is geared towards tourists and there was a significant amount of industry around it, stair wipers, monkey shoo-ers, souvenir and water sellers etc etc.

Note the slingshot, used to deter the more aggressive monkeys.

The monastery is quite ordinary (by the regions standards !!) , but the walk up to the top was interesting, there are numerous stops on the way with descriptions of the life of Me Wunna and the various nats. Me Wunna is in the green.

The top had some semi-spectacular views (hazy again) and plenty of Buddha and monk statues. There was a MASSIVE amount of cash offerings in all the small temples – a guy with a gun and helicopter could be very rich !

We spent a couple of hours there and headed back down to the village.

Giovanni, Paulo, Bob and Mike.

Love this cow.

Obviously NZ farmers have been bullshitting us (pun intended) for years about how many acres are required per cattle beast !

Our driver was a bit miffed that we did not want to have lunch at the local restaurant, we assume he got some kickback. Bob had been to a great vegetarian place Yar Pyi in Old Bagan and wanted to go back there today. Our driver was initially reluctant to take us, but once the inevitable had sunk in he was OK with it, turns out Yar Pyi is owned by his uncle.

The food at Yar Pyi was great, most of the guys had the famous guacamole but i went for a pumpkin curry and it was very good. The owners family were great, very friendly and a bit of a laugh. They loved Bob as he had been there twice before and kept coming back with more people in tow. After lunch it was back to the hotel for a lie down and a clean up before dinner.

Dinner was back at the Weatherspoon again, I had my first salad since being in SE Asia and it was great!

Though this post may not inspire any potential visitors, if you are in Bagan and can get a crew together to take vehicle, it is definitely a worthwhile day trip, I did enjoy the day !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Popa

Bagan – beautiful Bagan (day 1 of 3)

Day 74, Sunday 18 March 2012, Bagan

Ah, Bagan ! Bagan is what I have most wanted to see in Myanmar. The Bagan archaeological zone is approx 42 square km’s and contains over 3000 (yep three thousand, or 4400 depending on your source) stupas’ monasteries and temples dating back to the 1100’s. Angkor may contain big and impressive temples but Bagan has the volume, and oh how I loved them !

The plan for the day was to hire bicycles (1500 kyat (2 NZD) for a day), leave late morning and ride to New Bagan about 10km away and the furthest point from Nyaung U. At New Bagan we would check out some of the mid-range accommodation options and see if any had wifi (our hotel has no internet) or would be a good place to chill if we got sick of the Eden Hotel after the two nights we had booked for. We would then check out the temples etc on the way back and hit one of the biggies for sunset.

At the free breakfast – toast, egg and fruit I was chatting to Bob who I met last night and he was meeting an Italian guy he had met at Inle Lake who arrived in town yesterday, I asked him the Italians name and he said it was Paulo. I replied that I thought it might have been Giovanni (who I first met in KL and again 2 days ago in Mandalay) and he said that Paulo had just met with Giovanni and was meeting him again in town tonight, so we planned on all meeting up for dinner later – a small world. Unfortunately breakfast pretty much went straight through me , so I was really hoping it was not a re-occurrence of last week.

I went and checked the internet shop again and the web was still out of action, damnit ! I wanted to email a few people and let them know what was happening in my week. I am so reliant on the web, so different to when I went to Europe in the eighties and it was all slow post and no one worried if they didn’t here from you for a few weeks.

Around 10.30 we went to the bike rental place over the road from the hotel and rented two (untrustworthy) steeds. I would call them girly bikes, but everyone rides them and the basket on the front is so much better than having a backpack sweating away on your back. The seat was way too low, it had one gear and virtually no brakes, but it was a bike and we were off exploring.

If you got bored with me going on about Angkor Wat, now would be a good time to stop reading, as this is all about temples, and I soooooo love the temples – and the buddhas and monks and nats and ogres and all the other bits and pieces associated with Myanmar’s Buddhism.

The first km was riding through the outskirts of town, past the villager’s houses and gardens, cows and chickens and pigs. It is very dry so not a lot of small greenery, though plenty of trees and as with most of SE Asia, lots of cafes, small restaurants and little shops selling all sorts of useful things. Out of town we started to see stupas and small pagodas on the road side. It is a six 6km ride to Old Bagan on the old road and there is plenty to see on the way, we had decided that we would focus on the further away sites today and come back tomorrow for the closer ones, so we just rode on past. The road was not pancake flat like I expected, with lots of small dips and rises and the surface was not too bad. Mike got his first flat tyre just outside of Old Bagan, fortunately bikes are very common here so there are numerous bike repair stands around the place, so we were soon back on the road after a valve replacement.

The archaeological museum is in Old Bagan, so we paid the $5 entry fee and took an hour or so to wander around the museum (relishing the air con) and learning about the things we will see today. It seems a lot of the carvings and features of the temples have been removed, either stolen or damaged or taken to museums for safe keeping. It was a useful trip as there is little or no information out in the field and my guidebook is next to useless for detail. The museum looks like it has been built at great expense by the government, which sucks when you see how little money the real people have 😦

Old Bagan used to just be called Bagan until 1990, when the government forced all the residents out of town and moved them to a new village – now called New Bagan, four kms down the road. Old Bagan is now full of resorts for rich people and package tour tourists as well as some of the big temples – hence the clean out…

The massive temple building effort in Bagan was started in 1044 when King Anawratha took the throne and embraced Buddhism. The building frenzy lasted 200 years until King Narathihapati bankrupted the city building Mingalazedi pagoda leaving the area vulnerable to invasion by Kublai Khan in 1287. The whole area was damaged in an earthquake in 1975. Sadly Mingalazedi, which is supposed to be beautiful inside is under renovation.

We carried on the ride to New Bagan, where we had lunch at the Green Elephant, it was a tourist place with inflated prices but we decided to eat there as we had not had decent food for a few days and my stomach was not feeling that great. The food was very good too ! one of the great things in Myanmar is a lot of the restaurants give a gift of a small plate of fruit as a dessert, I ate a bit of the fruit but pretty much had to go straight to the loo again, I had a lot of fruit at breakfast as well so I am wondering if I am overdosing on fruit after a long period without it ? I was a bit worried that this was going to be the start of another four days of stomach illness, but fortunately it was the last real episode.

Outside the restaurant I found my first flat tyre of the day, so walked down the road till we found a tyre repair man who pumped my tyre up and we rode around and looked at a couple of hostels. At the second hostel we visited my tyre was flat again so had a valve change and rode on some more, this time we managed to make it out of town and it was time to go sight see.

We stopped at numerous small pagodas during the day, a lot are empty of anything at all, most of the stupas had four Buddha figures inside and most of those are locked behind gates. There are a lot of great Buddha and monk statues to see though.

My wheels…

Lay Myet Hnar temple

The view from the roof. A lot of the pagodas have access to the roof, but the passages are small and tight and in some cases very easy to miss.

Dhammayangi temple

Some of the temple have remains of murals on the walls, a lot in a state of disrepair, which I like, in some cases touch up work has been completed which ruins the authenticity for me. The same applies to most of the large Buddha figures. This monk was part of a series of monks painted on the wall.

This temple was built in the mid 1100s and is one of the biggest temples in the area, the inner part of the temple was blocked soon after it was built, but we could walk around two external passageways. I found a sneaky passage way to an upper window and shot a few photos of the view.

The big temples close to the villages where the roads are sealed and in reasonable condition draw all the package tour tourists and late in the day is when they all come out. Like some pre-dusk vampire hoard they magically appear and suck all the vitality out of the sites, luckily they only seem to stay for a few minutes – or maybe the light is just too much for them. This is why I suffer the heat of the day. (Mum – sorry !!!)

Ananda Paya

This is supposed to be the most beautiful temple in Bagan, but frankly I found it dull. It had been extensively renovated and all the small figures were behind bars. It is possibly the most beautiful on the package tour trips, but i found some stunningly preserved sites out in the field over the next few days.

There was very little mural work., but it was in original condition and hard to find, it is lucky I like poking my nose into all the doorways and walkways….

What was cool was the inner wall was lined with indented shelves, presumably with Buddha figures, right up to the ceiling five or six metres up.

When we left Ananda I found I had another flat tyre, which I had pumped up at the place Mike had his flat repaired earlier in the day. We were originally planning on going to one of the big temples and getting to the roof with the horrible herds for some photos, but the sunset looked like it was going to be as dire as every other day in Myanmar and with the constant flat tyres and a six km ride between towns we decided to head back before nightfall and check some of the small temples on the way.

At the Upalithein Monastery

Mike found he too had another flat tyre so started walking towards town and I rode ahead and stopped to take photos along the way. After stopping to at my final temple I had a flat front tyre this time so ended up walking with Mike back into town. It was a looong 3km…

We got back later than expected so had a quick shower as we were meeting Bob for dinner, we walked way the heck out to the small Weather Spoon cafe where we had an excellent meal and a couple of well earned beers with Aussie Bob and Italian Paulo. The cafe had slow and sporadic internet and I managed to get one email and one facebook posting away before giving up !

On the way back I was drawn into one of the local cafes to watch the end of the Chelsea / Leicester City FA cup tie, they LOVE their football here.

Surprisingly after a warm day of riding and walking I felt good. The weather here is not as hot as elsewhere and definitely not as humid as Cambodia.

Did I love the day – yes I did !

The last of the prepared posts, back to writing and some photo editing now !

The boat from Mandalay to Bagan

Day 73, Saturday 17 March 2012 , Mandalay to Bagan

Up early, no internet again, I found out that the connection was in the hotel owner’s house and he doesn’t turn it on until 8.00 AM, we left at 7.15.

Today we caught the fast tourist boat to the town of Bagan down the Ayeyarwady River, a theoretical six hour ride that took eight. The boat was great, big and half full with a small, but expensive cafe and definitely priced so that only tourists could afford it at $40US a ride. It was a lot more expensive and slightly faster than the bus, but a whole lot nicer I suspect.

The morning was very glarey again so the early photos are quite washed out. Stupidly I did not get a photo of our boat, but I suspect the one below is one of the slow ones.

And this fishing boat should not be on the water at all.

As we passed Saigang we saw a few of the things we missed when we only did the quick stop yesterday, there was some nice colonial buildings near the water front.

This is the dry season so the river is incredibly low, small communities move down onto the sand to fish and have easy access to water. Thatched huts with no power or water are common throughout the parts of Myanmar that we travelled.

The ride was long and uneventful (thankfully) though it was far from boring, lots to see from the side was we made our way down the, not so beautiful, Ayeyarwady River to Bagan.

This lady was selling snack food from another boat when we pulled in to pick up a river pilot for a section of the river. You will see on her face a white/yellow paste, this is called Thanakha and is on most women’s, a lot of children’s and some men’s faces, throughout Mynamar. It is part make-up, part skin freshener and part sun block. I would suggest this woman is using it as a sun block as normally it is only applied to the cheeks and forward. it is an old tradition in Myanmar and one that has thankfully not died. Thanakha is made from the ground up root and bark of (I am assuming) the Thanakha tree…

The sun was setting just as we arrived in town.

We had not arranged any accommodation as there is a vast array in the three large villages that make up the Bagan region, Nyaung U is the budget village, Old Bagan, the resort village and New Bagan is the mid range. The boat docked at Nyaung U so we decided to try there first.

Once on dry land we encountered the usual manic state of dozens of cab, motorbike and tri-shaw drivers trying to sell us their services or suggest a hostel. I got a bit ticked off with them as i tried to consult the guide book on hotel names. Naturally the one I chose happened to be owned by the uncle of one of the tri-shaws so we ended up with him and his friend transporting us, via the archaeological site ticket office ($10US for a week) to the Eden Hotel. The hotel is cheapish, reasonably comfortable so we decided to stay. My pack on the back of the tri-shaw.

We had dinner in a cheap Myanmar/Chinese place up the road (we found way better eats the next day) and then went to the internet shop, where the internet was apparently broken. I found the cheapest beer in Myanmar (Andaman Gold), so grabbed a couple of very cold cans and went back to the hostel. Outside our room I ran into Bob an Aussie of similar age to me who is living in China, we chatted for a while and I shared a beer.

And that was the end of a reasonably enjoyable day, as a means of transport I have enjoyed the boats I have caught.

Mandalay – 3 ancient cities tour

Day 72, Friday 16 March 2012, Mandalay

Yesterday we booked a car to take us on the ‘3 cities’ tour, it is a well worn tourist route that takes in three ancient cities that are near Mandalay. There is limited public transport available to tourists and this just seems to be the only way to get out of the city to see the sites when you do not have much time. It was just over $30 for the day for the car so not unreasonable. Jacqueline, who we met in Yangon joined us for the day as well so the cost between three was good.

The car was a small, old, Mazda ute and we sat on a couple of bench seats facing inwards in the back. I like travelling out in the open, though the dust and fumes got to us by the end of the day. We left the hotel at 8.30 into the tail end of rush hour, the roads in Mandalay are not as wide as those in central Yangon so there was a lot more traffic, mixed in with the scooters and the usual lack of any traffic control at intersections and it was a noisy stop start ride to the edge of town. It appears that Mandalay has every type of transport available to man, horse and cow drawn carts, cars, bikes, buses and trucks, all fully laden. I particularly love these small trucks and have yet to see them elsewhere, they are very loud, slow and belch out masses of dirty black smoke. I have seen a number of Toyota Hiace trucks with these engines bolted on to the front.

The main road out of town has been fortunately split into two separate roads, one for each direction, so reasonably safe, given the way they drive. On the way to Sagaing we hit a traffic snarl up, after a while I took a peek round the side of the ute and was staring at the bum of an elephant in a truck, not something I see every day !

The first stop was Sagaing Hill, sadly our driver had lousy English so we didn’t get any explanation about things during the day and I don’t think we got to see much outside of the big attractions. As we were walking around yesterday we were offered day tours from a number of people who had excellent English, but we had already booked through the hotel so had to turn them down. Next time I will wait and make better informed decisions.

I could have spent a day in Sagaing alone, the area has over 500 temples and stupas all seemingly connected by vast covered walkways up and down the small hills. Sadly, as it has been everywhere in Myanmar, the sky was foggy/dusty/smoggy so there was limited view and the glare really made photography tough. Like the other large stupas in Myanmar the main stupa on the hill is layered in gold leaf.

Around all around Myanmar are these drink stations (I am not willing to try them) . I am quite fascinated by them, not sure why as they are mostly the same and quite simple, I will do a photo post of them at some stage.

From the hill we had the driver drop us off at the start of the Ava Bridge, which crosses the Ayeyarwady river (Irrawady) and we walked over to the other side, with me stopping for photos along the way. Bizarrely the walkway over the bridge was infested with small moths, thousands of them, not something I have seen anywhere else. The Ayeywady runs pretty much north to south through central Myanmar and is the key source of transport and water for many people.

The next stop was the ‘island’ of Inwa, largely cut off from the mainland, by the river and canals the island held the Burmese capital of and on for four centuries from the mid 1300s , but few remains of this exist, parts of the palace wall and one tower are all that are viewable.

[rant warning] I really liked the things we saw today, would loved to have spent more time exploring all the places we visited, and much more around Mandalay, but from Inwa till bed time I was very frustrated by unexpected costs. I didn’t realise you had to get a boat to Inwa (I didn’t know it was an island before we left, should have read more), so the boat was an extra expense for the day, it wasn’t much but by the end of the day we had shelled out a bit here and a bit there and I pretty much spent three times my daily allowance. Hopefully this will not haunt me later in the trip as the budget was tight and I cannot get more money as there are no ATM’s. Inwa was also the start of Siem Reap size hassle by children (and adults) trying to sell souvenirs, they are persistent and annoying. [rant over]

The boat ride was a couple of hundred metres and once on the other side we found we had to take a horse and cart ride around the sites (it was further than we thought – ignorance strikes again) this was a further $10 for the three of us. Again our guide spoke no English so I have no idea about the first stupa was stopped at as it was not in the book. The ogre motif is not something I have seen anywhere else in SE Asia.

Some extremely shoddy repair work had been done on some of the stupas here, it was a real shame as a lot of it is unnecessary, it wasn’t needed for safety reasons, and it was appallingly and slightly randomly done. I am glad this Buddha had not been touched as I liked the state of disrepair.

We made our way to Bagaya Kyaung a teak monastery from the mid 1800’s, which is still being used as a school. Here we had to pay $10 each for a week long pass to visit all the old sites around Mandalay, an expense I was anticipating. The monastery was bare but fascinating, the external carvings being quite weathered. The Buddha inside was a lovely alabaster creation, but too dark too photograph.

The monastery had a small working school inside, I am not sure if this was for the benefit of the tourists or not. Don’t get me wrong seeing kids in school was a great thing as most do not seem to go at all, so any education is good, but the monk was just sitting there while the kids did their thing.

[edit] At breakfast on our last day in Myanmar I was talking to an American volunteer teacher who said that school is mandatory in Myanmar, and most kids go, maybe she hasn’t been to Inwa or maybe the school day is short and kids go in shifts as is the case elsewhere in Asia. I was pondering a post on ‘well meaning’ christian teachers after listening to a couple at the airport in Yangon as I was leaving the country, but I wont as I may offend. [end edit]

The next pagoda we stopped was mostly collapsed but had a very nice, weathered Buddha figure with a monk on each side. I haven’t seen this style, I particularly liked the peaceful expression on the kneeling monks faces.

The royal palace watch tower was built in 1822 and is virtually all that remains within the palace walls, the tower was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1838 and has been partly restored the view from the top was pretty good (though of course hazy !) and we got to share the space with some young girls trying to sell us post cards, we didn’t stay long. The tower is on an angle and is known as ‘the leaning tower of inwa’.

The final stop on Inwa was the Maha Aung Me Bonzan monastry, which was started in 1822.

After the monastery it was back in the boat and back to the mainland, where we pretty much were forced to stop and buy lunch at the local cafe for about twice normal prices. The food was BAD, so we were not entirely amused. At lunch I ran into Giovanni, the Italian guy I did the night visit to the Thaipusam festival in Kuala Lumpur with back in Feb. It was good to catch up. [edit] and the first of many catch-ups!

From Inwa we went to Amarapura and for the me the highlight of the day [edit] maybe of all Myanmar[end edit] – U Bein’s bridge. This is the world’s longest teak bridge at 1.2km, during the rainy season the river is almost to the bridge – there must be a huge amount of water going through.

We arrived too early for sunset so we took a leisurely walk across the bridge and visited a small temple on the far side, we then took a slower stroll back. In theory we should have spent more money and hired a boat to row us out into the river to take photos of the sunset over the bridge. Instead we walked down some steps to a sand bank in the river and hung out there until the sun set, which was entirely unspectacular. Giovanni joined us here for an hour. (and I run into him again in a couple of days). I loved the bridge and had a good time on the river bank taking photos of the people walking across.

I was desperate to get a good monk shot here and I was rewarded with a few.

After the sunset over the bridge it was a dirty, dusty, fumey, eye watering ride back to the hostel. Jacqueline and I had decided to meet with some others from her hostel to go and see the Moustache Brothers political cabaret show. So it was a quick shower and out down to her hostel to get a cab to the show. We were expecting normal cheap SE Asia prices but we were told it would be $10 return and no negotiating. We told the driver no and went and found another driver who said the same thing – i suspect a rort, the ride is about 4kms, and basically it is the only way there. I would feel safe(ish) walking the streets of Mandalay, well safe from being robbed, but there are no sidewalks, a lot of the cars and bikes have no lights running and the air is foul, so we took the cab.

The beer at the cafe next to the show was twice the price of beer at the hotel, but we had a local guy with us so paid a normal price for beer and some snacks. The show also cost $10, which was more than it was worth and way more than we all expected, I had to borrow a couple of thousand kyat (pronounced chat) from Jacqueline as I didn’t have enough money on me. The show was interesting I suppose a mix of political jokes (the govt. Does not like burglars as it doesn’t want the competition) comment on their past and a song and dance show showing Burmese dress styles (weird)…. The Moustache brothers have been doing the show for many years and have been arrested a couple of times, in 1996 they were sentenced to six years hard labour for dissent after a show at Aung San Su Kyi’s house. They are only allowed to perform the show in their house and in English, which they do nightly – it was funny in parts and weird in others, regrettably I did not think to take my camera.

Internet was off when I got back to the hostel.

The text was written at the time, but not posted till 12 days later due WordPress being blocked in most of Myanmar, and slow internet where it wasn’t. I have noted where I changed from the original.

Mandalay

Day 71, Thursday 15 March 2012, Mandalay

Mandalay, Mandalay.

I have always been an avid reader, as a child and young adult I was drawn to novels of adventure and mystery and there are certain place names that even now send a small shiver of expectation of adventure up my spine. Mandalay is one of those places names.

Up at 5.00 am for a 5.15 taxi to Yangon airport. This was probably the crustiest taxi we have had and the driver certainly had a touch of the formula one driver about him, his intent was to pass everybody on the road and not allow anyone to pass him, it was a fairly fast ride to the airport. Check in was as manual as the ticket purchase, but at least it was straightforward. There was a lot of people in the airport, I am guessing that to save costs they maybe only open the airport for certain periods ? A lot of flights went out at a similar time to us.

The flight left 15 minutes early ! I guess when everyone is on you may as well go. The plane was an ATR prop jet, it was about half full. It was a full service flight so we had coffee and a croissant and a free newspaper. Great flight but the visibility was appalling and I didn’t get to see much, so I read the paper and caught up on Myanmar news.

We arrived in Mandalay at 8.00 and took a mini-van to town, the mini-van seems to be the only choice to get there, accept maybe tour buses. Cost for the mini-van was 4000 kyat each (about $5) for the forty five minute drive, and we were taken to the hostel we wanted to go to. Which was full…. Bugger. Luckily there were a few others in the immediate vicinity so we wandered up the road to the Nylon Guest house, which turned out to be pretty good and better value than The Winner Inn in Yangon, it did have wifi, but it was sporadic at best. The view from the room.

We took a small walk around the immediate area. Mandalay is not like I expected, given it is a famous SE Asian city and the capital of Burma for many years. We were in a fairly central area and the city is quite run down, even in comparison to Yangon, it is very dusty and the pollution from the cars is eye watering. Unlike Yangon motorcycles are allowed in town, and like everywhere else in Asia, road rules just do not apply to motorcycles.

We stopped at the Rainbow restaurant for lunch, which was pretty good, washed down with a couple of Myanmar beers, which was even better. There was a lot of locals drinking beer and whisky for lunch.

Myanmar is famous for its red splattered streets, betel nut chewing is very common here and not something I have seen anywhere else is SE Asia, reminds me of Papua New Guinea. The local people in the bar, both men and women had red stained lips and teeth. Given the lack of dental care and hygiene in Myanmar, the staining really made the mouths of some of the people we met quite unpleasant looking.

We had a bit of a rest after lunch and mid afternoon started on a walk to and around the royal palace walls and on to Mandalay Hill. The hill houses a few stupas and is the single high point in Mandalay and supposedly offers great views.

We planned on walking around the Royal Palace walls, which are approximately 2kms each side.

The walk was long and hot and after a couple of km’s a trishaw ( bicycle with a small side car) rider came past and offered us a ride, it was on my list of things to do so we took it to Mandalay Hill. I am glad we did, the walk was a lot further than I expected !

The trishaw was a bit more expensive than I would have liked, and this really proved to be the case throughout Mandalay – I suspect there was some price fixing between the providers as there was no bargaining and taxi’s were twice the price of Yangon – and five times the price of elsewhere in SE Asia. By the time we left the city we were pretty unhappy with the gouging as were most other backpackers we spoke to.

The Hill was pretty good though there was no view at all due to, according to a local man we spoke to “fog”, it tasted like smog to me, but he said there was no smog in Mandalay as the was no industry… There were numerous Pagoda up the hill and I had enjoyable walk snapping photos on the way.

Apparently Buddha stood here and pointed down from the hill and prophesied a great city would be built here in 1857, which was when the king Mindon Min moved the capital to Mandalay and built the palace.

A number of people live on the hill, selling souvenirs and drinks to tourists, Mike and I bought a couple of sketches of Myanmar scenes from on vendor. Myanmar is a lot like Cambodia and Borneo, the lack of good infrastructure and a rather lax attitude to rubbish disposal means there is rubbish everywhere. Mandalay Hill, which is the prime tourist attraction in Mandalay is covered in trash, everywhere you look off the path to the summit is covered in rubbish.

After the disappointment of a lack of view from the top of the hill and there being no chance of a good sunset we walked back down again and I took a few photos of the setting sun, through the “fog” over the moat of the grand palace. On the way down we stopped to chat to an Burmese English teacher who said he had been a political activist and had fled Myanmar to Thailand a few years ago and had just come back now things were changing. We had an interesting and slightly cagey chat about politics and life in Mandalay for a while. We all hoped for some good news on the by-elections on April 1.

We then took a motorcycle each back to the hotel and went out to the Lashiolay restaurant, a Lonely Planet recommendation for a fairly good Shan meal and a couple of beers. The local food is heavily influenced by India so is quite spicy. We had a couple of chicken dishes, a spicy potato and a vege dish with rice. The food was OK, the quality of the vegetables here is considerably lower than elsewhere I have been, so though the food is well prepared and cooked and tasty enough the meals are not great – not anyone’s fault of course. I am also very cautious of the chicken as nothing seems to get wasted here….

After dinner I was pretty whacked so back to the hotel, for what was the best shower in SE Asia, as the internet was down it was an early night.

Stupored after the stupa

Day 69, Tuesday 13 March 2012, Yangon.

very slow internet, so not many photos… but Myanmar is a big yay so far 🙂

I had a pretty average sleep, while the room is quite nice it only has internal facing windows and these are on to a lit hallway, while the curtains and frosting provide privacy they do not block the light – and my bed was right next to them. The hotel is also quite noisy so going to have to take a pill tonight. I am not sure of the status of my stomach, it is quite tender this morning, could be due to emptiness, could be due to one of these last night but who knows – will test and see.

The hotel provides a simple free breakfast, i had scrambled eggs and toast and soon after that we went out for the days mission. Go to Air Mandalay and get seats to Mandalay, change money and visit the Shwedagon Paya.

Through good fortune rather than good planning Air Mandalay’s offices are situated almost between the hotel and the paya and a 15 minute walk from the hotel. After setting off, at my instance, in the wrong direction, we soon realised our mistake and turned round and headed back the way we had come. It was an interesting walk to the office, the guide book says the footpaths are a mess in Yangon, but in this section of town the footpath had been recently replaced and was smooth as silk. As i mentioned last night, the roads are wide and clean, the buildings around are mostly ‘western’ in design and I could easily be walking down a street in Auckland.

The first sign that things are behind the times here was at the air Mandalay office, Air Mandalay is one of a few small local airlines plying the local Myanmar routes, apparently it is not owned by the government so by buying tickets we are not directly supporting the regime – I will post on this separately. Anyway, the tickets were hand written, there is no ticket machine, the confirmation that seats were available was done by phone and we had to pay cash, I think I mentioned yesterday, no credit cards in Myanmar…

On the subject of cash….

I had read a lot about changing money in Myanmar, in guide books, forums and blogs and all have the same story, yet there is always that doubting she will be right attitude that you take when you go.

A few places will change money, apparently the legitimate places, such as banks and the airport (it was closed when we were there) now offer a rate close to the official rate, before you had to use street money changes to get a good deal – with the associated risk of being ripped off. And there are a LOT of stories of people being ripped off, no matter how closely the exchange was followed.

You can only change US Dollars, I read a couple of posts about people managing to change a few Euros, though they got really really bad rates, and it took them a while to find someone to change it.

The USD have to be immaculate, – no folds, no tears, no marks, they must be near new, old bills are no good (even if they are immaculate !).

Big bills get better rates ! you will get more kyat for 1 $100 bill than 10 $10’s….

So those are the rules…

We handed the Air Mandalay clerk are money $105 each (a massively expensive trip but will save us a day). As we were paying in USD rather than use a precious $100 we used a mix of $20’s and $10’s. The clerk went through all the bills and rejected 3 $20s and a $10 saying the bank would not accept them, we couldn’t see what the difference was with some of the others, but changed them for other bills from our wallets and these seemed to work. We also had to pay a further $3 fee for the airport and again 2 of $1 bills were no good… I used 10 and got us some Kyat (local currency ) in change as we needed some anyway. First mission completed.

Second was to visit Shwedagon Paya. The main Zedi (stupa) is 98 metres tall and is layered in a rumoured 55 tonnes of gold leaf and is incrusted with 5000 diamonds and 2000 other precious stones. The paya can be seen from just about everywhere in Yangon and is central to Burmese Buddhists faith.

The paya is certainly impressive ! started 2500 years ago it has been added to over the years and is quite large. Unfortunately it was late morning when we arrived and sun was blasting down on the reflective tiled ground so it was quite warm. I took a lot of photos but will only upload a couple here due to bandwith, I may do a bulk Myanmar upload to Flickr later on.

After the Paya we set off to walk into down town, it was a couple of kilometres away down a hot wide road, but it gave us an opportunity to see some more of the place. We were looking for a bank to change our money and after an hour or so of walking around in the heat I was pretty gone, my back was aching badly and I had tanked energy wise, so we ended up getting a taxi back to the hotel with the aim to get a cab directly to a bank in the morning. Another sign we are not in the real SE Asia, no scooters in Yangon – and now this – how will they drive !!!

I spent most of the afternoon lying down and pouring water in to my mouth, I was feeling very average and think I got a touch of sun stroke, was hot and achy and very tired.

We watched a few bad movies on TV, ate some food, I had a chicken cashew, my first non-western food in a few days. Now my stomach appears to have settled i can back to trying local foods again : )

I popped painkillers, Imodium and half a sleeping pill and hit the pillow at 10.30, hoping for a good sleep..

A visit to Preah Vihear Temple or was it Preah Vihear army base.

Day 64, Thursday 08 March 2012, Siem Reap – Preah Vihear.

You will recall that a couple of days ago I met Cheeba, a Canadian woman here in Siem Reap for a holiday to see the temples. She had hired a car for a trip up to the Preah Vihear temple up on the border with Thailand and I had agreed to go with her and share some of the cost, and today was the day.

Built in the 9th century the temple has been hotly contested between Thailand and Cambodia for many years and was ‘given’ to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962, a decision the Thai’s did not and do not agree with. In fact as recently as Feb 2011 both sides were shooting at each other over the temple and some of the damage was pointed out to me on the tour. There was also a massacre of Cambodian refugees by Thai forces here in 1979. So a chequered and violent history to the site, you can read more on it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preah_Vihear_Temple

The temple itself is on the top of a 525 metre high cliff and has spectacular views over Cambodia, Thailand and up to Laos – except today of course!.

Right time to get on with my story.

I was up early, really early….

I had set my phone alarm to go off at 6.05. When I woke and groggily checked my watch it was 6.00 so I turned the alarm off, grabbed my clothes and went into the bathroom to get ready for the day, I was fully dressed and brushing my teeth when I glanced at my watch and noticed it was now 12.35 am…. 6.00 and 12.30 look so similar when you are half asleep !!! Alarm back on and back to bed half clothed.

Up again at the real 6.00 am, dressed and teeth again and downstairs for a coffee and wait for the car to get me at 6.30. Come 6.50 I thought I had best walk round to the hostel where Cheeba was staying and find out what the story was, when I got there I found they had left, so the hostel guy rang the car guy and they had been muddling around Siem Reap trying to find my hostel (the name of my hostel had not been remembered correctly!), they were not far out of town and were going to wait. The hostel got me a motorbike so helmetless (as is the norm for passengers) I was soon screaming through the back streets of town out to the car.

There was four of us on the trip, the driver, who spoke pretty good English, myself, Cheeba and the tuk tuk driver Cheeba had been using as he had never been to the site. The drive took about three and half hours over a not too bad road, better than I had expected anyway and our driver was very safe, which was great! We only had to swerve for roaming cattle twice – and once for a pig on the way back..

As mentioned the temple is on the top of a hill and you cannot take a car up there so you have to hire a 4wd drive at the outrageous rate of $35US. This is a business that is dying as the road is being rebuilt. It is not a hard road, but very steep at the top.At the top there was a lot of soldiers and gun emplacements, no big guns in sight, though I am sure they are around, I did see machine gun nests close to the border though. You have to have a soldier take you on a tour – private revenue generation ! and ours had very little English but he did point well.

We got to the start of the temple site and Cheeba had to lie down, she had been feeling unwell on the way up, so I went off down the temple stairs to the border for a look.

The bottom of the stairs are less than 50 metres from the barbed wire, so it really is close to Thailand. The tree is in Cambodia and the stairs are in Thailand.

And they are serious about keeping it…Saw this little critter on the way back up.Cheeba wasn’t feeling any better after a rest so I went off with my soldier to explore the temple site.My favourite bit of carving at Preah VihearThe holes apparently held large candles ?My guideSome war damageThe token monk shot

This soldier wanted a photo taken of us : )

The driver and tuk tuk guy, as you can see there was very little view, it was quite smoky,dusty and cloudy.

My guide took this photo on the cliff edge, the two Cambodian tourists both wanted a photo of me with them, not uncommon, but weird….

These are cliff faces where the Thai troops forced 42,000 refugees over, with 3000 confirmed dead and 7000 missing at the end of that tragic day. : (

There was not a lot to look at the temple, most of the carvings had been looted and I was told the gold Buddha had been stolen by the Thais. But the site was pretty cool, I liked the location and I liked that there was only about 20 people there. Apart from about 50 soldiers, mostly without weapons, and all very friendly, I think that they like it when foreigners come to ‘their’ site.After an hour or so of wandering around I went back down to where Cheeba was and she was not in a good way, fevers and aches, our soldier guide and the car driver had to help her walk back down to the 4wd for a very high speed and dusty drive back down to the car. The ride back to Siem Reap was marked by quite a long rain shower, not heavy rain fortunately, but enough to create a massive puddle in one of the towns we passed through which three small children were paddling in.

Apart from a couple of deep fried somethings, that were possibly rice ? I had no idea, I knew it had no meat ! I had not eaten all day, I was also extremely thirsty having run out of water an hour or so ago. I gulped a very welcome can of Angkor lager as soon as I walked in the hostel door, then had a shower and made Mike go out for an early dinner. After a few days of procrastination we finally purchased some souvenirs from the market and went for dinner at Temple again (free wifi of course). It was soooo good to eat…

An Indy (Jones) day

Day 62, Tuesday 06 March 2012, Siem Reap – Beng Mealea.

Today was going to be our final day in Siem Reap and therefore our final temple visit. We chose Beng Mealea as it is about 60k from town, so a visit chews up a large portion of the day, especially when travelling by tuk tuk ! I have enjoyed this slow and open aired method of travel, especially on these trips out of the core of the Angkor sites. Even though they are dusty and probably hazardous you do get a better ‘feel’ for the places you drive through and the air con works very well, well the air part, there is not a lot of conditioning going on.

Beng Mealea (BM) was built in the 12^th century during the reign of Suryavaman II and had the same floor plan as Angkor Wat, but appears smaller in size ? There is very little information about the build as there are very few inscriptions in the stone work that provide details to the historians. The site is outside the main Angkor area and currently also out of the control of the Angkor management and is run by local people.

The site is pretty much as discovered with no restoration work having taken place, unlike Ta Prohm which is ‘controlled’ chaos Beng Melea is chaotic ! A walkway was built through part of the site for the filming of the movie “Two brothers” but apart from that there is no path through and most of the site is only accessible by clambering over ruins, walking across roof tops and jumping down from walls – I was in heaven! Being so far away from the core of the ancient Khymer sites meant far less tourism and less damage to the ruins. Though I enjoyed being able to romp all over the place, I am sure it is not doing these ancient stone works any good.

The day started at 7.30 again when Mr Lin picked us up in his tuk tuk. We decided to not go back to the bakery we had been too for the past couple of days due to the slowly declining freshness of its food. Mr Lin took us to the Blue Pumpkin, which is a very European bakery with very European pricing – well not really, but a lot more expensive than the local one, but the food was fabbo – and even better it had some wholegrain bread !

Filling my face with pastries we started off on the two hour tuk tuk ride to BM, it was a pretty good journey, lots to see and the further we got away from the lake the dryer the land became. Due to its different management, BM is not included in the Angkor Wat ticket so we had to pay a further $5USD, which I was very cool with, the site is amazing and this is a key source of income to the local villages, in a very poor country.

Like Angkor Wat the site is surrounded by a moat, but here it is also a source of food for the local village (though I am sure they fish in Angkor’s moat away from the tourists), it is also a place for the buffalo to cool down.

P1090618

Like a lot of the temple sites BM was used as a camp by the Khmer Rouge during the war with Vietnam because the international community had requested/ordered/paid/something to Vietnam to prevent them from shelling the ruins. Mines have been and even 40 years later,are still an issue here and the advice is not to stray from clear paths around the site. Sadly this is true for much of rural Cambodia.

The first view of the site is the south gate, but you cannot really enter through there.

The guide book suggested walking around the site to the east where there is an entrance boardwalk on the north wall. There was not a lot of wall carvings here, on the south /east corner were these carvings, apparently the carving of the apsara cupping a breast is unique to BM.

At the east gate I climbed on top of the wall and clambered along before jumping down into the site to meet Mike, who had taken the traditional method of entry by the boardwalk. This tree was growing on top of the wall, and I loved how its roots were tunnelling through the stone work.

Inside the walls it is a riot of trees and rocks, with root systems through and over and around (and destroying) the buildings. It was a lot of fun exploring all the different buildings. There were a few tourists here but it is quite off the beaten track.

Coming from somewhere like New Zealand, which is quite free of dangerous animals, it never really occurred to me to take any care as we clambered around the ruins – even though snakebite is very common in Cambodia.

At the end of the boardwalk system there is an entrance into one of buildings and as we made an approach a local guide came and joined us. He led us on a trail through the middle of the site, that was up and over collapsed roofs, down through rubble filled doorways, through dark corridors and back up onto roofs, it was all great fun and we saw a few things we would have missed on our own, so very worth the couple of bucks we each gave him.

At the western wall we ran into a Canadian woman, Cheeba, who we started talking to and she wanted to know if we were interested in going up to Preah Vehear on Thursday. This temple is on a cliff top near the Thai border and is hotly contested with Thailand (in fact they were shelling each other over it in Feb 2011!). I was immediately keen, but we had planned on leaving town on Wednesday, I got the name of her hotel and promised to confirm or otherwise later in the day, but yeah I am going !!

According to our guide the Khmer Rouge took offence to the head on this particular carving, so cut it off !

I loved BM ! a lot of fun, not so much to see in the way of detail and intricate carvings, but being able to romp around was certainly interesting anyway.

After a drink of water and a coke we hopped back onto the tuk tuk for a warm ride back to Siem Reap. We stopped for gas just out of the site – is Johnnie Walker Black petrol better than Red ?

I shot a couple of scenery shots on the way back to the main highway, it was great to see the schools were very well used. These photos do show the conditions that the rural people of Cambodia – and most of SE Asia, live in. No power, no running water etc. It is a hard life.

I really like these, but have yet to get a good picture as they are really long… belt drive single piston, two stroke farm implement, with a big trailer on the back, often with a dozen people stacked on top.

After a shower and a lie down we wandered down to the main bar/restaurant strip in Siem Reap, Pub St for dinner and went to Temple club, the food was good, more expensive than the 5 Suns as you would expect. I did have some fresh spring rolls, not fried, not baked, no fat or oil, just fresh vege, heavenly – I am so sick of fried food…. We spent some time wandering around the markets looking for souvenirs and not buying anything. We did however, get a foot massage from the blind masseurs in the market.

When we got back to the GH I really felt like a scotch, but not having any I had water instead.

Angkor Thom, Part 2 – Bayon

Day 61, Monday 05 March 2012, Siem Reap – Angkor Thom, Part 2 of 2

I have split today into two posts as we saw an awful lot and I took a massive amount of pictures. I have also made a separate post just with some of the faces from Bayon as they were stunning and would have made uploading this post too slow – and reading it pretty slow too I guess.

It was a pretty awesome day!

After a wee break in the shade we wandered around the Terrace of the Leper King. The terrace is about fifty metres long and seven high and is covered in murals, when we got to the end of terrace we discovered it is actually in two layers, with the back layer containing some of the more original condition carvings.

The leper king terrace is joined to the Terrace of Elephants, which is of similar height , but 350 metres long and has a small section in two layers. The terrace of the elephants was a viewing platform for royal ceremonies.

From the flat terraces we crossed over the road to Prasat Sour Prat (temple of the tightrope dancers). These are twelve towers that were supposedly used by performers on tightropes to entertain the king.

There were a large number of people cleaning the area of leaves and rubbish, all too much for some. I will say all the sites we have visited have been extremely tidy, there must be an army of people out early everyday cleaning.

Prasat Bayon!!

Wow Bayon ! I had been looking forward to Bayon all day and had deliberately kept it to last so I could savour the anticipation, and the temple itself – however, having said that after four hours of walking in the sun and heat looking at temples I was a wee bit worn out. I should have planned on a third day.

Bayon is constructed of three levels, the first two are square and the top is circular, with the top layer containing fifty four towers, and each of the towers has four faces on it. The faces are supposed to be of the Bodhisattva (enlightened being ) Avalokiteshvria but also have an uncanny resemblance to king Jayavarman VII. The 216 faces stare down at all his subjects from all angles.

The bas reliefs on the outside of Bayon measure over 1.2 km and contain more than 11,000 figures that describe everyday life around Angkor.

As well as the fifty four towers which were very cool, Bayon was also a rabbit warren of narrow inter-connected corridors and alleyways, it was quite fun just wandering around turning left and right and popping up and down very steep little staircases to see where you would pop out – and how many faces would be staring at you. I loved it all. It is a truly magical place.

I am not sure how Mr Lin (our tuk tuk driver) knew it, but he has obviously had a lot of experience with tourists. Even though we were not doing the conventional tour of Angkor Thom and we were certainly not clock watching, when he dropped us off at 8.00 this morning he said he would see us at 1.00. At 1.05 I arrived at the tuk tuk ! He has predicted what seems like to the minute, how long we would take to see each temple. Awesome.

We got back to the GH about 2.00 and for me that was the end of the day, I had a lot of photos to review and posts to update, so after a shower and some clothes washing I sat around in the nice cool air conned room for a while and then had a good Skype and FB message session with a friend and my son Dom. After that it was back to the Five Suns for a burger and fries for dinner and then an early night as I was really tired.

It was a truly awesome day, I have loved all the places we have visited in the vast Angkor complex, but those faces of Bayon. Wow, take a look…..

7.30 start again tomorrow, and the final Angkor temple site.

I would like to assure everyone, especially mum, that though it appears I am wearing the same shirt most days I am washing shirts every day at the moment! So they are clean(ish).

Which is more than I can say for my feet after a dusty day of walking…