Upon Arrival in Yangon (Rangoon), we were greeted by a shinier, more modern airport than I expected. After a short shared cab ride we arrived near the city center, which is marked by the gleaming Sule Pagoda stuck right in the middle of the city’s busiest roundabout. The agenda for the first day: visit the Thai embassy to apply for a new tourist visa.

Myanmar is slowly modernizing but still a different world compared to neighboring Thailand. For example, there are no ATMs in the country so you must enter holding enough cash to cover your entire stay. Our first mission was to exchange most of the U.S. dollars we bought in Bangkok to Myanmar Kyat. We headed to the Aung San Bogyoke market where the best rates are supposedly found. Since every merchant around seems to deal in currency exchange it was no trouble at all to purchase several giant stacks of kyat at about 2,500 to the dollar. All of the merchants, though, are extremely fussy about the condition of the bills they accept. First of all, no “small head” bills (referring to the old $100 bills) and any wear-and-tear whatsoever on any bill warrants a reduced rate or downright refusal. With the exchange sorted, we hit the Thai embassy.

I was thoroughly questioned about the unusually large number of sort-term Thai tourist visas filling my passport, but was granted “one last” two-month visa. We wandered the streets of Yangon for a bit later on after checking into a hotel.

Myanmar’s captial city is, although not without its own strange charm, a generally unpleasant place. Overcrowding, extreme poverty and lots of trash keep it far from the top of my list of favorite cities. I think it has certainly seen better days, as has the rest of the country. But despite the unfavorable setting, most of the people I encountered were quite friendly and helpful. Pui and I decided to visit the famous Shwedagon Pagoda before catching an overnight bus to Mandalay the next day.

The Shwedagon Pagoda is the most significant Buddhist site in all of Myanmar. At the center of its large complex of impressive shrines, zedis, murals and statues stands the main paya, a 98-meter mountain of gold. A local guide named Jiaw Dein (my new Burmese name?) quickly took notice of me and Pui. He worked up an astrological chart for each of us and showed us to the shrines we should visit according to the day of the week on which we were born. 2007 will be “100% lucky” according to my chart. And I’ll be married by 2009.

The ride to Mandalay was not as bad as I had expected, although I still haven’t mastered the art of sleeping on overnight buses. We arrived in the afternoon, tired and groggy, and made quick business of checking into a hotel to nap the rest of the daylight away.

Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city, is a dustier, even less modern version of the capital. There are no streetlights nor traffic lights, electricity is intermittent at best, and the roads are a shambles. Everything in sight is coated in a thick layer of the bust that follows the traffic in brown clouds. Instead of taxis there are bicycle trishaws and pick-ups, but otherwise the scene on the street is much the same as in Yangon: tea shops, hole-in-the-wall restaurants serving cold, oily Chinese and Bamar food, a smiling baby everywhere you turn, and piles of books, sunglasses and cheap electronics on street-vendor tarps. We allotted one full day to exploring Mandalay which was more than enough. To celebrate Pui’s birthday on the 4th, we ate dinner at one of the (few) “nicer” Burmese restaurants in town.

Note: I have removed some details from this entry at the request of some people mentioned in it.

We decided to leave Mandalay for the mountains in the East to do some trekking. Our ticket on the train would take us to [omitted] in Northern Shan State in about 12 hours - we opted for the first-class seats. First-class ended up being the same as third-class on a Thai train: plain, hard wooden seats in a car packed with passengers and random cargo, no fans. I enjoyed the great scenery despite a severely numb ass. The route east includes the crossing of the world’s second-highest railway bridge, the Gokteik Viaduct. I later learned that photographing the bridge is supposed to be prohibited, but I managed a few poor shots of it as we slowly rolled across. [The internet connection here is too restricted to upload my photos now, sorry] Each stop of the train brought us by increasingly small stations for a cup of tea and/or piss break. More local passengers would squeeze themselves and their cargo onto the “ordinary class” cars and we would move on to the next one…

The train pulled into [omitted] just after sundown. Representatives from 2 of the 3 guest houses in town gave us the sales pitch and we opted for the [omitted], spoken for by Mr. [omitted] over Mr. [omitted]’s place. I figured it would all be the same no matter which we chose and settled into a basic but comfortable room (with a hot water shower!). Actually, the hot water is no minor detail. [omitted] is fucking cold! It became priority #1 to purchase a sweater at the market in the morning -I hadn’t anticipated this sort of weather at all.

Over the next three days we spent in [omitted], we accomplished little more than purchasing those sweaters. The information provided by our guidebook (the latest Myanmar Lonely Planet) prepared us little for the shady goings-on of this little town. It was here that I started to learn that life in Myanmar really can be as bad - or worse, even - than is reported to us back home.

First, we walked out to the [omitted], an old British colonial house once home to a Shan prince. The last prince (or sao pha) was arrested during the military takeover in 1962 and is believed to have been killed a year later. After his [omitted] wife left, the home was occupied by Mrs. [omitted] and Mr. [omitted] ([omitted] of the sao pha) until just last year Mr. [omitted] was sentenced to 13 years in prison for allegedly “giving false information to foreigners” and for receiving guests without a permit. It was Mrs. [omitted] herself who related to us this story while we stood talking through her now permanently locked gate.

This is one among many similar stories about current happenings across the Shan State - the government has been systematically arresting all of the key Shan politicians in an attempt to maintain control of the region. Mrs. [omitted] urged me to share her story publicly on my blog as long as I removed any specifics which could allow the government to identify and arrest her, hence all the black bars and missing flag on the travelogue map.

In [omitted], we also sought out Mr. [omitted] on advice from the guidebook. L.P. suggested that we ask him about catching a local bus to [omitted] for trekking. Upon meeting him, his first question was “Which guest house are you staying at?” When we told him, he said that the local police, in cahoots with the owners of another guest house in town, have prohibited him from giving foreigners such information. He began to describe the current situation in [omitted], but interrupted himself a couple times to duck behind the counter to avoid being seen talking with us when certain people walked by. I became very uncomfortable standing there and told him I’d come back later to talk.

The next day I payed him another visit and he seemed eager to give me more details about his plight. He showed me a list of about a dozen rules handed down to him by the police forbidding him, among other things, to give information to foreigners about trekking, to speak to or about certain people (including Mrs. [omitted] and Mr. [omitted] - he was glad to hear that we were able to visit Mrs. [omitted] in person), and display photos of Aung San Su Kyi in his storefront or even hang them in his private back room. He was able to talk more about the crackdown on the Shan minority and told us that he has plans to close his shop and “disappear” with his daughter for three months as he fears that his time in [omitted] “may soon be up.” He eventually offered to help arrange transport to [omitted] via a local truck to [omitted] for us, but we had already abandoned the trekking in [omitted] plan in favor of visiting the north.

Before leaving, we walked out of town through a couple tiny Shan villages and played with a bunch of adorable little kids at an elementary school. I took lots of photos which the little monsters promptly erased by going crazy all videogame-style on my camera’s buttons. I also got a haircut from a nice lady who (surprisingly) spoke Thai. She and Pui talked about Thai food while she gave me something of a military crew-cut. I miss Bangkok already.

Back to Mandalay on a bus full of pineapples and sacks of beans… the only way to the north open to foreigners requires going through Mandalay in the middle of the country, so reaching our destination of Myitkyina will be a 36 hour + affair. Traveling anywhere in Myanmar requires the patience of a saint. Our original plan, hatched just before departing [omitted], would see us getting back to Mandalay in time to catch the 1:50pm train to Myitkyina (a 24 hour ride). Of course the bus arrived late and I’m sitting here scribbling in my notebook at the train station after having spent another day in Mandalay, waiting for our train, which is expected to be more than 6 hours late. Patience…

The train finally showed up in Mandalay. We climbed into our sleeper car to settle in for the estimated 24-hours to Myitkyina and met our roommates: Kyaw Lay and friends. Kyaw Lay (”Jo Lee”) introduced himself as an employee of Myanmar Railways and then asked if it was alright for his 2 friends to share the 4-person room with me and Pui all the way to Myitkyina. I said OK, but the conductor soon came around and there was much heated discussion (in Burmese, of course) about it. In the end, Pui and I shared the room with just Kyaw Lay for most of the time.

Somewhere along the way we had realized that due to all the delays, we would not have enough time to visit Myitkyina and so we had better get off the train at Katha instead; only, the train doesn’t stop directly at Katha…

Between studying my large fold-out map and trying to ask Kyaw Lay about how to get there, we finally figured out that we have to get off the train at Naba. Of course we figured this out just after we rolled past Naba. An hour later, we disembarked at Mohyin and met a Belgian traveler who had made the same mistake about 6 hours earlier and was still stuck in Mohyin. At first, we were told by everyone that we must wait for the train running the other way to return us to Naba where we would then need to take a pick-up to Katha. No one could tell us how long it would take. Then, suddenly, we were offered the option of taking a K1500 bus that was to leave in an hour and arrive in Katha after 6 hours on the road. All 3 of us went for it. The “bus” turned out to be a local truck full of cabbage and lots of people - our “seat” was a small spot on the roof above the driver - but it did arrive in Katha just after sundown, as promised.

After a quick survey of the hotel options (3 identical hotels right next to eachother: shared bathrooms with no running water, limited electricity) we took a room and walked around a bit. Although larger than I had expected, Katha is a small town on the Ayayerwaddy river that became an important spot for teak wood production during the British occupation. Its small claim to fame among travelers is that it was once the home of a young Eric Blair, AKA George Orwell, and is the setting of his book Burmese Days. Although the book is fictional, its descriptions of Katha (then known as Kyauktada) are accurate. So accurate, in fact, that in order to release the book for the first time in England, the name of the town had to be changed to Mandalay and some details altered. Copies of Burmese Days (Orwell’s other two famous books, 1984 and Animal Farm are curiously banned in Myanmar) are sold all along the tourist trail in Myanmar and I had just finished reading it myself, as well as a book I had brought along called Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin - a recent travelogue in which the author recounts a year spent retracing the footsteps of George Orwell in Burma. Apart from this disctinction, Katha is just another pleasant river town - a nice stop to break up the long boat ride between Myitkyina and Mandalay.

Because of Pui’s schedule, needed to start the long journey back to Yangon as soon as we arrived in Katha. The plan was to take the 2-day boat down to Mandalay, so first thing in the morning we hit the local IWT (Inland Water Transport) office. Boat schedules in Myanmar, like so much else, are utterly unpredictable. The IWT guy informed us that the boat would leave tomorrow. In the late afternoon, at whatever o’clock. Since the only other feasible option for getting back to Mandalay (aside from repeating the 24-hour train journey) was the bus, we chose to take the risk of assuming a very tight schedule by waiting another day for the boat…

With an extra day and a half left to kill, we took to exploring the town. We hired a horse-cart for the afternoon to take us around the main sights in the area: several pagodas, temples, a golf course and a large orphanage. At the orphanage we were given a brief tour - and received celebrity-level attention from the kids - then were invited to kneel down before the headmaster and receive a bunch of bananas in return for our small cash donation. We spent the remainder of our time wandering about, and at one point befriended a funny local character named U Than Wein who took us around to some of the old landmarks mentioned in Burmese Days (including the old European Club which features a tennis court still in use by some locals). Than Wein explained that he is the son of the former police chief of Katha - quite interesting because that was Orwell’s title during the British days (he was stationed in Katha for the end of his service in Burma). Our conversion stumbled along in broken English, but I was able to figure out that Than Wein’s father would have been the first Burmese police chief of Katha after England pulled out of the country!

The boat finally did arrive and we opted for the much more expensive cabin-class ticket rather than freeze during the cold nights on the deck. It turned out to be a good choice. The 2-day trip down the river was scenic and peaceful, punctuated by a few frenzied stops at small villages along the way. The boat sat anchored during the nights apparently because the water level is too low to risk becoming stuck on an unseen sandbar in the dark.

Upon our arrival in Mandalay it was decided that the only way for Pui to catch her flight back to Bangkok on time was to book a flight to Yangon the following day. So we did. I got two tickets on Air Bagan, using up almost all of the cash I had left. It was a quiet Valentines day in dusty Mandalay…

Before hitting the airport in the morning we managed to visit the famous Mahatmuni Paya. No women allowed close to the Buddha! There was yet another novitation ceremony underway - ’tis the season apparently.