World of Wonders - Wondering about the World

Reflections on China
You might recall that bureaucracy and bribes had caused us to ditch our plans to head to Myanmar (Burma) and instead, we were going to revisit Laos, one of our favourite countries. Retrieving our passports from the Burmese consulate, we headed to the Lao embassy and booked a ticket to the Lao border.

Then… as I was pedaling my hired bike down one of Kunming’s wide, super smooth boulevards edged with pretty bright flowers, it struck me – we could go to Myanmar (by air) and then onto Laos! We hit the brakes, hot footed it back to the travel agency – asked for a refund and then bought a ticket to Mandalay. Now, who said Svensons were indecisive?

Our return to China was, in all, a revelation about how much we had changed both as people and as travellers in four years.   Having been able to communicate in Peru, we feel strangely mute with our inability to talk. There still isn’t an abundance of backpackers in China, and it is hard to get around, with few tourist facilities for independent travellers. Of the people we met travelling, 90% of them were either studying Chinese or working as English teachers in China!

As China is touted as the big go-ahead country, where English is being studied non-stop, we were surprised to not find more people speaking English. China still retains its heavily smoking and spitting population that vomits on buses and has no idea how to clean a toilet. You can change something like a language but you can’t shift the way people think.

Old friends
From the moment we were on the main road into Mandalay, or more specifically, hit a few crater like potholes, dodged oxen drawn carts, and gazed at fields filled with tall sunflowers, Myanmar once again entranced us.

We’d loved Mandalay before – mostly because of the stories and explanations of our trishaw driver. In third world countries things don’t change too much – he was still waiting outside our hotel – just as he was 14 months before. We’d become friends with him because he spoke excellent English, with a vocabulary that is wider than some native speakers. Though his pronunciation is a bit off we respect that he is entirely self taught; poring over books perched up in the seat of his trishaw.

It seems that not much has changed since our last trip – within his life, that of his family’s or even within Burma. Certainly, Aung Sung Suu Kyi remains under house arrest and the people’s ability to speak freely stands at zero. Again, we question ourselves – should we be travelling to a country controlled by a military junta that does nothing for its people? Oh, sorry – the military is currently is relocating its capital based on an astrologer’s prediction! Now that is going to help a country that is one of the second poorest in South East Asia!

The power supply is appalling – that is, there is only one or two hours of electricity a day – with wealthier businesses having generators to fill the very long gaps. One evening, we were wandering in a street with more holes than Edam cheese when the dim lights in houses went out, plunging us into pitch black. It must have been a poorer street, because not one generator rumbled into life.   As we negotiated the street, hoping the trishaws and scooters without headlights would avoid us, we felt completely safe. Even though this is a desperately poor place, no one was going to rob us, and we wondered if, like in China, a draconian government breeds honesty. I’d often heard that Peruvians say that things were safer in their streets during Fujimori’s time when (apparently) common thieves were shot without trial. This grates my sense of human rights, but…

Magical Mrauk U
Our plans for an overland trip dashed, our holiday became less backpacking and more “holiday”. We flew to Sittwe on the south western coast of Myanmar, tucked up in a corner alongside Bangladesh. As we fly in, the bleached beaches are fringed with palm trees and stilt attap houses, the homes of fisher people out on the bay in tiny craft.

The people who live here are Rakhaing, a mix of Burmese and Indian, and it is reflected in the faces on the streets of Sittwe, in their cooking, and even in their attitude which is a bit pushier than other parts of this peaceful nation.

We take a boat upriver about 6 hours to the ancient capital of Mrauk U; the trip itself is spectacular – winding up and out of a wide river delta. A golden sun sets over this tranquil landscape as simultaneously an ethereal full moon rises – with the flat delta plains we are able to see both at the same time. Your breath catches in your throat, with the unusualness of the scene. The luminous full moon shines serenely against a sky that fades from dusky pink to soft blue and then inky dark and accompanies us as the river gradually narrows until we arrive in this village far from the modern world.

About 500 years ago Mrauk U was the capital of a glittering kingdom once described amongst the richest cities of the world: now it is all but swallowed up by time and the jungle.

With about 7 independent foreign tourists in town during our stay, its fun riding our bikes around the ancient temples and ruins which are indispersed within the village of bamboo houses and palm trees. The people see few foreigners and call out happily, “bye bye”. They seem to think its cold judging by the prevalence of beanies and scarves, but for us it’s pleasantly balmy. There are some package tourists but they burn around in jeeps, and must always be accompanied by a licensed guide. We find that only one other Australian has visited Mrauk U since January and its kind of fun being unusual!

We travel by horse cart and boat up to the very edge of Chin State. Before the British carved up this part of the world, the Chin people had their own independent state that consisted of parts of Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh. Now, insurgents are fighting for the re-creation of “Chinland” and there are reports of bombings, but news is sketchy. The military government of Myanmar doesn’t want to report unrest – not for tourism, but because if they did so other peoples within Burma may rebel too.

The Chin are most distinguishable to those in the west for their practice of tattooing their women’s faces. This custom began hundreds of years ago when the nearby Rakhaing kings raided Chin territory and carried away their daughters. The Chin people decided to tattoo their daughter’s faces so that any invaders would not want them. The tattooing was voluntary - girls chose to go through the rite practiced by a woman shaman when they were about 10 years old. However, it’s a fading tradition – there are now apparently no tattooed women younger than forty. We question our motivation for visiting these villages – we are going for a look, like we might in a zoo.

Its fun having a small fraternity of foreigners in town and we hang out with a French couple on their fourth visit to Myanmar, a German couple on their third visit and a British woman on her seventh visit, travelling with a Burmese friend. (Much later, we met a French lady who was on her 13th visit to the country!). There is certainly something unspoiled about Myanmar that enraptures – on our second visit we felt like amateurs!

The Burmese man was thirsty for knowledge about the outside world, as we were for stories of his closed world. Yet he recognises our similarities as well, with beautiful simplicity, “We all cry, we all die.”

Though the Burmese in hotels and shops generally speak reasonable English (better say, than Thailand or Laos), it’s handy to have him translate and explain various customs. We reflect, once again, how rare it is to make true friends in a foreign country. Of course, we have interactions with hotel staff, waiters, taxi drivers and guides, but they are fleeting, fun and sometimes shy interactions where you don’t really know the person.

Wondering about the way of the world
We take a boat south along the coast to our next destination, Ngapali Beach, stopping at a remote island for a lunch break. As we disembark, we gather a crowd of about thirty women and children who follow us through the village, giggling curiously– very few foreigners arrive here. On our way to a pagoda, we pass a school, and on the way back, the teachers have the children assembled outside to get a good look at the foreigners!

We are told about a UNICEF sanitation project where part of the funding agreement, UNICEF said that each house must have a toilet, which the government “implemented” by saying that if houses did not build toilets families would be fined the equivalent of $5US. So… everyone built the toilets, but never used them as they needed cleaning, bred mosquitoes and were considered unhygienic by the people. They continued to go to the toilet behind their homes in the jungle – not civilised according to the west – but actually a better solution!

Ngapali Beach is Myanmar’s prime beach destination – relatively untouristed compared with other Asian beaches. With nearly all people flying in and out it’s hardly a budget backpackers daydream – but it is beautiful and pristine. Seafood restaurants abound and at one such establishment, our German travelling companion recounts his experiences of when the Berlin Wall opened. On a balmy Myanmar evening he vividly transports us back to a dark and cold Berlin night where, as a 17-year-old youth, his life changed forever. He had grown up in communist East Berlin and thought his life would continue the same for decades – poor (compared to West Germany) and without freedom. He recounts there was a rumour the wall might open so hundreds of people milled around the dreaded Iron Curtain. Remember that if you tried to cross this wall – you would be shot. At midnight the gate opened and peacefully they all got stamped out of the East and entered the rich West – something that only dreams were made of.

He spent the evening drinking beer with West Berliners and our friend recalled that even though this was such a momentous night in the morning he re-entered East Berlin to go to work so he wouldn’t lose his job. A crazy thing to do because the wall could have been closed again and he would have lost his one chance of freedom.

Our Burmese friend was transfixed by the story – as he heard that this seemingly normal German traveller had once lived in a situation with little freedom (not unlike in Myanmar) – and then one day it miraculously all changed. You could see it was a Burmese’s fairytale.

It made me realise too, just how lucky Australians are – collectively, as a nation we have suffered few deprivations or hardships. The sad thing is that most of us don’t know or realise just how lucky we are.

From relatively expensive Ngapali with its fly-in-and-out Europeans we head down the coast to less visited Ngwe Saung Beach where we shared a 30 room resort with a couple of Russians who like to invite us in for a whiskey at 11am. This is a busy resort – at the place next door a lone foreigner has the whole place to himself!    Beaching is fun - but we forge onwards in rickety old buses that rattle and shake and take on great piles of cargo mid trip – sacks of rice, charcoal or even tyres. The tropical heat enhances the odour of the half-dried (or was that half rotting?) fish that seem to accompany all passengers on these buses. As third world bus trips go, these are quite hellish and it wrenches our hearts in a depressing way – Myanmar is desperately poor country with no infrastructure, little electricity and ancient vehicles. You wonder how they can ever possibly break out of this cycle.

In Yangon, the capital, we are once again entranced by the busy, steamy streets filled with yummy food stalls and sidewalk tea shops and we see our Burmese friend again – he teaches us a little more about Burma and the simple way that they live their lives.

An environmental scientist, he has never had a job because there simply aren’t enough jobs for the university graduates, echoing a story we heard many times before in Myanmar. Besides, even if he were to get a job, he would probably earn about $15 US a month (the standard wage for government employees). Yes, you read that right!

On our first trip we found the Burmese people to be an intelligent, reasonable and thinking– something that is confirmed during this trip. They live with a special grace and dignity that makes us want to live in a similar way.

Colourful Kengtung
We fly up to Kyaingtong (Kengtung) which sits very near the Golden Triangle and is apparently only accessible by air because of insurgency in Shan State. Kyaingtong is at a crossroads between China, Thailand and Myanmar (as well as Laos) and the locals proudly point to the centre of town where the three roads radiate out. It doesn’t feel like Burma – people wear modern clothes and are just a little less friendly. We go on several day hikes and once again hit the “zoo dilemma” – for what reason are we visiting these villages? We learn about their fascinating beliefs, and take some beautiful photographs, but leave feeling a little bit like what we are – plundering tourists.

Onwards to the Thai border – where we haven’t even entered the country and a small boy begs from us. We walk on and he shouts at us “Fwwuck you”. Welcome to Thailand, a country completely ruined by rapacious rich tourists.

Yet as the Burmese had assured us, behind their iron curtain on the Myanmar side, there was “everything” in Thailand – ATMs, flash cars, abundant souvenirs, cornetto icecreams and much more! It was all so easy – and that’s when its so clear once again - that we don’t even have to escape, we can go anywhere we want.

Arie on the Plain of Jars in Laos, story below

\Looking back on Laos
We spend all of four hours in Thailand and cross the Mekong into Laos at Huay Xai. It’s charming and relaxed… and crowds of young backpackers wander the streets on their adventure of a lifetime. We meet the first Aussies we have seen in our whole trip – they look as if they are still in high school but are actually teachers who have been working for a couple of years. They soon tell us that they are hardly done by earning $30,000US a year and when we tell them of the Burmese teachers earning just $15 a month they don’t see how spoiled they sound.

Luang Prabang, a world heritage town, is charming and packed with tourists. But lots of tourists also bring benefits – great food, cheap (good) guesthouses, souvenir shopping, abundant Internet and… travel agencies. We muse back to our last visit, five years earlier when we thought the town was touristy. Now, that tourist impact has quadrupled, with the benefit being that it is now incredibly easy to get around – drop into one of these agencies and they can organise everything you need – buses, drivers, guides, hotels, meals… toilet stops. Its no longer an adventure destination but it’s a welcome break after the difficulties of travel in Myanmar.

We head out to the famous Plain of Jars at Phonsovan - it is our reason for wanting to return to Laos. “The Jars” leave a lasting impression on us – but not for the reason that you might think. They are very interesting, spread over a vast area– but what is heart pounding is the effect of the Vietnam war on this peaceful country that was never at war.

As we drive around, the impact of this secret war becomes coldly evident – the land is scarred, with huge craters created by these falling bombs – and not randomly either – one field can have 3 or 4 of these horrendous holes. We see a map of the region showing the distribution of B52 bomb drops and red to show direct fighter strikes. The whole map is coloured and along the roads and at villages it’s pure blood red. That’s a lot of people killed in a war that never existed. Laos remains to this day the heaviest bombed nation on earth (heavier than any country in the world wars) and we are right in the heart of where it happened. It is horrible to see that man – our own race – can be so bloody destructive.

Arguably, the world didn’t know what was happening in Laos in the sixties and seventies. But we do know – in graphic televised detail – what happened in Afghanistan and now in Iraq – and we stand by and let it happen. We visit a cave where 400 civilians were sheltering- and where they died- when an American bomb got them. I think of the caves where “terrorists” were bombed in Afghanistan and think of the women and children that died there along with them.
We’ll digress to a story told to us by a British backpacker we met in China, who recounted driving across the USA and in the deep south meeting two young guys and the conversation turning to the Vietnam War – which they had never heard of. It is almost impossible to believe – and you get goose bumps to think that Americans exist that have never heard of their country’s greatest failure in the 20th century. It also makes you think that’s why Americans let disasters occur all around the world in their name.

Floating down the river on a tube at Vang Vieng is described by our guidebook as one of the “ the rites of passage of the Indochina backpacking circuit…” We already had our stripes, having done it years before, but we were fascinated by how much Vang Vieng had changed. We remembered a peaceful float on a tube at sunset down the meandering Nam Song River, amongst some of the dreamiest spectacular Karst scenery in the world. It is one of those places that is so beautiful it makes your heart ache you want to remember it forever.

Disco music pumped loudly from downstream, and as we approached, we heard the shouts and yells of drunken revelers– most backpackers, earning their stripes, leave around lunchtime and float downstream stopping at beer stations and adventure playgrounds. At the biggest beer station plastered twenty-year-olds leap off jumping platforms, zoom on flying foxes and generally have an ace time. But – the clock is ticking – and they have to be back in town by sunset – so the staff at the beer stations load the inebriated kids into their tubes, pop a beer into their hands, and off they go, “merrily, merrily, merrily down the stream…” until the next beer station where a man shouting “Beer Lao Beer Lao Beer Lao” pulls them in with a long stick. We are sober and it’s hilarious!

On our final day we kayaked from Vang Vieng to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, (well not the whole way, but that was what the tour was called!) and then flew to Bangkok. We met on the airport bus an inspiring American girl of 21 who has already volunteered in Turkey, Nepal, India, Thailand and Tibet– travelling for passport stamps, new experiences and good stories and photos is not enough anymore. We vow that future travels are going to take a more solid form, in the form of giving and helping.

Bad connections mean we spend the night in Singapore – tantamount to heaven – they speak English and are wonderfully organised! But they also have lots of posters about unattended bags and spotting people acting strangely on subways. It’s something I notice when I get home on the Perth trains and it makes me wonder. We have a lot here – as they do in Singapore – and we are very afraid of losing what we have to the point of being paranoid. But in countries like Myanmar, Laos, Peru or Colombia (amongst many others) they have a very real risk of a bomb going off and yet they seem to live life without the fear that I see created in our media.