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US$1 equals 6.4 Myanmar kyat  US$1 equals 1 FEC On my first visit to Burma, years ago, the hill tribes were still permitted to travel freely and the famous Padaung (“long-necked” women) were strolling the streets of Yangon (Rangoon, as it then was). To a young, impressionable westerner, their colorful costumes and polished brass coils fitted one over the other around swan-like necks, symbolized an exotic and mysterious orient.  Indeed, this country is a place of surprises and delights, strange happenings and curious experiences in out-of-the-way places… Where else would you find a floating monastery whose notably laid-back monks train generations of their cats to jump through hoops? Or fishermen who row, standing up, one leg wrapped around an oar, propelling their boats with languid grace? Kipling summed it up a century ago in his Letters from the East. “This is Burma,” he wrote, “and it will be unlike any land you know about.” On previous visits to Burma, I’d made the rounds of all the better-known places. This time, I planned to land at Kawthaung, spend a week traveling up the coast, then continue by air to the northwest of the country. And I intended to visit the Golden Rock Pagoda at Kyaik-tyio on my way north from Kawthaung.

After haggling the fare—$10 asked, $2 bid, settled at $4—I walked down the steps from the jetty with Thanu, my boatman. 

Ranong is at the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Kra, where the Pak Chan river forms a natural boundary between Thailand and Burma. The river is tidal here, and it was now low water. The long-tail I hired was 15 yards from the river bank at the end of a bridge of narrow planks laid over glistening black mud. Halfway there, a plank tilted, I overbalanced, and much of my right leg vanished into the sludge. As I pulled it out, the stench was indescribable.

Cockroaches and other crawlies

When I finally boarded the boat, non-paying passengers appeared almost immediately. Disturbed by the outboard’s vibrations, cockroaches and other crawlies emerged from their slumber to scuttle around the bottom and sides of the boat. Ten minutes upstream, we veered toward the riverbank where a dilapidated shack was built out over the water. Alerted by Thanu’s shouts, a cheroot-smoking old crone handed down a rope with a metal can attached. Hauling up his money, she exchanged it for a bucket containing two bottles. The contents of the larger one went into the outboard’s tank, the other, down Thanu’s throat.

Many of the long-tails on Pak Chan are water-taxis and, like their brothers on dry land, are driven by seriously unhinged characters. At speeds equaled only by greyhounds on steroids, operators with large motors weave between slower craft shouting abuse at anyone in the way. Thanu, whose navigation had become increasingly erratic after his pit stop, was now completely out of control. 

Hurtling through a group of boats near a floating market, we collided with one carrying a dozen women returning from their morning shopping. Its operator leaped onto our boat, screaming and shaking his fists at Thanu. For a moment, I thought there might be a punch-up, but it was just a noisy charade put on for the benefit of the passengers.

Cheroots, unwashed bodies, and yesterday’s curry

When we finally arrived at the crowded, one-room immigration office in Kawthaung, the air reeked of cheroots, unwashed bodies, and yesterday’s curry. A shifty-looking character tried to borrow $5 from me for his day-visa. Finally, the official who’d been inspecting my passport threw it back on the table. “Your visa no good here,” he shrugged. “You go away. Enter Myanmar only at Yangon.” My substantial bribe, offered discreetly through an assistant, was refused. I’m all for stamping out corruption, but this was carrying things a bit far.

I was forced to return to Ranong, fly back to Bangkok and onward to Yangon, with a night’s hotel stay en route. One part of me raged that this was all such a waste of time and money. But the other part knows that these events are part and parcel of what makes travel in Asia so charming..  So now I was in Yangon, and Kyaik-tyio and the Golden Rock Pagoda was almost a day’s drive south. I rented a car with driver and headed off for the two-day trip. Outside city limits, the road narrowed to one lane in each direction.  Northbound, heading toward Yangon, most of the vehicles were monster trucks. For hours, I lived a near-death experience as one after the other lumbered toward us, occupying the entire road, swaying perilously with towering loads of crates and sacks of produce. Most of Burma’s 47 million people are profoundly Buddhist. In cities and towns, the distinctive shapes of pagodas pierce the horizon in all directions. In the countryside, there are countless mini-shrines and wayside monuments. As we headed south, our journey was punctuated in almost every village by shrill loudspeaker music, interspersed with one-liners from the Buddhist scriptures, all designed to coax a contribution for the local shrine. Braking occasionally to sub-Formula 1 speeds, Than hurled coins into bamboo baskets tended by young girls in colorful blouses and the floral-printed sarongs that the Burmese call “longyis.”

The Golden Rock, one of Burma’s most revered but least accessible places of pilgrimage, is an enormous, gold-leaf-covered, pear-shaped boulder with an 18-foot-high mini pagoda on top. Perched alarmingly on a promontory overlooking the valley 4,000 feet below, the Golden Rock is said to maintain its balance only by a hair of the Buddha preserved inside the pagoda. 

Until 12 years ago, the only route up was a footpath from Kinpun, the base camp in the valley. Now a road takes you to a village at 2,400 feet. From there, you trek the last 1,600 feet.

The road from Kinpun up to the village was one of the worst I’ve ever traveled. I wasn’t surprised when I heard that 34 people had been killed two weeks before when a truck rolled down the mountain. “We are not counting,” was the reply when I inquired about the number of injuries in five other accidents reported during the previous six months.
The two-hour trek from the end of the concrete road up to the Golden Rock reminded me of walks in the Pyrenees—except for the heat and the fact that no one had ever offered to carry me up Pic de la Serrera in a sedan chair. Even if you’re elderly, out of shape, or just plain lazy, you can still make it to the Golden Rock. For $2 to $5, depending on your weight and baggage (some pilgrims take sleeping bags and cooking equipment), two young men will carry you there. 

Earning enormous amounts of merit

The sedan operators have a crafty, market-tested strategy. The obvious targets are the obese, the infirm, or the very old…and all are besieged as soon as they get off their trucks. Other operators lie in wait all the way along the trail to snare those who start out with good intentions but become less motivated as the climb gets steeper. Flushed with righteousness and the notion of acquiring enormous amounts of merit, Buddhist-style, I brushed the operators aside like flies.

It was 5 p.m. when I arrived. The backdrop of intense blue sky and tropical vegetation was perfect. Recalling my guidebook’s lip-smacking description of the sun’s early evening rays dancing on the golden boulder, I got my camera ready. I rounded the bend and there in front was the shrine I’d struggled all day to reach. Just one problem…all that was visible was an impressive collection of scaffolding with bits if gold rock just visible between the bamboo rods. Another home run for the gremlins. 

Sucker for remote places with exotic names

I’ve always been a soft touch for remote places with exotic names. The mere mention of Mrauk-U—the headquarters of Burma’s western kings for four centuries and one of the most spectacular royal cities of Asia—always made me twitch. It was there I headed next. 

The only access to the city is by water, a six-hour journey up the Kaladan river from the coastal city of Akyab. The agency rep, who delivered my plane ticket, also brought me a life jacket to take on the boat I’d rented. “I’m sure you won’t need this,” she said, “but things are rather primitive there and they won’t have these on board.”

At Akyab (formerly known as Sittwe) airport the next morning, I met my guide, Linn, a 22-year-old student who was unable to complete her courses because the military closed down her university (and all others in Burma), for most of the last decade. Like many other young people, she uses her English language skills in the tourist industry. 
 

But my Akyab hotel was dismal…lights didn’t work, bare wires dangled from connectors, and the television flickered with colors I didn’t know existed. As I shaved, I was serenaded by the occupants of a bird’s nest in the space between a broken exterior window and the interior louvers of the bathroom. Under the circumstances, it seemed churlish to complain about the lack of sink plugs or soap. 

As we drove along the riverbank to find my boat for Mrauk-U, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d been warned that the toilet facilities were basic. When we stopped beside a monstrous, white-painted, double-decker gin-palace, I was awestruck by how much floating real estate I’d got for my money. But why had I brought a lifejacket all the way from Yangon? Linn laughed. 

“Ours is the next one over,” she said. We boarded the cruiser and walked through its air-conditioned, bar-equipped cabin. Emerging on the other side of the deck, we peered down. Our poor relative was moored alongside. The agent’s description of the toilet facilities had been faultless—a small wooden enclosure cantilevered out over the back of the boat had a hole in the floor.

It took only a few minutes to slip our moorings. The boat, typical of a Kaladan craft, was 30 feet long with a simple wooden superstructure covering most of the deck. While the crew of three looked after things, I sat chatting with Linn under an awning. For long periods, we were out of sight of the Kaladan’s banks with only ducks and marsh birds wheeling above for company. When the river narrowed again, there were villagers wading waist deep, pushing triangular A-framed fishing nets in front of them. 
 

Don’t think about the brakes… Arriving in Mrauk-U, we navigated between dozens of other craft in a narrow creek, glided under arching trees, and tied up at a jetty. We’d had left Sittwe only six hours before, but the clock seemed to have turned back more than half a century. Waiting to take us to the hotel was an original Willys Jeep, a leftover from World War II. Wires dangled from the dash, holes gaped in the floor, the seats were worn down to their metal infrastructure, and the vehicle apparently had only one speed and no reverse gear. When we missed the turn to the hotel, the driver had to coast 20 yards and then make a U-turn. I tried to avoid thinking about the brakes. The royal palace of Mrauk-U was built inside fortifications, which straggle for 19 miles around the present-day city. I climbed the hill at its center as soft morning light revealed hundreds of honey- and ochre-colored monuments extending in all directions.

Later, I wandered cool corridors of temples with niches containing hundreds of Buddha images and shrines with reliefs depicting life in the ancient royal courts. In the Shittaung Temple, I sat before a massive Buddha chiseled from stone in the 14th century. As its serene gaze challenged the unbelief of this 21st-century visitor, it seemed that for this moment alone, my journey had been worth the effort.

Linn was born in Mrauk-U and went to school there. She was an excellent guide who understood that I wanted to meet as many people as possible. In a field near one of the temples that we visited, a farmer was de-hulling paddy with a hand-operated mill. Linn knew the family, and we went over to talk to them. The farmer’s wife, who was preparing a stew over a wood fire, invited me to sample it. It was made from green beans, sliced red peppers, potatoes the size of marbles, lentils, and chopped chillis, all thickened and flavored with the inevitable ngapi, an evil-smelling fish paste that the Burmese use in many of their dishes.

The chillis were so lethal they seared the lips and tongue. The good news was they made my mouth so numb I could hardly taste the ngapi. Sign language is a wonderful thing. In a couple of gestures, I expressed gratitude and declined a further helping on the grounds it might leave the family short.

The day we left, we made an early visit to the market where Linn stocked up with baskets of vegetables and flowers. Our journey back took longer—seven hours—because of a strong wind. 

Introducing the Internet

That night in Akyab, she brought three friends to dinner and asked me to explain the Internet to them. They’d heard of it, but had only the vaguest notion of what it was. In Burma, there are no cybercafés, no personal computers, and no private access to the Internet. 

On my last day in the country, I went to Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda. Early morning sun was already splashing the gleaming-white marble plateau. Around the gilded central stupa, devotees were burning incense sticks, garlanding statues, or sitting in contemplation amongst the shrines spread across the 14-acre platform. Lustrous images graced temple interiors lit by flickering candles, while high above, thousands of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires glittered from the dome’s soaring pinnacle. It was my eighth visit there, but familiarity never seems to diminish my response to the fusion of spirituality and imagination in this greatest of all Buddhist monuments. 

In The Gentleman in the Parlour, a book about his journeys in Southeast Asia, Somerset Maugham wrote: “I am often tired of myself, and I have a notion that by travel, I can add to my personality and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from the journey quite the same self that I took.” 

Burma has always had that effect on me.

Visas and when to visit
Visas for 28-day visits are issued by the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok to personal callers (allow two working days) or by mail from other embassies. Submit your passport with at least six months of validity remaining, three applications, and four photos. The cost if $25.

It’s best to visit between November and February. Between March and May, it can be too hot and humid for comfort, and the rains come from June to October. 

How to get there
The only direct flights to Burma are from nearby countries. Long-haul visitors fly to Bangkok and take Union of Burma Airways or Thai Airways International into Yangon. The current return fare, economy, on UBA is $165 and on TAI $180. 

I prefer TAI. If you’re traveling economy class and have a long wait for your connection, check TAI’s one-way upgrade price to business class. Last year, paying $40 extra for the one-hour flight got me into the Royal Orchid lounge with its free eats, drinks, and the latest newspapers, plus frequent flyer points on Star Alliance.
 

How to travel inside Burma—some tips 

I used Diethelm and Co. to save the hassle of booking internal flights. Their Bangkok operation co-ordinates Burma travel. I paid by credit card and, after arrival, contacted the Yangon local office to pick up tickets or for trouble-shooting. 

Diethelm waives their handling charge of $35 per booking if total bookings exceed $250 (a couple of flights amounts to $250 or more). Their excellent website has links to itineraries and prices for group tours or for private transport and personal guides for those who want to travel independently.

For more information, contact Diethelm and Co., e-mail dto@dto.co.th; website: www.diethelm-travel.com.

I usually rent my own cars with  drivers/guides. Allow $50 per day or $75 daily for trips with overnight stays. A guide only costs $20 per day. Taxis are cheap. Short distances cost around $1. For $5 you can travel anywhere in town.

The omnipresent military, combined with Burmese natural civility, help ensure personal security. Muggings, pick-pocketing, and petty theft are virtually unheard of. However, don’t ignore common sense precautions. Unaccompanied females can expect to attract attention, but it shouldn’t be threatening.

Money, money, money

Burma’s official currency is the kyat, but there are two others in circulation: FECs (see below) and the U.S. dollar. Everyone wants dollars so take plenty of singles. It’s best to use kyats for taxis, restaurants, and small purchases. Forget credit cards. Only the big hotels accept them. There are no ATMs.

Unless you’re traveling on a pre-paid tour, you must change $200 (or the equivalent in another acceptable hard currency) at Yangon airport’s banking kiosks. In return, you receive Foreign Exchange Certificates (1 FEC equals US$1). FECs are special banknotes, which circulate only inside the country. The Burmese regard them as an inferior kind of dollar. Last year, when I changed FECs into kyats, I got only 300, as compared with 400 for a $1 bill. I’m told the rate is now as high as 700 for dollar bills.

After changing the obligatory $200 into FECs, you can sell the rest of your dollars wherever you want—in shops, at money changers, or at street kiosks. Check current rates first with a couple of vendors and count the kyats before you hand over your money.
 

Where best to lay your head Yangon has good four- and five-star hotels, including Sedona, Traders, The Strand, and Nikko Royal Lake, where published rates are $150 to $350. Outside Yangon, there’s not much choice, even in Mandalay, the country’s second city. I stay at the Swan Hotel there. Farther out, things get basic. In remote places, I reserve through Diethelm. Because there are too few tourists—only about 200,000 for the entire season last year—and a lot of competition, all Yangon hotels offer discounts. If you want four-star at best rates, don’t book ahead. Target a couple of hotels, take an airport taxi to the first, and ask the driver to wait.

When the receptionist tells you the price, look apologetic and say it’s over your budget. Chances are, you’ll get a better offer. If not, move on to the next. If you don’t like this idea, book your first night, then ask around.

For local flavor and ambiance, I prefer medium class. A five-minute stroll to downtown, the Thamada in Yangon is comfortable, with air-conditioning and satellite TV with CNBC ticker tape so I can see how much money I’ve lost on the North American markets overnight. It costs $35 per night.

Outside Yangon and Mandalay, I pay $35 to $60, including breakfast. Most hotels insist on payment in dollars or FECs.

How to plan your trip—some recommended reading

Guidebooks I rely on are Burma from APA Productions, the Insight Guides series, and Burma by Caroline Courtauld, from Odyssey Publications Ltd., Hong Kong. I use the Burma map from the Periplus Travel Maps series. You can cheat by checking tour-group itineraries on the Internet to see what places are hot and what hotels the agencies use. Also check out www.myanmar.com.
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