From Burma to Myanmar

by Lydia Laube

  Then in 2012 the government began to make concessions towards liberalisation. Elections were held and Aung San Suu Kyi, one of my heroes, changed her mind about the boycott. She said, ‘Come, we need your money, but limit the amount that goes to the government by only patronising private hotels and restaurants.’ Later, her house arrest was lifted and she was able to leave the country to receive her Nobel Peace Prize.

  Time to go back to Burma!

  Aung San Suu Kyi and I arrived in Yangon on the same day, only one of us clutching a Nobel Prize unfortunately.

  Leaving Adelaide for Burma, I flew first to Darwin to spend three days in my spiritual home, revisiting old friends and haunts. I had dinner at Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Club where I was delighted to find nothing had changed—the same cook served the same fabulous fish with the same wide smile, breakfast at the Parap market, a Saturday morning tradition, and a barbeque in a balmy, frangipani-scented night. What more could I have asked for?

  My soul restored, I left for Singapore in the early evening, switching from Qantas to Jetstar. It took five hours to Singapore. It was a boring, no frills flight but I bought some food and wine to while away the time. The young Irishman sitting next to me had to put his food and beer on my AMEX. Jetstar did not soil their hands with cash.

  The onward flight to Rangoon, now known by its pre-colonial name of Yangon, departed in twelve hours so I decided to stay in Changi airport. After being misdirected three times—I don’t think even the people who work in this enormous place have any idea what it contains—I found the Transit Hotel. Rooms here are sold in blocks of six hours plus any additional hours required. The accommodation was tiny but well-equipped with TV, phone and air-con, but all the rooms with an ensuite had been taken so I had to wander around the airport corridors to use the bathroom in the fitness centre.

  Up early with the wake-up call I had requested, I went in search of my luggage. My bag had not been booked through to Yangon but was being held hostage, awaiting ransom and liberation, in the Lost and Found office.

  There was a two hour wait until my flight. I wandered about and ate some awful food—a dish of foul boiled sausages that looked and tasted like entrails. Finally in the departure lounge, I watched two Asian pilots, one a slim young girl, stride past and mount the cockpit of the Jetstar plane waiting outside on the tarmac. On the plane there were four hostesses, two Singaporeans in Jetstar uniforms and two gorgeous Burmese girls in attractive orange longiis (a sarong-style long skirt) and blue blouses. My suspicion that this was not a genuine Jetstar flight deepened. The refresher towels handed out as we boarded had first aroused my doubts. Australian airlines gave up such niceties long ago. My misgivings grew when complementary food and drinks were served and I saw the Air Myanmar logos on the food trays. Help! I was flying with a Third World airline again. I had noticed that I was the only Westerner aboard. Was there something I did not know?

  On the back of the seat in front of me was a prominently placed brown paper sick bag. It was a long time since I had seen one of those on a plane, and I had never seen one used. Oh well, there’s a first time for everything. And Murphy saw to it that the only time I witnessed this event I had a good view of it. I was seated beside the thrower-upperer. The poor woman used that bag with a will, including while my food tray was in front of me. Not that it deterred me.

  The flight from Singapore to Yangon took two and a half hours. When the Burmese woman next to me managed to get her head out of the sick bag for long enough to fill out her immigration form she asked me for help. I tried. But she could possibly be in prison by now! I have no Burmese and she had no English.

  At Yangon airport, despite the new terminal, it was the remembered humid, sticky, noisy, crowded chaos. A plane from Bangkok had arrived at the same time, bringing a few backpackers. We all gravitated to a pair of young men who were enticingly waving a placard labelled ‘Motherland Guesthouse’. I had made a booking there, I hoped. It had been difficult to find places that could take an internet booking or even that had internet access.

  The Motherland welcome committee said they did not have a booking registered for me but they took me with them anyway. We stood outside the building waiting for their van for what seemed an age, sweating amid the surrounding bedlam. Finally the van came but there was not enough room for all of us so an English lad and I were shunted off in a rattly old taxi. It took an hour to reach the guesthouse and I arrived steaming and panting for the cold drink that was offered. An air-conned taxi was a rarity in Yangon.

  I had recognised nothing on the drive. There seemed to be a lot more cars and the traffic was mad, but at least there were not the blaring horns of Bangkok.

  2 Mother Love

  At Motherland chaos reigned supreme. The tiny foyer was packed with new arrivals, most of whose bookings appeared to have been lost like mine. I was finally found a room. This guesthouse is extremely popular thanks to Lonely Planet’s endorsement. (Which, incidentally, turned out to be well deserved.) The staff was unbelievably kind and patient. Nothing was too much trouble.

  My room was a pleasant surprise. Big, with lots of light via almost two walls of windows, it had an attached, perfectly adequate bathroom with touchingly innocent faults like a towel rail you’d have to have been ten feet tall to reach. And if that didn’t deter you, it was placed directly under the aim of the shower water. The toilet system was unable to cope with toilet paper so the roll of paper was lovingly enshrined in a plastic case and displayed like the treasure it is on the table beside the bed, nowhere near the loo. The paper was wound into its case so that it came out furled like a flag and needed to be unravelled to make it usable. Was this just to make life interesting? The way the zoo keeps orangutans mentally active by hiding their food. There were two three-quarter sized beds, comfortable if hard, an air-con that worked well—when the power was on (it failed regularly). A TV hung from the ceiling of the alcove between the entrance and bathroom doors, so high and in such an awkward position that it was almost impossible to see, so it was a good thing it didn’t work.

  I was very happy with my room’s outlook. One window provided a panoramic view of a stone wall, but the other looked out over the narrow alley behind the guesthouse where the cook house lived partly covered by a slanting corrugated-iron roof. Here, against either wall of the alley, big aluminium cauldrons perched on braziers and steam rose from pots cooking on hot plates on low tables. The kitchen may not have been five star but the food it produced was delicious and freshly cooked.

  Work began early down there in the cook house, and, after a great sleep, I lay in the pre-dawn light listening to the sounds that rose up to me—voices chatting quietly, roosters crowing, cheeping chickens, a cat calling to her mewing kittens, and someone playing softly on a flute.

  Presenting myself for breakfast downstairs in the guesthouse restaurant, an attendant sang softly to himself as he brought me a tray of white bread and jam. This may be considered a delicacy here, but not by me. I rejected it politely and asked for eggs. An omelette filled with vegetables, two sweet, tree-ripened bananas and a mug of wonderful local coffee replaced the first offering.

  The Motherland staff took their obligation to feed you breakfast very seriously. You were almost force fed it. No matter what time you left in the morning it was compulsory first to have breakfast. I even saw it offered to folk who had just arrived as they waited for their rooms. As a lifelong devotee of a good breakfast, how could I not have fallen in love with people so dedicated to it?

  I spent the morning in a fruitless search for onward travel by river. Burma is well supplied with rivers, and boats have always been used as a means of transport around the country. Since roads have been built the opportunity for passenger travel on boats has decreased. I had seen a boat trip up the famous Irrawaddy River advertised in an Adelaide newspaper and asked about this. Strangely, no one had heard of it in Burma. But the patience of the girls at Motherland who helped me look for it was limitless. They phoned and used the in
ternet but all the phone numbers recorded for this establishment had been changed, were wrong or did not answer. This was not uncommon. The phone service here was notoriously deficient.

  After a terrific lunch of fish, ginger and onions, I walked around the corner to a shop I had been told sold mobile phones. On the way I walked over a railway line that passed between tumbledown shops and buildings and crossed the road without signs or barriers. In my room I had heard trains hooting as they went very slowly past. It was absolutely essential to go slowly, I thought, after seeing the way people walked all over the line. I wondered how many people the train caught unawares.

  In the phone shop an obliging young woman inserted a SIM card into my phone for me. It cost a mere twenty three dollars and came with ten dollars worth of credit. Later I found my phone was blocked and did not work. I returned and discovering that I could not get a refund so I bought another phone! Me! Luddite of the Year with two phones. But it was a bright classy red and only cost another twenty dollars, considerably cheaper than a short while ago when severe restrictions on mobile phones existed and just a SIM card cost around a thousand dollars!

  Then I took a taxi to the town centre. It wasn’t far and taxis were fairly cheap; it cost about three dollars. Yangon, bordered on the south and west by the Yangon River, is Burma’s largest city and was its capital from British rule in 1885 through to independence in 1948 until 2005 when the government built a new city at Nay Pi Taw in central Burma and suddenly announced that poor old Yangon had been demoted. There seems to have been no logical explanation for this move, although it is said to have been advised by government sanctioned fortune tellers.

  Yangon’s downtown streets were as appalling as the area around Motherland—broken and dirty. When I stopped to give an old beggar woman a donation—the only beggar I saw incidentally—a large and muscular rat, the Mike Tyson of rats, ran over my feet and shot off down the gutter.

  I came upon a small supermarket on my travels and ambled around it casually, much to the suspicion of the many security guards who followed behind keeping me under surveillance. The owners of this establishment had missed the point of supermarkets being self-service. Along one wall stocked with cosmetics, maybe fifteen feet in length, six female assistants stood ready to help you. Unfortunately, it was impossible to see the goods past the barrier they presented. However, I did find a thirty cent electricity adapter plug.

  Not surprisingly, in the confusing central area of Yangon I didn’t locate the place I had been given directions to, but I did manage to find my way back to Motherland on foot.

  A handy landmark of inner Yangon is the Sule Pagoda, whose great golden stupa rises incongruously from among government buildings and shops at the centre of the town’s primary traffic intersection. It is thought to be two thousand years old and to enshrine a sacred hair relic of the Buddha.

  A total of three hours hiking about in the heat had almost finished me. Thank heaven for my brollie. It was now July and the rainy season, and although not the hottest time of the year, it wasn’t the coolest either. I fell into my room pooped and soaked, wringing wet with sweat. I had a cold shower and gave up on this day after phoning all over town seeking a room for tomorrow. I had to leave Motherland then as they were fully booked. The reception staff helped me and eventually I found a vacancy in a hotel closer to the centre called the Queen’s Park.

  Checkout time in Burma is a civilised twelve midday, so that’s when I moved on. My new hotel had a grand-looking exterior, albeit no sign of a park, nor the queen for that matter. At the front desk two charming receptionists gradually overcame their surprise at seeing that I was Western, female and alone, and decided which room would suit me. I paid a little more for a superior room, at the front with lots of light.

  The hotel had a cavernous empty dining room where I had lunch after making a spectacular entrance. I missed the bottom step and performed a four-point landing splat onto the hard concrete floor. Two waiters rushed to scrape me up and restore me to a more dignified position. The food cost much the same as at the Motherland. I was to find prices the same all over the country no matter where I ate, in seedy work men’s cafes or hotels.

  One of the front desk receptionists spoke some English and she helped me find an address for the agent of the Pandaw, the elusive boat that allegedly sailed the Irrawaddy. After several unsuccessful phone attempts I set off in a taxi to find it. It was situated a couple of miles north of the city centre at the Inya Lake Hotel.

  What a ride! In a death-defying taxi with no windows, I was flown along the roads in a howling gale. Horrible. I sat directly behind the driver hoping he would act as an air bag when the inevitable collision came. In that position I couldn’t see the worst that was happening around us, like pedestrians peeling off our fenders. Managing speeds of one hundred plus whenever possible, the driver weaved madly all over the road, in and out of phalanxes of buses and cars.

  We reached Inya Lake much to my relief. This extensive lake is off limits at places where there are state guesthouses or ministerial housing. At one end is the home of Aung San Suu Kyi where she had spent much of the past twenty years under house arrest.

  At the Inya Lake Hotel, a very posh hotel with a grand foyer, the receptionist imparted the unwelcome news that the Pandaw office was no longer there. They had moved last week, pushed by Murphy no doubt. The lengths some people will go to avoid me. The receptionist obligingly phoned around searching for the firm—they had left no forwarding address—and eventually sent me off in another taxi. This one dumped me at a big building where I wandered from dreary semi-lit floor to floor until another kind woman took me in tow and delivered me to an office. I was shown into a waiting room obviously meant for VIPs. It was packed with heavily carved wooden furniture, including seven enormous blue velvet upholstered thrones arranged along one wall. Another lovely young woman explained that I was still not in the right place for this by now apparently mythical boat.

  She wrote down the address I needed and outside the building I found a taxi driver who, with the help of several passersby acting as interpreters, said he knew the way. He didn’t. He took me up and down unlikely looking lanes and tried to deposit me several times at various doorways. We finally arrived at a place with a guard who said, yes, this was the place, and I got out.

  Now a second security guard appeared. He said, no, this was not the number that was written on my piece of paper. He pointed down the road and I set off on foot. After walking for some distance and finding nothing likely, I returned to the gate where I accosted a passing schoolboy who led me to the building I wanted. I wondered how you could stand all day at a gate and not know which numbers were along your street.

  Finally I climbed a steep narrow flight of the grittiest broken stairs imaginable to the office of the agent. But it was all to no avail. The boat had no booking or shipping facilities in Burma—it was all done from Australia by email. But yet another sympathetic woman took my phone number for future contact. I returned, exhausted, for dinner at the QPH and a rest. The TV in my room had CNN so I put my feet up and watched the news.

  All accommodation in Burma seemed to provide breakfast in the room rate, probably a legacy of the British B & B tradition. The QPH’s was buffet style in the dining room, with a good selection of fruit, juice, great coffee and Asian dishes, even eggs if ordered. Most other patrons of the hotel seemed to be Asian businessmen and I was the only Westerner.

  The phone in my room was easy to use, even if the numbers were hit and miss, either disconnected or changed. I got travel agents from the phone book and called several until I found one who spoke enough English to understand what I wanted—to travel by boat. He was very helpful and told me about the local boat that went around the delta to Pathein. It seemed to be the only possibility at that time. I had given up on the Pandaw.

  Once more the receptionists at the front desk phoned for directions, put me in a taxi, and waved me off to the ticket office for the local delta boat. They told m
e I looked Burmese, which I took as a compliment.

  3 The wind is in the palm trees

  At the shipping office on a riverside wharf I was ushered into a tin shed that was the waiting room for boat travellers. It was filled to the brim with people sitting on benches or their luggage, but I was shooed through this place and installed in the manager’s small office. It was very hot in there but at least I had a proper chair. I was told to wait thirty minutes. At ten the manager arrived. So much for early Asian starts to the day.

  This nice man showed me a photo of the boat and promised me a cabin. As a foreigner I had to pay a much inflated price in dollars but he could not change my hundred dollar note. I signed an agreement to accept the cabin and to pay for both berths when I came to board the ship at three the next day for a five o’clock sailing. My passport was inspected, all my details were recorded in a book, and I was free to go.

  The day before when I had been speaking to the woman who told me about the Pandaw, she had mentioned this local boat trip to Pathein. She said that the Pandaw had not been able to obtain a license to travel this route because of the danger of going out to sea in a large bay that can be wild at times. Now it occurred to me that the Pandaw looked much bigger and better than the riverboat on which I was about to venture out there.

  The taxi driver who had been waiting for me took me to the street of opticians where I ordered a pair of specs to be made to the prescription I had brought with me. The frame I chose was branded Chanel but I very much doubt it, and the whole arrangement cost twenty-eight dollars. I also ordered some new prescription lens for my sunglasses. They cost an unbelievable nine dollars. The three staff spoke little English and it was not easy, but very pleasant, doing business with them. Many times they tried to force cold drinks and coffee on me. The specs turned out to be good. They told me I was very pretty. Was I back in You Are Very Beautiful Country or were they in need of some of their products? Maybe it was just my lipstick.