Mingalaba!

It's been a while butwe are still alive....

After 5 months it's time to leave Latin America behind us and move to the other side of the world. From Mexico City we flew to Dallas Fort Worth and then to San Francisco. In 'Frisco' we had to kill some time waiting to board our flight to Hong Kong. So we hopped on the 'BART' (Bay Area Rapid Transport- system) to downtown San Francisco. In San Francisco we pretty much rushed through the mainsights; Union Square (and for Lina a short visit to Macy's just to catch a glimpse of a decent shop after 5 months on the road...), China Town, the Trans America pyramid, Little Italy (man, it's so hard to resist all these nice restaurants along Columbus Avenue) and then to Lombard Street, the assumed world's crookedest street where the sensation is apparently just to queue up and then drive down.... isn't that 'hilarious'

? After our last effort to see the sunset as close to the Golden Gate Bridge as we could make it, we returned to the airport satisfied but tired to the bone, ready for a 16 hour overnight flight to Hong Kong.

Arriving in rainy Hong Kong early in the morning was quite a shock. No english spoken here. So the taxiride to our hotel was a downright rip-off. The first one. And hopefully the last one. Hong Kong deserves its status as New York from the East. Wow, what a city! Neon light forests on Nathan Road denser then the tropical rainforest, smells on the (night) markets that are hard to locate but they are stimuli (both positive and negative) for your senses, a skyline which makes Manhatten blur (although the daily light and sound show with lasers and all that was a bit of a disappointment, but, hey, who cares with all these skyscrapers lit with neon lights every night of the week anyway...), birds and goldfish being sold for luck on markets in Mong Kok, the clumsy use of our chopsticks in order not to starve, the Kung Fu fighters in Kowloon Park, doubledecker trams and busses manoeuvring between the highrise apartment blocks of Wan Chai, Central and Sheung Wan, the depressing and hence beautiful harbour of Aberdeen on the south side of Hong Kong Island and not to forget the unforgettable daily and nightly views from Victoria Peak. And, last but least, the greatest invention ever: the Octopus Card. Sent our minister to Hong Kong to learn about effective public transport payment systems..... Yes, we love Hong Kong! This is East meets West in the best imaginable way! But there is one thing we want to stress and that is: do not (I repeat: NOT) celebrate New Year in Hong Kong unless you need to be in bed early. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the waterfront promenade of Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the fireworks from the skyscrapers on the opposite site of the Victoria Harbour on Hong Kong Island. Although we saw at least maybe 2 rockets explode in the air, at 00.05 the police showed some very effective 'crowd management'- skills as everyone was forced to leave the waterfront and was sent back into the city centre and at 00.15 the waterfront promenade was deserted (and not accessible anymore). So we had to make our own party with our bottle of champagne and party attributes (...). Although no one joined (or understood) us, we still managed to hang out on the streets of downtown Hong Kong till the early morning....

And then time to move to South East Asia. An area where we planned to stay about 3 to 4 months before going to India, but we changed plans as soon as we arrived in Bangkok (Thailand). Is this real? This is even worse than we imagined it would be.... Thousands of (mostly) teenage backpackers are all gathered in one spot in South East Asia.... and we are in the middle of it....I think we are getting old...

Although Bangkok comes close to hell on earth, it was a good place to get acclimatized to the extremely humid and hot weather, do some cheap shopping, and.... arrange our visa for ... yes, fasten your seatbelts... Myanmar (to some people still known as Burma)! It took us about half a day on the more then chaotic embassy of Myanmar in Bangkok to fill out the necessary papers, hand them in and pay the visa fee of 16 Euro. But, it was all worth it. 2 days later we picked up our passports with visa!

Deciding to go to Myanmar meant some serious consideration weighing the pros and cons ('go' vs. 'not go'). Myanmar has an oppressive military regime and some say that tourism legitimises the government to continue like this as for example a share of the entrance fees that you need to pay go to the government and its generals. Although this is unmistakingly true we are convinced that there is another side as well. We are both convinced that tourism has a positive effect for the people of the country to play a part in the world, to talk with foreigners and practice their english. Moreover, of a less tangible character, where an international community is present it's less likely that human rights are being violated. We are constantly bearing in mind that we will spend as much as we reasonably can into the private sector (e.g. busses, minimarkets, flights, etc) and try to avoid to pay entrance fees.... And as we are no saints, honestly, the mere egocentric fact that we were so damn curious about this unknown pearl of South East Asia put a big weight on our final decision to give it a 'go'.

As it is currently not possible to enter Myanmar over land we flew from Bangkok to Yangon (stripped of its status as capital in 2005) with Air Asia (Ryanair of the east....). Arriving in Yangon felt like a 'timewarp'. The true Myanmar spirit revealed itself quickly and obviously..... men wearing long skirts called 'longyi', women wearing traditional 'thanaka' make-up, huge golden pagodas with lots and lots of worshippers, tons of male Dracula look-alikes due to the 'bettel- leaf' chewing, taxis that are nothing more than a chassis on wheels and the fact that we seem to be an attraction comparable with aliens from Mars... ET phone home....

Yangon is a huge city with its 5 million inhabitants but has a village-like feel compared to Bangkok. It is a mixture of British Victorian architecture, golden pagodas like the huge Shweddagon Paya and the riverside Bo Ta Taung Pagoda, bustling Boyoke Aung San Market and friendly locals who are extremely curious and eager to practice their English language skills.... We also met a nice girl called Phaw Phaw on the streets in downtown Yangon. She showed us around the city and took us on a local bus experience which is an adventure in itself (just look at the Burmese language and you will understand at least a little bit why... and then there is the bus itself of course....). Besides this another thing to take into account is the fact that electricity in Myanmar is a true come-and-go- system; every day the electricity goes on and off like the tides of the ocean (but then less predictable). One moment the whole city is dark and then it's (a little) lighter and again dark.... Add to this the sidewalks that are of the rumble-and-tumble kind and you will understand that our first day in Myanmar was an unforgettable one and hopefully a good sample of what there is to come. O, and, by the way, the rest of our stay in this time warped country we will not go anywhere without our new friend mr. Flashlight...

The second day we encountered an even more challenging, less easy to fix problem... money

. Money in Myanmar is a big problem. Actually, in the whole country there are no ATM's, creditcards are not accepted, traveller cheques are rarely cashed (and when they are there is a commission fee of around 25%), banks do not dispense cash advances... and we had just 500 US Dollar cash with us (in case of emergency).... After asking around everywhere, we learned that there is one hotel in Myanmar (lucky us, it's in Yangon!) that gives Mastercard cash advances. After getting enough money to stay about 4 weeks in Myanmar - on a tight budget- we encountered the next problem. Our US Dollar banknotes were not new enough... they are not accepted on the black market which is the only way to exchange US Dollars in the local Kyats... So one minute you think you have money and the next moment it's already an illusion...duh... Our tactic to spend the 'bad' dollars to pay in hotels under the motto 'this is all we have; take it or leave it' generally worked out... But still we needed to change our dollars in Kyats on the streets where everyone can see what you have ... Imagine that 100 USD in Kyats is a pile of 1000 Kyat banknotes equalling the size of a thick piece of cake. Adding to the aforementioned that we travelled with about 1500 USD in cash hidden everywhere, we cannot conclude differently than that money is a problem in Myanmar.

After Yangon we moved to the city of Bago - nicknamed Buddha World. The first impression of Bago was, let's say, not so good. The extremely busy Yangon- Mandalay mainroad (which is more or less the only road) crossed the city, with its millions of motorbikes, trucks, dogs, sidecars, pick-ups, cows and people.... No places to eat something decent (we wanted to end our shitty days as soon as possible...), friendly but also less friendly people shouting at us in quite a rude way ('hey you, where you go'? 'Money'?), looking at us shamelessly without any respect or whatsoever and electricity that is even more erratic than in Yangon. But underneath this chaotic surface there is a true spiritual Buddha world. Lots of beautiful monasteries with monks going around the city to collect their daily breakfast, pagodas like oases and reclining Buddhas which are bigger then an average apartment building. We thought that Buddhism comprises the expression of the 'Middle Way', but so far it's only extremes!

Leaving our backpacks in Bago we headed to the Golden Rock of Kyaikhtiyo. On the foot of Mount Kyaikhtiyo we based ourselves in the 'base camp'- village of Kin Pun. From Kin Pun we jumped in a truck to bring us half way the mountain. And that was far enough... With about 60 other people we got squeezed in a Spartan truck without roof or any kind of other security and in a 'Siberia-transport-like'- ride, with a driver who couldn't care less that he has the lives of so many people in his hands, we were taken to the drop-off point from where it was still a 45 minute hike to the top. After paying the immense 'entrance fee for foreigners' we could finally walk to the Golden Rock itself. This huge golden rock is perched on the edge of a cliff and marks the spot of a Buddha hair donated by a hermit in the 11the century. It's a place which draws loads of pilgrims (but just not today...) It's beautiful but somehow a little disappointing as we expected it to be even bigger.... the rides up and down Mt. Kyaikhtiyo were more memorable then the rock itself.

Back in Bago we took the nightbus to the city of Mandalay. The 'Road to Mandalay' was pretty loud (Burmese cinema is alive and kicking!

) and in the morning, after a 12 hour busride, we were woken up with a loud, long and meditative mantra in the bus. Goodmorning, Myanmar! Although we associated the name Mandalay with a romantic city it's nothing special at all, except the huge Mandalay Palace which covers an area of more then 4 square kilometers and Mandalay hill, a stupa dotted hill overlooking the city. But Mandalay is more about the ancient towns around it: the huge unfinished base of a planned 150m high stupa at Mingun which we reached by a trip over the Ayeyarwady River and an early morning 10km bicycle ride to Amarapura (The City of Immortality) with its U Bein Bridge which is the world's longest teak bridge measuring 1,2 km. To see the sun come up here and watch life pass by makes Amarapura wonderful!

Kalaw, our next destination, is a small town in the 'highlands' of Myanmar. From Kalaw we started our 3-day overnight trekking through the highlands passing through several hilltribes such as the Palaung, Pa-O, Danu and Thaung Thu people. Like true shephards we had a small herd with us consisting of 2 sheep: an 18- year old sheep and so-called guide a.k.a. Nan Khin Thein who was supposed to speak English but in fact could only make the typical 'beeehh'- sound', and another 20-year old 'some more tea, please?'-sheep a.k.a. Nan Khun. Our two sheep were unfortunately not able to build bridges between the tribe members and us, but despite this slight deception the trekking was very impressive anyhow. The landscape was an ever-changing colorpalet, the warm hospitality of the Danu family where we spent our first night on the hard wooden floor of their 'house', the delicious Shan-food, the little young monks of the wooden Pattu Monastery where we (and a dozen of mice) spent our second night 'on the road' waking us up with an 'who-can-pray-the-loudest-competition' at 5.30 in the morning and not to forget the always 'mingalaba' (= hello) - screeming kids.... This is the unexplored Myanmar! Ending the trekking pretty exhausted (it's damn hot in Myanmar...), we arrived at Inn Thein Monastery located on the banks of the Inlay Lake, our final destination. From here we took a longtailboat across the lake to the village of Nyaungshwe, our basecamp for exploring the fascinating waterworld of Inlay.

Inlay Lake is a world apart. The lake itself is the bouncing heart and its adjacent canals are its veins. This lake is literally alive; becoming bigger in the wet season and smaller in the dry season, on-the-water tomato and flower farms with farmers doing their job from a small boat, fishermen rowing their wooden boats with the typical Inlay leg-rowing technique, the plenty small villages with wooden stilted houses, the monasteries including the Nga Hpe Chaung (better known as the 'jumping cat monastery' where monks taught their cats to jump), the Red Mountain vineyards and winery (yes, Sauvignon Blanc 'made in Myanmar'...), the colourful Nan Pan market with hundreds of longtailboats and thousands of people from the surrounding tribal villages coming to buy and sell an unimaginable range of products. And from both the water and the shore you can feel it pulsating. You can feel its beat, the heartbeat of Inlay Lake... its rhythm is hypnotizing and makes you want to linger...

but there is still more to see and time is running out because of visa-limitations...time to move on.

After a 12-hour busride from hell on the bumpy 'roads' of central Myanmar passing through the mountains and along many female and children roadworkers (forced labour by the regime) we finally arrived completely exhausted in Nyaung U, one of the four bigger villages in the Bagan Archeological Zone. If you think Hong Kong is the superlative of skylines, then forget it now... Bagan is the 'king of skylines'. About 4000 pagodas and stupas in red, gold and white are spread over a plain which covers about 42 square kilometer. This is f*&cking spectacular! A 'pagoda-overdose' would have been a logical state of mind, but it was fascinating till the last one. The individual pagodas itself are without exception beautiful, but the real draw is the collective of these constructions all together taken in from the top of one of the pagodas. The sunset from the Pya Tha Da Pagoda with a cold Myanmar beer and the sunrise from the Bu Le Thi pagoda were heavenly! We spend our last days in Myanmar hiking and biking over de sandy dirttracks through the fields of pagodas in Bagan, from pagoda to pagoda, sometimes interrupted by the need to get rid of some irritating kids wanting so sell postcards and all kind of other shit. This is the good life.

'Timewarped' Myanmar is a hardcore travel destination, but at the same time one of the most authentic and rewarding places we have ever seen. For the people in the country we hope that things change as soon as possible meaning the military regime will be replaced with a democratic government so that the people of Myanmar also will know what true freedom means, but for Myanmar to continue to be the unique and distinctive travel destination as it is today, we hope that nothing will change in this country. The people here are knocking on the door to make business in tourism. Let's hope that it will not become a second Thailand in the future...

After another bumpy 15 hour busride with some flat tires and a 1,5 hour flight we are back in Bangkok. The so-called civilized world....

Myanmar, cay zu din ba deh! And now....... pizza

!