19 random Burma photos

Random Photo: Favorite Sandwich

I had the privilege recently to speak at David Farley's Restless Legs reading series at Lolita in the Lower East Side. I wrote something for the event, called "The Hopes & Dreams of Our Travel Generation's Contributions to the Betterment of Travel are Hinged on our Collective Ability, and Willingness, to Celebrate the Mundane along with the Marvellous."

Aka "Sandwiches."

It ended with my favorite sandwich:

I had it a few years ago, just as I was leaving BURMA. I was wrapping up a six-week research assignment in a country many said you shouldn’t go to because of the military government. I showed up at the Yangon airport with a $1 or so of unused kyat wadded in my pocket and an appetite to fill the three hours till my flight left for Singapore. The city had just opened a huge new airport – I zipped past immigration and found myself alone – just a sea of polished white tile and a dozen empty storefronts. No other travelers were there yet, and there was nothing to eat.

I saw a couple uniformed local women sweeping the spotless floor. One had thanakha tree bark-paste dotting her tanned cheeks in the image of perfect suns. I asked her if I could go out for something from the sidewalk vendor, visible from the departure lounge window. She immediately set her broom down and shuffled off in her flip-flops to ask, then shuffled back to say no, and quickly offered to retrieve something for me. It’s the sort of sweetness I found throughout the country.

Soon, she returned with a portable feast: a cup of tea, a bottled water, a bag of chips, and a Styrofoam container with two sad croissants, each stuffed with a cold hot dog. Sandwiches, YES!, I thought. I tried to give her my money, but even though the minimal cost was easily more than her day’s wage, she refused.

It's Shwebo!

VIDEO: MY FAVORITE TOWN IN BURMA




I have a documenting problem, in that I document too much. I know it's wrong, but pretty much any where I go I end up trying to 'capture' by my digital camera, then my video camera, then my journal -- and THEN maybe I'll take a note for whatever project I'm actually being paid to go there for. So I put together this little video to make it worthwhile...

I visited Burma a couple months after the protests last September, and found things -- in touristy destinations or back-waters -- more or less back to the normal day-to-day routine. One of the things I think is important to do on any trip, but particularly to a place like Burma, is get off-the-beaten-track and try to engage with people.

One of my favorite places in Burma is Shwebo, about three hours' north of Mandalay by local bus -- and rarely seen by anyone. It once was a proud Burmese capital; Alaungpaya revived a sinking Burmese empire in the mid 18th century -- and nearly conquered all of Siam (Thailand) in his brief lifetime. Now it's more known for the thanakha (powdered bark), that women and children apply in smears, dollops and stripes to their faces for sunscreen and skin moisturizer.

At a little teastand on the main street, a father and son sat down with me to chat a bit (in English) about Shwebo, Burma and the US presidential race. When I asked the inevitable question -- 'do you like Iron Cross?' (Burma's own Rolling Stones -- their long-time biggest rock band) -- both dad and son's eyes popped open wide. Son was off to grab a CD, which he gave to me. 'I hope you enjoy it.'

That's Shwebo.

(I went with harpist Hlaing Win Maung for the soundtrack though. Apologies to Iron Cross.)

How to Carry a Basket On Your Head

MORE FROM MRAUK U

In Yangon bookstores it's easy to find a handful of English-language translations of local writers who wax poetic about the charms of rural life. I bought a couple for about $1.50 each and thumb through them during the trip. It's easy enough to see during a trip here, out the bus window, or beginning on the shortest bike ride out of a town or village.

On my last night in Mrauk U, I wandered atop an overgrown pagoda so thick with brush and cobwebs you can't see anything but the top of a pagoda-top Buddha from below. Above there are four entrances, each with a Buddha looking out. From the top, you can catch a panoramic scene of Rakhaing farming and farmers' lives, which bustle with energy in the cool hours right before dusk. Monks in saffron robes, women balancing baskets of vegetables on their heads or sacks of rice to be husked, walked along a skinny dirt road that cut a diagonal to the green rounded hillocks in the distance.

In fields, boys walked across the road to a creek and filled two rusted cans with water and carry them with a pole on their shoulder back to water, row by row, their plot of cauliflower. Below, a frightening tree with a veiny trunk and branches dwarfed a bamboo hut elevated on poles; outside it, a grandpa in a magenta sweatshirt, swept his clean dirt yard.

I got back to the bike, with a great Belgian scientist I met a couple days before, and we headed out - away from town - a couple kilometers, deeper into the farmlands and past some of the hills. Then stopped on the raised dirt road between a gold field of rice and a green field of cabbage and radishes. We returned 'bye byes' local kids offered us, and waved to a parade of passerby, mostly women carrying baskets on their head filled with vegetables, rice, sugarcane, sticks. Some looked stern or shy. Others giggled, even dared removing a hand holding their basket to wave briefly, and move on.

Soon a plumpish woman carrying a basket overflowing with neatly arranged radishes - white roots about 10 inches long - paused before us. Signalling to the basket in near panic, we rushed to help her take it down. My Belgian pal said, 'My goodness, it's at least 50 kilos - that weighs more than her.' The two of us very nearly dropped it. Her group - including a serious looking grandmother - stopped and we helped them unload to. And they sat with us for about 10 minutes. I showed the old woman a photo she let me take of her - frowning - and her eyes lit up like a teenager when she saw her digital likeness.

We helped them reload. They keep a small towel rolled in a circle on their head and balance the basket, just so, on top. It was getting dark, so we bid farewell and started to drive off. Teenage boys jumped up and down in the ricefield just then - signaling to each other 'ho! ho! ho!,' which we joined in as we left. Laughter came from all parts of the field from people we hadn't even seen.

Sometimes to see things you have to stop a bit.

ReidOnTravel Update

A BREATHER & A HARD TRIP

The past several months have been busy for me -- finishing up maps for the website, tracking the Central Vietnam floods, and finishing up the last text for the free Vietnam guidebook. I've also been talking with a publisher about making a pocket-sized 'alternative guidebook' to Vietnam, which I'd like to see IF it can be made for dirt-cheap prices.

So many of the travelers I see in Vietnam have a good time. Still I'm a bit worried most are falling into a trap. Whether they're carrying backpacks or Gucci roller suitcases, they pretty much see Vietnam the same way. Hopping up or down the coast, staying in the same places (Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue), and taking variants of the same group tours -- Halong Bay cruises, Mekong Delta boat tours, Sapa treks. Nothing wrong with that of course. All three places are wonderful, and sometimes it's just as well going on a tour, but I hope -- with this guide -- to push travelers JUST a bit beyond the usual travel ways of the country. It's a lot more rewarding to get just a taste of what's on the next block.

I just wrote about how to see the Mekong Delta on your own in 'DIY Mekong Delta Adventures' for Transitions Abroad's new Nov/Dec issue (in print version only). Somewhere over the years, no one's noticed how easy it is to go and around the famed boat trips on your own -- and get more out of the trip. Also, the good folks at GoNomad.com recently posted an excerpt from my blog about how to find the best Hue food away from the traveler's guesthouse ghetto.

Next Up: Burma
I'm heading off tomorrow night for a research trip updating Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guide. I was last in the troubled country three years ago for LP and have been following the military crackdown closely. Because of the military government's brutal regime, many outsiders believe travelers shouldn't visit (to money out of the government's hands), others -- including most Burmese people you meet in the country -- want 'independent travelers' to come. Just not on group tours or staying in high-end hotels. Tourism has fallen by 90% to the country during its high season, mostly affecting small privately run businesses. Every year, off-shore oil reserves -- not to mention the trade of rubies (and heroin) -- brings in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to a select few up top; an average traveler staying in family guesthouses for a couple weeks spends about $300 -- with all but a fraction staying in private hands.

I'll be gone through mid to late January, and will try to post on-the-ground reports of what's going on in destination areas like Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan and other places in between.


Robert, in snowy Brooklyn