Avoiding parasols at Pathein

Exotic nibbles at the night market

Pathein is rather a nice town. The Lonely Planet doesn't give it much airspace, describing it merely as in the middle of a fertile rice-growing area, as a stop on the way to nearby beaches, and at the centre of the country's parasol production. Since I'm as interested in parasols as most people, which is not much, that wasn't exactly an endorsement. 

But Pathein is also one of the most accessible towns on the delta of the vast Ayeyarwady (formerly the Irrawaddy) River and I've got a soft spot for deltas. We went to the Mekong Delta when we lived in Vietnam a million years ago, and while lacking in parasols, I remember it as being pretty fabulous. You could take little boats down little waterways, with wooden/thatched houses on the banks and it was all very picturesque. Surely the Ayeyarwady might offer similar delights, we thought. (The Mekong also has stilt houses and floating markets, where locals sell all sorts of produce from their boats, but I suspected the Lonely Planet might have mentioned it if the Ayeyarwady offered similar attractions.)

The daily commute at Pathein

So with four days to spare before the arrival of Emma and Ben, we headed west from Yangon to Pathein, and were very glad we did. The town is blissfully untouristy - we saw four other Caucasians in our time there - and it's a great, chaotic, laid-back place in a Burmese sort of way. That is: really friendly people; horribly polluted canals; a mixture of dilapidated wooden houses, blackened colonial buildings and modern concrete with twiddly ironwork; and many seriously unostentatious eateries offering a mix of Myanmar, Chinese, and Indian food.

A typical inner-city waterway

A high-class waterfront restaurant

Quick digression... Restaurants here almost always open directly onto the pavement (ie without a door), have concrete floors, fluorescent lighting, grubby walls and floors, a toilet roll in a plastic holder on the table to use as a napkin and cheap plastic chairs. "Myanmar food" basically involves a (normally delicious, though not always delicious-looking) selection of pre-cooked curry dishes - pork, chicken, duck, fish, intestines - laid out in metal serving dishes. You point to the dishes you want and eat them with rice and condiments. A curry buffet, I suppose.

This curry shop is in Yangon and rather a smart affair. Very often they are just a stall by the side of the road. We were advised it's better to eat at a curry shop at lunchtime, rather than the evening, as the food's likely to be fresher.

Back to Pathein. It also has more cycle rickshaws than we've seen elsewhere, a similar quotient of motorbike taxis and tuk tuk trucks touting for business on every corner and a night market down by the river, a rather high-class affair by Myanmar's admittedly fairly chaotic and rubbish-infested standards. 

It's not a great photo, but if you look carefully, you'll see this amazing woman is balancing her tray of fried things on her head in a cycle rickshaw. Quite a feat, even without the seriously potholed roads.

One of the Lonely Planet's criteria for accepting or rejecting hotels in Myanmar is the absence or presence of squashed blood-soaked mosquitoes on the walls, and the size and joyousness of the bathrooms. In my experience you have to go fairly high up the price scale in Myanmar to lose the mosquitoes and gain a pristine bathroom. Certainly the Day-To-Day Motel (which isn't a motel at all, (hardly anyone has cars, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to park them outside the third-floor rooms) is what my grandmother might have called cheap and cheerful. Sometimes I think we ought to be too old for budget accommodation, but it does make the dollars go further and at least the place wasn't still being built - as the one we booked (and stayed in) in Bagan was.

(Another aside, Myanmar hotels also have lots of hangers-on, who lounge around cheerfully chatting outside, or sit in reception watching TV, or on the roof - often with their children - under the washing. Presumably they sleep in unoccupied rooms. Another mystery.)

We spent one day in Pathein on a wonderful boat tour of the delta (of which more in a separate blog), and the rest of the time wandering around aimlessly, visiting pagodas when we came across them (which is often in Myanmar), trying (or sometimes not trying) local delicacies, watching small and smaller ferries plying endlessly across from villages on the other side of the river, visiting the night market, being befriended by a mum and four kids who begged at the market, and taking pictures of things that made you want to take a picture.

Like these chickens, on their way from the river to the market.

Once he'd finished tying the unfortunate chickens to the pole, the guy with the helmet picked up the other end, and off they went...

I was writing this blog sitting on the bus back to Yangon, with a seriously slapstick Burmese movie playing on the overhead screen. (Almost all long-distance bus trips show a movie - normally a mixture of slapstick comedy (farmers falling into wells and tripping over while drunk), and dead-serious tear-jerker romance, with lots of ranting and wailing. 

And I realised, with much shame, that we didn't visit at a single parasol establishment. 

Bugger.

We also didn't eat any intestines or other innards at the night market. So many missed opportunities!

The ethics of elephant tourism. Q: did we do the right thing going to see the elephants? A: Who knows?

We did and didn't want to see the elephants around Chiang Mai. You can't walk 100 metres around the central city without seeing adverts for elephant interactions - apparently there are something like 70 elephant tourism operators in northern Thailand. On the one hand, who wouldn't want to get up close and personal with some gorgeous, enormous, hopefully friendly pachyderms? But the ethics are worrying and complex and there's a lot of information and misinformation around when you try to make a good decision. (If you want a much better discussion of the issues around elephant tourism than I can give, I recommend this article from The Atlantic: www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/483138/) 

But in brief: once logging was banned in Thailand in 1989, the captive elephants that were a big part of the logging trade were out of a job. No job, no food. Elephants are critically endangered and about about half of Thailand's elephants live in captivity. They are expensive to feed (they eat about 250kg of leaves and stuff a day, at a cost for owners of about $US1000 a month) and there isn't enough jungle remaining to support them all. In the wild there is also the problem of poaching, and of elephants getting into trouble by straying into villages and eating crops or damaging property. 

The answer? There isn't one, but experts seem to suggest that while elephant tourism isn't ideal, done properly it is one solution to how to bring in money to keep captive elephants fed and healthy.

So the next question is: What is "properly" and how to chose an ethical operator?

Again there's lots of literature, but no simple answer. We chose an organisation (Chai Lai Orchid) that says it hires almost exclusively Karen ethnic people as its mahoots and workers, and puts money back into the local community. It rents its elephants (and their mahoots/trainers?) from less scrupulous tourism operators - ones that keep them in bad conditions and allow chair riding. (The latter is when two or three people sit on the back of the elephant in a sort of cage thing - like you see in the pictures from the time of the Raj - which apparently causes nasty sores on the elephants.) In fact, Chai Lai Orchid doesn't encourage even bareback riding. 

But what if the less scrupulous operators then go off and replace the elephants being rented out to nice operators by poaching them from the jungle in Myanmar? As I said, it's not easy. 

However, we made our decision (right or wrong) and out the three of us went to the Karen tribal area in the back of a fire truck taxi. It took about an hour.

The first impression: shock to find the elephants chained in a clearing - we weren't expecting chains - funnily enough the operators don't mention that in the spiel on their websites. Though if I had read the Atlantic article before we went I would have been less surprised. The operators argue that without chains how are you to keep the mahoots, the tourists and the locals safe from a group of 5000-kg eating machines with unpredictable tempers? We discovered the elephants are also kept chained at night, but the chains are longer. 

As promised by Chai Lai Orchid, the (human) group was small (just us) and we were given bags of bananas and introduced to the 11 elephants, all females and ranging from 50-year-old ex-logging elephants to toddlers. All the elephants were enthusiastically interested in our bananas and happy to do what it took (photos with tourists, lifting their trunks on command, sneaking into your banana bag when you weren't looking) to separate tourists from bananas. It felt much like dogs with treats or children with lollies. It was undoubtedly a wonderful experience (for us). 

Then the three of us Mandow/Goddens, plus three (now unchained) elephants, three mahoots and an English-speaking guide went for a wander in the jungle. Again the elephants appeared very cheerful, interested largely in maximum eating along the way, and getting bananas off us whenever possible. If you think it's hard to resist when a cat looks at you imploringly while you're eating dinner, try ignoring an elephant's silent pleas as she pushes her trunk in your direction in a cute "I know you've got a banana in there" fashion. 

After our walk, we went down to the river and two baby elephants were brought down for a bath. They lay down in the water, we climbed in too and scrubbed them with sand and water. In return, they sprayed us liberally with water from their trunks - on command from the mahoots. They appeared to be happy - playful even, though I'm not sure if I could tell if an elephant was a bit grumpy. (On the other hand, I suspect you can tell if an elephant is very grumpy!) The mahoots didn't use sticks or chains, just voice commands.

We took lots of touristy photos. It was a wonderful day. 

I still have no idea if we did the right thing. 

Chiang Mai part one: Being a tourist

It's hard to believe we had been in Myanmar for a month already, and then there we were in Chiang Mai in Thailand to renew our visas and get a couple of days of Serious Tourism Activity. Chiang Mai is what Myanmar may be in 20 years' time - still friendly and laid back, but more prosperous and with better-functioning infrastructure. Rubbish in bins rather than the river, roads smoothly paved, drains covered, education not purely involving rote-learning, dogs less mangy and flea-ridden. (Maybe dogs shouldn't be listed as part of the infrastructure, but they kind of are...) At least, hopefully Myanmar's cities will develop like Chiang Mai, rather than like Bangkok - a concrete hideousness in my opinion. 

These monk waxworks in a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai are eerily realistic. You can surely see them breathing

Seeing Thailand reinforced what Myanmar has been through in the last 50 years. In 1962, when the military took over, Burma was a leader among Asean countries in terms of economic growth and prosperity. More flourishing than Thailand. Now it's at the bottom of the league, way behind Thailand. Oh, the power of crap leadership. Somehow the Thais have also avoided the separatist violence that has torn Burma apart. The villages around Chiang Mai are Karen (pronounced Karén), but cursory discussions with a couple of local women suggest there isn't the tribal persecution in Thailand that's taken place against Karen (and other) ethnic people in Myanmar. There is a big group of Myanmar Karen refugees in New Zealand, escaping hideous treatment.

It was my first time in Chiang Mai, but Geoff's been here before, in the early 1980s, when it was a small town catering for tourists wanting to go trekking. Now the place is  a major city - you'd have to be trucked way miles out of town before you could even think of walking in the countryside.

Communal taxis or old-fashioned fire trucks?

The old centre of Chiang Mai - inside the moat and the remains of the city walls - is pretty, though fairly polluted (air quality-wise) and very touristy. Every second building is a guest house, hotel, restaurant, cafe or Thai massage parlour (proper massage, though the other is probably there too). In between are bike rental shops, clothing and souvenir stores and tour operators. Outside the centre, every second building is a dental clinic - some pretty flash - catering for the big market in foreigners getting major teeth repairs done cut-price in Thailand and having a holiday at the same time.

While not in the dentists' chair, the tourist hoards can visit elephants and Karen villages, go zip-lining, bungy-jumping, pagoda-hopping, trekking, rafting. We chose elephants (more of our unresolved ethical dilemma there in another blog) and zip-lining in some rather glorious jungle.

We also hired wobbly bicycles and visited some beautiful pagodas, which are interestingly different from the Burmese ones, despite the relative proximity. Looks like the Thais also have problems with foreigners and disrespect for their religion. Signs like the one below were everywhere, not just around temples, but even at the airport. In Myanmar, a New Zealand bar owner and his local partner were put into jail recently for using an image of Buddha in headphones to advertise cheap beer.  

No Buddha lampshades, dog pillows or plant pots acceptable

Sam ate bacon pancakes, we all drank fruit shakes and ate pad thai. The markets were interesting and had some unusual coloured food...

Sticky rice - another addition to the breakfast repetoire

These pink eggs are actually a version of Chinese "100-year-old eggs" - preserved over a number of days/weeks, and then painted pink (can't find out why they choose pink). Inside the white has turned black and jelly-like and the yolk is a sort of greeny colour. I did try them, but think I'll stick to the pink sticky rice.

All your stimulants for the day in one beautifully-presented package

And then at the end we couldn't resist a fish foot massage - a truly weird tickly feeling as little fish cheerfully nibble away at the dead skin on your feet and ankles. For the record, fish particularly like old crusty feet (Geoff's most popular, then mine); they largely ignored Sam's feet and those of a young Chinese tourist who foolishly put her feet into the same pool as Geoff. 

Our feet felt fabulously soft afterwards though. 

Geoff's feet - fish favourites

Four fascinating things in Myanmar

As you can imagine, we've come across lots of fascinating things over the last month. Here are just four of them, in no particular order:

Everyone wears skirts

There's an old Burmese saying that goes "Men who cannot read are like the blind. Women who cannot weave are like the cripple." There was a time (according to Wikipedia) when every household had a hand loom, and women wove "longyis" for all members of the family - both male and female. Now everyone gets theirs at the market, I suspect, but they are worn daily by most people - except the trendy young who wear jeans, despite the heat. Unlike a sarong, longyis are normally a circle of cloth, tucked in at the waist for women and gathered in a knot at the front for men. That way they can't flap open and reveal all - even when you are riding a motorbike with your dog (and your wife), or loading 50kg bags of rice onto a boat down a narrow wooden gangplank.

And unlike other countries, where national dress has been mostly supplanted by ubiquitous jeans and t-shirts, Burmese people still largely wear longyis. This was helped by all-powerful former military dictator Ne Win, who decreed that only the army could wear trousers.

Geoff gets a lesson in tying his longyi

Everyone has mud-looking stuff on their faces

I think I've mentioned thanaka before - the yellowish-white paste that so many people (most women and girls, plus some men and boys and virtually all school children) wear on their faces. It's made from ground bark - you buy a chunk of thanaka wood from the market and then grind it on a special stone slab, adding a bit water. You might smear it all over your face, or just on the cheeks and nose - often in a deliberate pattern. It's part sunscreen, part skin whitening, part a sign of beauty, like make-up. But we learnt another crucial thing about thanaka recently: young women who neglect to put thanaka on their faces every day (even if they aren't going outside) risk being seen as lazy - and therefore not a good future wife. Beware.

Getting my thanaka done - and my eyebrows highlighted with betel nut. Thanaka does feel a bit odd - like having a face pack on in the street, but is stangely cooling too. 

Everyone chews paan

Walk down any street in Myanmar and there are the tell-tale red stains from people spitting out kwun-ya, the Burmese word for paan - the addictive betel leaf/areca nut/lime paste mixture that has stimulant and psychoactive effects, as well as turning your spit and your teeth a scary shade of red (see photo above). In Burma, they tend to mix other ingredients in too, including tobacco, cardamon, and cloves (for fresher breath). Paan stalls are everywhere and are a veritable trove of potions and unguents.

A street stall selling paan - and a stupid tourist taking a photo

One Burmese man told us that chewing paan is good for your teeth, though the evidence from people's mouths here might not support that, and it's also a strong risk factor in mouth cancers. Our grossest kwun-ya experience was taking a taxi from the airport in Yangon, where the driver kept a used water bottle on the floor into which she regularly ejected her pan spittle. It was quite disgusting.

Betel leaves for sale in the market

Everyone/everything on the same motorbike

I am constantly amazed how much you can get on one scooter. Four people? No problem. Parents, baby, toddler, shopping? Perfect transport method. A whole shop? Yup.

In Hsipaw, sellers would go to the early morning market and load up their bikes with an amazing amount of stuff - flowers, fruit and veges, meat, spices, cooked food etc - all in separate little plastic bags. By the end you could hardly see the motorbike and driving it must be so difficult. Then they'd go round the streets selling the produce off the bike.

A bike shop, Myanmar-style.

Below, if you look carefully, you'll see this guy has two dogs, totally unrestrained, on the back of his motorbike. Apologies, it's a terrible photo, as by the time I got my phone out, the motorbike was heading away.