Reading George Orwell's "Burmese Days" - a novel describing the life of a colonial expatriate in a small town situated in upper Burma . Till today, not much changes have been observed , for instance, the existence of English club, Indian doctor and corruption.

His sequel "1984" describes ironically even better the political life in today Myanmar (former Burma).

Many humanitarian organizations are against travelling in Myanmar with the slogan "Don’t support with your Dollars the military regime and the ruling people of the SLORC (the only legal political party...). So I have always been doing something incorrect - at least this time,I tried to do some homework. Read as much I could about the current situation. There is plenty of information available in Bangkok. The most popular writer is the noble prize laureate Aug San Sukyi (spoken "SuTschi"). She was still under house arrest at the time of my visit in December 1998.

My travel mate this time is a young teacher from Singapore. I met her once upon a time in Turkey. I organized the flight out of Bangkok (Thailand) right after the King Bhumibol's birthday on December the sixth. Ching Yee had to be back at work on January the second. Singaporeans work even on holidays...

Entrance fee for the "well-shielded" countryThe Myanmar government has a clever way of getting the hard currency from every tourist. No escape at the Rangoon airport to avoid the changing of the 300 US dollars into the Monopoly money - so called FEC (foreign exchange certificate). After that we were free to go our own way to bargain for a taxi to get into town. At the official Tourist and Hotel Booking counter, they wanted to charge us 5 FEC which is equivalent to US$5 for the cab service. Luckywise, I asked a custom officer before for the normal price (2 FEC). And one month later, we paid 1 FEC to get back to the airport..oh well..

So welcome to the world of bargaining! After all the easy travelling in countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, this was indeed a new challenge.

The capital was bustling with activities with street vendors, rows of cobblers and old running vehicles. Modernization has masked the city with a new facet - gone are the old and shaggy images portrayed by some of the books. The distinctive and drastic contrast of old and new architectures are found in this capital. The government was criticized for moving out the squatters. But how did the European Cities design their big avenues and parks? How many people had to move for the Champs d’Elysee in Paris? The time stands still in Myanmar - all men are wearing longies (a sarong-like piece of cloth wrap round their lower body) - trousers are definitely not a Burmese fashion!

Horror-ride to the NorthWhenever I can travel by train, I will go for it . Never again on one of these dangerous and uncomfortable burmese buses. So I made the first political "faux-pas" - the 15-hour ride to Mandalay which cost 30 FEC plus 3 FEC for a sleeping compartment. The sleepers were normally not available for tourists as they were meant only for government V.I.P s. After 1 hour of persuasion with the train station master, Ching Yee finally got hold of the only two-berth compartment! This was the most horrible train ride in my life.... the coaches virtually jumped (believe it or not) about 50 cm up and down from the track. It was too dangerous to change from one coach to another. I could not sleep anymore - my hips were bruised after a couple of hours hitting on the stone-hard bed. We were both horrified - we were frightened that the coach would derail. We told ourselves that in future we would take buses instead. By the way, it would only cost us 3FEC on those foreign imported luxury buses.

The old Royal City of the north has also been "cleaned" up. Instead of heading to the Royal Palace, we followed a monk whom we met on the local public bus.

Why did we decide to change our itinerary and follow him? Well, come to think of it now, I really have no idea at all… Anyway, he chatted with us on the local town bus and we just ended up at the terminal instead of alighting at the palace entrance. He invited the two of us for lunch at his monastery. He seemed to have a lot to share with us. Having gone through many ordeals in his life, the word "fear" did not seem to exist in his dictionary. Throwing the hanging robe over his shoulder and taking a sip from his cup of cold tea, he began to recount his three-time imprisonment. He went on to describe how he was brutally tortured and how he managed to escape from death while he was being electrocuted.

All that happened while he was a teacher and a member of the communist party. Even now that he has become a monk - he still knows the guys who tortured him but he will never hesitate to discuss that with the tourists.

Shan-state From the hot lowland we ascended the Shan Mountains. After several journeys on minibus and train, once again we embarked on a never-ending journey on hard wooden benches. The English men definitely knew how to live a luxury life during the colonial ruled era. In Maytown, there were old handsome villas and botanicals gardens. I might be admiring the good old time but on the other hand the Brits were just a bunch of ignorant and arrogant "businessmen". This is however Not my sentence for you could also find these remarks in George Orwell's or Maurice White's books. Both writers had lived in Burma at that time.

Another day travelling into the Shan-state brought us to the small town Hsipaw. We lodged in the only "onsite double room" in town, normally reserved for the smugglers and his girlfriend.

In places like this you meet strange people - like this guy who smuggled rubies to Thailand on his motorbike. In rough, Basic English he asked me for my girl?!? (He offered to even pay with his red stones...) I had to tell him that Ching Yee was not a girl like what he imagined to be like. Well Ching Yee , an asian, resembled the native burmese woman in the eyes of the locals, and that might have led him to develop wrong ideas about her. But then, I knew that my girl liked these jewels pretty much, so I told him I would check with her if she would want to discuss about the stones with him. Shortly after, I returned to the room and told Ching Yee about the smuggler and the stones. Needlessly to say Ediboy, with his usual mischievous bone in him, did not reveal the whole story to her. The innocent teacher brought along her "Lonely Planets" and out she went for the "meeting". Seeing her back while she left, I tried hard to hold my gloating laughter. Quickly I pressed my ear hard to the door to eavesdrop on their conversation. They were both obviously talking with totally different things at the back of their minds. I knew she could handle the situation. After some time she returned looking really annoyed without the rubies. Not long after, we had to put up with the guy singing love songs in front of our door.

River-cruise down the Irrawaddy to BaganBack to Mandalay we boarded on a riverboat. 12 hours downstream on the mighty Irrawaddy, gazing the magnificent landscape.

Bagan had 4000 temples in an area of about 40 square kilometers. We explored it on a metal horse-bicycle. That means I was the "coolie" and Madame from Singapore sat behind making comments and reading the guidebook.

(She couldn’t ride a bicycle properly, haha well you don’t need this skill in Singapore...)

The day was bright with scorching sun above us. Like the locals, I applied Tanaka (local makeup and sun protection) on my face and wore a longy. We turned out to be the attraction among the visitors.

Accident on Inle-LakeAnother exclusive site was the Inle-lake - home of the leg-rowing fishermen and floating gardens.At the floating market in Yawana ,I felt displaced in our huge longtail boat among the smaller teak boats of the local market women. This was especially so when two souvenir dealers attempted to clamp onto our boat at both sides.

Instead of buying souvenirs, I bought fruits for the next three days to keep the market running.

The boat tour was well-organized with designed stop-overs . We stopped at practically every workshop with attached souvenir shop. (Silversmith, woodcarving, weaving etc.) The prices were higher than in the boutiques in Yangoon with sub-standard quality. However, that did not stop the tourist throwing their notes into the shop - well at least in doing so they helped to support the village.

In the beginning, I was scared of the racing attitude of our boatsman. That fear kind of eliminated when I observed that it was the local way of on water. So in the end, I began to relax and sat comfortably to enjoy the fresh breeze. With incredible perfection, our boatman sped under wooden bridges, made a U-turn and dodged other boats. At the same time while he was performing these "stunts", steering in a 90-degrees angles into our direction was a full passenger laden boat steering.

The next moment, I heard the teakwood splintering and I leaped overboard and landed in the lake. The channel wasn’t deep, clasping my binocular in one hand, I raised myself from the water with water hyacinths and seaweeds hanging over me. Before me was the two pierced boats rammed into floating tomato-island garden. Surprising, there was no heated argument between the both boatmen despite the big hole on our boat! They were more concerned about the wet tourist and providing dry clothings. Fortunately, I bought some longies before this and they came in handy. Back in town, I made a lot of heads turn and children were giggling profusely - the coloirful striped longy on me was actually meant for women! Never mind about the embarrassment, I was more concerned about the dead rats in the water where I was swimming before. But nothing happened.

After that I suffered a two-week diarrhea in a town called Molmein. Only then we discovered a big sign erected at the city market warning the local market people to be clean take precautious of the outbreak of "plaque" (nothing to do with the teeth though....). It’s the medieval "black death"..still exist in Myanmar . As I said before - back in time.

Pilgrimage up to the Golden RockThe last excursion led us up to the "Golden Rock". It’s a sacred place on top of a mountain. 5 hours of walking with thousands of pilgrims. There were Sedan chairs available, but we covered te whole journey by walking 5 hours. Watching the thousands of pilgrims making their way up the mountian was already worth the trip. Most of the people slept on the hilltop. Foreigners are obliged to check in at the only hotel. If I wouldn’t get terrible sick (heatstroke, oily food..?) I would have enjoy the formidable sunset and rise. Back in Yangoon was shopping time. I even considered to ship one of this unique "pedicab" to Switzerland. I really couldn't imagine what the Swiss custom-officer would demand from me this time, considering that they already wanted to overcharge me for the two boxes of souvenirs which I posted by sea-mail. End of Myanmar Info-Last Edited 12.5.00 cy/eb