Travelling in Southeast
Asia's "Next Big Thing"
Originally publishing
in the Jakarta Globe, 01/02/12
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/lifeandtimes/rediscovering-burmas-magic/495128
The
driver’s name is The Ha U, and he speaks unexpectedly fluent English.
“I’m
actually an engineering lecturer at a local university,” he says, “but salaries
are very low here in Burma, so I have to work as a taxi driver in the
mornings.”
The
Ha U is taking me down the bumpy road to the little town of Nyaungshwe at the
head of Inle Lake.
“And
the good thing is that there are many more tourists now, so I am making more
money,” he says. He’s right – when we
reach Nyaungshwe it turns out that most of the hotels are full…
***
Things
are changing in Burma, Southeast Asia’s original pariah state. In 2010 democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was
released from years of house arrest, a nominally civilian government took
power, media restrictions were loosened, and some of the country’s thousands of
political prisoners were set free. High
profile diplomatic visits have followed, with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton
and British Foreign Secretary William Hague coming to call in recent months.
And
the steady drip-feed of positive news has had an unexpected side-effect. In 2010 Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League
for Democracy dropped their long-standing demand for a tourism boycott. Tourism numbers surged by more than 20% last
year, to 360,000. Burma, it seems, is
set to become Southeast Asia’s hot new travel destination, and I am here to see
what the country has to offer.
***
Inle
Lake is Burma’s answer to Sumatra’s Danau Toba – a long lozenge of water hemmed
in by the high hills of the Shan State.
Stilt villages stand over the shallows, and the local Intha people grow
tomatoes on beds of floating reeds.
I
am certainly not alone here, however – in the lakeside village of Ywama there
are dozens of other tourists, clicking away with cameras as local women in
orange head scarfs hawk muddy catfish, fresh from the lake.
Robert,
a German tourist I meet here, says he is surprised by how “touristy” he has
found Burma to be.
“There
are so many more travelers now, but everyone is still going to the same few
places – Yangon, Mandalay, Inle and Bagan.
They haven’t really opened up the rest of the country. That probably makes it feel more crowded than
it really is,” he says.
***
From
Inle I head north into the hills, travelling along a rickety railway laid in
the 19th century when Burma was part of the British Empire. I disembark from the train in the little
upland town of Hsipaw. This was once the
capital of an independent Shan kingdom; today it is a sleepy backwater where
monks in maroon robes wander in the market between women with turmeric-daubed
faces. Hsipaw is also experiencing its
own miniature tourism boom.
In
a peaceful garden on the outskirts I chat to Khin Myint Htay, a local widow who
decided to take advantage of her school-learnt English by opening a café for
foreigners late last year.
“I
learnt to make good coffee from a German tourist, and I always try to get more
suggestions from all my visitors,” she says.
***
From
Hsipaw I head back west to Mandalay.
Burma may be beginning to open up, but it has a long way to go in terms
of development. There is no
street-lighting here, except where locals tie a lamp to a tree, and the roads
are riddled with potholes. But there is
plenty of commerce in everything from secondhand books to Chinese toys. I wander between Buddhist monasteries and
teahouses where old men huddle over cups of tea sweetened with condensed
milk. Around 90% of Burma’s population
follow Theravada Buddhism, and most local men spend at least a few years of
their life as a monk.
After
a few days in Mandalay I continue my journey to Bagan, where Burma’s Buddhist
heritage reaches its most spectacular manifestation. The dusty plain here is dotted with some 4000
pagodas, built between the 11th and 13th centuries. There are souvenir hawkers around the biggest
temples, but I hire a rickety bicycle and head out along the sandy paths
between scrubby fields and clumps of purple bougainvillea. Tourism here may be booming – and guesthouses
in the nearby town of Nyaung U fully booked – but the unbeaten track is never
far away in Burma.
***
The
train is creeping over the fertile flatlands that flank the Andaman Sea. The breeze comes through the open windows in
hot gusts, and bow-legged hawkers come shuffling down the aisle to sell
hardboiled quails’ eggs and sweet coffee.
On the seats opposite me a party of Buddhist nuns in pink robes sit
smoking aniseed-scented cheroots.
I
have headed south from the heartlands and am now approaching the sleepy town of
Mawlamyine, the original capital of British Burma, a place where old churches
still stand beneath the palm trees. The
town lies off the main tourist routes through Burma, but even here the recent
uptick has had an impact.
In
a riverfront guesthouse which once belonged to a British teak trader, the
owner, a middle-aged man named Ivan, tells me that the past year has been the
busiest since he gained his license to accept foreigners in 1997.
“Last
year we had more than 1100 foreign guests; just yesterday there were 17
staying. I don’t really know why this is
happening, but probably because the country is becoming more open and the
situation is improving,” he says.
***
My
time in Burma is almost over, and from Mawlamyine I head back to Yangon. This is the country’s biggest city and home
to its only significant international airport, but it is still a far cry from
the glass-and-concrete megalopolises of other Asian nations. Downtown is a place dominated by tall
British-built houses with stucco balconies.
Ramshackle buses ply the streets and monks wander the cracked pavements
looking for alms.
It
is hard to tell how sincere and how far reaching recent reforms in Burma will
prove to be in the long run, but something has certainly changed. As I wander Yangon on my final morning I spot
vendors openly selling laminated portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi. Just a few years ago they would likely have
suffered harassment from the authorities; now they are doing a roaring trade.
Local
guesthouse owner Aung Bo gives me a lift to the airport. He is a portly,
middle-aged man dressed in a longyi, a Burma-style sarong. As we rattle along the crowded streets, he
tells me that the tourist trade is flourishing.
“Right
now there is not enough accommodation in Yangon. Every place licensed for foreigners is full,”
he says; “The biggest reason for this is that Burma has become more open, so
foreigners are happier to come here.”
The
imposing gold outline of Yangon’s iconic Shwedagon Pagoda looms to the right,
and Aung Bo smiles at me in the rearview mirror.
“You
know, people should forget about ideas like socialism, capitalism and
communism. There are really only two
kinds of government in the world – difficult and easy!” he says.
Burma
has certainly long labored under the former.
As we pass the first advertising hoardings and tower blocks – modest by
Indonesian standards – and the airport comes into view, I am not sure whether
it will be enjoying the latter in years to come. But while the door is open, I’m sure that this
is a country worth visiting.
©
Tim Hannigan 2012
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