burma

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Kiwi-Chimp Venture past trips - burma We did not look around for long and found a hotel room which even had TV and fridge and air condition for 12,- USD. But I did not get any more sleep because we decided that the day was to nice to sleep so we hired some push bikes and went around the town, stopped to have a good laugh at the harbour with some women working as street cleaners. With our little dictionary “English-Burmese, Burmese-English” we did manage to find out their names, age, if they were married and had children etc... And the main thing: All off us enjoyed the conversation very much. Again we experienced how friendly the people in Burma where and that was not the last time!! On our bikes we cycled the 15 km to a 1,2 km long bride build from Teak wood, standing on 984 posts, going across a big lake. The U-Bein’s Bridge: What a beautiful place. We pushed our bikes across the bride, stopped lots of times and set on the wooden benches on the bridge, watched the people going past, played with some children, took pictures and enjoyed to be out of the city at such a wonderful place. The sun set there was fantastic and quite a few monks from the nearby monastery came to talk to us. Funny thing: All people in Burma are quite happy to have a picture taken of them and if you do not get your camera out to take one they ask you if you do not have a camera with you to take a picture of them. So we got lots of beautiful pictures and also asked for addresses so that we can post the pictures to the people in Burma. The next day we went on a boat to the other side of the river to a town called Mingun, about 2 hours away from Mandalay. We tried very hard in the morning to get a local boat across to Mingun but did not manage so. It looks like it is all a set up deal from the government, that tourists have to take the tourist boat across and the locals are not allowed to give us a ride over. Shame, because there we were on a tourist boat, together with about 20 other backpackers and about 5 other tourist boats with package tour tourists. We were very surprised to see so many tourist at the same place as we did not notice them in the town at all. Well, Mingun has got some very old monasteries and the a gigantic bell (90 tonnes) which is claimed to be the largest, not cracked bell in the world. There is a larger bell in Moscow, but it is cracked. The bell is about 4 m high and over 5 m in diameter. You can scramble right inside it , which Trev of course did, and when someone from outside will give it a good thump, you can hear the ring from the interior. The bell was made for the world’s largest zedi (temple) in Mingun. Thousands of slave and prisoners of war laboured to build the massive stupa, beginning in 1790. Work halted when the king died, leaving a brick base that stands about a third of the intended height and an earthquake split the monument . The base stands 50 m high overlooking the river and you can climb up it, you must go barefoot and from the top you have a fine view over the village and river, beautiful! The place was quite interesting, but other than that we felt a bit like in a tourist trap because for all this tourists arriving at the same time, all the souvenir stalls were open of course and people were trying to sell you all this different souvenirs, postcards, t-shirts etc. They were nice and friendly but did not leave you alone at all, not our cup of tea!!! But we had to wait until our boat (and all the other boats) went back to Mandalay at 2.00 pm. So we decided to get away from the tourist attractions and found an old Pagoda, where a few little kids were playing with each other. We too, a little rubber ball out of our pockets and joined in their play. They loved the ball and it was such good fun to watch them running after it and laughing and having fun. The next day we took a pick up (bus) to another town more further north. We decided to go up there after quite a few people had told us about this place, which was British hill station from 1896. At 1070 m, it is considerably high and the altitude makes all the difference. Pyin U Lwin is pleasantly cool even at the hot season and at night it can get quite chilly and best of all, the air is fresh. Sweater-knitting is a prominent occupation in town; most of the work is done by women, while the men hang out in teashops. Myanmar’s elite military training school is based in Pyin U Lwin and it is good fun to watch the cadets marching on the streets. A few thousands of Nepalese and Indians have their home in Pyin U Lwin and it was here where we found great Indian and Nepalese food and could not stop eating!!! The standard transport in town is a miniature, enclosed wagon pulled by a pony and getting around can be really enjoyable, reminding us of the American Western films. You can still find many colonial –era buildings in town, but what a shame they are all run down and many of them are getting replaced by modern buildings by Chinese developers. Pyin U Lwin is a centre for growing many English vegetables and flowers, which would not grow in the hotter conditions of the plains, and there are still many English signs around. A nice place to relax and we staid in a nice hotel for 6,- USD (double room) with a large beautiful and quite garden with deck chairs to lay in the sun. On our second day in this nice town we hired bicycles and cycled to some water falls about 12 km out of town. Nothing special really, we had seen better ones. So after looking at them we left our bikes behind and decided to go for a little walk. We found a narrow foot path between some rice fields and walked for half an hour before we got to a little village. Some kids were playing outside a hut and we set down, got our apples and bananas out and shared them with the little boys and girls who did not take long and came up to us. We decided to walk a bit further and at the end of the village was a big football field. But not what you imagine of a football field, no, it was just a square with red dirt on which a couple of young monks (between 6 and 10 years old) were playing football against some other kids. Trev did not stand around long and asked them if he could join into their play. They agreed enthusiastically and so Trev mixed with the little boys and I took some beautiful pictures. It was so funny to watch, some little dogs, just a couple of weeks old, joined in too and all were having good fun. After a while it got pretty hot and we all heard a bell ringing and a man on a bike cycled up to the football field. He had a big box on his bike and the kids looked at him wistfully. So Trev and I checked out the content of the box and guess what it was? A box full of ice cream, or what they sell as ice cream, actually it were little plastic bags filled with some juice and then frozen to a ice stick. We asked the man how much one would cost and quickly calculated that enough ice sticks for the whole football team would cost us about 30 Pence!!! So, there was not much to think about and we bought each of the young boys an ice stick which they took gratefully and definitely enjoyed whilst Trev and I decided to start walking further down this food path. I guess the man on the bike went home after we bought 18 ice sticks from him. He might have made his money for the day!! page 1-2-3-4-5 Copyright © 2003 kiwichimp all rights reserved

Kiwi-Chimp Venture

past trips - burma

We did not look around for long and found a hotel room which even had TV and fridge and air condition for 12,- USD. But I did not get any more sleep because we decided that the day was to nice to sleep so we hired some push bikes and went around the town, stopped to have a good laugh at the harbour with some women working as street cleaners. With our little dictionary “English-Burmese, Burmese-English” we did manage to find out their names, age, if they were married and had children etc... And the main thing: All off us enjoyed the conversation very much. Again we experienced how friendly the people in Burma where and that was not the last time!!

On our bikes we cycled the 15 km to a 1,2 km long bride build from Teak wood, standing on 984 posts, going across a big lake. The U-Bein’s Bridge: What a beautiful place. We pushed our bikes across the bride, stopped lots of times and set on the wooden benches on the bridge, watched the people going past, played with some children, took pictures and enjoyed to be out of the city at such a wonderful place. The sun set there was fantastic and quite a few monks from the nearby monastery came to talk to us.

Funny thing: All people in Burma are quite happy to have a picture taken of them and if you do not get your camera out to take one they ask you if you do not have a camera with you to take a picture of them. So we got lots of beautiful pictures and also asked for addresses so that we can post the pictures to the people in Burma.

The next day we went on a boat to the other side of the river to a town called Mingun, about 2 hours away from Mandalay. We tried very hard in the morning to get a local boat across to Mingun but did not manage so.

It looks like it is all a set up deal from the government, that tourists have to take the tourist boat across and the locals are not allowed to give us a ride over. Shame, because there we were on a tourist boat, together with about 20 other backpackers and about 5 other tourist boats with package tour tourists. We were very surprised to see so many tourist at the same place as we did not notice them in the town at all. Well, Mingun has got some very old monasteries and the a gigantic bell (90 tonnes) which is claimed to be the largest, not cracked bell in the world. There is a larger bell in Moscow, but it is cracked. The bell is about 4 m high and over 5 m in diameter. You can scramble right inside it , which Trev of course did, and when someone from outside will give it a good thump, you can hear the ring from the interior. The bell was made for the world’s largest zedi (temple) in Mingun. Thousands of slave and prisoners of war laboured to build the massive stupa, beginning in 1790. Work halted when the king died, leaving a brick base that stands about a third of the intended height and an earthquake split the monument . The base stands 50 m high overlooking the river and you can climb up it, you must go barefoot and from the top you have a fine view over the village and river, beautiful! The place was quite interesting, but other than that we felt a bit like in a tourist trap because for all this tourists arriving at the same time, all the souvenir stalls were open of course and people were trying to sell you all this different souvenirs, postcards, t-shirts etc. They were nice and friendly but did not leave you alone at all, not our cup of tea!!! But we had to wait until our boat (and all the other boats) went back to Mandalay at 2.00 pm. So we decided to get away from the tourist attractions and found an old Pagoda, where a few little kids were playing with each other. We too, a little rubber ball out of our pockets and joined in their play. They loved the ball and it was such good fun to watch them running after it and laughing and having fun.

The next day we took a pick up (bus) to another town more further north. We decided to go up there after quite a few people had told us about this place, which was British hill station from 1896. At 1070 m, it is considerably high and the altitude makes all the difference. Pyin U Lwin is pleasantly cool even at the hot season and at night it can get quite chilly and best of all, the air is fresh. Sweater-knitting is a prominent occupation in town; most of the work is done by women, while the men hang out in teashops. Myanmar’s elite military training school is based in Pyin U Lwin and it is good fun to watch the cadets marching on the streets. A few thousands of Nepalese and Indians have their home in Pyin U Lwin and it was here where we found great Indian and Nepalese food and could not stop eating!!! The standard transport in town is a miniature, enclosed wagon pulled by a pony and getting around can be really enjoyable, reminding us of the American Western films. You can still find many colonial –era buildings in town, but what a shame they are all run down and many of them are getting replaced by modern buildings by Chinese developers. Pyin U Lwin is a centre for growing many English vegetables and flowers, which would not grow in the hotter conditions of the plains, and there are still many English signs around. A nice place to relax and we staid in a nice hotel for 6,- USD (double room) with a large beautiful and quite garden with deck chairs to lay in the sun.

On our second day in this nice town we hired bicycles and cycled to some water falls about 12 km out of town. Nothing special really, we had seen better ones. So after looking at them we left our bikes behind and decided to go for a little walk. We found a narrow foot path between some rice fields and walked for half an hour before we got to a little village. Some kids were playing outside a hut and we set down, got our apples and bananas out and shared them with the little boys and girls who did not take long and came up to us.

We decided to walk a bit further and at the end of the village was a big football field. But not what you imagine of a football field, no, it was just a square with red dirt on which a couple of young monks (between 6 and 10 years old) were playing football against some other kids. Trev did not stand around long and asked them if he could join into their play. They agreed enthusiastically and so Trev mixed with the little boys and I took some beautiful pictures. It was so funny to watch, some little dogs, just a couple of weeks old, joined in too and all were having good fun. After a while it got pretty hot and we all heard a bell ringing and a man on a bike cycled up to the football field. He had a big box on his bike and the kids looked at him wistfully. So Trev and I checked out the content of the box and guess what it was? A box full of ice cream, or what they sell as ice cream, actually it were little plastic bags filled with some juice and then frozen to a ice stick. We asked the man how much one would cost and quickly calculated that enough ice sticks for the whole football team would cost us about 30 Pence!!! So, there was not much to think about and we bought each of the young boys an ice stick which they took gratefully and definitely enjoyed whilst Trev and I decided to start walking further down this food path. I guess the man on the bike went home after we bought 18 ice sticks from him. He might have made his money for the day!!

page 1-2-3-4-5