Further Update from Myanmar Portion of Trip

Tuesday, Sept. 20, Inle Lake

The sun is out again today, but my plans to go to Inle Lake have been thwarted. After breakfast, I walked to the main canal and planned to follow it south to the lake. When the pavement ended, it became a muddy, sloppy trail. I went on a dry path going eastward trying to find the main roadway going southward. Eventually, I was walking beside a lady who began speaking with me. When we came to the main roadway I was seeking, she turned southward, too. A few moments later she said, “This is my school. Would you like to come inside and visit?”

It was an older building with six classrooms—one for each level, K-5. The students stood and recited a greeting when we entered. Then she and I went to the office for a glass of tea together. She explained that there is an orphanage next door, and that most of the children in her school come from there. She also explained that parents must pay if students are to go to school beyond Grade 5. Therefore, most of her students, being without parents, will only finish the 5th standard and then be turned out into the world.

After saying good-bye, I headed down the road again. There would have been plenty of time for me to reach the lake, but I started noticing how loose my shorts were. As I pinched and felt with my flat hand to see how much weight I had lost, I suddenly realized I wasn’t wearing my money belt under my pants. I had missed putting it on for some reason this morning. It had to be on the extra bed in my room.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about Myanmar is that no one seems to enter your room as long as you are a guest unless you request it. You sleep on the same sheets, use the same towel, etc., unless you request that they clean the room. Therefore, I knew that the money belt would be safely laying on the bed when I returned. But I also knew I would be worried until I confirmed that and retrieved it. (It had almost $2000 in U.S. and other currencies and a credit card in it.) Therefore, I gave up on seeing Inle Lake and returned to the hotel. The belt, with everything in it, was underneath a shirt I had worn yesterday. Now that I am back in town, I guess I will relax and read. It’s too far to the lake to try to go there again at this hour.
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It’s 7 p.m., and I’m on the balcony of the Shanland Restaurant overlooking a canal with lots of water sounds coming from frogs and bugs. The restaurant is inside a courtyard. As soon as I entered from the street, the word went out. By the time I got to the balcony, the multi-colored Christmas lights along the roofline were on, the mosquito coil was under the table and lighted, and the last of the two tablecloths (blue over brown) was being placed on the table.

I had planned to invite Chit Htwe to have dinner with me tonight. I wanted to show my appreciation for the good experiences he provided me, and I figured a dinner that costs 2-3 times the average daily income would be a special treat for him. After waiting for 1 ½ hours where I usually find him, I gave up. He had suggested that we meet tonight, so something must have gone wrong. I had planned to get his address so I could send his family copies of the photos I took last night.
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Well, I shouldn’t have ordered the fish. It had little flavor and I had to hassle with the bones. It was served nicely, though—in a fish-shaped metal dish above a container filled with glowing coals. Also, they had cut it at an angle into the flesh so that it was easy to remove portions of the fish to eat. The best part of the meal was a delicious spicy soup that was served. UMMMM!

I found Chit Htwe afterwards. We went to a tea shop and visited. He wasn’t feeling well; he now has a cold like his brother and me. He said people get them often here because of the frequent weather variations. Later, he walked me home. I gave him the money I had intended to use to pay for his dinner, and we said good-bye. I know he was wishing he were free to travel like me.

Back at the hotel, I visited with two doctors, a Swedish lady and an American man, who are on assignment in Yangon with Doctors without Borders. They’ve taken off 5 days to travel to here.

Wednesday, Sept. 21, Inle Lake to Kalaw

The Myanmar trip is beginning to come to an end. I caught a truck and a bus this morning to come to Kalaw. It’s another hill station a little closer to Yangon. I’ll be here tonight, and I’ve bought a bus ticket to leave for Yangon tomorrow. Unfortunately, it will still be a 17-hour trip from here.

Kalaw has fresh, cool air. It’s surrounded by hills covered in pine trees. It’s a rather small town that serves as a center for trekking through the hills and the area Shan villages.

After arriving at noon, I explored the streets in town. I passed schools, temples, the market, a park, the railway station, etc. I stopped at a tea shop and ate a snack—a steamed bun stuffed with onions and boiled eggs and a cup of hot tea. A light shwer began, so I returned to the hotel.

This is the nicest place I’ve stayed in Myanmar. The room is bright and clean with fesh white sheets, a good bed, cable TV, etc. The view is over a Buddhist temple and the market with the green hills beyond.
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I had dinner with two women from Isreal. We sat and visited at the table for about 2 ½ hours. We talked about our experiences here, about their lives in Isreal, etc. For dinner, I had a garlic chipati (somewhat like a flour tortilla), mutton curry, steamed rice, and side dishes of pickled mango, cabbage curry, radish curry, and sour leaf and bamboo choots. I returned to the hotel at 8 and stayed inside the rest of the evening.

Thursday, Sept. 22, Kalaw to Yangon

Today is the day I’ve been dreading—the day of the long, overnight bus trip to Yangon. There’s nothing really to do until the bus arrives at 2:30 but wait. I’ve had the usual breakfast which had an added treat of juice (banana-pineapple). The day is mostly cloudy with the look of possible showers. So I hope I can just relax in the room watching a movie on TV and/or reading.
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I left the hotel at 11:30 and spent two hours wandering. I stopped by the tea shop and had a steamed bun and milk tea. Then I walked into the countryside. I took several photos of blossoms I found along the way.

Near the Catholic church and school, I met a young man who walked back tinto town with me. He’s 25 and a brother in the church. His duties include shopping, cooking, and assisting in teaching English. Buthe’s a betel nut chewer, so that spoils any chance for him to become any more than he is.
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The bus arrived around 2:40. That was the beginning of an 18-hour ride! And how slowly time passes when you are NOT having fun!

A nice young lady was sitting beside me at first, but it was only temporary. A young male engineer getting on later at another town had that seat reserved. In the meantime, however, we were having lots of rain fall on us as we went over the hills. It was so bad that the road (one paved lane) was sloppy muddy on the sides. It reminded me of the problems I’ve had traveling in Mountain Province in the Philippines. There could have easily been a landslide to close the road either by covering it with rock and mud or by by actually loosening the road allowing it to slide down the mountain. Fortunately, neither of those happened. The rain was so heavy, however, that water started dripping into the bus around the windows. The lady beside me gave me a tissue to stuff where the dripping was occurring. Since the rain stopped soon afterwards, that took care of the problem.

The engineer spoke to me some after he was seated, but he was either shy or had a speech impediment or both. He spoke in a VERY soft voice and it sounded as if he were mumbling. Like most men in Asia, he sat with his lets sprawled apart. (They are used to squating with their knees spread.)

Friday, Sept. 23, Yangon

We had another flat tire. Each time the bus stops, one of the employees takes a metal rod and hits each tire to test it. While we were stopped for 20 minutes for breakfast this morning, the rod hit a dull tire! So the breakfast stop to an extra 45 minutes as the inside tire was changed on the rear of the bus.

Bothe the dinner and the breakfast stops, I visited with a young Japanese man (a systems analyst) who was traveling on another bus on the same route making the same stops. He was traveling with a female friend. Although their bus got to the station in Yangon 45 minutes before mine, they still had not gotten a ride into town when I arrived. That worked to my advantage. The first taxi driver wanted 10,000 kyat to drive me alone. He came down to 4000, but I didn’t want to pay more than 3000. (I’m running low on kyat and don’t want to exchange more.) I just left that area of the huge station walking to the exit. Another taxi driver stopped me and reluctantly agreed to take me for 3000. Then I saw the Japanese couple standing nearby. We made a new agreement—2000 each (less than 3000 for me and double what the driver would have gotten)—and drove into town together.

I’m back at the Queen’s Park where I stayed when I arrived. I’ve had no news since I left here on Sept. 7 (17 days ago). I turned on BBC and immediately saw a long report about Hurricane Rita telling that Galveston and other areas had been evacuated. Seeing the radar, the outer edges (bands of the storm) are just beginning to reach shore, and it looks as if the eye has turned slightly in the last hour or so of the 6-hour loop they are showing. They are starting to say that they expect landfall near Sabine Pass. It will be about 8 hours before I go to bed tonight, so I’ll see what it looks like then. When I get up tomorrow morning, the storm should be hitting wherever it’s going to hit.

After napping a couple of hours this morning, I cleaned up. I thumbed through the English language papers downstairs and didn’t see any news of particular excitement from the past two weeks. Then I went out. After walking to explore for 45 minutes or so, I stopped at a tea café a block from here and ate a snack. (I’d skipped breakfast when the bus stopped this morning.) Just as I finished, it began to rain, so I quickly returned to the hotel.
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I walked to a place about 50 blocks away for dinner. It seemed even further, since the sidewalks were filled with market stalls almost the entire way there. I had charcoal-broiled pork with two sauces—a tangy garlic-vinegar sauce and a hot and sour sauce. It was delicious.

I splurged on a Diet Pepsi for tomorrow. They didn’t have cold ones or I would have drunk part of it this evening. Instead, I have it cooling in the mini-frig.

It’s only 8 p.m., but I’m still exhausted from lack of sleep on the bus trip last night. I’m off to bed early.

Saturday, Sept. 25, Yangon

It’s another hot, humid day. I went out about 8:45. I tried to go to the Thai Airways office first, but they don’t open until 9:30 on Saturdays. The attempt to go there got me surrounded by beggars and postcard-selling children. What a hassle. One boy on crutches kept up with me at my normal walking pace for over two blocks before giving up.

I went to the market and made one of my few purchases while traveling. I bought two longyis. They are tube-shaped wrap-around skirts that men wear both here and in southern India where I will be for the next 2 ½ months. The fact that I can at least use them as lounge wear is why I bought them. They are from Shan state and 100% cotton. Both are the traditional Myanmar plaid style—one red, green, and black and the other blue, green, black and gold. I probably paid a little too much, especially since they were handed to me in a very nice heavy paper shopping bag with black rope handles! But I got the two for $5.39.

From the market, I explored the waterfront. Yangon, however, has not modernized and opened the city to the waterfront like so many other places have done. It still is blocked by a wall topped with barbed wire and houses the military, warehouses, etc. There are a few openings for access to ferries, but even those openings are guarded. On the opposite side of the street, there are a couple of ornate Chinese-style buildings and a cluster of large colonial buildings near the Strand Hotel, the local colonial-eara hotel built by the same man who built the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Now that I have seen and read about Myanmar, I’m afraid I must declare it as one of the losers among Asian countries. Like The Philippines, it looks as if the problems they have are insurmountable. Their biggest problem is political. The people are varied and have difficulty getting along with each other without a powerful central government. The military provides that now, but to maintain the power, it has cut the country off from the rest of the world in many ways, has spent far too much money on itself, and has allowed corruption to develop to the point that nothing gets done without military officials being paid off. As long as the military stays in power, it will remain poor and backwards. And if the military were to give up power, the various ethnic groups would likely fight each other. There already exist more than one “liberation army” in the country.

Myanmar is an intersting country to visit, however. That’s mainly due to the friendliness of the people. The biggest problems they face related to tourism are:

1. Poor transportation infrastructure which inolves long, uncomfortable trips to get from place to place.
2. Greediness which has overtaken local transportation people causing tourists to feel trapped with unreasonably high costs compared to what locals pay.
3. Isolation caused by government communications restrictions which:
a. Cut off Internet access
b. Allow e-mail to be sent only via a local provide at a very high rates and ONLY if it passes a reading by the government censor
c. High international telephone calling rates ($5 for 1 minute to the U.S. or Europe)
4. The tendency to have high entrance charges for foreigners even for entering parks or being within viewing sight of a lake!
5. The fact that there is nothing to do after 9 or 10 p.m. Young backpackers spend as much time partying as they do seeing the sights in other countries, so I imagine they are bored to death here.

Latest Update from India

Tuesday, Oct. 18, Kumbalam

I roade one of the bus routes yesterday afternoon. It was one with most of the children being 9 or younger. I had to help them down off the bus, since the steps were too big for most of them. The main reason for going was to see the scenery, however. This route covers many backwater areas. I saw canals, lakes, fish farms, fishermen, women doing laundry at the edge of the water, etc. There were islets covered with coconut palm trees, dugout canoes along the waterfronts, rice fields to the sides of the waterways, etc. This is such a beautiful area.

I went to Kundara in the afternoon. I intended to get a haircut, but the barbershop was closed. I did find a supermarket, however, following Joseph’s directions. I bought toilet tissue, since my nose has become runny from my cold. I also got a cold bottle of water that was so refreshing after walking for over an hour in this heat!!

We had a religious incident here tonight. My spider was back. (He had probably just been behind the tank when I couldn’t see him this morning.) I showed it to Joseph and asked if we could catch it in a jar and release it. He said, “We use a broom and kill them, because they are dangerous.” So he told Bragosh (sp?) to get the broom and kill the spider which he did. Bragosh’s sister who is the cook and had seen the spider when I showed it to Joseph asked, “Why did you kill it?” Bragosh said, “Because he told me to.” When Joseph asked what the problem was, Bragosh said, “In my religion (Hindu), he was a god. You made me kill one of my gods!” Both Bragosh and his sister were upset with Joseph.

Two more things from today:

I saw two people I knew in Kundara. It seems to happen that I see people I know every time I go there now. I met the shop owner who invited me to see his shop last week walking down the streets. Then a man rode up to me on a motorcycle and asked if I remembered him. He was another of the men who had delivered the refrigerator last week.
A man called me to the roadside as I walked into town. I introduced myself and explained I am staying at St. Jospeph International Academy in Kumbalam. Later in the day as I walked back out of town, he motioned again and asked, “Kumbalam?” I said yes and walked on. A moment later, he pulled up in a motorized trishaw and asked me to get in. He brought me about 2/3 of the way back. At that point, he dropped me at an intersection where he turned and continued on his way.

Wednesday, Oct. 19, Kumbalam

I was awakened this morning by yelling. Sound echoes through this building with concrete floors, walls, and ceilings and with ventilation openings above each door. But this was LOUD yelling. I could hear well even with my earplugs on. The cook and Joseph were the main participants, but I think another man (maybe her brother) was involved. It was ain Malayalam, the local language, so I didn’t know for sure what it was about. I hope it wasn’t about the spider god we killed last night. I’d hate to be partially responsible.

I finished the math scope and sequence chart by 10:00. It still needs some formatting to adjust gaps and make it look better. I’ll do that tomorrow, then we will print it.

Joseph took me to the campus in Kollam today. I showed the scope and sequence chart to the principal, two math teachers, the science teacher, and the English teacher. I taught part of a math lesson, and I visited with the English teacher about planning his daily lessons.

Leaving there, we did several interesting things:

We stopped to see his lawyer, an interesting man who has been to Houston. Joseph says he’s the top lawyer in this area with a staff of 50.
We went to a hospital for Joseph to visit a friend who had a heart attack this morning. It’s the best and largest of the hospitals here—the place where Joseph has taken volunteers when they’ve gotten sick in the past. It’s a Catholic hospital run by nuns and priests. A nun didn’t want Joseph to go up, because it wasn’t visiting hours, but then the priest who is the head administrator of the whole hospital complex and a friend of Joseph’s and the man who had the heart attack came along and took him up.
We stopped to make some copies as school was out, and I was surrounded by children who wanted to touch my hands at first and then later my face. Fortunately, it started raining and they dispursed just as it was almost getting out of hand.

We were invited to a birthday party this afternoon at 5:00. We didn’t leave until 6:45. Apparently things run on Brazilian-like time schedules here. Even then, the party began slowly with the kids watching a children’s TV program for about 45 minutes. After that, it moved quickly. The bad news is that I realized then that I had not brought my camera to get photos. First, they brought out the birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to Meera, the young girl celebrating her 12th birthday. The cake was cut, and she took a slice which she used to break off pieces and serve a bite directly to everyone there starting with her parents and then with Joseph and me. Then each of us was given a whole piece of cake to eat and a small glass of sweet wine to drink. The kids were holding their noses and making faces as they were swallowing the wine.

They began bringing out the food after we had finished the cake. (The procedure matched the one I had experienced two weeks ago when Joseph’s cousin’s wife had a birthday.) Instead of rice, we had sliced white bread. Apparently that’s a special treat. Two meats with sauces were served over the bread. One was made with chicken and shallots. The other was a green coconut sauce with beef and peppers. Both sauces were delicious, but the green coconut one was my favorite. Sliced tomatoes, onions, and peppers were served on the side. Afterwards, the had the locally traditional birthday dessert of rice-like pudding made with vermicelli. Meera’s father had cooked all the food.

The children performed some songs and plays after dinner. Then we excused ourselves about 8:45. I gave Meera a pen I had brought from America. And all of us gave her homemade cards we had signed.

Thursday, Oct. 20, Kumbalam

I’ve been invited to a wedding in two weeks. The one being married is the brother of one of the teachers. I think it will be an all-day event. It starts around 8 a.m. It will be a Hindu ceremony, and it’s an arranged marriage.

The power has gone off. For the past two weeks it has been off quite a bit due to a new “three-phase” connection being made to the school. It means that I can’t do my scope and sequence work. Sometimes it is for a short period. Monday, however, it was for most of the day. I hope it will be back on today so I can complete my work.

Joseph says my presence is making a difference. He’s excited to see the teachers thinking about what they are teaching. At teacher training colleges here, they are told to follow the book. Well, some areas such as Hindi and Malayalam (national and local languages) have limited materials and no real textbooks, so they have not been doing much. The whole first year of study in Hindi was being spent on studying the alphabet which is quite limited. Joseph now has them thinking about the scope and sequence of their subject—what they teach and which years they teach it in—and making decisions to move things and add things. All morning he and one of his principal trainees has been conferencing with the teachers. Joseph says it’s the first professional conversations he’s observed on this campus where teachers were thinking and talking about what they are teaching. One of them commented to him that she had never realized before now how the program was building from year to year. And that’s a teacher with a master’s degree who has been teaching for some time.

The power didn’t come back on until noon. Then I couldn’t get the computer started. Due to frequent power outages in India, backup batteries are used between the power souce and the computer. My guess was that the fuse in the backup system had blown. But when I took it out and looked at it, it looked fine. So I left the power on for a while and didn’t try turning on the computer. After about 30-45 minutes, I tried again and it worked. I guess the backup battery just needed some recharging before it would work. In the meantime while the power had been off, I spent most of my time creating a job description for a computer teacher and starting to do an English scope and sequence chart by hand.

I’ve been intending to write more about the children living at the hostel. I think I’ll describe one every few days. Shivani is the youngest. She’s only 6 years old and is in Standard I. She’s especially cute right now, because she is missing her two upper front teeth!! (One of her lower ones is also loose.) She is a small pixie-ish girl about 3 feet (1 meter) high and quite petite. She has a short hairstyle that frames her face, and she sometimes wears it in a funny looking style where a small tail is made off-centered sticking up in the air above of her head. Her eyes are big and rounded like those of children on a line of popular greeting cards in the U.S. She’s always sporting a mischievous grin and is quite lively. Often, she holds her arms out and twirls and dances around the room. She’s definitely what we call a “free spirit” in the U.S. Her constantly joyful approach to life keeps us all smiling and happy watching her. A couple of days ago, I realized she reminds me of someone I know. I can imagine that Drew Cassady was just like this little girl when she was that age!!!

We printed the math scope and sequence charts tonight. They look great. I think Joseph was a bit surprised. Although he had seen them on the computer screen, he hadn’t realized yet how much would be in them, how much one can learn by reading them, and how nice and professional they would look. He’ll make copies to give to the math teachers and to place on a table for other teachers to see.