After three days in the capital and another three in the next biggest city a change of pace was needed. Pick-up trucks ply the route between Mandalay and Pyin U Lwin, 68km to the east. We bought a ticket for the rear of a pick-up at the foreigners’ price of 700 kyat (about 70c, locals pay 500 kyat) and sat in the cramped confines with at least a dozen other people for three hours as we climbed 1,000m to the old British hill station formally known as Maymyo. The journey wasn't so bad - John was able to read, I played a few rounds on my electronic golf game and we both listened to Puccini and the theme from the Piano on John's mini disk player.
Maymyo is a great place to escape from the heat and the hustle of the big city. We found a very quiet guesthouse away from the main street run by a lovely older Nepali man who would later tell us about the latest Space Shuttle disaster. He also told us that 40% of all income at Burmese hotels from foreigners must be paid back to the government as tax each month. For the most part John and I have been trying to avoid Government owned and operated businesses to make sure that most of our tourist dollars benefit the average Burmese citizen but hearing this from the hotel owner was slightly deflating. The Government seems to have so many ways of making sure that they benefit directly from almost everything we buy, not least by the useless FECs that I have in my wallet and struggle to get rid of.
Later that afternoon we found the generous Family Restaurant for a massive lunch - we only ordered two items from the menu, a mutton curry and an egg curry, but we ended up with no fewer than 17 plates of food plus an endless supply of tea and poppadoms. There was more food than we could eat and the final bill came to just over $2 for the both of us. It was so good that we went back again the next day, mainly for the food but also because the family running the place made us feel so much at home.
Before leaving town we also ate at the Tea Line Milkshake Shop located in a strawberry farm just behind the golf course. The strawberry milkshakes were phenomenal but their rice salad was even better. We were there just before peak strawberry season but the berries were still pretty good if a little on the small side.
MISSING LINKS
On Monday we played our first and probably only round of golf in Myanmar. The Maymyo Golf Club had quite a good write up in the Lonely Planet guidebook so John and myself decided to check it out for something different to do. Part of the attraction was that the green fees include shoe hire, clubs and a real Burmese caddy.
The day before we went along to see the course and ended up playing cane ball on the practice green with some of the caddy's as the heat of the afternoon wore off. They invited us into the clubhouse for a drink but we had a taste for beer and all that was on offer was a dodgy rum concoction.
Prior to the round we seemed to command the attention of everyone at the course as we kitted ourselves out with shoes, gloves and a variety of tees and balls. The club inventory didn't include golf shoes big enough for John's size eleven feet so he had to play in his sandals. On the first hole the caddy's set the precedent for the rest of the round by helpfully moving our ball to a better lie and often teeing it up on a small tuft of grass on the fairway. Any shot that went out of bounds was confidently moved back into the fairway with a cheeky grin and a nod of the head as if to say "It's okay, I won't tell anybody". Over the next 18 holes we had the two caddy's searching in trees and lakes for our lost balls. Their help was wasted on us because as we continuously found just about all of the hazards that the Maymyo Golf Club had designed for the discerning golfer. After a tough three and a half hours we finally made off the course, both of us with well over a hundred on the score sheet. It was not a pretty round of golf but it's nice to say that we played golf in Burma. For the record I shot 110 and John 122.
Quick nap after a long round of golf
PSYCHIC BARGAINING
We spent a day longer in Maymyo than we wanted to. We hadn't bothered to properly research our exit from the town and they day we wanted to leave the hotel owner told us at breakfast that we had already missed the only pickup truck to Hsipaw, the only bus to Hsipaw, and the only train. We wanted to go to the bus station to find out for ourselves and look into the possibility of getting there by some other means, but like most days in Burma we got distracted early on and things didn't turn out as expected. We befriended a tricycle rider who was delivering wood to somewhere under the guise that we were looking for the post office - which was also on our agenda. Rather than just pointing us in the general direction he took us there himself after delivering his cargo. The post office was not open yet but across the road we saw a familiar face. It was the first man that we met in Hsipaw three days earlier - we had chatted with him about this and that and he had helped us find the Grace Hotel (US$4 a night) with little fuss. We wandered inside his shop and looked around. I told him that I collected old paper money and he obliged by pulling out many old notes that I had never seen before. Some were still in circulation but others had been demonetised back in 1987. Although they were worthless I knew that money is money and it still holds some value if only for the collector. He happily gave me about half a dozen notes, and some old coins and didn't ask for anything in return. John and I looked around his shop for a little while and found a few items of interest, one in particular was a 10 inch tall statue of a nat made of bronze and copper which caught Johns eye. Once the shop owner saw the look in Johns eye the bargaining process began but it didn't follow the normal pattern. The owner played the familiar game of starting out high, $70, and then followed it up with some familiar phrases, "How much do you want to pay?", "It's much more expensive in Mandalay". For ten minutes John continued to examine the figure, picking it up, putting it down, walking away, admiring it from a distance, all the time not saying a word to shop owner. During this time the price began to fall, first to $60, then $50 and $40. John's patience remained steady and finally when the price dropped to $30 he decided to buy but not before I added a couple of lion statues and a teak elephant to the deal. I had never seen anyone bargain with a shop owner without actually saying a word, and I probably will never see it again.
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