The many characters of Hsipaw

THE CAST OF HSIPAW
For a change of pace we decided to catch the train from Maymyo to Hsipaw with the idea of catching the bus back to Mandalay a few days later. The train is a lot slower than the bus but the scenery was a little different and we had plenty of room despite riding in the lowest class possible. The journey of about 150km took 9 hours but during that time we passed over the Gokteik viaduct which was, when completed in 1900, considered one of the finest engineering feats at the time. The bridge is a little on the shabby side now and the train creeps over slowly to lessen any stress on the aged steel. A few minutes before we reached the bridge I was playing with my digital camera, taking photos of some of the passengers and showing them the results. The conductor saw me doing this and made a point of telling me not to take any photographs of the viaduct or my camera would be confiscated.

In Hsipaw we decided to stay at the Mr Charles Guesthouse, partly because it was the only one we could pronounce but mainly because somebody from the guesthouse was waiting at the railway station for us and it seemed like a good idea. It was a rambling sort of guesthouse but the staff were friendly and the breakfast was hard to beat. At 3000 kyat per night (about US$3) it was also the cheapest we had come across yet in Burma.

Hsipaw is a town of characters and we met many of them over the next few days. The first came purely by chance as we were walking through the market. We had stopped to talk with some people to learn how to say hello and thank you in Shan and after a few minutes we were ushered through a couple of corridors down to meet someone's brother. Before long we were stood in front of a man fixing the roof of his stall after the torrential downpour the night before but when he finished he offered us tea and beckoned for us to sit with him for a while and talk. He was a softly spoken man with a permanent smile and a thoughtful turn of phrase. We told him where we were from, where we were going - two very important questions in Burma - and chatted about this and that until we got up to leave. I had noticed that he sold many hats at his stall so I jokingly said that he must be Mr Hat, but he smiled broadly and said 'Some people call me Mr Bamboo, since all of my hats are made of bamboo'. And so it was Mr Bamboo. Three days later I went to see him again and he remembered my name and John's and again invited me for tea so I drank again and took his photograph for my collection.

Next we met Mr Book, a staunch member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and proud supporter of Aung San Su Kyi. He talked for a few hours about the standard of living and the military regime but was nervous while he did so. Twice he got up to look over his fence to see if anyone was listening and he always kept one eye on his front gate to see who might be approaching. It was uneasy at times but Mr Book, whose real name is Ko Zaw Htun, talked honestly about life in small town Burma where the people are cheerful and recover quickly from personal or domestic disaster. We wanted to talk for much longer but he had some errands to run and other tourists also wanted to talk to him.

Other characters around town were less talkative and more about business. There was Mr Bean, a bean seller in the market, Mr Food ran the best Shan restaurant in town with his brother who also goes by the name Mr Food, Mr Banana Pancake and Mrs Massage, both self explanatory but Johnny the Monk was altogether different. Although he's in his 50s he's still new to the Monk order, joining within the last few years. He talked about his kids and his life before he was given the responsibility of taking care of the local stupa and told long tales as he drew puffs on his cheroot and played with his cat. As he talked a few other travellers, two of which had sought out Johnny to help them master the art of meditation, joined us and listened intently for three hours or more.

Finally we met Fern at the Shan Palace at the eastern edge of town. Her husband's uncle was the last in a long line of Shan Princes who mysteriously disappeared in 1963 and presumably executed shortly afterwards. Fern and her husband Donald are about as close to Shan royalty as there is left these days and they will proudly tell anyone about their family and history. John asked Fern what life was like in Burma now and she replied, 'Life is very difficult. Life is getting worse. We have hope but our leader wants to make change the peaceful way so it will take a long time.'

Local kids around Hsipaw

Hsipaw is also where both John and I fell sick on the same day. We were forced to stay in town longer than we probably should and after five days it was time to catch the early bus back to Mandalay. The bus back down was much quicker than the train and within 7 hours we were back in the broad Mandalay valley near the banks of the Ayerwaddy River.

THE MOUSTACHE BROTHERS
As promised John and I returned to see the Moustache Brothers during the day so that we could ask them questions about the country, the government and in particular their own personal struggle. A couple of days earlier John and I watched the movie 'About a Boy' on DVD and in it Par Par Lay gets a mention during an Amnesty International help-line scene. I wanted to take my computer along and show it to them just in case they hadn't seen it. It turned out that they knew about it, owned the VCD but had never actually found the correct scene. When they saw it for the first time they all fell about in laughter and screamed with delight. I had to play the scene over and over again as more and more of them gathered around. Later Par Par Lay took us to their local teahouse where I showed some of the regulars and anyone else that was curious. I showed them how to find it on their own VCD player and they began their show that night by showing the scene - three times. They are all extremely proud of it. They gave us autographed photos to give to Hugh Grant and Nick Hornby (the author) the next time we see them and John promised to at least forward it to their respective agents.

John asked Lu Maw about the years that Par Par Lay and their cousin Lu Zaw spent in prison. For the first few months they were forced to perform hard labour but the last five years of their sentence they were held in solitary confinement. Par Par Lay has taken much of the media attention but his cousin served the same sentence - it shows on his face too. Regardless of past experiences their hospitality was unequaled. We had an endless supply of tea, plenty of samosas and tomato salad. All of them were up and down the whole time, fetching more tea, or maps and photographs. They were insistent that we take lots of photographs of them and they even put on a little show which I got on video.

Pyin O Lwin, Myanmar

THE ROAD FROM MANDALAY (to Pyin U Lwin)
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.