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Published: March 2nd 2007
Long Neck (Paduang Woman)
It's been said that if you remove the rings the head flops over & the neck snaps in two. Read on to find out. Inle Lake The railway employee's uniform - green knitted jumper complete with knitted train didn't scare me, rather it was the very young soldier with a very large gun that put me off taking photos....
It's no big surprise in Burma that trains move at a remarkably slow speed. That doesn't stop a few middle aged tourists making a special journey to travel over the impressive Gotkiet Viaduck somewhere between Pyin Oo Lwin & Hsipaw. The train crawls over the viaduct as the land falls away beneath, opening up to a massive gorge, waterfalls & somewhere far far below, a gushing river. Not only are the giant windows open, but so are the doors, giving a fine opportunity to lean out & marvel at the mind blowing drop directly below. It's only natural to try & take a photograph in such a place.
However the ever logical government perceive that middle aged European train enthusiasts may be insurgents & may be taking photos to plan a future bombing mission. Hence, although it was the employee in a green wooly jumper that asked me to stop mid photo, it was
the very young soldier with a gun standing at the end of the carriage that did the trick.
While most locals in Burma welcome tourists despite various boycotts, the ones least popular are those on fully organised tours, or who see the whole country from the air conditioned comfort of the back seat of a private car. I mean no disrespect to those who choose to travel this way, but it was sad to see that the handful of other tourists who took the train over the gorge disembarked at the first stop after the viaduct & jumped back into their air con private cars for the rest of the journey.
Burmese trains, like others in many parts of Asia provide little in the way of comfort - wooden seats filled with more passengers than space allows. Most of the journey the carriage rocks gently from side to side, although at times it sways so far from one side to the other that if you were to try & pass between carriages you would surely be cut in two. Somehow women selling food still manage to carry huge trays of food on their heads without ever dropping them.
Pickled Tea Leaf
& other snacks. Kyaukme Even when not swaying around there's always a handful of people being being sick. At least the wide open windows keep the air fresh & the temperature down. Until it gets dark that is, and the thermometer plumets. Journey times are erratic - no one ever really knows what time the trains will depart or arrive. At bigger stations we stop for upto an hour; at smaller stations which are nothing more than a bamboo hut in a bush we stop for just a few moments. However long the trip, there's always an endless supply of rice, fish, curry, steaming boiled eggs, freshly cooked corn on the cobb & deliciously sweet oranges.
Pyin Oo Lwin, just an hour or so by car from Mandalay (but four hours by train) was a hill station built by the British, a 1050m above sea level hillside retreat for them to head when the temperatures in Mandalay were too hot for them to handle. The mid winter temperatures of Pyin Oo Lwin must have made the Brits feel right at home - one day & night was all the cold weather we could manage. The town itself is small with little to see
Horse & Cart
Pyin Oo Lwin other than a lot of tea shops, even more wooly jumper shops & a very large number of colourful 'horsecarts' - still one of the main forms of local transport. Safeways remains the strangest sight, complete with red sign as I remember Safeways in the UK from my childhood.
After a long day on the train, we finally pulled into Hsipaw. When I came here in 1999 I left having had a very memorable experience. Hsipaw was one of those mysterious places that sucked you in & left you feeling touched by the place & people when you left. Today it couldn't feel more different. Like much of the country it appears to be stuck in a strange surreal timewarp. Because Burma was a British colony until so recently, some buildings and technology were advancing at a vaguely similar pace to the UK. However when the Brits left things came to a standstill and in places nothing has changed since. Being in Burma it often feels like it's somewhere between the 1930's & 1950's. Antique & vintage is still modern here - it's normal to see old cars that would be worth a fortune abroad, ancient books turn up
Noodles
Drying in the sun, Kyaukme here & there, the oldest I saw was a 1938 first edition. Even Hsipaw's shiny red Toyota fire engine is an antique - maufactured in 1964, but still putting out fires today.
Hsipaw is in Burma's Shan state and is a town full of characters who've all assumed names such as Mr. Knowledge, Mr. Book, Mr. Tea, Mr Bean and so on. The ethnic Shan people used to govern themselves and had their own royal family but when the military took power they didn't like the Shan Prince and what he was doing so arrested him. Fourty years later he's still not been heard of. Until recently the nephew of the prince, Mr. Donald, looked after his palace - a modest European style house. In 1999 I visited Mr Donald there & spent a fascinating morning talking with him & his wife.
Today Mr Donald is in prison, officially for something along the lines of 'saying bad things about the government to international people' & 'taking money from tourists without permission'
Whilst in Hsipaw we had no idea of the other changes in town. Although I couldn't put my finger on it at the time I was
convinced that something was wrong - there was a very strange & surreal feeling in town. Soon after we left the story emerged - apparently the owner of the most popular guest house in town, Mr Charles, has turned into a friend of the military government. It's said that he was responsible for the nephew of the prince being sent to jail, & that he now has the whole town worried that they are about to follow him there. Hence people like Mr Book who was previously very friendly & keen to talk to foreigners now lives in fear, apparently watched at all times & too scared to even mutter 'Mingalaba' to us.
(this is alleged but not confirmed, look here for more info:
Thorn Tree Discussion Forum Despite the change in atmosphere Hsipaw is still an interesting little town, where abundant local industries thrive. A lazy stroll around town leads past an art deco cinema, a beautiful pastel coloured mosque, the obligatory pagoda (Buddhist temple) & to the quiet backstreets full of cottage industries. Outside one house sit a few looms where women weave traditional Shan shoulder bags. Down an alley a man turns a pile of worn tyres into rubber
sandals & buckets. In numerous front rooms, women roll Burmese cheroots (cigars) from local tobacco. Across the railway tracks white Shan noodles hang like threads of wool to dry in the midday sun.
Just a few hours from Hsipaw is the small town of Kyaukme, home to just about no tourists at all. There was a vague hope of heading off to a remote mountain village to see a few locals in traditional 'ethnic' dress - but arriving too late in the day this wasn't going to happen.
Instead we took off on the back of a motorbike with a 16 year old schoolboy who said he would be our guide for the day. It's not everyday that you put your trust in a 16 year old that's wearing school uniform, but this one turned out to be okay.
Rice noodle factories, a lead beating factory, paper factory, rice terraces, monasteries, Kyuakme is another town full of thriving cottage industries. Heading out of town the scenery changes to rolling green hills of rice terraces, villages scattered amongst them. Rather than find locals in ethnic dress that have seen plenty of tourists already, the boy took us another
Railway Station
This room is straight out of a museum. Note the framed photo of hated General Than Shwe - it's not there through choice. Pyin Oo Lwin place where few have passed before (2 to be precise). The clothes may not have been fancy, but the welcome was unique.
The guide wanted to take us to meet his English teacher - an old man of Nepalese descent who takes classes in a homemade classroom at the front of his house. The early evening class of around 20 local teens was about to kick off. After listening in for awhile we were asked to comment on the performance of the class. The teacher is dedicated to the kids & has written his own textbooks for them - strangely the word 'English' isn't used anywhere at all, to the class it is known only as 'The International Language' The method for learning is largely based around the class shouting out questions & answers en masse, as loud as they possibly can, by candlelight of course.
Burmese people have learnt to live with powercuts - in over five weeks in the country we had just two days of 24 hour power. Every single other day we lost power, anything from five minutes at a time to a few hours or a whole day. It's widely believed that the
government cuts the power as a mark of control, and when the power goes most people just carry on. Many live life by candlelight, while anyone who can afford it has a generator. It's worrying though when you're at an international airport such as Mandalay, & you discover that even there the power comes & goes as erraticaly as everywhere else.
Inle Lake is one of Burma's most popular sights. Rather than 15 or so hours on another bus we opted for the bargain 20 minute flight. On arrival at Nyaungshwe, the town beside Inle Lake, Kylie announced that she couldn't breathe properly anymore. Rather than this happen in Mandalay, the city with international connections that we had just left, she saved it for here, a place with no more flights out & a place that's at least 15 hours on a bus to anywhere else. As expected, the hospital was just like any hospital that you've seen on a documentary about the third world on tv. Very basic indeed. At least the consultation room wasn't full of desperately sick people & worried relatives as had been the last hospital we'd visited in Cambodia. Fortunately the young female doctor
Horse & Cart
Pyin Oo Lwin spoke English & she diagnosed bronchitis. Five sets of pills later, that's about 20 pills a day, & Kylie was fixed.
Sitting 875 metres above sea level, Inle Lake is 22km long & 11km wide. Seventeen villages inhabited largely by local Intha people are built on stilts around the lake & cruising across it is like floating across a pane of glass, perfectly flat & always mirroring a perfect reflection.
As well as the stilt houses, the lake is dotted with floating islands, formed from marsh soil & water hyacinth & staked together with bamboo poles. Abundant with fruit, vegetables & flowers, the islands are an important part of life for the locals. Meanwhile fishermen row their small canoes with their legs, freeing spare hands to work with their cone shaped nets that fit neatly over over bamboo frames.
Being a touristy place, you're expected to do a day trip on a boat out on the lake. The large boats are powered by giant engines that thoroughly destroy any peace that once inhabited the area. You are expected to go to a market, visit some handicraft places & buy a lot of locally made parasoles, wood carvings
Old Monk
Inle Lake & gold things at very inflated prices. Out boatman didn't quite understand why we didn't want to do all these things & sadly refused to let us stop at what would have undoubtedly been the highlight of the day - a monk's initiation ceremony.
Markets rotate to different villages around the lake daily. Two that we found, Maing Thauk & Phaung Daw Oo, are a random mixture of souvenir stalls that far outnumber the tourists passing through & local Pa-O people who come down from the hills to buy & sell their every day goods to every day locals. Fruit, vegetable, meats & household items are all traded by these women that still wear their black tunic style traditional outfits. A nod to the changing times though - most of the women have swapped traditional headscarves for modern brighly coloured hand towels.
Paduang or Longeck women are something I never thought I'd see or want to see, but we seemed to stumble upon some without really planning it. These women are known for the brass rings that they wear around their necks as well as on their legs. Few continue the tradition today, realising that putting 18kg's of
Buddha
Nice eyelashes. Kyaukme brass around a woman's neck is not a particularly healthy thing to do. Apparently now outlawed in Thailand, just a few remain here & there in South East Asia. The house we found was inhabited by two eldery ring necked women & two teenaged ones. It's perhaps safe to say that the elderly women were moderately happy, while the younger ones, probably forced into the role to perform to tourists, clearly were not.
As the eldest woman weaved on her loom, brass rings on her neck & Manchester United sandals on her feet, the other woman sang a haunting song while the young girls half heartedly danced around for us. I've never seen anything quite like it & I think I hope that I never do again. It's been speculated that if the rings were to be removed the women's heads would simply flop over to one side & their necks snap in two. As coincidence would have it, we saw the removal of a Paduang woman's rings on tv (Ripley's Believe It or Not). There was no snapped neck, no tumbling head, just a lot of bruising on what looks like a very long neck. Although called 'long
Train Passengers
Look closely at the guy on the left & you'll see he's spitting out betel nut juice.... a very common sight. Charming. neck' it's actually the spine that's damaged, having been pushed down rather than the neck having been elongated. The woman on tv didn't like being without the rings & asked for them to go straight back on.
Burma is generally remarkably cheap, but these ladies wanted giant sums for their goods - we're in a tourist trap & sadly the rings they wear are just a ticket to big tourist dollars.
Having expected to have an early night on New Year's due to a serious lack of 'going out' options, it was a pleasant surprise to end up spending the evening with a few locals around a campfire. Kylie was the only female as all good Burmese girls were tucked up in bed nice & early. A good thing as I don't know how well they would have handled the lethal combination of locally made Burmese rum & Myanmar beer, mixed together & drunk like shots. Women in Burma are generally still quite conservative - they rarely show any flesh, don't drink, don't smoke & aren't often seen out & about of an evening enjoying themselves.
The boys played guitar & sang Burmese pop songs with all
Souvenirs
Inle Lake the passion you can expect of increasingly drunk youths as we clapped & danced around the fire with them.
2006 became 2007 & we disappeared off to bed.
Thinking of heading to Burma? Not sure about the tourist boycott? Feel free to contact me for more info about the country or whether you should go or not Wellington - Sydney - Bangkok - Khao Lak - Chaweng (Koh Samui) - Lamai (Koh Samui) - Bangkok - Macau - Guangzhou - Yangshuo - Guangzhou - Zhengzhou - Guangzhou -Shanghai - Huang Shan - Shao Lin - Beijing - Xi'an - Chengdu - Leshan - Kanding - Tagong - Litang - Xiang Cheng - Zhongdian - Lijiang - Kunming - Hekou/Lao Cai - Hanoi - Cat Ba Island - Ninh Binh - Hanoi - Hue - Hoi An - Hue - Hanoi - Sapa - La Chau - Son La - Mai Chau -Hanoi - China Beach - Hoi An - China Beach - Quy Nhon - Kon Tum - Saigon - Phnom Penh - Pursat - Battambang - Siem Reap - Anlong Veng - Siem Reap - Kompong Cham - Kratie - Ban lung (Ratanakiri) - Kratie - Phnom Penh - Kampot - Sihanoukville - Bangkok - Kanchanaburi - Bangkok - Rangoon - Bagan - Monywa - Mandalay - Pyin Oo Lwin - Hsipaw - Kyaukme - Inle Lake (Nyuangshwe)
New Zealand - Commonwealth of Australia - Kingdom of Thailand - Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China - People's Republic of China - Socialist Republic of Vietnam - Kingdom of Cambodia - Union of Myanmar
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Patricia Somewhere
Patricia MC
Again...
Incredible pictures and accompaining comments! Your insights about the people are remarkable. We need more people like you, who can relate to the true culture and feelings of less fortunate ones.