MYANMAR

"Improper practice of democracy often leads to anarchic phenomena.

The improper practice of democracy often leads to anarchic phenomena. Thus, democracy requires stability and peace in the country, knowledgeable and mature citizens and a reasonable degree of wealth and prosperity on the part of the nation and the people. So, the Armed Forces has laid down the 12 objectives and the government, the people and the Armed Forces are building sound foundations in unity, while the Seven-step Roadmap has been laid down and the transition to a new order and a new system is being undertaken."

- Senior General Than Shwe, Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services (from speech delivered at the parade of 65th Anniversary Armed Forces Day)

The New Light of Myanmar (estd 1914); 7th Waning of Tabaung 1372 ME (Saturday 26 March 2011). Front-page banner quote.

***

The 12 Objectives (also from The New Light of Myanmar)

Four political objectives:

- Stability of the State, community peace and tranquility, prevalence of law and order

- National reconsolidation

- Emergence of a new enduring State Constitution

- Building a new modern developed nation in accord with the new State Constitution

Four economic objectives:

- Development of agriculture as the base and all-round development of other sectors of the economy as well

- Proper evolution of the market-oriented economic system

- Development of the economy inviting participation in terms of technical know-how and investments from sources inside the country and abroad

- The initiative to shape the national economy must be kept in the hands of the State and the national peoples

Four social objectives:

- Uplift of the morale and morality of the entire nation

- Uplift of national prestige and integrity and preservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage and national character

- Uplift of dynamism of patriotic spirit

- Uplift of health, fitness and education standards of the entire nation

People's Desire

- We favour peace and stability

- We favour development

- We oppose unrest and violence

- Wipe out those inciting unrest and violence (!)

Other notes:

- Anarchy begets anarchy, not democracy

- Riots beget riots, not democracy

- VOA (Voice of America), BBC sowing hatred among the people

- Do not allow ourselves to be swayed by killer broadcasts designed to cause troubles

***

History lesson

The population of Myanmar comprises several ethnic groups, the largest of which are the the eastern Shan, the southern Mon and the central majority Bamar, after whom the country has been named, rising to prominence in the 11th century and building thousands of Buddhist temples during their 200-year reign. Weakened by a failure to centralise and consolidate power and by constant expensive wars with their old enemy, the Siamese, the power of the Bamar kings was finally shattered when Kublai Khan invaded. There followed smaller Mon and Shan kingdoms, until the Bamar Empire emerged again in the 16th century and triumphantly sacked the Siam capital at Ayuthaya. Again, though, the royal succession faltered through internecine strife and over-ambitious expansionism, and the country became a part of British India in 1885 after the third Anglo-Burmese War.

The rise of nationalism following WWI didn't skip Burma, and the 20s saw several large-scale protests against colonial rule. Often led by monks (who were often handed lengthy prison sentences), these prompted some concessions from the British, but it was the 26-year-old Aung San's establishment in 1941 of the Burmese National Army - and its subsequent growth and resistance to the Japanese occupation - which gave him the leverage to negotiate successfully for full independence from 1947. This achievement resulted in lasting national adoration, but later that year he was assassinated by political rivals, leaving behind his two-year-old daughter Aung San Suu Kyi - and a country which promptly collapsed into anarchy.

The main power struggle was between the secessionist communists, supported by China, and the US-funded Kuomintang allied with other anti-communist and ethnic militias, who were all forced to retreat after Mao Tse-Tung's victory. After almost surrendering, the Burmese government managed to regain control in the 1950s and expelled all foreign 'aid', but constant political squabbling led first to the voluntary handover of power in 1958 and then its forced assumption in 1962 by the armed forces, or Tatmadaw. This move was welcomed by a population grown tired of lawlessness and the Tatmadaw initially made good progress, but its announcement that the country would "march towards Socialism the Burmese way" was rapidly followed by widespread nationalisation, massive inflation and demonetisation, riots and massacres, and the expulsion of Indian and Chinese minorities.

Marching in this particular direction continued until the massive student-led protests in 1988 when thousands were massacred. The resulting Western sanctions resulted in a closer relationship between Myanmar and its neighbours, particularly China, but also India and Thailand. Nonetheless, the obvious impending collapse of Communism prompted the junta to about face and abandon socialism for the free market in most industries. After this popular change, and huge investment in public infrastructure, the generals felt they had won public support and so finally allowed elections in which they lost heavily to Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition. The response was to block the parliament from taking office, and then arresting, imprisoning or exiling its leaders. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest again and remained there, with only brief periods of freedom attended by bloodshed, until January of this year.

***

Than Shwe, the junta's current leading general, is a flabby old chap whose meagre chest is adorned with more medals than it can reasonably bear. He looks out from the front page of the New Light of Myanmar newspaper in three-quarter profile, gazing implacably along the Seven-step Roadmap towards a new order and a new system, and impetuously ignoring the population whose welfare he is supposed to be advancing. His quote above is, of course, profoundly derogatory to the Myanmar people and dismissive of their many qualities, and is merely the latest of many hundreds of vapid statements issued over the years in an entirely transparent attempt to legitimise the regime's retention of power while it and its cronies amass enormous personal wealth.

This they do through two main channels: the exploitation of the country's huge commodity reserves - mainly oil, teak and precious stones - through 'shared partnerships' and 'joint enterprises'; and the exploitation of its people - not by extermination like the Khmer Rouge, but by economic warfare. The largely uneducated Tatmadaw is annihilating the civilian middle classes by steadily increasing taxes, fees and licence charges on desirable goods, services and trades - making them affordable to a dwindling minority which, by obtaining them, become more subject to state control. Thus, to obtain General Than's "reasonable degree of wealth and prosperity," people are forced to stick their heads up, be noticed, and thereby get relieved of more wealth.

For example: I am told - and my experience would seem to confirm - that less than 2% of the population own a car, with prices for even fifteen-year old Japanese imports running at over $10,000. And despite having the largest oil reserves in south-east Asia, a litre of petrol now costs roughly $1.20 - equivalent in value to the highest-denomination bank note - having increased exponentially in 2007 (sparking further monk-led protests). Well before dawn, queues of hundreds of vehicles queue form at the few stations where fuel is available. Unlike in other Asian countries the rural population do not flock to the cities because employment is unavailable and costs are high, so the country remains largely agrarian and the majority subsist on $3 a day. At the other end of the scale, the wedding of Than Shwe's daughter in 2006 was estimated to cost the country $50 million - about a dollar per citizen.

In recent years the State Peace and Development Council, as the generals call themselves, has been following its usual strategy of appeasement by the extension of minor liberties while accelerating its own enrichment programme. After cyclone Nargis killed 140,000 people in 2008, the junta refused external aid from most countries but embraced that from Beijing, soon realising that permitting cheap imports would allow the imposition of additional taxes on the elite who distribute them and also on the masses who consume them. The price of an imported Chinese scooter has since fallen by 100% to $400 and sim cards - initially over $600 - have plummeted to about $25. Clothing and white goods are also becoming cheaper, I am told. But prices are rising for subsequent necessities such as detergent and the sporadic petrol and electricity supplies. A similar process took place in Vietnam during the last decade. If people toil for years and finally attain relatively cheap commodities, they feel a sense of achievement and progress but are in reality even worse off compared with the privileged class who, during those same years, have progressed far further, cruising in Range Rovers to gaudy whitewashed mansions in the leafy suburbs. It's easy to say that this is just capitalism at work, but in contrast to equally corrupt yet free-market democratic India, there is no middle ground, and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

***

My actual trip

Descending into Yangon along the Ayeyarwady delta, the hazy landscape slowly resolved into a pancake-flat view of brown snaking rivers flanked by bright green paddy fields glinting in the sun. Small towns dotted the landscape, each of them surrounding a pagoda shining in white or gold. I was stamped and admitted to the country with the minimum of hassle. No questions from immigration, and a dismissive wave from customs. My bag could have been filled with revolutionary, pornographic and narcotic paraphernalia. Stepping out of the terminal into intense heat and humidity, I began perspiring violently. As no public transport goes to the airport, I boarded an ancient private bus for the bumpy 45-minute trip through the city to my guesthouse. Looking out the window I was immediately reminded of India. The streets, edged with sand and thronged with roaring trucks and parping motorbikes, are lined with rows of crumbling multi-storey poured-concrete blocks filled with tiny enterprises below tiny apartments whose balconies are strung with drying laundry.

Bamboo stalls line the pathways: street food, clothing stands, tea shops where men sit reading newspapers cross-legged on tiny plastic chairs. Women in cane hats squat behind huge piles of vegetables or fish swarming with flies. Seven-year-old monks and seventy-year-old nuns pass by, flicking their purple and pink robes over their shoulders, clutching an alms bowl to collect food, or an umbrella to shade their shaven heads. And everywhere the jungle seems to be trying to retake the urban landscape. Plants of all kinds spring from the many cracks in paving and masonry. Giant palm trees recede into the distance. The damp aroma from all this vegetation, mixed with that from diesel and kerosene fumes, frying food, human waste, disinfectant, incense, and minty paan spat onto the ground in great bloodstains, all combine to enrich every experience with a feeling of fecundity, of the constant cycle of growth and decay. Things here are no longer built to last but seem rather to be built for a very temporary utility.

On my first excursion from my hotel I hadn't gone twenty minutes down the road when I was met on the street by a young monk who asked me most courteously if I wouldn't mind attending his English class. So he guided me up the shabby staircase of one of the crumbling buildings to the fourth floor and into a room in which the paint peeled off the walls in a pattern reminiscent of a horrible skin disease. I was introduced to the teacher - a hilarious jovial skinny long-haired bejewelled hippy named Uma, who waved his arms a lot and spoke a wonderful English learned almost exclusively from a book of proverbs translated into Bamar. "There's one born every minute!" he would say when his students made a mistake, and "pearls before swine," after I said something that they didn't understand.

I sat in the centre and they plied me with questions. "Allow me to ask you something, and please be quite frank." Did I have my own language? How large is my country? When did it achieve independence? How many times have I been to London? My father's and mother's professions? What do I think of the Myanmar people? What do I do for recreation? What religion do I follow? How many countries have I visited? Is it true that there are very many prostitutes in Thailand? They were all in their early twenties, full of smiles and laughs and curiosity. None of them had ever left the country. They were mostly boys, ad about half were monks, but there were a few girls who had I offered might well have married me on the spot.

One of these was much celebrated because she had just got a permit, produced and passed around with pride, to work as a nurse in Singapore earning $450 a month - three to four times the GNP per capita. There were some guys of Chinese descent and one of Indian extraction who offered me a cheroot. Soon I was sitting back at my ease smoking freely and regaling the class with stories of my life, my travels and my weighty thoughts. The teacher took some photos which I was later enraged to discover were ruined by his disabling the auto-focus. Hunger eventually forced me back out onto the street after two hours. I walked on to the Sule Paya, the temple in the heart of the city around which the British numbered grid street system is laid. So after an interesting biryani at the lively night market I wandered back to my hotel on the corner of 56th and Panzungaung, getting lost several times in the darkness and finally being set to rights by a stern policeman.

Drinking beers at the hostel I met one of those fascinating people you only meet when travelling. Bammer, or Bamboo, is a sixty-something Californian who left the States to dodge the draft back in 1963 and hasn't been back in 47 years. Here's a guy who's been everywhere, and done everything, long before there were guide books and banana pancakes and ubiquitous internet. He'd followed the entire hippy trail through Afghanistan and the Karakoram highway before it became fashionable; he'd killed a man in the Amazon who was going to rape his wife. He was entirely believable. But the most important thing about him was that he sounded like the Dude, and looked like the Stranger. And if you don't know what I mean, then watch The Big Lebowski. He sat there at 11pm behind his shades and his bushy grey moustache, laughing freely and tossing his long hair, totally at ease and at peace. I overheard him saying to a French girl: "Yeah, I dig France, man. Beaches are nice. I remember I got a call from my brother, you know? And I was like, What?! Mom's sold the beach house?! - Now I can never go back, man!" I wanted to tell him to keep his gold-brickin' ass out of my beach community, but I didn't know if anyone there would get the reference.

***

I slept late on my second day in Yangon to escape the roaring heat. Eventually resolved to walk the entire 10km to the jewel of the nation, the Shwedagon Paya - a 1500-year-old temple complex surrounding an enormous stupa embossed with sixteen tons of gold and surmounted by a sixteen-carat diamond. Walking towards the city centre I passed by the Muslim quarter where rotund orange-bearded men and skinny unsmiling boys emerged from a mosque onto the street. Here the stalls sold heavy fried Indian foods and sweets. The Muslims seemed to be mechanics and metalworkers, and I passed several roadside smiths with ship anchors parked incongruously outside next to huge piled lengths of chain.

Wandering freely, I got lost several times amid the identical buildings and the absence of street signs outside of downtown. Heading onwards I soon realised that Shwedagon Paya Road was eerily empty of pedestrian traffic because it was four miles long and largely devoid of shade. The heat at 2pm was outrageously violent, yet on I sweated, grateful for the bag of iced watermelon I had bought. On and on, past the endless People's Park - which is closed to the public - I began to flag a little, never having perspired more outside of a sauna. Once the Paya's gleaming zedi, or central stupa, loomed in the distance, I got a second wind. After three hours walking I finally arrived, shrugged off the taxi drivers, the food stall owners and the pierced kids, checked my shoes to a flirtatious young woman, and entered.

I was suddenly alone on a long flight of wide marble steps, blessedly shaded by a high canopy supported by richly carved pillars. Bells rang in the distance and the air was scented with incense. Ascending slowly towards the glint of gold I began to feel a sense of timeless majesty. But suddenly I became aware of a stronger sense and the spell was broken by a visit to a toilet frequented by far more vicious mosquitoes than pious Buddhists. Soon I got back into the groove and reached the top of the staircase where I was relieved of my $5 entry fee, most of which goes to the generals. Duly stamped and stickered I entered the courtyard where the flagstones hot to the touch for my delicate feet.

Walking around the giant golden stupa in the requisite clockwise direction, lots of Burmese tourists were chattering. Monks, monks everywhere, tiny ones running and ancient ones hobbling. Hello! said the little kids. I sprawled in a shady spot and watched the Paya change from shining yellow to burnt orange to blood red as the sun set, which was pretty unforgettable. But the timelessness of the scene was kind of spoiled when the power was turned on and multicoloured LED halos began to twinkle behind the head of every visible Buddha statue; despite trying hard to maintain my sense of awe, I was reminded of a Japanese pachinko hall. I would very much like to have visited the Paya before the advent of electricity.

I needed to pay for my hot-air balloon flight in Bagan, my next destination, so the following day I took a cab out their office in the city's fanciest hotel where rooms started at US$400. The lobby was full of elderly continental European and north-east Asian coach-group tourists and in the conference hall preparations were being made for a fashion show. Having achieved my task I went across the street to Inwa Lake, its shores lined with the mansions of the rich. Among these was Aung San Suu Kyi's house, which stood out against the rest by virtue of its colonial architecture and its security cordon. Walking towards it I was surprised to find no barricades, but then remembered that Suu Kyi was released from house arrest earlier this year. So I went up to her gateway and peered in. Didn't look like anyone was home. I sat around for a while hoping to be invited in, and the passersby smiled. But there was nothing doing so I wandered off down the shady winding streets of the exclusive suburbs. Occasionally as the road climbed I caught a glimpse of the spires of the Shwedagon Paya, so I was never in danger of getting lost. After several miles I came upon a wonderfully peaceful nunnery layered along a hillside where lilies floated in reflecting pools and graceful fruit trees swayed in the warm breeze. I sat on a stone and drank in the scene. Groups of young nuns in their pink robes glanced back at me and dissolved in giggles, clutching at each others' arms.

Back in the city I bought some papaya and strolled along ducking in and out of shops and laneways, feeling pretty pleased with myself. I had some tea with another local English teacher who was pleased to inform me that "the Lady is free!" He wrote out my name in Bamar script and arranged to meet me later dinner and beers in Chinatown. Sitting for a while on a tiny pink stool drinking sweet instant coffee from a roadside stall, I noticed a young fireman at the next table and complimented him on his bright yellow boots. Made in China, he said, and came to sit with me. He was killing time before his shift, which began in three hours. I wondered why he would sit around in the sun for so long in full uniform, but it soon became clear that it was out of pride. He had a prestigious and stable job in a city where most of the other guys his age pulled rickshaws, sold paan, or squatted around on the street all day. His father and brother were both firemen and his mother owned the stall at which we sat; she smiled a matronly smile at me. Apparently there are three or four big fires every week in Yangon, and after six months he would be transferred to a rural station. Soon he disappeared and I went off to Chinatown where I couldn't find the teacher. Opposite a brightly lit temple strung with paper lanterns I sat at a stall and ate a huge steaming bowl of delicious Shan noodle soup, watching the street life go past.

***

Unique in South-east Asia, people in Myanmar still wear their traditional dress. The longyi, pronounced lonnjee, is a wide cylinder of cloth wrapped around the lower body and gathered at the front, where the knot is folded into the waistline. Although full-length it can be hitched to various heights as required by tucking the surplus material into the folds at the back. I did not try one, but other travelers I met swore by its utility and practicality - if they were able to keep it from falling down. In addition to wearing the longyi, the women here, and some of the younger boys, cake their faces to various depths with thannakha, a yellow paste of the powdered wood of a sandalwood-like tree; supposedly, it acts as both a sunblock and a moisturiser.

I had heard Myanmar described as "the best of India meets the best of Thailand" and to an extent that's true. The street scenes are very similar to India - lots of street life taking place around stalls and bamboo huts arranged outside hideous peeling poured-concrete buildings. The concrete paving slabs are so shattered and uneven that they threaten at every second step to tip you into a stinking drain. In fact public infrastructure in general is deplorable, except surrounding wealthy enclaves. The roads are pitted and crumbling, while those highways in a decent condition are empty. Street lighting is urban areas is largely jacked from the nearest main circuit by the local shop-owners. Power cuts are frequent, caused by mild breezes or the most minor electrical storm. Trains can run up to 12 hours late and are also affected by mild weather.

The smell is also reminiscent of India - aromas of all sorts of foods from the street stalls, and the kerosene fumes of their stoves, and the diesel fumes from the traffic, and wafts of incense, and minty paan juice spat out in great bloody gouts, and disinfectant, and human waste. But I was surprised to find that the food in Myanmar was not to my liking. Perhaps I had bad luck, but every local Bamar dish I sampled was horribly sour - sour pickled cabbage; sour pickled mushrooms; sour tomato curry; sour fish soup. The Shan - or Thai/Chinese food, on the other hand, is absolutely delicious.

Advertising is uniquely revealing about any place, and here again Myanmar is like India. The ads are split in their target demographic. One half of the market is urged with strong-man imagery to buy the best cement, steel rods, sprockets, ball bearings, three-stroke engines, generators and lighting fixtures, while the other half is tempted by huge sun-faded billboards depicting plump women adorned with vulgar jewellery being fawned over by paunchy gents in open-necked shirts sporting bouffant hairdos. Some ads transcend boundaries. Wholesome families, including the mother-in-law, watch TV while drinking instant Rich and Creamy instant tea or coffee sachets; popular boy bands are seen langorously drinking Royal and Grand whisky, and smoking Red Ruby and Blue Diamond cigarettes. Western caffeine, nicotine and alcohol products are produced here in 'joint partnerships' and marketed under various brands by evil corporations such as Nestle, Tiger and Rothmans.

***

Next day took a taxi to Yangon station which is like a little town where all the streets are identical and all the traffic is buses; a low circle in the Inferno, populated entirely by tough kids with multiple piercings who hustle travelers into the nearest place serving alcohol. I had booked a night bus to Bagan and was curious to see if the contraption in which I eventually travelled would bear any resemblance to the gleaming luxury vehicle depicted on my ticket. My heart sank when we arrived at the oldest most banjaxed bus I've ever seen. No windows and fixed hard seats. But then, gloria, we were gestured to the adjacent bus which, although it didn't have four-poster beds and full-body massages, did at least have cushioning. However the seats were designed for persons not exceeding five feet in height and soon I found that reclining mine to an obtuse angle resulted in a rapid loss of circulation to my feet. Further, the slightest bodily movement resulted in my shins coming into abrupt contact with one of the various steel bars welded invisibly below, which I can only assume were installed by design out of sheer malice. In addition, the window pane beside my head was loose and rattled violently. Finally, the misanthropic driver blared truly diabolical music and interminable movies long, long into the night. The road was too bumpy to read and the cryogenic air conditioning precluded sleep, so I passed the time by twitching with rage. Originally seated beside an ample woman who burned with shame at rubbing up against a single foreign male, I got some relief when she exchanged seats with a wide-eyed eight-year-old who I could push around with impunity, but who got his revenge by sleeping soundly through the whole trip. But at least I had a little more space to twitch.

The journey was broken only at a gaudy truck-stop that rose out of the darkness like Las Vegas, offering wholesome food and opportunities for prayer rather than gambling and whoring. Mercifully we arrived at our destination of Nyaung U several hours earlier than advertised and took a horse and cart through the dark sandy streets to our guest house where we slept the sleep of the righteous. Awakening early afternoon we took a stroll in the smothering heat. I was in search of the Ayeyarwady, or Irrawaddy - one of the great rivers of Asia, and one I'd always wanted to see. We reached its banks after a pleasant but sweaty walk through the village of Wykti-In, or Giant Pig, named after a malevolent local beast slain by an heroic king; history doesn't recall if he enjoyed the rashers.

Like many places in Myanmar Bagan used to be the national capital. Now it's not even a city, but a plain of 20 square kilometres below a lazy bend of the Ayeyarwady about 300km north of Yangon. During its heyday in the 13th century its monarchs and richer citizens built over 4000 private temples and stupas in a bid to outdo each other and their predecessors; 2500 remain after an earthquake in 1975. For the uninitiated, the correct archaeological term for this number of temples is a 'shitload'. They are reminiscent of the temples at Angkor in Cambodia, except these are of brick instead of stone, and less magnificent in scale and decoration, but no less impressive for all that. Most of them are relatively small - simple stupas and larger shrines - but the true payas are enormous and beautifully symmetrical structures, rising hundreds of feet in tapered tiers to elegant pinched domes surrounded by smaller pinnacles in multiples of four, each temple enclosing a vaulted gallery housing single or quadruple altars beneath a towering Buddha statue. There are about a dozen of these larger temples scattered throughout the plain and their panorama is truly stunning, especially at sunset or sunrise.

Later we took another horse-and-cart ride to some minor temples but it was soon cut short by a minor storm that appeared out of nowhere from the north side of the river, gritting my eyes and throat and sending the locals running to secure their stalls and boats. We did visit one paya whose gatekeeper was a jovial plump red-toothed young man with two pet squirrels in his shirt pocket. He told us that Myanmar's most famous band, Iron Cross, were playing a gig in Nyaung U on April 1 - sadly too long a time to stick around in Bagan. Subsequently I saw many young guys with Iron Cross T-shirts in Mandalay and Yangon. In fact, aside from saccharine girl-pop, a majority of Myanmar's domestic music (judging from the band names alone; unfortunately I did not actually hear any of it) seems to be hard metal, complete with fascist icons. Guys ride their motorbikes in German WWII infantry helmets, or wear T-shirts emblazoned with the eagle or swastika. Hitler adopted a mirror image of the Buddhist swastika for his own ends; and although the Jews were driven out of Myanmar during the 1960s along with other minorities, I don't believe the people embrace the significance of this fascist imagery, unless perhaps in unlikely tacit support for their own government.

The next day I and my companion Charlotte rented bicycles and set off on a grand tour of Bagan, a 15km loop along the river and back to Nyaung U. It was really pleasant to bike around the temples in the coolness of the morning, but we soon grew weary of the gatekeepers touting their 'sand-paintings' and other wares. Stopped for lunch in New Bagan, whose residents were 'encouraged' to leave Old Bagan in 1990, ostensibly to facilitate archaeology but really to make room for expensive hotels. Some kids immediately appeared and shepherded us to the most expensive restaurant in town. They were surprised when we eschewed it in favour of a small place serving local dishes which we pointed out with their help, accompanied by lots of smiles and laughs. As we ate the horrible food the kids loitered outside until we beckoned to them to sit with us. They lashed into our dessert sweets after refusing politely just once. The little girls put thannaka on Charlotte's face and Charlotte put red lipstick on the little girls. So cute! she said; adorable! I thought they looked like underage hookers.

We wanted to see the river again so we set off, one girl on the back of Charlotte's bike and the boy on the back of mine, roaring orders to everyone. At the riverside temple we sat in the shade and Charlotte - or Chocolate as she was now called - was swarmed by even more little girls. Admittedly she was rather fascinating, wearing a backless diaphanous top and tiny denim cutoffs; not the most appropriate attire for visiting Buddhist temples. They cooed and touched her long blonde hair and sang songs for her. Disgusted by such effeminacy the little boy stood on the parapet with his back to us shouting like a general at his friends below, periodically turning and urging us to leave.

Down at the riverside we shocked everyone with our intention of going for a swim. Charlotte changed into her skimpy bathing suit in a nearby shack, and down onto the bank we went. The kids wanted us to get into a dark and stinking pool but we walked on to the main stream. The girls had disappeared, and we had by now attracted a dozen additional boys who glared open-mouthed at Charlotte. Dangerous! said some. Not dangerous! said others. There were plenty of local people in the river both up and downstream, so after some hesitation I stripped down to my underwear and we waded in. The water was warm and slimy and filled with pieces of fish and vegetation. I floated there for a few minutes looking at the temple. Then I remembered that the Burmese python can swim very well and has been known to grow to eight metres in length, so I got out to dry in the hot sun. Charlotte caused howls of derision by borrowing one of the boys' longyis to get changed under. Most of them turned away, sneaking glances which reduced them to tears of laughter. But one cheeky guy stood contraposto with his hands on his hips, a big white grin on his face, raising his eyebrow at me and cocking his head towards Charlotte. I laughed and let him believe that it was so.

My sunrise balloon ride the following day was cancelled due to rain. This was a bit of a disappointment but on the other hand it meant that I had an additional $300 to spend. In the morning I walked with Charlotte to the jetty where she was to take her boat upriver to the village of Pokoko, and leaving her there I went off on my rented lady-bike in the searing heat with my water and my hat and my sunscreen, to see the sunset. I cycled off-road along sandy pathways to the most remote and easternmost of the grand temples, the Pathada Paya, where I was irritated to be forbidden from climbing to the very top. The sign above the locked stairway said that this was to 'preserve the sacrosanct heritage' or some such, but I knew the real reason: Myanmar's richest civilian, Tay Za, had exercised his power to close off the upper tiers of all the largest temples to tourist access so as to leave his own incredibly ugly (and illegal) modern viewing tower - with its $10 entrance fee - as the highest local vantage point.

Still I was enveloped by a wonderful solitude when I scrambled as high as possible up the Pathada Paya. All I could hear were the putting of faraway tractors and the calls of the shepherds driving their herds below. There I sat for several memorable hours contemplating the stunning panorama of temple spires receding into silhouette above the glinting Ayeyarwady. But as the sun began to set it all fell apart. I ran out of water and became parched. I was bitten by bird-sized flying insects. Then eight large tourist buses arrived amid clouds of dust and I was presently joined in my wonderful solitude by hundreds of Burmese with their radios and mobiles and incessant chatter. Then the clouds rolled in and the sunset was destroyed. I descended the candlelit stairway to discover that the back tyre of my bike was flat. It was 10km to my guesthouse, and getting dark fast. It was barely tolerable to cycle through the sand, but when I hit the tarmac road (with another 6km to go) I was forced to walk. This wasn't as bad as I had expected. The temples were lit, and the road was empty, and again I had a great feeling of isolation, except for the giant bats. But inevitably I soon met an entrepreneurial local guy with a headlamp and a puncture repair kit, who for 50 cents fixed my flat and sent me on my way without ever having said a word.

***

Using some of the money from my cancelled balloon odyssey I booked a flight to Mandalay and early the next day I took a horse and cart to the airport, which is how I shall travel to all airports in future if possible. There were only five passengers on the turboprop aircraft and we flew at only 9000 feet which made for a bumpy ride. Mandalay International Airport, serving only two international routes, is a wonderful white elephant located in total wilderness an incredible 30km from the city. Despite being built only fifteen years ago (at huge public expense) its lonely grey halls are already deteriorating; the whole place was cloaked in brown dust and ants swarmed through cracks in the windows. The information screens were blank and the ambitious eight baggage carousels sat motionless. Large fish circled slowly in the flooded underground car-park ramp.

I shared a taxi into the city and found my guesthouse on the corner of 25th and 83rd. Despite public opinion to the contrary, Mandalay is a young city, only founded in 1857 when the Burmese capital shifted yet again. Kipling's famous poem has a lot to do with this misconception. Kipling himself never actually visited the place. But I was there. Whenever I arrive in a new city I always like to wander aimlessly and maplessly, taking turns that seen auspicious, and I usually end up in interesting places. On my walk in Mandalay I was duly rewarded by several bustling markets, a tea shop staffed entirely by ten-year-olds, and an internet cafe in which the previous occupant of my seat had left the porn video playing minimised. After several hours of this wandering I inevitably arrived at the moat of the erstwhile royal palace, two kilometres square and fifty metres wide, enclosing a high red wall with uniquely Burmese watchtowers. I was reminded of Hue in Vietnam; Mandalay Palace was also destroyed by war, and rebuilt by forced labour not too long ago. So I didn't visit, instead walking around the moat and then taking a trishaw to the famous Mandalay Hill.

A digression on trishaws. Every Asian country has its variation of the three-wheeled bicycle taxi. In India the wallah is in front and the seat is mounted behind, with no back support. In Vietnam the passenger reclines languidly in front. In Myanmar the seats are back-to-back in a little sidecar. Trishaw drivers pay up to 30% of their take for the privilege of loitering near tourist guesthouses - depending on how big the fish is. These fellows were usually fat and sleek and cunning and falsely friendly. So I ignored them and selected my drivers from the street, who were invariably honest and kind, and not as desperately poor, ancient and skeletal as their Indian counterparts. But they are no doubt still poor: they can go for days without a fare - just sitting around waiting. Several of them told me that the government is trying to stamp out trishaws altogether; they are already banned from congregating near railway stations, markets and tourist sites - in fact practically every place where a person might actually want to hire one. The reasons for this are unclear, but if trishaws were to disappear the city would be poorer for it.

So I negotiated a price with my driver for the wait and the ride back. He kept my shoes and I started to climb barefoot. It seems that every hill in Myanmar is surmounted by a paya and reached by innumerable steps punctuated by other payas increasing in magnificence with altitude. This was no different. I was soon befriended by a cute young monk who was also climbing. He had excellent English and I found out several interesting things. For instance: every male in Myanmar must spend some time as a monk at two stages in his life - between the ages of five and fifteen, and again after the age of twenty, for a period of not less than three months on each occasion. Interesting that the troublesome and rebellious late teenage years are excluded.

So we walked and chatted. The temple on top of the hill is encrusted with mirrors and arches inscribed in the beautiful Bamar script with the names of donors. Of course there is a gleaming gold stupa, or zedi, in the centre. As we circumnambulated the boy pointed out various things; the river, his monastery, the Shan mountains, the local prison (backing directly onto the local university). He then showed me his English textbook, which was full of the same archaic phrases as the one owned by the teacher I met in Yangon. After sunset and the obligatory photographs, it was time to descend. On the way I was looking for the memorial to the British regiment that captured the hill from the Japanese in WWII, but I failed to locate it. Instead I found lots of sprawling cats. The trishaw and my shoes were waiting.

That evening I joined some new friends for dinner. Like elsewhere in Asia, much food is eaten on the street, and there's usually a great spread of Indian, Thai and Chinese choices. We dined at a Mandalay institution - the Chapati Stand. Rows of foot-high plastic furniture spread along the pavement, centering on several massive pots of meat and veg curry heated over drums of kerosene. It's sweaty, smoky, loud, uncomfortable, and so delicious that I overate and I got the chapati sweats that night.

Next day I hired a motorbike (and a driver) to take me around a couple of the sights outside the city. First was Sagaing, a lovely riverside town of low hills covered with monasteries and nunneries all linked by pleasant shaded walkways. This apparently is the place where Burmese monks go when they feel the need to relax and get away from their hectic pill-popping 24-hour party lifestyle. It is, in fact, wonderfully peaceful, and could have stayed all day, but instead just strolled around for a few hours, popping in and out of temples and being hassled for 'donations' by watery-eyed old monks. I spent a while surreptitiously watching two young monks who had climbed a tree and were shaking the blossoms from the branches. These are later dried and (I'm presuming) made into incense.

My driver gave me strict instructions to descend the same way I had gone; I ignored him completely, and when he found me a few hours later, pottering around a local market, he was irritated that I had upset his schedule. So he punished me by going straight to a craft shop where I was determined to buy nothing yet ended up spending $20 on carved wooden stuff that I can't even import to Australia. After that, off we went for lunch in a roadside dhaba. In the shade several fat men in vests snored and rolled around on charpoys with their chubby arms outflung.

On our way to Amarapura, which also used to be the nation's capital, traffic was stopped by police as a group of young monastic initiates passed by on their way to their new home. I was lucky to see this event which apparently only takes place in the area every few months: a long procession of about a hundred little boys on horseback and a hundred little girls in bullock carts. All the children wear jewellery and crowns and makeup and fine colourful robes and are shaded by elaborate parasols. All the animals are richly tasselled and liveried. At either end of the queue a large band of brass and drums, prodigiously amplified, is hauled on a flat-bed truck and in the centre the local lamas ride under saffron canopies. The children were on their way to meet their relatives for a communal feast, the day after which they hand back the jewellery and wash off the makeup, queue to have their heads shaved, and are finally given their robes and take their vows. It's a very expensive but most auspicious occasion for the families. So meritorious is it to sponsor a novice that childless people often pay for the children of friends.

As it began to rain heavily and I became a little worried for my safety given at the driver's breakneck speed; I was glad when we stopped for coffee to wait it out. He told me about Thingyan, Myanmar's equivalent of the Thai Songkran or water festival. This celebrates a deity who is not in fact immortal but who merely has a very long life; this festival is when he leaves the celestial realm and lives in the human world for a while. The driver's pronunciation of 'celestial' sounded so much like 'salacious' that for some time I had quite the wrong idea about the whole thing.

At Amarapura the main attraction is the world's longest teak bridge, U Bein's bridge, linking the old city on the one side of the Ayeyarwady with the monasteries on the other side. Over 1200m long, it's supported on tree trunks sunk in the sand, although some parts are concrete. It's a bit of a tourist trap but the view of the sun setting behind the bridge, as it's crossed by hundreds of monks, cyclists, and local women balancing loads on their heads, is pretty magical. Here I also missed a great photo opportunity. A coachload of stern tall unsmiling army men were walking across the bridge, determined not to show any outward signs of emotion. But as I passed a group of them standing around in the centre, for some unexplicable reason one of them was holding to his lips a child's tiny orange plastic trumpet, with a gold horn. He hadn't noticed me, and when I was struck by the absurdity of the scene and laughed out loud he was embarrassed and teased by his friends at having let down his guard and displayed a sign of weakness - and to a foreigner!

The last paya I visited in Myanmar was the youngest of all I'd seen, and also the biggest. Mingun Paya is an hour's trip upriver from Mandalay. It featured in a photograph by the guy who also took the famous picture of the Afghan girl with the green eyes. Begun in the mid-19th century, construction of Mingun was halted when the king died; in those few years an enormous square base was built, a hundred feet high, with a grand portal in each wall. Soon afterwards the whole thing was split by an earthquake unfortunately resulting in the central chamber being sealed off but also producing the cracked facade featured in this photo, and also in several of my own. Back in the city I met my favourite trishaw driver who took me to the post office and other fascinating locations, telling me all about his life: being imprisoned for intervening in a fight; how a month in jail changed his life; how he doesn't chase money any more; how he studies English every day; how his friend escaped to California by virtue of his connections with an NGO staffer and his English language skills; how he's worried that the government is reading his emails (he is a Gmail user). On this last point at least I was able to reassure him that if anyone's Gmail is being hacked then it's not that of a trishaw driver.

Arriving back at the airport the next morning, dozens of porters squatting at the departures mall leaped to their feet and swarmed around my taxi. I sat in the shabby Kipling Cafe eating Maggi noodles and massacring mosquitoes. There were very few passengers and therefore no queues, but my passport was scrutinised thoroughly before I was admitted to the check-in desk. Here my lone presence caused an argument among the staff who then apologetically informed me that my flight was delayed by three hours. Back in the Kipling the obviously gay waiter was being mercilessly taunted by a group of oafish airline employees. Soon I was fetched back to the gate by the check-in staff who had found me a different flight. I gave the waiter a large tip and my best smile, told him he was very handsome, threw a withering look at the slack-jawed persecutors, and flew away to Yangon.

***

I left Myanmar at 6pm the next day and after spending seven hours in a Bangkok airport hotel I arrived at Paro in Bhutan, via Dhaka, at noon. This represents four countries in sixteen hours, which I believe is a personal best; although I suppose Bangladesh doesn't count because I couldn't get off the plane.