TravelStream™ news feed for member chan_hc on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/chan_hc en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:39:04 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259620009/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259620009/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259620009/tpod.html Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:39:04 -0500 Getting Started

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Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia

I am in Kuala Lumpur now, after a 48 hours journey from Pattaya; bus-train-bus.

Now I am with mom, whom I have not seen since late 2006. The reason I have to come here to be with her is that she was born and raised in this city, so now she comes back here once every year, spends 3 months with her siblings and other relatives and friends each time. If I went to Hong Kong I would miss her. For the next 7 days, my only plan is to spend some quality time with her.

After that I'll fly to Hong Kong and see my sisters and friends.

So, even though I still have a month to go before I will be back in San Francisco, the travelling part of my journey is over. From now on, it is only families and friends, too personal to write about in my blog.

I think my next and last entry will be written on the plane between HK and SF, to summarize the whole trip and also let you know that I’m safely back home.
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Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar


In the early morning the bus arrived at Yangon’s Long Distance Bus Station that is about 14 km from downtown. In a true backpacker’s spirit, I didn’t use the taxi, but tried my luck with the local bus – it is rather simple once you find the right bus because it goes all the way to the center. With helps of the locals I found it in a darken pre-dawn side street not far from the station, and it was ready to go. Ah, another accomplishment - but before I could pat myself on the back the bus broke down soon after it left the station – obviously someone is trying to make it clear to me that Burma did not like me.
But did I like her? After a day's worth of reflection, my conclusion is I do not. Not because of the fact that without a doubt, Burma is unique, very unlike any place that I have traveled, and there is a long list of things that I felt are strange and/or illogical: no ATM; the large number of old (pre-WWII?) and beaten-up motor vehicles that still run on the road; almost all newer vehicles are imported used from Japan, with steering wheel on the right-hand side yet traffic is kept to the right side of the road; an aircon room is not an aircon room most of the time because of frequent blackouts and brownouts (a fan room make more sense); the government blocks the access to some websites including Hotmail and Yahoo (surprisingly, Gmail is left untouched), but it was done so clumsily that almost every internet café has the software to override the blockade (rumor has it that the government employs some Russian technicians to do the task – I think they should use the Chinese ones – and sadly, this is not a joke); 99% of men here wear the skirt-like longyi; 85% of them have dark-redden teeth from chewing betel leaves all their lives, and they spit the blood-red juice all over the place (not that many women chew them); 80% of women on the street have thanaka (those yellowish skin-protection stuff) smeared on their faces, all day long; no 7-eleven store; nuns wear pink robes; the rich and powerful live like prisoners because their houses are behind high walls that topped with barbwire; no motorbike in Yangon but plenty of them in the rest of the country; people here are dirt poor but the buddhas and stupas are all covered with tons of pure gold; here I found some of the ugliest cities but some of the prettiest mountain views; they chose to cover up a major tourist attraction for maintenance during the high tourist season; the government is nasty but the individuals, including the police and government officials, are some of the nicest and most polite ones that I have encountered …the list could go on and on.
Being backward and strange sometimes has its charm; a lot of people are attract to that, me included, to a certain extend. But I think I am turned off by the fact that the backwardness and most of the illogical stuffs occur because those who have the power just don’t give a damn – they live so high above the citizens of the country that what inconvenience the common people don’t bother them.
I hate to be in a place where the government has absolutely no concern about her people’s quality of life. I don’t think I will return to this country any time soon.


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Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai, Thailand

From Bangkok airport I went straight to the bus station and took an overnight bus to Chiang Mai. Over there, I put on a different hat: I was no longer a traveler, but a vacationer. With my expat friends, we rented a car and spent two days in a resort in Chiang Dao, 120 km north of Chiang Mai.

Over there, life was good: we enjoy pricy red wine, venison, cheese cake, but also lunch from local market that consisted of very tasty grill fish, soup, grilled chicken, fresh papaya, all for $2 per person. We whiled away the hours by chatting, reading, driving around the countryside, explored a cave, or even went to a very touristy elephant show, even though seeing those magnificent animals acting like clowns wasn’t a lot of fun to me (I think the elephants, which are intelligent animals, hate it too. This, plus the fact that they cannot be truly domesticated, are the reason why a number of elephant-handlers are killed by them every year). After Burma, it was a nice change and a much-needed respite, and a very timely introduction to what would follow next: a few days of sun and sea on a beach somewhere in southern Thailand.


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Pattaya, Thailand

Ah, the sun, the breeze, the coconut trees, the waves, the relaxation…sounds like heaven? May be to a lot of people, but not to me. First, I am a mountain-hiker, not a beach-comber; second, I don’t know how to relax. I always need to have something to do, or I’ll be bored.

Well, that was the exact reason why I wanted to spend a few days by a beach – I felt that it was about time to learn how to relax, how to enjoy doing nothing.

My original plan was to go to the south, until I realized that unlike the rest of the country, which is having a cooler dry season, the weather in the southern part of Thailand is quite rainy. So I went east, to a town south of Pattaya, where a mile-long beach is found; a very nice aircon room just 50 yards from the beach costs less than $20; a whole day rental of a set of umbrella-beach chair on the beach costs less than a dollar; plus lots of cheap seafood.

So I stay there for 5 days: spent the better part of the day on the beach, swimming or reading or writing my blog with my netbook until I dozed off; or just stared at the horizon, enjoying a beer or drinking the juice of a young coconut.

Finally. I could relax and be lazy and not feel guilty about it.

And that’s why this entry is a short one.




]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259264417/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259264417/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1259264417/tpod.html Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:45:46 -0500 Getting Started

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Inle Lake, Myanmar

I got up at 0430 to catch a bus to Mandalay, after which I caught an overnight bus to Inle Lake. I did not hit the bed for 27 hours. Traveling in Burma was time-consuming and not very comfortable.

But I was glad I did it. Inle Lake has floating gardens, village on stilts, mountains, and friendly people with interesting traditions. Some travelers call it heaven on earth, I wouldn't go that far, but would admit it is the most peaceful place that I have visited in Burma (of course I haven’t visited that many sites)

After a short nap, I joined 3 other visitors from the same hotel for an all day boat trip around the lake, sharing the 15 USD cost.

The trip was quite interesting. We first went to the SW corner of the lake, up a creek to a local market. There were some stalls catering to the tourist who arrived by the boat loads, but most of the business there were for the locals and I saw a lot of Pa-O people who live in the nearby hills (those who live around the lake are Inthas), dressed in their traditional clothes, and caught a few of them taking bathes in the river. Next we went to a shop that had 3 Padung women doing some weaving. Just like every woman in their tribe, they wear brass rings on their necks to prolong them (6 to start with, and by 25 their long necks proudly display 25 layer of rings, the most any one can wear) – their tribe live in the mountains around the lake so no doubt they were there only as tourist attractions. After that we went up north a bit, to Phaung Daw Oo Paya, the holiest religious site in the southern Shan State, where 5 Buddha images, covered by thick (15 cm) cold leaves, were enshrined. After lunch we went to a weaving workshop where a tour that detailed each step of weaving (they use silk and fibers from lotus stems) was demonstrated. A good place, but no doubt the hand machines there are for shows only, while some modern machines elsewhere are producing the bulk of the merchandises. Next we went to a shop where they hand-rolled the cigars and enjoyed some tea and snacks and conversation among fellow travelers. By 1600 we went to Nga Hpe Chaung Monastery thru the floating garden where a lot of vegetables, mostly tomatoes, are planted on strips of dirt surrounded by water at the edge of the lake – the farmers sit in the boats while working the land, for the jumping cat show. Many years ago, the monks there must be bored by daily chanting, so they took times to train a few cats to jump hoops. The tradition continues, and now becomes sort of a tourist attraction. The show was short and only moderately interesting (ok, I know it’s not easy to train cats to do anything). The main joy of the trip for me is to see the lake in different lights, from early morning mist to sunset clouds, with fishing boats and mountain as backgrounds. As always, rural Burma is much lovelier than dirty cities that show a lot of poverty – strolled thru the local market in the next morning, I sensed a feeling of abundance - people here may not have money, but blessed by the fertile soil in and around the lake, there are lot of foods around.

I planned to stay there for 2 days, but after studied the inconvenient bus schedule, I decided to leave the next day to be sure I would not miss my plane. I could have stayed for another day and arrive in Yangon in the morning, just in time to go to the airport and fly out on the same day, but things are not that reliable in Myanmar, plus the fact that I didn’t feel luck here anyway, so I chose to travel to Yangon a day earlier.
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Hsipaw, Myanmar

By Nov 13, I had only six days left before I the day that I would fly out of Burma, just enough time to visit two places, but there are 3 supposedly interesting sites to go: Bagan, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, an ancient city where ruins of many temples, some of which almost 1000 years old, are found; Hsipaw, a small town in the mountain; and Inle Lake, a lake inside the mountain in another part of Burma.


Well, to me, it was a no-brainer – so off to the mountains I went.

The bus left Mandalay at 0900 and after what seemed like a thousand hair-pin turns arrived at Hsipaw by 1400. I saw a lot of sunflower on the way up, on the roadside and in the fields. They are not the same kind of sunflowers grown in Ukraine, even though they are called by the same name, and share a same color (bright yellow). In Burma, the size of the flowers are much smaller, and those on the roadside are tall bushes with several flowers on one stem, and those in the field are much shorter plants with much smaller flowers.

I spent two days in Hsipaw, stayed in a hotel that offers cheap and very basic rooms, like all other places in town do, and did a bit of hiking outside the town and walked the town's streets. The town is at the edge of the famous Golden Triangle, on a main road that goes between the Chinese border and Mandalay, so there were a lot of 18 wheelers going thru it all day long, but when I walked away from the town center, in 15 minutes I would be among rice fields where harvesting was in progress, and mountains were only a few more minutes away. On top of the nature I also enjoyed learning the history of the area – beside the Shan people, who are the natives, there are a lot of Chinese, and like elsewhere in SE Asia, this hard-working and very business-minded minority control most of the shops here, but unlike Chinese in other parts of Burma, most of them still speak at least some Chinese and have a closer connection to China. Although some of them have lived here for generations, not a small number of them are the off springs of the Chinese Nationalist soldiers who entered the area from Yunnan in 1949 (even though the majority of them were airlifted to Taiwan in 1952, a small number of them chose to stay). The daughters of the owner of the hotel where I stayed, are two of them. They talked lovingly about their grandpa, who passed away in 1999. He was from Hunan and always missed his homeland but never managed to go back, not even for a visit, because of the objection from his wife, a local Shan woman. Listening to them, I couldn’t help but imagined if I was there 10 years early, I could have talked to him, learnt about his life and also told him what I saw in my trips to China. He must love it. Then again, I also realized that this hotel did not exist at that time so more than likely I wouldn’t have met him any way, even if I was here. Life is never what you want it to be.

I also read the Chinese book "Life In the Golden Triangle" that I picked up in the hotel’s lobby. It is written by a Chinese TV reporter in 2002. The book has some good, up-to-date info about the area, especially about Chinese who live there, the politics and struggles between the Burmese government and the country’s numerous minority groups, and the effort of the government to eliminate the drug trade which made this area so infamous.

Burma is very much like Afghanistan in one aspect – there are warlords, a lot of them, who have their own armies, and the majority of them are directly or indirectly involved in opium and heroin trades. Most of them are leaders of different minority groups, but some of them, who live along the Chinese border, are of Chinese heritage. Unlike Afghanistan, the central government here is much more powerful, who can defeat any one of them if it wants to – in fact the very heavy-handed approach of the government (some term it genocide) is one of the major reasons of the existence of the tribal armies.

Of course a period of two days was not even remotely enough to really know the place and its people. But I must leave - I got only 3 more days, and Inle Lake was calling.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555716/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555716/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555716/tpod.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:57:38 -0500 Getting Started

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Mandalay, Myanmar

I did another travel-until-you-drop journey: started the trip in the morning, travel All day and thru the night, arrived at my destination the next morning, did the sightseeing without a rest, wouldn't hit the bed until the end of the second day. I did this kind of thing quite frequently in Burma. This time I was traveling from the Golden Rock to Yangon, and at the bus station in Yangon I caught an overnight bus that went north to Mandalay.

My bad luck in Burma continued. My bus developed some problem overnight and finally had to stop right at the middle of the road, the driver and his helpers worked for 2 hours to replace a parts that connected to the right rear wheel.

When we finally arrived, I found a hotel, took a shower, and then went out to hire a trishaw to see some attractions.

Mandalay is the capital of Burma’s last royal capital, but just like all other places in Myanmar, the city offers only payas, a lot of them, for sights, plus the palace, which is surrounded by a moat, quite impressive, but the interior is rebuilt after WWII and now is mostly a army barrack, so I didn’t pay the $10 ticket to get in. The same ticket covers a few other temples too, so I avoided them as well. After all, I had seen too many payas already.

I went to two temples: Mahamuni Paya that houses the highly venerated Mahamuni Buddha Image, which is covered by 15cm of cold leaves (there were several male workers – females are not allowed to be on the alter - standing by the Buddha, their duty was to apply cold leaves that the faithful handed to them. When I was there, one of them signed me to go up, and handed me a piece of gold leave, free of charge, and gestured that I should apply it on the statue) , and Shwe In Bin Kyaung monastery (the Teak Monastery), where the detailed wood engravings covered the elevated central building are beautiful. Better yet, there were hardly any tourist.

After lunch I went north, round the palace and peeped at the Atumashi Kyaung and the Shwenandaw Kyaung next to it. The latter is a fine example of the traditional Burmese wooden monastery. A little bit after 4 PM I arrived at the foot of the 230m high Mandalay Hill, took off my shoes and walked the 1749 steps to the top with bared feet, looked at a lot of Buddha and nat shrines on the way up. The stair was dirty and the walk wasn’t that comfortable. The view on the top was just ok with view of the surrounding Shan hills, the Ayeyarwady river and the city, including dozens of stupas and a huge prison. I stayed there until the sunset was finished, using part of the time talking to two young monks who were eager to practice their English and equally eager to learn about the outside world. One of them was from a small village far away, been a monk for 4 years, had 2 more months to go and would return home to be a farmer.

Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant that the trishaw driver recommended. The fish soup was ok (I haven’t had a truly enjoyable meal for a while now). The owner is a Chinese from the Kachin region at N, he speaks Chinese but was not keen to talk to me.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555072/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555072/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chan_hc/1/1258555072/tpod.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:41:26 -0500 Getting Started

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Kyaiktiyo, Pegu, Myanmar

Kyaiktiyo (the Golden Rock), my next stop, is said to be a "major pilgrimage site for Burmese Buddhists and tourists as well". It is a massive, gold-leafed boulder delicately balanced on the edge of a cliff at the top of a mountain. It was truly a miracle that it has been there for as long as man has known about it, maintains its precarious balance despite strong winds or earthquakes. It has become one of the most sacred Buddhist site in the country. A small stupa had been built on top of it.

I woke up early so that I could sit on a plastic stool in the middle aisle of a packed bus to make that 3 hours journey, with a lot of anticipation. But apparently my bad luck had followed me – when I arrived at the base of the mountain I found out that the rock was completely covered up by screens for maintenance. No view of it is possible.

Shit.

I still wanted to go up the mountain anyway, so did a lot of Burmese pilgrims and a small number of travelers. It was quite a unique experience.

It is 11 km between the starting point for the hike up and the bus station. To cover that distance, one must take a truck. That service must be monopolized by a government agency or some company with close tie to the government, so customers' comfort is the least of their concern. The trucks’ beds are lined with wooden slats merely half a meter apart for benches, and they are completely packed to the brim, people sit shoulders against shoulders, knees jammed into the buds of the persons in front. After much waiting, because it wouldn’t go until it’s completely full, workers come by, yelling and pointing, to collect the $1.5 fee, and then the truck will be moved to another location where a man standing on a high platform counts heads – must be for commissions to the government - than a bumpy, uncomfortable 45 minutes ride starts. I instinctively dislike the way I was treated, and after a few minutes’ thought I realized why – it reminds me of the scene in a livestock yard, where cattle are herd and count and transported. Right at that moment I decided that I would not visit Myanmar again – something is fundamentally wrong here, where they treat human beings like cattle.
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Hpa-an, Kayin State, Myanmar

It must be bad fung-shui or wrong karma, I didn't have much luck in Burma. My first disappoint came after I travel east from Yangon on an overnight bus to the sleepy provincial city of Mawlamyine, wanting to try the boat ride upstream from there to Hpa-An, because I was told that the scenery along the river was good. I went even though I didn’t have much info about the boat, such as its schedule and where to find it, but found it anyway, and was able to go on the same day (folks, that’s backpacking at the purest form). The boat is a rusty leftover from the colonial era double-decker and it has no seats – the locals sat on the mats of their own and the few foreign travelers must pay 50 cents to hire a plastic chair or mat. The weather was hot, the humidity high, and the going was slow, with numerous stops – it took 7 hours to cover may be 50 km. Worst of all, the supposedly pretty scenery did not materialize, so the trip was boring, except for a few interesting moments when I could observe people’s lives along the river bank.

It was dark already by the time the boat arrived at Hpa-An, and by then I haven’t seen a bed for almost 2 days. So after a quick dinner I went to bed, hoping that my luck on the following day would be better.
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Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar

A popular joke around here is that George Orwell, who had lived and worked in Burma for a while, had written not one, but three novels about the country: Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984. Of course the sad fact is that this is not a joke, but the fact. Over here, the pigs (literally) indeed are the members of the upper ruling class.

My first and lasting impression of Yangon, the biggest and richest city of Burma, is how poor and rundown it is. The city is full of dirty and dilapidated buildings; the dirty sidewalks are cramped with desperate people who set up small stands – sometimes just a piece of tarp on the ground – to sell whatever they have: raw meats, fruits, snacks, old books, pirated DVDs, clothes, wrapped betel seeds, molded microscopes that are useless; the streets are filled by old and beat-up cars and buses, and no motorcycle – because the ruling generals don't want the people to be too mobile.

Burma is isolated and ostracized by the international community. Inside it you’ll feel that you have traveled back in time, and this country is so different from the rest of the world, it’s in a world of its own. Here most of the big buildings were built in the 1930s during the British colonial years; the tallest building is merely 20 stories high; the city is mostly dark at night, unlike most modern cities. There are so many of Indians in the city – came when the country was a British colony – that sometimes you feel like you are in India. People here don’t have family names – the first word of their name is the day of the week when they were born (I verified this fact many times, apparently it’s true). The men and women alike wear the bi-sexual wraparound garment called longyi, chew the betel and spit out blood red saliva to the ground; the teachers make 30 USD a month while a family needs $100 a month to live on; the only decent looking residential houses are almost all behind high walls topped by barbwire; the only kind of buildings who are sure to be clean and shinny are the giant pagodas, which are covered with tons of gold leaves when a normal person on the street would be hard-pressed to make enough to live on.

I spent two days here and that’s more than enough, for the city really has nothing to show besides a few pagodas. You see one and you have seen them all, for they are all alike. Besides, their entrance fees for foreigners are way too high. In fact everything the foreign travelers pay here are high – the hotels, the foods, the bus tickets, all of them. The two-tiers pricing must be working very well here because there’s no way a local with normal income can afford them. The fact that the country is poor and has relatively much less visitor actually makes the cost of traveling in it higher. For example, the only reliable transportation for us from point A to B inside the city is by taxi. Without a native to guide you, there is no way a foreigner can negotiate the chaotic bus system here.

Luckily I met a few natives here and enjoyed the experience. One was thru the Couchsurfing network; but the system works a little bit differently here: the locals are not allowed to have foreigners stay in their houses; and they are too poor to take you around; so we could only meet for drinks and I paid for all the expenses. I also met a few students who were very eager to practice their English (so that they can work in Singapore – unemployment seems to be very high here) inside the Shwedagon Paya compound, which, with a 2500 years old paya (a religious monument) that is covered by not only by 53 tons of gold, but also 5000 diamonds and 2000 other stones, is the main temple of the city. And then when I walked along the streets in the China Town’s temples, I ran into a few older Chinese who still speak and read Chinese (all Chinese schools are closed in 1964 by the military government) and eager to chat. I was surprised by how freely and openly they criticized the government and praised Aung San Suu Kyi. When asked, they told me it’s ok as long as they don’t do it in front of the police. So, it is not quite 1984 – yet. Some of them expressed hope that change will happen in the foreseeable future (election is scheduled to be held in next year, but whether it will actually happen is anybody’s guess), saying that the US government is putting pressure on the government; but I am not that optimistic, since I know with the backing of the Chinese and Indian governments, the generals can more or less ignore the outside world’s actions towards them.

So, I don’t like the city but I will remember the experience for a long time. I am leaving the city tonight and catching a night bus to the east; I afraid the condition in the bus would not be too comfortable, but hope that I will be pleasantly surprised.
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