TravelStream™ news feed for member simondav on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/simondav en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:30:40 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219232340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219232340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219232340/tpod.html Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:30:40 -0500 Southern "Silk Road" road trip

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Dunghuang, China

The hotel staff had informed us the night before that our buses left at 8.00 in the morning. Ian was going to Xining and myself to Dunhuang. Our taxi driver dropped us off outside a hotel with several buses in the carpark. As it was still bitterly cold we waited in the lobby for signs of movement. When people started arriving we managed to ascertain that although 2 of the buses were going to Dunhuang none were going to Xining, they pointed further down the main street, and Ian found out from them that there was another bus station further down the street.

I tried to buy a ticket from the kiosk, and after much tooing and frooing and phoning the police they made negative gestures that clearly indicated they couldn't sell me a ticket. The lady in charge came out and of the kiosk and tried to explain something in Chinese, pointing in the same direction up the street that Ian had dissapeared in. After much manic gesticulations and mutually incomprehensible shouting, I signalled her to tell a waiting Taxi driver where to take me. In the event there was another bus station just 5 minutes walk up the street and I found Ian there waiting for his bus. Five minutes later the Hong Kong guy showed up in a taxi from his Chinese nationals only hotel. He helped us buy our tickets, mine for Dunhuang cost 97Y.

Ten minutes later and our bus was ready to depart and amidst tearful handshakes, I said goodbyes, mounted my bus and we set off. Seeing Hotaugau as we left it in broad daylight, it seemed a far less prepossessing place than the previous night. There wasn't a blade of grass in the town, and nodding donkey oil dericks surrounded it. It appeared a completely alien construction in the surrounding barren landscape. Every conceivable thing needed to sustain life in Hotaugau had to be imported by truck.

The journey to Dunhuang took 8 hours. Most of it was just the same bleak upland desert devoid of any features whatsoever. We passed through some areas of savagely eroded landscape forms that could easily be mistaken for ruined cities with their surprisingly regular features, that resembled the remains of gigantic walls. We stopped for 45 minutes for lunch in another barren town. I managed to gesticulate that I wanted to eat in what passed for a restaurant there, and I was rewarded with a bowl of noodles for my pains.

Shortly after leaving the town, a mountain range came into view and eventually the road turned more or less due East and we continued for an hour or more in this direction, until the mountains had subsided into a low range of hills. It took the bus about 30 minutes to get through the hills and we emerged into a true Sand desert which I figured must be part of the Gobi. It was similar to parts of the Takla Makan, but the duststorms were far less ferocious. There was a thin film of sand on the road, and it was fun to watch the constantly changing patterns in front of the bus as the wind blew it.

Finally at 4.30 in the afternoon we reached Dunghuang. Although Dunhuang is a desert town, it's completely unlike Hotaugau, as its an Oasis town with a long history and a natural water supply and the appropriate greenery that goes with it. It was with relief and a small amount of regret that my road trip across the desert of Western China was over.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219127400/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219127400/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1219127400/tpod.html Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:27:01 -0500 Southern "Silk Road" road trip

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Hotaugao, China

We were mustered through the bus station at 8.00am promptly and as I thought, we were travelling in a SUV. It was a pretty tight fit as there were 11 of us including the driver. The first 2 hours of the trip were on a sealed road and I took the opportunity to catch up on my sleep. We came to a truckstop with a single shop which was where the completed blacktop section of the road ended. From here on it was going to be bumpy with no more beauty sleep. We lost one of our number at the truckstop, so now it was at least only 3 abreast in my back seat allowing for a little bit of movement.

Although the blacktop was ended, the Chinese road crews had carried out an impressive amount of work on the road to Shimien Kwang. Nearly all of the many culverts to allow drainage runoff had been completed, in places all that remained to be done was laying the blacktop. Further on towards Shimien Kwang the blacktop had been laid, but trenches had been dug through it at the drainage culverts, rendering it drivable for only short periods before one had to go off-road.

The road's certainly an impressive engineering achievement, but you can't help thinking how the Chinese government justifies it financially. It links an obscure oasis town in the Takla Makan desert with an even more obscure asbestos mining town on the completely barren Chaidam upland desert.

For maybe 2 or 3 more hours after the truckstop it was basically desert terrain, albeit steadily more uneven, as we climbed up steadly through the Altan Tagh mountains. There were no vertigonous mountain roads to be crawled up, and we followed a old river bed up and through the mountains onto the Chaidam on the other side. During our passage through this valley we sited a small family group of deer, I was later assured they were just common Antelope rather than the much rarer Tibetan antelope. The Chaidam is an extension of the Tibetan plateau north of the Kunlun mountains. Calling it bleak would be an understatement, for great stretches there is no plant life whatsoever and whichever way you turn you face the same grim prospect of bare brown earth. Occasionally you would see a few black dots in the distance and eyes straining you would try and identify what kind of animal they were. As the car got closer you would realise that they weren't animals but just individual shrubs instead.

About an hours drive from Shimien Kwang the accident happened. The car was leaving one of the completed stretches of road to avoid one of the trenches, when the accident happened. Ian had mentioned before that when we went over a bad bump there was a kind of slipping sensation that felt like it was within the car, he suspected that there was a problem with the suspension. There was a loud breaking sound and a massive jerk. We all got out of the car and when I saw the damage I thought we were going to be hitching the rest of the way to Shimien Kwang. The left front wheel had risen right up into the front wing and thrown it out of joint. Ian thought that the front connecting rod was broken and that we were going to be walking.

The driver started to jack her up, and the other Chinese guys gathered some big rocks with the intention of using them to prop the car up to enable repairs to be done, although the damage seemed too dire to be fixed there and then. I wandered over to an abandoned work camp about 400m away with 2 of the Chinese. They found a couple of wooden poles which they took back and used as levers to hold the car up while the rocks were placed beneath. It turned out the work camp wasn't completely abandoned as appeared at first sight and 3 or 4 rooms were still in use. I wandered into what I found was the kitchen where I found the cook. Ian and the HK guy came over and we all had a coffee safely out of the rain which had started shortly after the accident. The cook - with the HK guy acting as a translator - told us they had been building the road for 4 years. I sympathised with anyone stuck in this place for 4 years, 1 afternoon was enough for me.

After the rain had fallen off a little, I wandered over to the car and the driver had made some progress with a couple of other guys assisting him when they could. The front connecting rod itself hadn't broken but the balljoint connecting it had, and amazingly enough the driver had been carrying a spare of this part. The driver had replaced it and it was just a matter of putting the wheel back on and removing the rocks using the wooden poles again. It had taken the driver 3 hours and a lot of sweat to effect repairs and under the circumstances it was a good effort.

When we reached Shimien Kwang it was everything and worse you would expect an asbestos mining town to be. The streets were unpaved and just dirt with no plantlife whatsoever. People were walking and riding around with facemasks on the thickness of nappies. Bedraggled dogs were rooting through piles of rubbish and the buildings were the kind of grey, drab brick ones you see everywhere in China. The one exception was the new bus station which was still to open. Evidently this was meant for stream of passenger traffic the new road to Charklik is supposed to generate. Good luck to them I say arriving in this godforsaken hole. The asbestos mine itself was an awesome site. It was bigger than I expected. Smoke and dust were rising from it in equal measures and it was surrounded by gigantic piles of slag.

I decided immediately that there was no way on earth I was going to spend a night in this hellish spot. The minibus to Hotogau which normally waited for the car had already left so Ian and myself settled on a price of 300Y with our driver to take us the extra 80km to Hotaugau for the night. The HK guy agreed to come with us, although he took some persuading, he seemed to have an unseemly desire to spend a night in this horrible spot. We had no trouble negotiating the two police checkpoints marking our exit from Xinjiang and our entry into Qinghai province.

I wasn't sure whether our entrance into Qinghai would be problematical as we were entering a restricted area which was closed to foreigners. In the event our driver presented our passports to the Qinghai police and after 5 minutes one of the policement came over and stipulated that we had to spend the night in either the Traffic hotel or the PetroHotel. About 5 minutes after we had departed from the checkpoint, one of the cop cars from the checkpoint sped by us at lightning speed. Whether they were going to Hotaugou to make sure we checked into the desired hotels and left the next morning was anybodies guess. The journey to Hotaugau took about 90 minutes and was marked by periodic glimpses of large oil derricks. After Shimien Kwang Hotaugau felt like a real town with restaurants, hotels, shops and even KTV establishments.

The Traffic hotel turned us away complaining they were full, more probably they couldn't be bothered with the hassle of reporting us to the police as they were obliged to do, the Petrohotel was out, as it was way too expensive at 350Y a room. Finally after cruising around the town and being turned down by a couple of other establishments, we finally got the Post Hotel to accept us at 120Y for a double room.

After dumping our bags in our rooms all 4 of us repaired to a Hui Muslim restaurant where we enjoyed a sumptious Chicken feast.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218616800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218616800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218616800/tpod.html Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:22:51 -0400 Southern "Silk Road" road trip

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Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur, China

After arriving from Pakistan I had spent a few days in Kashgar taking in the sights and drinking alcohol freely again after the hardships of Pakistan. I had decided to take the Southern Silk road out of Kashgar which skirts the Southern edge of the Takla Makan desert. This route links several scattered Oasis cities together. It is very infrequently travelled by outsiders today. It seemed a fairly easy trip as far as Charklik, but after that my guidebook the Rough Guide gave only the barest of indications of the route to follow and was very vague about journey times and schedules. The Rough Guide book said that from Charklik it was possible to hire a private car on a trail across the Lop Nor desert to a town called Shimien Kwang - an asbestos mining town. Apparently there was then a minibus to a town called Hotaugau which was attached to the main bus network, and from where onward buses to Dunhuang, Golmud and Xining departed. This was pretty vague and there was no mention of what time the minibus departed Shimien Kwang for Hotaugau, the prospect of spending the night in an asbestos town didn't exactly enthrall me.

Two americans had decided to travel as far as Khotan with me, from where they would the bus which travels directly across the centre of the Takla Makan to Korla. We had a big feast at an upmarket Uighur restaurant in downtown Kashgar and then had a few beers at Johns Cafe outside the Chini Bagh. Although the food at John's place leaves something to be desired, its a good place to meet people and Jenny Hu the Manager is very helpful with information and bookings.
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Charklik, China

Got up the next morning at 7.00 am to be sure of getting a ticket. Ian had said there was a bus for Charklik this morning but that tickets went quickly. Had breakfast outside and secured my ticket at 8.30, one of the last on the bus. After the usual security checks, i.e. x-raying the bags and passengers, and we were off for 9.00am. An english speaking Uighur in front of me told me the trip would take 5 hours.

I was rather nervous on the journey as I was sat between 2 characters who looked pretty retarded and kept staring jerkily about, focusing on me rather too often for my liking. I couldn't help but wonder looking at them if their was incest involved somewhere in the family. What was interesting was when the bus driver took everybodies id's to give to the police at the first checkpoint, they had no id's, only some kind of signed paper, which seemed to satisfy officialdom however.

After quite an easy trip we reached Charklik at about 2.00pm, which gave me time to look around. For sleeping it was the trusty Traffic hotel again at 100Y for a room. Charklik seemed quite a pleasant town with the usual huge formal boulevards that all of these dusty Chinese desert towns seemed to possess. I found a restaurant with a few diners outside and ordered a Chicken dish from the picture sign outside. It turned out to be one of those big platters with half a chicken on meant for 2 people, all of it was too much for me but I made a good stab at it and it was seriously delicious. The guy pointed it out as a baked chicken on my menu translator. He then bought his baby over and insisted on taking a picture of me holding the baby with his camera phone.

I bumped into Ian back at the hotel, and he had been talking to this Hong Kong guy who had been on the bus with us, and they had spoken to the people at the bus station who had told them there was a vehicle to Houtogou at 8.00 am tomorrow morning. Having perused Central Asian travellers excellent website, I suspected that this was not a bus but a 4WD SUV and that the journey was likely to be rough and cramped and I mentioned this to Ian who seemed to think it was going to be a nice comfy bus ride.

We had a few beers outside the hotel that night, immediately adjacent to the hotel was a suspect hairdressers with several girls outside, judging by the coming and going it was obvious that the owner of the hotel didn't make the bulk of his money from the hotel trade.
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Cherchen, China

After saying my goodbyes to the Americans who were taking the trans-desert highway to Korla, I took a taxi to the bus station. My sleeper bus left at 10.30 Beijing time and it took us to 14.15 to reach Keriya where we stopped for 2 hours. I had lunch at one of the small restaurants outside the station there. The second leg of the journey through Minfeng to Cherchen took us just over 7 hours. At our stop at Minfeng I saw the 2 Americans on their way to Korla, and we said our goodbyes again.

The passengers were mainly Uighurs and were quite a cheerful bunch. The bus rolled into Cherchen at 11:30pm and after availing myself of a room at the local Traffic Hotel for 110Y, I walked into one of the restaurants outside the bus station which had late opening hours and who should I see but Ian, an Appalachian guy from South Carolina who had been staying at the Chini Bagh in Kashgar too.

He proceeded to tell me a weird story being thrown out of the Traffic Hotel in Khotan, leaving another after waking up in his room to find a hotel member of staff in his room inspecting his passport, and then being accosted by the police who had escorted him to the bus station to get him to leave town. He said the police had tipped off the security guards at the bus station that he was fair game, and they proceeded to go through his bags and remove items at leisure, in protest he then started giving away many of the rest of the contents of his bag to the watching crowd including his shoes. The PSB then turned up and made the security guards and the crowd return all his items, but in what he saw as a point of honour he refused to wear any shoes and he was going about barefooted until he reached Shandong where he taught english.
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Yarkand, China

We met up in Fubar at 9.00am for a fry up outside the Chini Bagh Hotel in Kashgar. This is the old Caravan Cafe site, and was going to be my last taste of Western food for a week. From now on it was going to be Laghman (pulled noodles) and other local food. After a good feed we made our way to the bus station. At the bus stations in Xinjiang there are usually plenty of long distance taxis whose prices are negotiable. Chris negotiated with one guy until we got a good price of about 300Y. From Kashgar to Yarkand is about 200km.

It took us a surprisingly long time to get out of the cultivated area around Kashgar. These cities on the Silk road around the Takla Makan are frequently called Oasis cities/towns, which makes you think of a place with just a few square km's of palm trees. When we left Kashgar we must have gone about 50km's before we hit the desert. Calling our driver would be an understatement. He proved to be one of those who couldn't resist overtaking even when it was apparent there was never enough room. Our journey was rather hairraising to say the least. There were a couple of checkpoints outside Kashgar but they were pretty lax to say the least, made up of part-time militia types dressed in a mixture of uniform and casual clothes.

We didn't see so much true desert on this leg, most of the intervening country would be best described as scrubland, with none of the classic sand dunes you so often see in photos of the Takla Makan.

We made it to Yarkand in about 2 and a half hours. Yarkand's very much a modern Chinese town these days with big wide boulevards and lots of characterless concrete buildings. This was one of my biggest dissapointments about the trip, the term Silk Road captures the romance and riches of these once mysterious remote desert cities, yet now the Chinese have pushed these massive boulevards through them, destroying much of the old towns and their city walls, and replacing them with their usual drab concrete blocks.

We asked the taxi driver to stop at the Shache Binguan, this being apparently the only hotel in town that accepted foreigners. We entered the building he dropped us at, but were refused entry by the staff, who pointed down the road. We marched down the road in the direction pointed and found another hotel that agreed to take us. I don't know if the actual hotel we were dropped at was the Shache Binguan and our information was wrong, or the taxi driver got it wrong. Price for a room at the hotel was 120Y.

We dropped off our stuff and then went for a look around town. We ventured into a Uighur restaurant where to our amazement, we found a young Uighur girl working there who spoke fluent english. After consuming our bowls of noodles she took us to the chief attraction in town, the blue tiled tomb of the famous wife of a local Khan from the Sixteenth Century. We imagined that the tomb would be several hundred years old befitting the age of the tomb but inside we found a plaque which states that the tomb was only built 20 years ago by the locals as a tribute which was a bit of a letdown.

We then ventured into the what was left of the old town, but there's basically just a few alleyways left and after a nosy poke into a few courtyards and a few snaps of the local kids who were following us and loudly demanding 'photo, photo', we were soon back to where we started outside our hotel. In Yarkand the sights and activities are pretty limited to say the least.

In the evening we found a restaurant that served dinner and had more noodles swallowed down with a good few beers. The conversation got round to the current political situation in Xianjiang and Tibet, and I noticed we getting hostile stares from a uniformed Han Chinese guy across at the next table, whereupon we decided it was time to call it a day and it was back to our hotel.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218874320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218874320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218874320/tpod.html Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:32:04 -0400 Southern "Silk Road" road trip

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Khotan, Xinjiang Uygur, China

Woke up early and had breakfast at a local Uighur streetfood stall of excellent local bread and some not so good overly milky tea.

Met up with the 2 Americans at the hotel. They were having trouble with their finances as they weren't sure if they could get an advance on their credit card, so they were going to move to another hotel a couple of hundred metres down the road. This was the Happy Hotel, which their lp guidebook said was owned and managed by a local Uighur family who were fantastically welcoming towards foreigners. Needless to say we barely got a word or a smile out of them after checking in. We took a 3 bed room in the bottom of the courtyard. The attached toilet stank terribly but at 30Y a bed we couldn't really complain. Every time we opened the door to the toilet the room was filled with the stench of excrement.

We then proceeded into town. They managed to sort out their finances and we had lunch at Weilimai Burger. I had a Chicken burger masquerading as a Cheese Burger on the menu with liberal amounts of mayonnaise on it.

I wanted to see some of famous Indo-European mummies recovered from the Takla Makan, and apparently there were some of these in the local museum. My Rough Guide showed it on a corner of the main square, but there was absolutely no sign of it. I finally found it by consulting Chris the Americans lp book which showed it in a new location. Made my way down there and it was closed for the summer because of the Olympic visa restrictions.

We then got refused entry to the internet cafe we had been using the day before. The guy just shook his head at us and muttered police several times. We surmised that this probably we had been using proxy browsers the day before and that our activity had been monitored by the cops.

After all the dissapointment I wandered down the bazaar which was immense in its size, although many of the stalls were closed, only opening on Sunday. I purchased a Uighur knife for 80Y. Then I went down to the eastern bus station and purchased a ticket for Cherchen or Quimo.

We had dinner at a local Uighur restaurant and I just had the standard Laghman which normally works out at 5Y to 8Y. We then repaired to a bar we had found earlier above Weilimai burger, and which appeared to be the only bar in Khotan.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218786900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218786900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/2/1218786900/tpod.html Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:12:12 -0400 Southern "Silk Road" road trip

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Khotan, Xinjiang Uygur, China

After eating one of those horrible Chinese breakfast made of brittle plant shoots and really doughy bread we made our way to the bus station. Purchased our bus tickets for 12:00 departure, so we had a couple of hours to lounge around at the station. We had a job getting our luggage through the security as they were taking all liquids off people including water at the entrance to the waiting hall, presumably as a precaution against some kind of bomb attack on a bus.

The bus journey proved to be a long dusty journey of over 5 hours. Much of the journey was through true sand desert with not a jot of shrubbery. Occasionly we passed a truck stop, and we imagined life must be a dusty hell for the people who live and work there. Frequently the road was obscured by dust storms with the road only visible for about 50 metres. Despite this the driver didn't reduce speed and we just powered through the dust storms at what must have been about 100kmh. It was a relief when we finally saw greenery again nearly 50km from Khotan. We booked in for the night at the local Traffic hotel adjacent to the bus station, my room being 110Y after a spot of bargaining.

We then found an excellent Hunan restaurant which was listed in the Rough Guide book called the Xiangchuan Boziwang, which is just 5 minutes west of the big Mao status in the main square. We had a magnificient spicy chicken feast washed down with plenty of Xianjiang beer.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202947500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202947500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202947500/tpod.html Mon, 12 May 2008 07:41:17 -0400 10 days in Burma

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Htee Tein village, Kalaw township, Myanmar

Up at 7.00am today for the first day of the trek to Kalaw. I had arranged a guide with the guesthouse manager the previous day and he was scheduled to arrive at 8.30. After the standard Banana Pancake breakfast, I picked up my airline tickets from the Manager, deposited my backpack with him, which would meet me in Kalaw at the Guesthouse he had booked for me, and then we set off.

The trek usually takes 3 days but I only had 2 days to do it in. My guide had said it would be possible, but we wouldn't be able to waste time. We took a boat to a village on the Western shore of the lake. On the way we passed many small boats full of children paddling their way to school at Nyaungshwe. From here we had to follow a path which took us through several villages to the foot of the hills that surround the lake. There was a pass here which could be clearly seen from the lake. It was quite a steep ascent in places but nothing too difficult, but it was still a welcome relief when we made it to the top and were able to have a breather and take a last look at the lake in the distance.

The country from now on was beautiful green rolling hill country. In the tropics you expect the landscape to be covered in fetid tropical jungle not the rolling hills more typical of the South Downs, the climate was pleasantly warm rather than broiling hot. The hills were dotted with the occasional village which were surrounded by cultivated fields for some distance around them. These villages were all occupied by Pa-O hill people who are also called the Black Karen. They look very different from the Burmese and the Intha people on the lake, being much more heavily built and swarthier. The people we passed cultivating the fields were nearly all women, and it seems to be the custom for the women to do most of the back breaking field work of dry rice farming.

My guide asked me if I wanted to sleep in the headmans hut in a village or in a monastery. Having slept in a hill tribe village once before in Thailand I couldn't be assed to be woken up at three in the morning by cockerels, with not a wink of sleep after that, so it was the monastery with barely a seconds thought. Plus there is a certain cachet in sleeping in a Burmese Pagoda for the night. The pagoda was a couple of hours further walk but we got there about 1.30 in the afternoon, after which he prepared a quick lunch of noodles and cookies with a cup of tea for us both on the verandah of the Pagoda.

There was a Pa-O village a couple of hundred yards away from the Pagoda, so I had a quick exploration after asking my guide if it was okay to look around. Not much to see, just the usual huts and farm animals, most of the people were working in the fields. I did find a shop which was operated by the local Burmese teachers as a means of supplementing their incomes, I bought a cold bottle of Myanmar off the incredibly sweet teacher at the shop who was called Daw Soe Soe Aye. She was aged 30 and it turned out she had been living and working in the village for the best part of 10 years since graduating at Taunggyi University. She was from near Mt Popa which itself is near Bagan and was ethnic Burmese not Pa-O. I thought she must lead a very lonely existence with only the 3 other teachers at the school being Burmese, everybody else in the village being Pa-O and basically uneducated.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202758200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202758200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/simondav/1/1202758200/tpod.html Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:06:24 -0400 10 days in Burma

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Nyaungshwe, Myanmar

Todays an early rising at 5.00am to catch the bus to Nyaungshwe on Inle Lake as it leaves Mandalay at 6.00am. I arrived at the bus station with plenty of time to spare when it was still dark. Several people already there waiting to board the ramshackle Chinese bus which looked as if it has seen better days. A couple of monks were hovering around people the passengers waiting to be given alms to buy their breakfast. At first I tried to ignore them hoping they would move on to someone else, but given his persistence I eventually found a dirty 1000 Kyatt note in my pocket and put it in the guys rice bowl. There was a lot of waiting around until the driver was satisfied that no more people were set to arrive. Then all the bags and boxes were heaved on board the bus into every nook and cranny and and it was all aboard.

The journey I was told would take about 11 hours and would be extremely bumpy. Initially after we got out of Mandalay the journey was through a flat plain covered with scrub, with no signs of husbandry at all. I'm not sure if this country was once forest which has been cleared and is now too infertile to support any crops but it was a pretty bleak sight with nothing of interest too see whatsoever, so after it became light enough I busied myself trying to read a book amidst the bumps of the bus. After a couple of hours we stopped for breakfast and I filled up with some rice and pieces of meat of some description.

Eventually we started climbing up into the Shan Hills. The Shan Hills and tableland are inhabited by a variety of ethnic groups, but the most numerous are the Shan. They profess to be Therevadha Buddhists like the Burmese but are ethnically and linguistically more akin to the Thais. Their language is supposed to be very close to the Northern Thai of Chaing Mai and the surrounding provinces and they call themselves the Thai Yai. Shan State is mostly off limits to foreign tourists, the only areas open to tourists are the Inle Lake/Kalaw area as far east as the capital of the State Taunggyi, and much further east on the Thai border, Tachileik and Kengtung. Why you can't travel beyond Taunggyi is probably due to the fact that much of the country is in the hands of various ethnic militias, some of these insurgents are still fighting the government forces, notably in Shan State the Shan State Army (SSA) which wants full independence for the region, but most have made peace with the army, which allows them in return to indulge in the highly profitable opium trade. The most notable proponents of this are the Wa tribe who live in the North of the state along the Chinese border and have their own private army of 20000 men. Its because of the military junta's accommadation with tribal militias in this area that Burma is the largest producer of Opium in the world after Afganistan and most of it is grown in Shan State.


Here there were clearer signs of tree felling but much secondary growth had been left behind so the prospect wasn't quite so bleak. There were a multitude of trucks coming in the other direction stacked high with Teak logs. Logging is a huge industry in Burma and Chinese timber concerns in particular are decimating the Teak forests in Shan state and elsewhere in Burma. An estimated 75% of the worlds surviving Teak forests are in Burma at least according to the lp. The Dutch guy who was the only other Westerner on the bus told me it was 45% so who knows. The only sure thing is that they are being rapidly reduced. The worst thing is that the money from this irreplacable natural resource isn't going to the Burmese people but to the Generals and the Chinese. We also passed quite a few road gangs grading the road. They were equipped with virtually no machinery and were reduced to bashing boulders with sledgehammers. Whether these were forced labourers who knows, but by all accounts forced labour is quite common in Burma.

After a few more hours we made it to Kalaw which is a major trekking centre, and where the Dutch guy and his Burmese girlfriend got off. Kalaw isn't that far from Inle Lake as the crow flies but due to the state of the roads its about another four hours by bus. Eventually we made it to the crossroads town of Shwenyaung. This was my stop, there were pleny of taxis by the bus stop waiting for onward travellers to NyangShwe the major township around Lake Inle and the price I negotiated was about $8. My taxi driver was obviously on commission as he asked if had a guesthouse booking, and having said no he suggested the Bright Hotel which has a good writeup in the lp, so I ended up getting one of the best rooms in the house for $15 with aircon and a hot shower. It was too late to do anything by the time I got there with sundown already approaching, so it was a quick shower and then time to eat. Eating place was the Unique Superb Food restaurant and I had the truly excellent Filet Mignon steak and the proprietor was a lovely Intha lady. The Intha are the local people who inhabit the lakeshore as any guidebook will tell you.

Anyway after a good fill I trudged back to my guesthouse. Nyangshwe went to bed early as most of the restaurants were already virtually empty and shutting up shop by 8pm, so after a chat with the manager of my guesthouse about getting a boatman and boat for tomorrow around the lake, it was off to my room and a return to my book for an hours reading, and then off to sleep.
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