Our impressions are a dramatic contrast to our pre–trip expectations. We had anticipated seeing an impoverished, malnourished people, dispirited by decades of bad rule. What we found was a people who are calm, joyful, industrious, and welcoming, a people, however, who are not really a single group of Burmese but rather a polyglot conglomeration — 135 ethnicities, each of them speaking a different language and many holding to traditional dress and lifestyle. We saw little evidence of illness or hunger. The farmers seemed surprisingly prosperous and bent on improving their lives. Beauty and serenity will be dominant memories of this land and its people, overshadowed by doubts and fears about its political future. In this report, we'll try to focus on three themes: the warmth of the people, their industriousness, and their diversity.

Their Warmth: Again and again, we untied our dusty hiking shoes and climbed bamboo ladders into homes perched on stilts to keep them safe from the monsoon floods. "Mingalaba," was the usual greeting. This time we sat on the floor with several women holding babies, as older children peered from dark recesses of the room. The women usually served us local tea and sometimes extra tidbits. This time it was delicious popcorn. Our wonderful guide Than Zin relayed the story of how he had brought medical help to this family when their little boy had abdominal problems. In most of the six or eight villages we visited on our three–day trek with Than Zin we found a family he had similarly helped. These village visits, along with those on the five–day trek later, were the highlights of our trip.

The smiles deserve special mention... We have never seen such beautiful smiles. They smiled to greet us as we hiked on the trail.
They smiled to welcome us into their villages and homes. They smiled for the camera. We have never seen people so content to pose for pictures. Sometimes they even asked us to photograph them. One day at breakfast we talked to an older Burmese couple who had fled to London in 1964. They were back to visit and happy that a friend's son had just been released after 18 years of incarceration as a political prisoner. We mentioned the beauty of the smiles. "Those smiles are genuine," the woman said, "because the people here live their Buddhism. It's part of who they are."

Buddhism is omnipresent. Millions of Buddhas dot the countryside. We were astonished to see private roads lined with Buddhas in single file, clusters of Buddhas, even fields of Buddhas. We saw the biggest seated Buddha in the world and the largest reclining Buddha, maybe half a city block long. On every hilltop and mountain is a pagoda or at least a stupa.
Half a million men are monks and hundreds of thousands of women are nuns. The people revere the monks
and they visit the shrines. Ancient beliefs in spirits are intertwined with their Buddhist practices.

In reference to the smiles, we should add that the Burmese are physically attractive. Many of the women are stunning beauties.
And of course no one is obese or even fat.

Their Industriousness: The second dominant impression is the industriousness of the people. Everyone is always working. In contrast to Africa, for example, the men here work just as hard as the women. Each village we visited seemed to specialize. On our cruise up the Irrawaddy River to Mandalay, we spent a couple hours in a village where one quarter of the families produce pottery. At 9 am, we saw people busily at work at numerous stages of production: some pedaled pottery wheels as others shaped the wet clay; some pounded the formed pots with paddles; others incised designs. In the morning sun, it was possibly the most picturesque place we'd ever seen. We photographed rows of pots, fields of pots, vast expanses of pots. I thought of a colony of busy ants as I watched women parade single file down the village paths with a big pot in each arm and two or three balanced on their heads. Boys balanced poles on their shoulders which were hung with pots on each side.

Villages that specialized in red peppers were among the most colorful. We came through just as the hot red pepper harvest was drying on bamboo mats in the sun. Other villages specialized in garlic, a winter season crop that grows in paddies used for rice during the rainy season. In another village a large percentage of the families produced large delicious rice crackers. We got our fill of them as we visited their production center. When an older woman for whom Than Zin had financed a new roof, called for us to come over for tea and rice crackers, we had to decline. They were delicious though.

Industriousness is only part of the story, however. The second theme here is the very high quality of all the work. When we visited the home of a hunter, he proudly showed us the crossbow that he handcrafted to shoot deer in the rainforest. It was so sturdy and finely honed that we could imagine it being used for 100 years. Their devices to facilitate labor are ingenious. We marveled at the way the mountain villages harnessed the power of streams rushing down from the Himalayas to create a pounder for transforming rice into flour. Their wooden looms are handmade and ingenious. Beautiful lacquerwork is another Burmese specialty; the process of layering the bamboo bark takes dozens of steps and many days for each item of lacquerware. We watched paper being produced from mulberry tree pulp, and swiftly turned into lovely umbrellas or lanterns with bamboo frames. Bamboo. Ubiquitous. Our list of the uses of bamboo reached 30, ranging from the cups from which we sipped tea at a wedding to the planks or poles used to get across the many rivers on our treks. So the people are not just industrious workers but perfectionists, and they work swiftly and efficiently, no matter what they're doing.

Their Diversity: The third theme is the diversity of the peoples, isolated from each other in mountain valleys and sadly, often fighting the government, which is dominated by the main tribe, the Burmans. On our nine days of trekking, our guides would tell us the name of the tribe as we entered each village. The tribe with whom we spent the most time, however, was the Karen (or Kayen), in part because our travel companion has taught Karen refugees in Minnesota. She spent some time in a Karen refugee camp in Thailand after leaving Burma. Those who reach the US are Christian, but those we saw on the trip were Buddhist. Their war with the government is the longest running guerrilla war in the world today. Political change is underway in Burma. While we were here the government and the Karen signed a ceasefire and the Karen guerrillas were out on the streets in some villages, though later they denied that what they signed had been a ceasefire. The government seems to be reaching out to ethnic groups. We attended a wonderful event celebrating an agreement between the government and the Mon people, but we saw our guide's fear and heard his warnings about the military people who were out in force at the event. "People do not readily give up the old ways," he told us. "We have to be very careful." He implied that the military might still turn on the people. We worry about the future of these beautiful people.

An Introduction:

We definitely recommend that our friends travel in Burma, now, before the deluge. Burma had about 400,000 visitors last year, compared to 24 million in Malaysia, for example, or 20 million in Hong Kong. More to the point, 400,000 was the same number of visitors last year to the National Museum of African Art, where our friend is a docent. Burma has 60 million people in a country the size of Texas. Explore Worldwide, which had never organized a tour in Burma until this winter, has 48 trips scheduled and all are fully booked. The New York Times just listed Burma as the third of 45 top places to visit in 2012.

The country can barely handle the tourists now and when the numbers multiply in the next few years, the strains on the tourist facilities will be enormous. We loved traveling as a threesome rather than in a larger group. We also definitely recommend hiking; it was the highlight of our trip. Some 85% of the Burmese still live in villages, 65,000 of them, so that's where you can see the real Burma, not the cities or towns. Go during the dry cool months. As we said above, the Burmese are delightful, helpful and hard working. The population density is low so you don't feel overwhelmed by crowds.

We encountered essentially no beggars. We saw no signs of malnutrition or extreme poverty or slums. The country is relatively clean; our hotels were adequate to excellent. We never felt in danger (Burma has essentially no crime) nor got sick, and our logistics went smoothly. The roads are not great and the bathrooms (outhouses) can be grotty. Alcohol or tobacco consumption is quite low.

All of our guides were excellent, locally born and raised, so they knew the languages and out–of–the–way places. They could take us into homes to visit families. The fresh fruits and vegetables are delicious. We can see why so many people come back to Burma repeatedly. One place we didn't visit was the Andaman Islands (Bay of Bengal), which must be spectacular and wonderful for snorkeling. We strongly recommend using Effie Fletcher of Himalayan High Treks to book the trip. She was indispensable in assembling our complex itinerary and gave us an extensive local network to use as a backup in case we encountered any problems.

We are guardedly optimistic that the recent political changes are real, but worried that the sky–high expectations will not be met, resulting in turmoil or even violence from frustration. Burma has virtually no civil society organizations and no relationships with the World Bank, IMF, or development aid funders. Animosities generated by the brutality of the military government (which has granted itself amnesty) still constitute a looming issue. Many ethnic groups still yearn for independence (more so after their bitter experiences with the government). The government budget is dominated by military expenditures, and entrenched oligopolies (connected to the military) dominate the economy. The new constitution guarantees significant military power in the parliament, and Aung Sun Suu Kyi may not be able to turn things around. But Burma is a fascinating place to visit, one of the only "undiscovered" places left in the world.     Go...   Soon!

Return to Burma:

For decades I had hoped to revisit Burma where I stopped in 1970 at a time when you could get only a one–day visa. Since then, Burma has become even more exotic and mysterious. Few countries are more interesting ethnically and historically than Burma, and for nearly 60 years it's been largely cut off from the outside world, reclusive, and racked by murderous xenophobic military Kleptocrats. Now, as we wrote before we left, there may be an opening that would end this extended nightmare. We wanted to see for ourselves. Here we'll refer to the country as Burma, although it's probably fairer to call it by its new name, Myanmar, because the Burman ethnic group comprises only about 60% of the population.

Buddhism:

The Burmese are overwhelmingly Buddhist. We have friends who know more about Buddhism than we do, but let us try to say a few words. It's a philosophy of life more than a religion. People do not believe Buddha is a god or son of god and do not (or at least should not) pray to him to do things for them. Rather, Buddha teaches us how to achieve Nirvana through various practices, including meditation. The greatest achievements in the search for Nirvana are selflessness, self mastery, indifference to results, and release of the mind. Buddhism affirms that suffering is part of life, but that people can live with suffering through the absence of desire, greed, hatred, and delusion. Buddhists believe in reincarnation; Siddartha became the Buddha in his 547th reincarnation. Buddha was, in fact, the fourth Buddha and one more is expected to appear. Buddhists practice good deeds hoping that this will create good Karma and lead them to be reincarnated in a higher consciousness. Without good deeds, one could be reincarnated as an animal. Given the horrors of the last 60 years in Burma, Buddhism has provided a crucial pathway to survival. The government has used it cynically, pretending to be ultra religious.

Rangoon:

Yangon, formerly Rangoon, appears shabby and polluted. As we walked the streets, we had to watch carefully to avoid falling into yawning, bottomless potholes in the sidewalk. Many buildings have power generators because the electricity supply is unreliable.
Informal markets with vendors squatting on the ground to sell, earning 50¢ to $1 per day, are ubiquitous. We saw no signs of
extreme wealth although we know that the military Kleptocrats are very rich and live in exclusive compounds.

Schwedagon Pagoda:

We visited the famous Shwedagon Buddhist stupa in Yangon (Rangoon), immense and impressive––one of the holiest places for Buddhists, on our
first afternoon in the country.

Climbing the high hill, we saw the massive inverted bell–shaped structure 325' high covered with 14,000 plates of gold (60 tons), topped by a tiara with 2,500 diamonds and other gems and an orb with 4,300 diamonds. (When Hurricane Nargis dislodged jewels from the stupa in 2008, government troops reportedly collected and expropriated them.) Surrounding the main stupa are hundreds of smaller ones, some for each day of the week, where people pray on their birthdays. The celebrants for the day we were there poured a cup of water over a small Buddha for each year of their life, plus one more for the year to come.

We saw many monks and devotees praying. In one amazing parade, we saw devotees, a broom in each hand, sweeping the ground for a group of monks who followed. Such acts of piety are common in Burma.



Bagan:

Next we flew to Bagan, where the first Burmese empire was organized on a large plain along the Irrawaddy River well north of Yangon. In the early morning, the scene was literally awesome: thousands of beautiful ancient temples and stupas bathed in a golden glow. In 850 AD a king converted to Buddhism and during the next 435 years the Burmese kings and others built some 5,000 stupas and temples in an area about the size of Manhattan. Europe has fewer castles than Bagan has stupas and temples. Many are elaborately carved and painted and some are crowned with gold. All the temples contain innumerable statues of Buddha (one had 4,000), often gilded with gold leaf. We visited and climbed some of them and were up high with amazing views during both a sunset and a sunrise. Watching the blood red sunrise and five hot–air balloons hover hazily over hundreds of stupas and temples was a breathtaking sight.

Cruising the Irrawaddy:

From Bagan we spent three days on a slow boat to Mandalay, going up the mighty Irrawaddy River. It was a tourist boat with 50 passengers from perhaps 10 countries. Only two others were Americans. A highlight of the cruise was a show with traditional Burmese puppets.

We stopped in two villages on the river banks. In the first, everyone worked laboriously to grow and process palm sugar. They had a few oxen to pull the plows and hauled water by hand from the river. We saw improvised rat traps, foot powered teeter–totter devices to pound grain into flour, and recumbent bicycle style levers to turn the pottery wheels. The villagers were always charming.

Mandalay:

We docked in Mandalay on a muddy beach. There we focused on the craft workshops. The most impressive was the gold leaf making for devotees to apply to Buddhas or stupas. Slight young men stripped to the waist stand pounding the gold for some six hours at a time to flatten it to an ultra thinness — horrendous work done with heavy wooden mallets.

We also saw wood and alabaster carving (mostly statues of Buddha) and workshops producing wonderful puppets, leather goods, and tapestries. The work is tedious and very precise, but it gives people a chance to earn cash. Gold leaf pounders earn about $10 a day, five to six times the local wage.

Pindaya Cave:

From Mandalay we flew to Kalaw in Shan State, the easternmost province of Burma. Near Kalaw we visited the Shew Oo Min shrine in Pindaya where 8,000 statues of Buddha have been installed in a huge multi–chambered maze of a limestone cavern. Buddhas of every size and variation of gesture, many covered in gold leaf have been installed by Buddhists from many countries. The subdued lighting gives the shrine a peaceful, eerie feel; the few other visitors were mostly Burmese devotees.

We wandered from one chamber to another, losing all sense of space and place. Pa'O women pilgrims — in their traditional checkered orange and black head scarves — purchased gold leaf to apply to the statues as an offering. Hundreds of years ago the monks planted Banyan trees outside the cave to shade the pilgrims so now there's an immense forest.

On the drive to and from the caves, we watched farmers harvesting wheat — smashing tied bundles of 30 or so stalks on rocks to separate the kernels, and then winnowing them in the wind. Laborers were rebuilding the road with crushed stone arranged by hand and asphalt applied with a watering can. It appeared that in one day 10 workers could complete only about 50 yards on one side of the road. The word "laborious" comes to mind. On the road we competed with an array of overloaded mini–buses, Chinese pickup trucks piled high with eggs and produce, bullock carts, and motorcycles.

Trek to Inle Lake:

From Kalaw we'd planned to trek down to Inle Lake. The itinerary implied that we'd hike about six miles a day, But our guide said it would be nine to 18 miles. We blanched! Even our athletic companion said there was no way she would hike 18 miles in a day.

Well, you know how this story turns out.

We hiked the nine miles the first day and it felt glorious, so we hiked eighteen the second. Only a few blisters and sore muscles. We carried light backpacks and four porters, including our cooks, carried the rest. We slept on the floor in Buddhist monasteries on and under huge quilts that kept us reasonably warm despite the (literally) freezing night temperatures. The novice monks accepted our offer of breakfast toast with jam; the elder monks prayed for our good journey. Each day we visited villages of different ethnic groups.

We saw men weaving bamboo baskets and mats, and herding and washing water buffalo and cattle, women nursing babies, kids playing with wonderful handmade kites, old women carrying prodigious loads including endless containers of water, and men transporting a portable gasoline pump to the fields to draw water for irrigation. Everyone was working hard without mechanized aids. It appeared that most crops were being grown for market (for cash), but they use no hybrid seeds or chemical fertilizer (only vast quantities of manure), so their yields must be paltry.

In each village prosperous farmers had finely made cinderblock houses with teak wood windows, some with glass. Each house had an outhouse (squat toilets) and some had gutters and downspouts rigged to water cisterns. In the villages and on the trails we could see that during the five–month monsoon, these people live in a sea of mud. We took tea and were given peanuts, beans, popcorn and tea cups (made of bamboo) as gifts. Our guide often asked for a handful of a particular crop for us to have for dinner. We visited two schools and donated boxes of pencils to the grateful students.



Inle Lake:

Arriving at Inle Lake, we traveled by motor boat, sometimes in open water and sometime slaloming down canals. Our hotel, the Inle Princess, was as luxurious as our nights in the monasteries had been Spartan. The lake is fairly shallow depending on the season. As we toured the lake, we saw several types of fishing, all of which depend on the fisherman standing on one foot at the fantail of a flat–bottomed sampan (long canoe), using the other leg to paddle the boat (with the paddle hooked to his heel). It's hard to describe "foot paddling" but basically the long paddle snakes down the body and around the leg so it is "held" without use of the hands. (They can balance even when the speed boats put off a large wake.) The advantage is that the fisherman can use both hands to cast and haul in a net, smash a bamboo pole on the water, drive the fish into the net, thrust a conical bamboo cage into the water to trap the fish, or cast and retrieve a line strewn with hooks.

Closer to shore, we also saw a man using a triangular net that he nudged along the bottom to scoop up shrimp. In addition to fishing, the people, most of whom live in stilt houses, have developed extensive floating gardens of staked tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and gourds. They paddle around in sampans to tend and harvest their crops. Along the canals, we were captivated by shimmering reflections of the houses — often festooned with colorful laundry — and domestic scenes of people on their verandas and docks washing clothes, bathing, tending orchids, mending fishing equipment, or buying goods from the sampan "convenience" stores. The buildings varied from ready–to–collapse to elaborately constructed. As we passed the schools, we could hear the students chanting their lessons. We also visited a center for hand weaving silk as well as lotus threads (the fibers from 8,000 stems make one scarf), a blacksmith shop, a cigar making factory (the girls make about $3–4 per day for rolling 1,000 cigars), and a silversmith. As in the villages, everything was handmade and everyone was extremely industrious.

Golden Triangle:

From Inle Lake we flew further east in Shan State to Kyaing Tong (also referred to as Keng Tung), a remote and spectacular mountainous region near Myanmar's border with Laos and Thailand — the famous Golden Triangle that produced 25% of the world's heroin for 20 years until the opium king, Khun Sa, made peace. (He championed Shan independence so he could run his own drug–smuggling fiefdom and lived out his days like a king in Rangoon.) The Mekong River defines the border between Burma and Laos and then cuts down through Thailand on its way to define the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. From Kyaing Tong it's only 50 miles to Laos, 100 miles to Thailand, 50 miles to China. The Chinese form a small but economically powerful ethnic group here. They are mostly descendants of refugees of Chaing Kai–shek's Kuomintang army after it was routed by Mao's communists. Indeed, the racist dictator of Burma who launched endless ethnic cleansing campaigns — Ne Win — was ethnically Chinese!

Kaing Tong Treks:

Eastern Shan State is famous for some 33 colorful ethnic groups, three of which we visited on treks from Kyaing Tong. In a Wa village, we were invited into a house for tea and a long conversation about the world. The mother had been a teacher and, unusual for the modest Burmese, asked us many questions.

Among the 1 million Wa in Burma and China
are some who were major players in opium production in the Golden Triangle. The other two tribes we visited, the Lahu and the Loi,
are distinctive as well. At one Lahu house we inspected a device they use to harvest the larvae of ground wasps, a delicacy. A funnel attached to a cage is placed over the entrance to the nest, the villagers hammer the ground to scare the wasps into the cage, and then easily harvest the larvae. But they don't take all the larvae; the funnel at the other end of the device permits the wasps to reenter the nest. Ingenious and sustainable technology. At the Loi village, which we reached after a tortuous four–hour drive on a deeply rutted road and a four–hour climb up a steep rocky trail, we visited a long house on stilts where 120 people live under one roof. Each family maintains a separate kitchen and an open fire in the common area. Since they have no chimneys, the smoke lingers inside and the ceiling has layers of soot dangling into the room.
Many of the Loi have asthma. These were the only children we saw running wild (they have no school). The little monks (called novices) who live at the monastery were out of control; several eight year olds were careening up and down a hill on a motorcycle. We jumped out of their way.

For the Lahu village school we packed in work books and pencils to donate to students but for the Loi, who have no schools, we brought medicines. We refused to follow our guide's request that we give directly to the children. In Senegal we saw how the children fight over any goodies that go to just a few. A Belgian couple was distributing cookies to the Loi kids. The bigger kids were grabbing the most. Some visitors became notorious for teaching developing world children to demean themselves by begging for "bon bons." We've learned that the best approach is to give these gifts to an authority figure, such as a teacher or a headman who can take control of fair distribution.

Luminaries:

One night in Kyaing Tong we sat waiting for our dinner at a sidewalk restaurant when an amazing display suddenly filled the sky. We later learned that a prominent monk had died so each night until his cremation, they were launching luminaries hung from paper hot air balloons. each trailing a tail of sparklers. They rose slowly, silently, drifting first one way and then another, forming and reforming constellations in the sky. Noisy, colorful fireworks periodically punctuated the display.

The Far North:

From Kyaing Tong we flew to Putao, Burma's northernmost city in Kachin State, near the borders with India and China at the eastern end of the Himalayas. Leaving Kyaing Tong was an intense experience; we suppose they are attempting to prevent the smuggling of heroin. At any rate, they checked us against three lists of names, and stamped our tickets, boarding passes and luggage tags six times. They patted us down with an electronic wand (that beeped for my credit cards). We then waited amid the throng in the departure lounge. Needless to say no information was available about flight status and when they called a flight, it was hard to understand which one was ready. We double and triple checked until finally our flight came, the last of the day.

The Last Village Trek:

We trekked to the last village on the trail before the mountainous terrain begins. It took five days and we slept in village trekking houses, sometimes on the floor. Again, we were apprehensive about the challenge but we finished the whole trek, and we loved it except for the precipitous ascent and descent. This and the earlier three–day trek were the loveliest hikes we've ever done because of the scenic beauty, fascinating village visits, and cool hiking weather. Only about 200 tourists a year take this trek. Truly a special and exclusive opportunity.

The hike is called "Last Village" because we end up in the last village up the Hpankanrazi Valley before the terrain becomes too precipitous for human habitation. We had spectacular views of a ridgeline of snow–capped 15,000' peaks, the easternmost Himalayas.

That first day of the trek we took off early from the town of Putao in a tuktuk, a tiny three–wheeled jitney with a motorcycle on the front pulling a wagon. An hour and a half later, the road for vehicles ended at a stream crossed by a rickety bridge consisting of several bamboo poles so we climbed down and strapped on our backpacks. We started our five hours of hiking with the steepest ascent we had ever undertaken, three hours on a 60–65 degree incline. The road, riven with deep gullies now, had been constructed three years earlier, but the monsoon had immediately destroyed it. Throughout the trek, we had many river crossings sometimes with suspension bridges of dubious reliability (with missing floor boards and inaccessible railings) but often only bamboo poles or rocks as river crossings. We passed through charming villages. The third day we rested and the fourth and fifth, we returned over the mountain pass, which was more difficult on the descent than it had been on the uphill.

The trekking houses were on stilts with walls of flattened bark or woven bamboo. We slept on the floor on thin mats or in wooden beds with quilts for warmth. It was cold up there —in the 30s at night. The fire pan in the middle of the room provided a little warmth but with no chimney and green wood, we couldn't stop weeping from the smoke. To get warm and avoid the smoke we went to bed at 8 pm each night; anyway we were tired. We slept in our polar fleece and wool hats. When we emerged from bed before sun up, the village would be enveloped in mist; we could see our breath for the first few hours after sunrise. We felt like we were in a very remote place.

We were impressed with the multiple ways these mountain people harnessed the power from the rushing streams. For example, every village had a water–driven system for pounding rice into flour. This involved a kind of teeter–totter with the pounder on one end and a large ladle on the other. As the ladle filled with water, it sank and the pounder rose. When the water emptied out of the ladle, the pounding end thunked down on the rice. Ingenious. In another village we saw a water wheel driving a pulley to run a rice milling machine.

We saw men chopping wood and women carrying it — endlessly. We saw men building stone walls and walkways to keep out of the mud during the monsoon. It seemed that every house had hanging pots cultivating orchids that they pick up in the forest after strong winds knock them down from the trees. We ran into four men returning from two weeks of a forest search for medicinal roots; sadly, they had failed to find any. We heard radios playing Celine Dion and Michael Jackson and yet found villagers who had not heard of Aung Sun Suu Kyi. We met a very spry 104–year–old woman with a huge smile and a firm handshake. Countless adorable children waved and yelled "Bye Bye." We met women crocheting. We saw few people wearing glasses and no evidence of medical care. But the people looked healthy and vigorous and the children seemed always irrepressible. What we didn't see in the villages was much evidence of government assistance or infrastructure.

On our way back we took a slightly different route so we could take in a Christian wedding. The bride wore a white dress and a tiara with a bouquet of flowers. The groom wore a traditional multi–colored long cape. A flower girl and a guard carrying a ceremonial machete walked behind them. Guests mostly contributed money as gifts, so we did too. When we arrived, they handed us bamboo cups with steaming sweet rice milk and tea and later food wrapped in a banana leaf. The guests photographed us even more than we photographed them.
So some folks had cameras; very few had
cell phones, however. This was another
huge contrast with African countries.

A guide and six porters/cooks supported us on this hike. They were all fabulous. One night we heard them singing to the accompaniment of a guitar and asked them to sing to us. The next day they came to the trekking house and for an hour serenaded with great enthusiasm and some talent. Our guide later told us what these songs were about: love and lost love, endurance in the face of great hardship, and lots of "Jesus" songs.

Rafting Near Putao:

We were a little reluctant to take on a whitewater raft trip the day after we returned from the hike, especially given that it was bitter cold when we left that morning for the put–in. But it turned out to be a delightful experience. We rafted for four hours on the Moula and Mali Kha Rivers, all of us paddling, and navigated about 20 Class I and II rapids (not very rough). At the confluence of the two rivers the rapids were Class II plus. The biggest obstacles were fish skeens extended into the river and an improvised bamboo bridge that required a portage. After the confluence we entered a narrow canyon of still water with remarkable reflections of granite cliffs rising above the river and locals panning for gold. At the end of the canyon, we took lunch on an island revered by the Burmese as the home of Nats, spirits who emerge on nights of the full moon. Water had sculpted the island rocks into beautiful, softly rounded shapes. They had set up an umbrella, lawn chairs and lunch for us! Then, much to our surprise, we returned in a long boat with a sputtering outboard back up through the whole confluence! The boat had barely enough power but it didn't die on us.

Arrival Back in Yangon:

From Putao we returned to Yangon and took a five–day swing to the East into Mon and Kayen States. Our arrival at the Yangon airport was hysterical. We walked into the terminal and were told to wait in the departure lounge for our luggage. Porters holding the luggage tags of clients rushed out on the tarmac and started ripping apart the large containers. I joined them, fighting off porters wanting to take our bags (by accident). A crazy "system."

Mawlamyine (Mon State):

We spent two nights in Mawlamyine, the former British state capital. A bustling, gritty, intense port city, it has the feel of India. In fact, many "Indians" do live there. A dozen mosques line the main streets, because most of them are Muslims from Bangladesh, not Hindus from India. We ate our best meals at our hotel in Mawlamyine: soft shell crabs, squid, and snow peas. Just before departing to visit World War II sites south of Mawlamyine, we witnessed a massive celebration, with a cast of thousands in uniforms and ethnic dress, of the recent peace agreement between the Mon people and the government.

We found key viewpoints along the parade route taken by the country's Vice President and that night we attended the cultural show for the dignitaries. We weren't sure we'd be able to get through security, but not only did they let us in, they went to find us chairs. Then, driving south, we passed miles of rubber plantations. We examined a tree and played with the rubber. We also went off on what appeared to be a wild goose chase to find local weavers, but after many wrong turns and requests for help — with two people pointing in opposite directions — we found a weaver producing gorgeous cloth. Her loom had eight foot pedals and eight heddles. One our way home we visited a shrine on a scale almost like Mount Rushmore — a massive concrete reclining Buddha perhaps 500 meters long, flanked by 500 concrete marching monks. Quite a concept! Wealthy Buddhists build such monuments to gain merit for themselves.

Death Railroad and World War II:

South of Mawlamyine we visited one of three cemeteries for the Allied war dead from World War II in Burma: British, Australian and Dutch, who died building the Death Railroad under the Japanese. Many of the graves bore statements of love from parents, brothers, sisters, wives and children. Beautifully cared for by the British War Graves Commission, it's nonetheless a sad, sad site.

The cemetery is near the terminus of the famous Death Railroad which had been constructed in 1943 by slave labor for the Japanese. The Japanese built the 260–mile long railway as their principal supply line between Burma and Thailand, avoiding a long and dangerous detour around the Malay Peninsula. For each mile of the railroad, 47 Allied POWs (British, American and Dutch) and 346 local laborers died — 12,400 Allied POWs and 90,000 local laborers. The Japanese were savage and brutal. Only 3% of Allied POWs held by the Germans died while nearly 50% of those held by the Japanese died.

In the Burma war theater, perhaps 200,000 Japanese troops died (60,000 of them in the invasion of India) and countless were wounded, and 25,000 British, American and Indian troops died. A million Burmese died. The exploits of the British Chindits and American Marauders — guerrilla style fighters behind the Japanese lines — are legendary. The extraordinary characters in this drama — Stillwell, Merrill and Chennault for the Americans; Slim, Wyngate, and Mountbatten for the British; and Chaing Kai–shek for the Chinese were profoundly interesting, deranged and/or brilliant. Churchill and FDR meddled in highly destructive ways. The father of Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the pro–democracy leader, led the Burmese support for the allies, only to be assassinated by rivals soon after the war, just before independence was won.

Hpa–An (Kayin State):

From Mawlamyine we traveled back towards Yangon to Hpa–An in Kayin State, home of the most determined opponents of the military government, the Karen (also known as Kayin) people. The highlight was visiting a series of Kayin villages and interacting with the villagers. On one of our drives, we hit on the day astrologers said was the most propitious in February for weddings. (The Burmese depend on astrology to guide their lives.) Wedding parties, in decorated cars and tuktuks, came singing down the road, blaring out greetings over loudspeakers. We visited two weddings to take in dancing by Kayin groups in traditional garb and were treated like honored guests at each. It was thoroughly charming. (In terms of astrology, the government's dictators relied on the advice of astrologers in 1975 to switch the country from left hand to right hand driving.) It seems that every two hundred meters in Mon and Kayin State
there is a monastery or stupa.

In town we witnessed boys playing two games; one had them kick a bamboo ball among the group until someone dropped it (reports are that they can do this for hours on end) and the other employed the same type of ball to play volleyball using only their feet and heads (we saw a boy spike the ball over the net with his head).
In both games the boys could expertly kick the ball with their heel as it fell behind them.

In Closing:

This was an intense but wonderful trip. We took twelve air flights including six on Burmese airlines. Overall, however, our experience with the Burmese airlines was good; we took six internal flights, all of which were on clean modern planes and all on time. The onboard service was reasonable, and we didn't lose any luggage.
Our homebound flights were 10,500 miles and 38 hours long, door to door.

Within Burma, road travel is crazy. The roads are too narrow, often one (?) lanes wide, necessitating a game of chicken between people, bicyclists, motor cyclists,
tuktuks, bullock carts, and trucks. Our driver often leaned on the horn
when we were in traffic.

And of course, we hiked for 10 days.
If you can handle the hiking, that's the way to really see Burma.