Damn headphones are totally buggered on this computer. Still I am determined to catch my tail up to a point. Having been murdered by aircon we finally arrived close to the Lake at 4am. Good timing. They offered us a shared taxi for 2,000 kyat but we refused with the intention of waiting for the pick up trucks. In the end they dropped the price to 1,000 kyat and it was deemed cheap enough not to sit on our arse for ages. With hindsight it may not have been the best decision however, as I have heard that the pick up truck passengers can often avoid the $5 charge for entering the lake. I have no confirmation of this however. Our original two choices were both full, so we opted for the Golden Inn. Got a nice room for around $18. Everything else there was far too expensive though. The little shop just opposite (on your right if you exit the hotel) proved to be the best bet for everything else. Their washing was much cheaper, their boat tours were cheaper and their bicycles were also cheaper. We did our washing there and rented a couple of bikes. We cycled round the east side of the lake to the floating town. It was a very pleasant place. They offered to take our bikes across the lake but we turned it down. The leg propelled boats were quite cool, though the twisting motion does not seem to have any additional benefits or indeed necessity. I am sure you could generate as much speed with a traditional pull motion, but maybe not. We decided to take the bikes round to the west as well to see the hot springs. The cycling route in that direction is really nice and bumpier than the east side. We passed some French tourists on the way and they told us that the hot springs were super touristy. Hah I thought. No problem. Yet when we reached them they were actually just overpriced jacuzzis. These were less hot springs and more hot tubs. We passed. Cycling back we got caught with a mini storm, which knocked out all of the internet. All sites are now legal seemingly in Myanmar (including the economist etc which I regularly read), but the connections are super slow. We watched some Ugly Betty and struggled to understand how people could spend a week here. Yeah its nice, its pretty even, but its nothing exceptional. It was certainly no Lake Bled or Lago Atitlan (which probably rank as my favourite two lakes).
In the morning we got up and headed for our lake tour. We had read it was a little tacky but still worth it. We shall see. An old woman walked us down to the boat where we were bombarded by local hat sellers. Fuck sake. It was starting already. We sped out on to the lake. Ah this was more like it. Skimming down the canal and into the reedy lake. We headed across to a local fisherman who was using a cool basket and spear combo and then he held onto our boat offering us a photo opportunity. Ah shit, it was gringo tourism. Awkward moment. Back into cruising across the pretty lake to our first town. It looked very beautiful from distance. As we got closer it was even cooler. Oh no a stop at a gold seller. Very nice. They even told us not to take off our shoes when all the locals clearly had. I don't like that. Ok so this is a shop. We don't buy things. Don't look at anything. Still here. Ok well just look at the craftsmanship. If you do that, however, they want to sell you something. Catch 22. I wanted to walk across the town as that looked interesting. Oh that's not possible. By boat? Back in the boat. Would we like to see the long knecked women. Why not we thought, imagining we were off to a village. Nope, we went to another shop where everyone stood around awkwardly. The women were clearly doing nothing until we arrived and then ran to some looms. We asked a few awkward questions and declined to take photos. Again we bought nothing. Cannelle worried we were going to hate this day. Next stop the market town of Inthein I think from memory. We set off through some nice canals and arrived next to a phalanx of boats. We were early as well, so fuck knows how bad it is for those following. Our boatmen told us we had an hour. We walked straight past the market, as we have no interest in buying stuff and climbed the local pagoda. That was quite nice. Then we came back and they told us we had two hours. We went for a walk along the canals and hung out on the bridge in town as we still had no interest in the market. 40 minutes later and we were off. We went to the famous pagoda (apologies as names escape me and we have binned our Myanmar book). Here we were ushered upstairs to eat while the boatmen sat downstairs totally segregated again. We ate the shittest food on our trip and then went to the pagoda, which was nice but we were accosted by young shoe hunters again wanting a donation. Luckily the older locals told us we didn't have to pay. We saw the gold blob buddhas and went back. The guides were playing a table and pockets that saw them flicking yellow and blue discs around. It looked cool, but they stopped when we arrived. We told them to carry on and sat and watched as it was 100 times more authentic than anything on the 'tour'. Where next on the wonderful Inle Lake odyssey? Ah banging a better sound system. Now I can type freely. Sorry for sucking you out of it there. This is where the tour got better. We headed to a weaving village. I assumed it would be another sterile sales pitch and I suppose it was, but the guide spoke English well and we got the chance to ask some questions. We had viewed most of the machines before we got onto discussions of pay etc. The average loom worker was paid 3,000 kyats a day and worked seven days a week (That's around $3.5 for those who aren't familiar with the money). She herself was paid about 50,000 kyats a month, though her rent was around 20,000. That's pretty shitty. Especially when the scarves they were making sold for upwards of $25 and the workers received zero income from this. No commission. No percentage. Nothing. Shocking. It turns out that a lot of tourist money just goes to owners and craftsmen get nothing. Made me feel better for not buying anything as no money would go to the workers anyway. She asked after our salaries and said I earnt more in two hours in Paris than she did in a month, though she was shocked at how expensive life was in the UK as I converted rent, transport etc into kyats for her. It was a much more informative hour long chat than anything we had had so far and answered some of our questions. Afterwards we were taken to some cigar makers, who rolled an infinite number per day. Again we don't smoke, so we didn't try them and it seemed that the end of our very long day of shopping by numbers occasionally interspersed by seeing the lake was coming to an end. We went through the floating gardens and to the jumping cat monastery, where the cats no longer jump. They just lounge around. How do you summarise this experience. Well. I would say it was worth it. Just. Though as everything is pretty crappy except for the lake itself I would recommend hiring a boat and just going to some villages with no tourists and walking around a bit if possible. However, if you like endless identikit bullshit peddled at you from annoyingly pushy sales people then just go for the straight tour. You'll love it. We looked into the possibility of moving our flights now that it was looking increasingly unlikely that we could go to Mrauk U. We reserved the final decision for Manadalay as that was effectively the point of no return. Oooh I am finally warming up back into the writing again. Pounding away with the Drive soundtrack playing in the background. We found a really cool pancake place with excellent toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner.
The last day at the lake (only 2.5 and not the 75,000 that most travellers stay here for) and we got to shoot the breeze with one of the tour guides. We had booked our bus to Mandalay through our usual place and the guy just chatted with us. We learnt the yellow paint was for beauty, skin softness and to protect against the sun. We learnt that the reason English Premiership football is on every channel is because they bet illegally on the games, but you get 6 months prison if caught, while owners get 1 year. Does not seem too proportional there. We found out the rules for the board game and that the people often played as 5's, bet 500 kyat each but that the house kept 500. It was an easy way to make money. He paid 50,000 kyats a month for his son's private school (a months salary for most) and 80,000 kyats for uni (its free but he has to pay accommodation). He needs 300,000 kyats a month to get by, which he can make from tourism. They can no longer walk the Kalaw to Inle :Lake route as the monks (those holier than holy types) had formed a cartel and only let people stay in their monasteries if they paid more than any other tour groups. It had let to a very steep rise in prices. Originally people could stay for free, but now the 'donations' were at least 10,000 kyats a person. Ah nothing like the authentic experience. Thanks Lonely Planet. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. We found out that the big green fruit is actually 1000 kyat in the markets and that people weren't trying to rip us off. I asked how it was possible for people to live when a fruit costs 1/3 of their daily salary, but he informed me that a person could survive on 1,500 kyat a day for rice and curry, but if they wanted biscuits or tea it pushed up the prices. Finally we found out that tour groups in Myanmar from Yangon paid double for everything. The last one was not too surprising. I left thinking it was a shame we could not take a tour with this guy and never once did he try to sell us anything. It was pleasant to just chat for around 3 hours and get the answers to some of our questions. It was missing in Asia. Something that I could easily find out in South America and that had made that trip so rich. We would have to couchsurf, so we researched and found some CS'ers in Mandalay. Surprising. We went back to the crepes place and then went to leave. There was a Japanese American old guy in the lobby. He was hilarious. He asked us where we had been and said he was going to fly out of Myanmar early (which a lot of travellers told us and did as well) because 'there is nothing to see here. Just pagodas and they are all the same.' He was totally incompetent but then told me he had been to 169 countries, but 'mostly just to the capital as lots of countries have nothing to see.' He seemed to take a perverse pain in his mission. He then asked the hotel to check for the bus pick up even though is was 3.30pm and it was coming at 4pm. When it arrived we told him it was for Yangonm but he wasn't sure and panicked. 'Where is everybody. Nobody is here. Help me.' He went looking for staff and they eventually assured him it was his pick up. He left waving and everyone including the staff were laughing. Eventually it was our turn and we had to wait ages for an Israeli girl to get ready. Fuck sake. When we arrived at the junction they told us we had 2 hours to wait for the bus. Well that was spectacularly pointless. Why so early? It was full of foreigners as we were cattle herded as well. Ah it was like Thailand all over again. Everyone was going to Yangon. Ah the LP loop. It was the other way. We should feel ashamed. The Israeli was on a different bus to us so once again we failed to have a foreigner on the same transport as us. One bus was leaving, when our Japanese friend came running from nowhere on the left as he almost missed it going to the loo. How has he not been killed yet while travelling? He will surely be hands down by far the most incompetent man to ever travel to every country in the World. If he can do it, fucking anyone can.
We arrived in Mandalay at 3am again. I swear these buses are timed to maximise profits for taxi drivers and hotels and yet we continue to disappoint all of them. The bus driver told us to stay on and he would drive us to the centre. I was against it as nothing would be open, but Cannelle pointed out that we would save the taxi fare so we went. He dropped us at the clock tower (one of the few things lit and like all things lit at night it was surrounded by taxi drivers like moths to the light and like moths they banged their heads/demands against our refusals until they beat the hope out of themselves). We walked to Nylon Hotel and got eaten by mosquitoes while we waited for it to open. We didn't want to wake them and pay. Around 5am they let someone out and us in. I asked if we could check in and they said yes, so we took our bags upstairs. While Cannelle had a shower, I realised that maybe they thought we were paying for this night, even though it was 5am. I went down to check and they confirmed it as true. Fuck that. I asked them when check in was. They said 12pm. I said we would wait in the lobby, so they relented and gave us the room anyway. Too damn right at 5am. Ridiculous. It was shit tv so we slept a bit. We decided to walk around the moat and go to the palace. Lonely Planet is super hostile to the idea of spending any money on government things, but everything of interest in Mandalay looked to be on the $10 pass and everyone had told us how much they hated this city. Well if you don't visit the $10 ticket stuff you will as the rest of the city is pretty shitty, so more fool you. A local taxi man accosted us, telling us we were the spawn of satan if we visited the palace, that he knew lots of anti-government stories and could drive us around. I assured him we could walk and he had found the wrong politically engaged tourists. We had been watching the slow 'opening up' of Myanmar and were curious to see if it was true on the ground. More on that in Part 3 when we finally got answers. Anyway we got rid of him, had breakfast in a cafe and then he caught us again. Fuck sake. Will he not take a hint. Anyway we snuck into the palace like fugitives, feeling rather guilty. You can hide surprisingly well within the walls, however. Its actually pretty cool. For starters it wasn't a fucking pagoda. The architecture is snazzy, the relics around the outside (plane, train and derelict mini golf course) are cool and it is well worth a visit. Plus you don't get hassled by vendors or anyone as no tourists go there. Next up was Mandalay Hill. What a contrast. Tacky, touristy and full of vendors. Its an awfully kitsch climb to the top for what is admittedly a very beautiful view. Some Dutch tourists told us we should buy some tat of some kind. Yeah just my thing. Thanks. We met a monk at the top who wanted to practice English. We hung out at the top for 2 hours and then he accompanied us through some more pagodas (woohoo I thought it a little rude to say no) and for lunch at a very swanky cafe. We had decided to come here before. He wanted to open a library and become a teacher in Chin State (at last a monk with true aspirations) but he also loved Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber (oh well). They were also learning English by 'English Grammar in Use'. Fuck me. Its the book we use as teachers to check anything we are not 100% on. They use this to actually teach. Those must be some fun classes. Totally flies in the face of everything we had been trained to do. He also spent 2 months in prison for the protests a few years back and had abandoned politics, though he did feel the country was changing for the better. We got more taxi hassle. Did we want a taxi back to our hotel. No thanks we can walk. But its so far. We already did it to get here. Did we want a taxi to Inwa etc. No we would cycle. Its impossible. No its only 12km. Its impossible in the heat and all tourists who try fail. I assured him that I can walk 60km a day comfortably and that I had cycled 140km a day in 45 degrees celcius easily. That made his friends laugh. Bastards never walk or cycle anywhere so of course they think its far. The heat is a little oppressive in Mandalay even for me though. The monk thought all foreigners were super rich, so I tried to explain that in general the older the tourist was, the richer they would be and vice versa. He eventually parted company with us and we grabbed some local home made ice cream from the Nylon ice cream place. Really nice. Babou's plane she had to take in Nepal had crashed the day before. She was a little nervous. I think we would have taken the bus. We got some bikes for the next day as we intended to leave at 7am and nothing was open then, because all foreigners are lazy, fat fucks who get up too late to enjoy the cool mornings.
We were up and grabbed breakfast. Then we cycled to Inwa. Super difficult lol. Even with a saddle that kept collapsing on me and made me look like a teenager on his little BMX, we managed to make it in less than an hour and a half. Impossible, indeed. I am so glad I listened to the font of all wisdom that was the taxi driver. We grabbed the little river ferry for 1000 kyat return and left the bikes. The locals all spoke French and said it was mainly French who came here. Interesting as its also government ticketed. I started to form my theory that maybe Routard was not as hostile to the government as Lonely Planet is, because every government place and thing was mainly populated by French people. We arrived and were offered a shit bell and pipe. Hmmmm, no thanks. Do we want a horse cart. Not thanks. But it is 10km and impossible. Yes of course it is. This was feeling like Mexico and the 'esta peligroso'. We like walking. It is neither 10km nor impossible. One bit of advice. Lonely Planet's map is shit. They show big roads and small dotted roads. You would logically assume that they are different sizes. Logic does not apply to the LP. They are all the same size and treat them as such. The dickhead horse cart drivers will send you left. Ignore them and go straight if you want a quicker walk. Go left like we did if you want a more scenic route. The place is super picturesque and the walk is lovely. We visited all the main sites and most of the minor ones in less than 2 hours and were back on the boat. The watchtower is now closed and you can't climb it, but you can still visit it. The teak monastery is awesome and again part of the $10 ticket. Its very atmospheric and nice to wander around in. Here we got stalked by a horse cart driver. Despite repeatedly telling us it was cheap and saying the other places were far (this was the furthest point from the entrance so we had already walked half) and us repeatedly telling him no and that we liked walking he kept alongside us. Fuck sake. Just take no for an answer. He reduced the price from 4000 to 100 and we still said no. Some stupid woman kept telling us to visit the pagoda on the right. We were sick of pagodas. Yet if you don't take the $10 ticket that is all you get. The other yellow monastery, which is probably my favourite individual building in Myanmar was also on the $10 ticket. Well worth a trip, but just buy the fucking ticket or it will be boring. Saw Sagaing from the bridge on the way back. Hills full of pagodas. Nothing new. Drive on. The bike was still shit. As we left the first tourists arrived at 11am. Good going in beating the sun. We always had places to ourselves and we sweated a lot less. The cycle back to Amarapura was much tougher as the sun was up and the bike was going down. We arrived and had a nice lunch, dripping by the bridge. Saw some beggars on the bridge as we crossed. It was not what we expected and not as impressive as I had anticipated, but it was nice and worth the visit. On the way back my bike got a flat tyre on the rear tyre. Fuck sake. This bike was killing me. I can categorically say that if I can make both towns and back by 3pm with the shittest bike from hell this side of Banos to Puyo in Ecuador (thank God it wasn't that bad) then anyone can do it easily. I think you could do both, the palace and be up the hill for sunset assuming your bike doesn't break down. We would meet a local CSer the following Wednesday. Mandalay itself by the way has super oppressive heat, but is a nice little city. I fell asleep, but woke int ime to go downstairs and watch the second half of the game with the hotel staff. It was Spurs v Man United. They told me it was 2-0 and I naturally assumed to Man U, but they said no it was 2-0 Spurs. Who scored? Bale and new guy number 5. Ah ok. I watched nervously as we finally beat the fucking bastards on their own ground. It was fun watching it with the locals. We had no common language except that of football. They were all Man United fans, as is virtually everybody in South East Asia.
In the morning we awoke to heavy rain and went looking for a pick up to Pyin Oo Lwin. Someone accosted us and said jump in. 1500 kyat to the town. Excellent. As we left the waters kept rising like some kind of biblical flood. It was the deepest water I had seen in the streets since Buenos Aires. Some bikes were breaking down. Cannelle was scared to go up hill in that. I said the water run off would make it fine, not entirely convinced by my argument. At least they drove carefully here. Anyway 2.5 dripping hours later we were there and the sun had miraculously reappeared. We had mostly got lucky with the showers on this trip.
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