Letter from Burma, Lake Day

Hello!!

Thanks for your emails Jack and Hilary. I can't access the article
Hilary but will see it when I get home. Is it about what you did at
the hospital (PTO days)?

And Jack thanks for sending along the info about your friend. We have
spent a lot of time in Shan state which is closer to Chinese border
than to the Thai border. I think the worst fighting is between the
Karen people and government. Shan people are not fighting at this
time and most people we talk to are very happy about that. The
government closes areas to foreigners when there is fighting going on.
Or they make you fly into towns and dont allow you on the roads...
that sounds like what your friend did. I'll be interested to hear
about his experiences!! The areas we have been to are pretty nice...
very very poor but nice people and no fighting. You see what the
government wants you to see...Of course they dont want you to see
anything bad. They control everything.

Mom.. everyone here speaks Burmese and then also their tribal language
(Shan, Intha, Karen etc). Some folks speak broken English and some
not at all. It hasnt been too much of a problem though. Jack I've
used that Point it book a few times and Burmese people like to look
at it to look at all the different pictures of things.There is a high
literacy rate (I think about 80+%) but university graduates usually
cant find any work.

its 9am Saturday here and Christina is still alseep so I'm sending an
email and then will go eat breakfast. We go to bed early (9:30ish) so
its hard for me to stay in bed that long!

Yesterday was an awesome experience. We are at Inle Lake and I hired
a boat driver to take me around for the day for $25. You can go on a
tour with 4-6 people but I hired the whole boat (long wooden boat with
4 seats) so we could go see some different places. We left at 6:15am
and started across the misty cold lake. Saw the fisherman picking up
their nets. Many of the Intha fisherman use their legs to row .. it
looked pertty cool. Arrived at the other end of the lake and walked
around the Thandaung market (held once a week). Only saw 2 other
tourists which was great. The Pa0 and Taung-yo people travel 6
hours down the mountain in ox carts hauling wood to sell to the Intha
people that live on Inle Lake because they don;t have any wood. Inle
Lake/Intha people sell them produce that they grow right in the lake
in floating gardens. The Intha houses on the lake are really cool.
Whole villages live in houses that are built on stilts and you have to
get in a boat just to pop over and say hello to your neighbor. We
rode slowly though some villages and everyone, esp children, come to
the windows and wave and shout minglelava (hello hello!). WIn, the
boat driver told me that 10 years ago the area was closed to
foreigners and they did not have any schools. Now they have a
primary, middle and high school.. all on stilts and all accessable by
boat. Most if not all the people we talk to are very happy to have
tourists around because, as long as the tourist does not do a package
tour and uses local guides, transport, private hotels etc it improves
their economy.

Anyway this is getting too long so I'll make it shorter. We spent the
day visiting pagodas, and villages. In 1 village they only make
pottery. In another they all made rice wine (that was fun stop. except
for the snacks. every house we visited brought out snacks and tea..
always more tea.. snacks at this house were tea, rice wine, and spicy
pig fat/gristle. i tried to be polite and tried a piece of pig fat but
just couldnt swallow it. so i sat there with it in my mouth until i
could discretely spit it out. yukky. also rice wine was firewater).
another village did silk weaving and one place did all bamboo
umbrellas and paper fans. for lunch we had "water chicken". i asked
if it was a duck and Win said "no, water chicken. only found in inle
lake and only in the wintertime". so who knows what it was! tasty
though. we also got invited to a Taung-yo house for tea. They called
down to us (in Burmese) and invited us to their home. It was also up
on stilts but more in the mountains so the animals stayed downstairs.
Win said he'd never been there before. They did not speak a word of
English and about 5 adults and 8 children just sat and stared at me
the whole time. Very friendly,warm and generous people. I gave the
kids a few crayons which they had never seen before and did not know
what they were supposed to do with them.

toilet experience... they were very clean but just a wooden box with a
hole that goes direcly down to the water about 6 feet below. That
can't be good for the water quality. The lake and canal are only used
for washing and fishing I was told. They get their drinking water from
wells.

we ended our day at Win's house where his wife and daughter made us
dinner (more water chicken plus fish, rice, soup).

when we rode back across the lake (10 miles) at sunset i saw the
fisherman putting out their nets. they spend the night in their little
dugout canoes and pick up the nets again at 0630am.

The impression I will leave here with is that these are the most warm
and generous people I have ever met. Sure, not every person is that
way but by far the majority of people are honest and genuinely
interested in where you are from etc etc. It is impossible to walk
down the street (esp when you are alone) without being stopped several
times by someone who wants to know where you are from and if you like
their country. ALso this is by far the most Buddhist country I've been
to. Everyone seems to be a practicing Buddhist and there are monks
and monestaries everywhere. NO matter how poor a family is, they
still donate food and money to support the monestaries.

OK that's all for now! I wanted to write everything down about
yesterday before I forgot. I think my favorite parts were going
through the villages and visiting people's homes. I used up 2 camera
batteries and a full 2g memory card so don't worry.. there will be
plenty of photos :-)

I hope all is well and have a very Happy New Year!! I miss you guys
and look forward to getting home. We fly back to Yangon tomorrow and
will spend New Years Eve there then to Singapore 2 Jan and home 3 Jan.

Take care!
Love,
cathy :-)
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Canoe Trip

The canoe trip was awesome. we had a very nice lady take us in
this flat dug out canoe. first the main canal was busy with
motorboats then we went on calmer side canals and they were beautiful.
everyone raised ducks and pigs it seemed. the pigs eat the algae (or
whatever it is.. looks like algae) from the canals and they looked
very fat and happy. we passed lots of wooden houses on stilts and lots
of beautiful lotus flowers. they are gorgeous flowers.

went to a huge old wooden monestary where there was only one crazy old
monk and 4 novice (little kid) monks. the old one would ask where you
were from then start naming cars from that country... "ohhh japan.
nissan, toyota, panasonic, mazda" then i said us and he said "oh us..
chevrolet" adn to the germans.. oh.. mercedes BMW. you get the idea.
it was pretty funny. we think he was going a bit daffy from being out
in that big old monestary with nothing to do. we watched the sunset
there then the lady took us back. a very nice and relaxing afternoon
and christina also enjoyed it a lot.

another funny thing.. we were looking for this motorboat driver named
win because we heard he was good. i asked a couple people this am
then forgot about it. we were eating lunch at a totally different
area of town and 2 people approached and the guy said this is win you
were looking for him. great communication network. phones dont work
but word of mouth sure does. anyway i'm going with win at 6:15
tomorrow am. we're going to 2 floating markets and a bunch of other
stuff then i'm going to his house for dinner with his family.
christina didnt want to go so early so she'll do a half day trip
tomorrow and we'll ride bikes or go hiking together on saturday.

dinner tonight was fish curry. maybe not quite as yummy as it sounds.
it was a whole fish and took a lot of work to get the meat off. it
was good once we did though. curry here is definitely not the same as
thai curry. again people are so darm nice though. as i'm sitting
here typing someone just brought me tea and orange slices and
"traditional shan dessert". not chocolate but it tastes ok. yesterday
someone brought us a fried banana that was absolutely delicious.. it
had this great coating on it. they gave it to us as a "present".
everyone knows and uses that word here. they give a lot of presents
and usually expect nothing in return.

i better go so i can walk home, take a hot shower and go to bed. it
got really cold last night.. down to 5c in the area which i think is
about 40f. chilly with no heat. very nice and warm and sunny during
the day.

i took a ton of photos today and imagine i'll do the same tomorrow. i
am going to be kicking myself when i'm back home and have to sort all
these photos out!!

Merry Christmas from Mandalay

Hello!!
I hope this finds you happy and healthy and enjoying the holidays. It is 11am Christmas Day here so Christmas Eve should be winding down in the US.

(I can access Hotmail in Bagan through some special program but can't access any of my addresses so Chris if you could send this to our friends and my Dad that would be great!) I can't access Hotmail most places but have been able to access gmail no problem as long as the town has internet access at all (which can be a problem).

Yesterday Christina and I took the boat from Mandalay to Bagan. We started off the day with some trepidation because the "fast boat" was fully booked so we had to take the "slow boat". The difference.. fast boat was $25, mostly tourists and took about 8 hours. Slow boat was $10, mostly locals and took 15 hours. I like boat trips and wasnt too worried but Christina wasnt sure she wanted to sit on a boat that long after our very long (partially miserable) train trip from Hspiaw to Mandalay.

So we got up at 4am and made it to the boat dock. WE got on the boat around 5am and got a good spot along the railing (very important!). WE took off around 5:30.. it was still dark and very foggy and cold. We got to watch a beautiful sunrise and the fog gradually lifted and the day warmed up nicely. There were about 15 or so tourists on the boat and the rest (about 200) were locals. The deck was crammed full of people and at every stop more women streamed on board carrying things on their head to sell. It was always complete chaos when we stopped.. people scrambling to get off the boat, ladies with big trays on their heads pushing their way on and men walking up and down the gangplank balancing heavy bags on their shoulders. Seemed like there were a lot of bags to be unloaded at each stop. The women would run onto the boat and try as hard as they could to get people to buy something before the horn blew then they'd run off again. First stop was the banana stop... about 20 ladies really really really wanted us to buy their bananas. Second stop was chicken stop, 3rd stop was unload many many heavy sacks as fast as you can stop (the guys were flying up and down the gangplank with these heavy bags)4th and 5th stops i don't remember and the final stop was the woven blanket stop. Good timing as it was starting to get chilly again.

SOme of the ladies from the banana stop stay on for the whole ride then take the night bus back to their homes. One lady sat by us for a long time and when she realized we couldnt eat any more bananas she started rubbing my feet. Well it worked like a charm. Soon both Christina and I were getting massages while sitting on the boat deck. I got one at 11am. Then spent a few hours reading and playing with some Burmese children (i brought some sticker books they really liked) and again passing the book of photos from home around (big hit). Around 5pm we thought what the heck.. lets get another massage. So we spent our Christmas Eve watching an amazing sunset floating down the Ayeyarwaddy River while drinking a beer getting our shoulders and feet massaged by 2 Burmese women who felt like they had 6 hands . Utterly fantastic. And only 2000 kyat each time. $1\u003d1250 kyat so less than $2. The ladies were really nice and we gave them some crayons for their kids and a couple shirts.

WHen we finally arrived in Bagan some 15 hours after starting, we were met with the usual throng of people trying to get you to stay at their guesthouse. We luckily had called ahead for a room and there was a man standing in the crowd holding up a sign that said Ms Catherine, USA. Hooray!! He took our bags and we followed him to a horse cart where he loaded us and our bags into the cart and delivered us to our hotel about 15 minutes away.

We ended the evening by meeting the 15 other tourists who had been on the boat for dinner at an Italian restaurant. CHEESE was a wonderful thing after rice and noodles for breakfast/lunch/dinner for the past couple of weeks. There were folks of all ages from France, Australia, UK, USA, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy (one of the Italians was a man traveling by himself who had to be at least 75 years old.. he was quite a character).

Then to bed. Today we\'ll rent bicycles and ride around some of the temples. Bagan is known for having thousands of old temples (i think close to 3000).

All of our days have not been as easy and wonderful as yesterday was but overall the trip has been great and Christmas Eve was perfect.

Merry Chrstmas, Happy New Year to you all and see you in 1 1/2 weeks!

Love,
Cathy :-)
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