My friend Campbell and I decided it was a fun idea to ride around Myanmar a couple of years ago. This five-part blog post will give you some insight into the things we learned, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the history behind many of the things we saw.

Read Part One HERE
Read Part Two HERE
Read Part Three HERE
Read Part Four HERE

A Man Who Was More Than Shakespeare

Campbell and I were sitting on the side of the road at 6AM eating breakfast; an amazing noodle soup combined with lots of tender chicken pieces. The soup was jam-packed with noodles which we were planning to use to power us the next 50km of 4×4 roads from Mektila to a distant town before needing to fill up the tank again. We saw a very old man walking with a cane to aid his steps on the rough ‘pavement’ that made up the side of the road. He was wandering towards us, looking up every now and then to check he hadn’t overshot his target. He stood by the side of our table for one moment before deciding to take a seat. His face moves closer to ours, squinting towards us as to make eye contact and get our attention. We had his full attention. We were just as interested in him, as he was of us. He opens his mouth and whispers, “You can read English?” We nodded, acknowledging that we both could. “Do you know poetry?” he whispered again. Our response was again, nodding.

“Wait here” he said, and he stumbled along on his walk, this time moving quicker than his approach. Campbell and I looked at each other. We were full of intrigue, and didn’t really ask anything to each other, we simply looked into each other’s eyes and made odd faces. He had walked into a shop, and was now stumbling back. He had in his hands two pieces of paper, which were flapping around in the wind. He sits down again in the same rickety chair. He puts his papers on the table and stares into our eyes with his own very pale and aged eyes. “Do you know Shakespeare?” he said. We both looked at each other, trying to decipher the complicated English word that he had said to us. “Oh, Shakespeare” I said. “Yes, Yes, I know it. He paused for a second and proclaimed, “My poetry, it is more. I am more than Shakespeare!” and he lifted his hands up in the air to show how much greater he was than possibly the most famous poet in English literature.

We looked at his poetry, all hand written in very legible writing, using quite complicated words and was pushing the limits of my English language. The poems were basic, but clever. We stuffed them into our bags for a read later on, and shook his hand. “Jez-u-timba-de” (Thank-you-very-much) we told him. It was time for us to depart, as we didn’t know how long or hard we would have to ride this day, in fact we didn’t even know where we would be by days close.

It baffles me. How can a random old person in a town in the middle of no-where speak English, however nobody else for the past week has been able to?

Burmese Tailor in Thailand: More Myanmar Insight

Campbell and I got a few bits and pieces made in Thailand by a tailor. Our tailor was a bit out of the main touristy area, meaning it was a very quiet little shop. A young man helped us out with our custom clothing; all fine and dandy. We got talking to him a bit deeper than the standard greetings, and it turns out that he was originally from Myanmar. And boy, did he have some amazing stories to tell us…

The way that he had fled Myanmar was by lying to the government and telling them that he was going to Thailand for a short holiday. He was able to leave on a bus, unlike tourists who have to enter and leave via a plane at Yangon. With him, he had all the bits and pieces he needed to set up residency in Thailand. He seemed to think it would be ok for him to move back to Myanmar one day, however he had no reason to be back there as all of his family and friends had now moved across to Thailand. He enjoyed living a freer life here. The Thai government does not force the Myanmar people to leave (which is an exceptionally nice thing to do), however they do charge a $200 foreigner tax per year. The foreigner tax wasn’t any problem for our tailor as he makes about $300us per month. His living costs included renting an apartment with his family which costs him about $1us per day (very tight living quarters!), but he said he is living reasonably comfortably.

He also informed us about Myanmars’s allies, which are Russia, China and North Korea. He said they were giving Myanmar ridiculous amounts of money for their projects, such as the new capital Naypyidaw’s infrastructure, in return for access to their resources. Our tailor seemed to believe that Myanmar didn’t want to spend money repairing roads, as they believed that their allies would eventually fix them for them at no cost. Apparently the Chinese people love living in Myanmar because they tend to be quite wealthy and they are able to have more than one child, unlike in China with their strict one-child policy.

My friend Campbell and I decided it was a good idea to ride around Myanmar a couple of years ago. This five-part blog post will give you some insight into the things we learnt, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the history behind many of the things we saw.

Read Part One HERE
Read Part Two HERE
Read Part Three HERE
Read Part Five HERE

Inle Lake

Inle Lake is a pretty amazing sight! The lake is used for everything from living on, farming, cleaning, bathing and fishing in. It is reasonably touristy by Burmese standards, however when we were about, we rarely saw foreigners. On day one of being here, we made a fantastic little ‘click’ of people that consisted of Mark (Ireland), Helen (Swizerland), Lea (Austria), Campbell and I. We were all classic people with great personalities, keeping the laughs rolling at all moments.

We hired a boat/driver to cruise around the lake, checking out fishing, cigar rolling, weaving, jumping cats and ancient temples. These activities were cool, however it was all a bit too touristy and ‘set up’. I think what we all enjoyed the most was simply being around each other on the beautiful lake, chatting away at whatever random comments came to mind. Thanks for the great time guys!

Downhilling with the Locals

We had finished spending a day around Mandalay (second biggest city) when we randomly saw a few guys with old downhill bikes near the biggest temple in the city. We got our trishaw driver to drop us off at this point so we could have a chat. The guys were all very literate and obviously had some money; there occupations included engineering, DJing and working in a bike shop.

They took us up their local trails, which winded down a hill that was only a 30min walk up. They lent us their bikes and we bashed down some basic trails that felt amazing after not riding off-road for a while. We stopped half way and give little children lots of treats for letting us ride though their village… it was really beautiful!

I was mucking around doing all sorts of random tricks on their bikes and decided it was a good idea to clothesline myself on the power supply for a few houses! I fell over, it was all right, but I had snapped a few of their small cables. The guys insisted it was ok, and I apologised profusely, as I felt terrible for what I had done.

According to the riders, they are the “only downhillers in Myanmar”.

Riding with a Pro Cyclist

We had only just arrived at Inle Lake and sat down in a restaurant to get some nice food. The food turned out to be absolutely amazing; dried beef was to die for! We ate and drank and generally had a good time, as we often do. Campbell then noticed the picture of a reasonably modern Trek road bike on the wall. I wandered over to it, and in a cabinet next to the picture were trophies, pictures, hats and the helmets of someone.

The lady who ran the restaurant told us that her brother was “the best cyclist in Myanmar”. She rang him up, and not long later a skinny yet very athletic Burmese man and his translator for the afternoon rocked up. We talked about where he had been, what it was like training here and where in Myanmar he rode. Not so secretly, Campbell developed a bit of a man-crush for him, enchanted by his smile and tattoos. We really wanted to know what level the “best cyclist in Myanmar” was at, so we organised to go for a morning ride the next day. As a gift, Campbell gave our cyclist his favourite cycling hat.

The next morning, our cyclist rocked up in his gear, including Campbell’s hat. His trainer arrived with him on a little motor scooter that we used for a bit of motor pacing. Not far along the road, our cyclist got a puncture which is not suprising! He was running super narrow racing slicks on these treacherous Burmese roads!

We stopped halfway on our 40km ride where we had some tea and talked about how he had become a cyclist. Apparently Myanmar doesn’t have any official cyclists, so according to the accountants he was a customs officer! They sent him money as a “customs officer” however he really used it to train and travel all over Asia. Kindly, he gave us both a pair of fake Oakley Radar sunglasses that we were absolutely stoked with and even used for the Tour de Timor! It was simply pot luck meeting both the downhillers in Mandalay and the pro-cyclist at Inle Lake!

My friend Campbell and I decided it was a good idea to ride around Myanmar a couple of years ago. This five-part blog post will give you some insight into the things we learnt, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the history behind many of the things we saw.

Read Part One HERE
Read Part Two HERE
Read Part Four HERE
Read Part Five HERE

Life on a Touring Bike

One of the most common questions I have been asked about Myanmar was whether it was hard to tour on a bike. The answer without any doubt is YES! The reason for this was found out after the first days riding. It turned out that accommodation was almost impossible to find, plus we didn’t have a tent, plus we were not allowed to stay with local people or institutions. This slight accommodation issue forced us to ride very long kilometres per day, in fact, our overall average riding per day was over 140km (including all the days we didn’t touch our bikes!).

Everyday we asked locals about which towns tourists were able to stay without troubles, and prepared to reach these towns by eating large amounts of food the night before in combination with leaving as early as possible the next day. We pedalled well over 200km per day on quite a few occasions which would take between 12 and 14 hours to do due to the horrible road conditions and extreme heat.

The roads in Myanmar were the worst roads we’d ever seen and ridden. It was common across the country for roads to be under construction for 10 years or more! The stages for creating a new road included setting the foundation of large rocks, then filling the gaps in between the large rocks with finer rocks and finally putting tar and bitumen over the rocks to seal it up. Unfortunately for us, they only ever got to stage one of the process which meant we were forced to ride on the side of the road, often in sand. As soon as we would stop pedalling in sand, we would almost stop. As a bike tourer, we were also carrying our homes on the back of our bikes, which did weigh a considerable amount. So to recap, 200km – off-road – in sand – on a loaded touring bike – intense sun – incredible heat. This was definitely a feat-and-a-half for us!

Other things that we battled with were very large and overloaded trucks passing us at slow speeds, whilst leaving no space for us on the road. Giving ‘way’ was not an option for the truck drivers due to the sheer narrowness of the roads. Having said this, the trucks were used to our advantage sometimes. We often enjoyed sitting in their aerodynamic drag at 35-50km/h; that was a lot of fun and something I’d love to do again!

Food

The food in Burma was not really directly comparable to any other country. Interestingly, it didn’t have much Indian influence, and was completely different to almost all Thai meals. The Chinese that we ate was not all that different to Chinese that we would have at home.

The most common form of food was rice, with between 5-10 different condiments for flavour. We always had the choice between mutton (lamb), beef or chicken for one condiment, then the rest were placed in front of you. We would get lots of chutney-style plates using different herbs, spices and fruits/vegetables. One dish that sticks in my head was an amazing mango chutney that had a slight sour tinge to it. The sweet/sour was a phenomenal sensation. We got to eat lots of bamboo, fish soups, vegetable soups, beans – as well as many dishes that we didn’t have a clue what we were eating.

Bagan

Oh my gosh. Bagan; the city of temples. I could not believe what I was seeing when we arrived to this ancient city. 2500 brick temples constructed across a 10km x 10km area. Amazingly there were 4500 temples in this same area until recently when a violent earthquake destroyed many of them. Bagan really needs to be world heritage listed, as the temples – sometimes over 70m in height – are walked through by tourists including myself, chipping old bits of stone off the temples as I clamber over. The main reason given is that the junta has haphazardly restored ancient stupas, temples and buildings, ignoring original architectural styles and using modern materials which bear little or no resemblance to the original designs.

The temples are about 20 degrees cooler inside than outside in Bagan (where it was hovering in the mid 40s). This meant that locals and their pets spent their afternoon hours sleeping inside them. The red bricks used to construct the temples are the most amazing ochre red I’ve ever seen. They are often precariously balanced and very prone to falling over.

The reason there are so many temples here is that 900 years ago people believed that if they sinned they would be able to get into Buddha’s good books by constructing temples to worship Buddha. The people that did some really bad things would spend over half their life constructing them.

The paintings and statues on the inside of the buildings were stunning! Couple that with tiny staircases winding up towards a top level which would overlook all the other temples – I truly loved this place.

My friend Campbell and I decided it was a good idea to ride around Myanmar a couple of years ago. This five-part blog post will give you some insight into the things we learnt, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the history behind many of the things we saw.

Read Part One HERE
Read Part Three HERE
Read Part Four HERE
Read Part Five HERE 

Part Two: Weather

According to a book Campbell and I read about the weather in Myanmar, “Myanmar has all types of environment except desert”. This in fact was a lie! Probably not a lie by the definition of ‘desert’, but Myanmar felt very desert to us. Well over half of our riding was along sandy roads, of which our tires would regularly bog in.

The heat and intense sunshine was absolutely incredible! The Australian sun is intense but this was another level. It was about 30 degrees and humid in Yangon, but not 100km north of this region and it was 10 degrees warmer and the driest heat we had ever felt. I got sunburnt to the point where I had blisters all over me and so we actually purchased business shirts to stop the intense sun from attacking our skin. They worked wonders!

Being monsoon season in Myanmar we were expecting to be absolutely drenched everyday on the bike. It turned out that there would was less than five or six days on the bike where we got wet! The ancient city of Bagan receives less than six days of rain per year, which is unbelievable considering how close to the equator this place is. Desert by Alex definition? I think so.

Finding Accommodation

The hardest possible thing about travelling Myanmar on the touring bike was trying to find a place to stay. Campbell and I had read that it was impossible to stay with local people as locals could end up in jail if the military found out. We also read that it was impossible to camp. I had visions before we left of having the sides of our tent being ripped open by crazy military members who would drag us into the unknown. We knew we could stay in hotels, and assumed there was always going to be a guesthouse to stay. How wrong we were; almost every guesthouse in Myanmar was for the local people only, as hotels need to have expensive licences in order to have tourists as guests.

It didn’t help that we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into on the route that we had chosen. It wasn’t until very late in the piece that we learnt of the black, brown and white zones, and looking back it made so much sense regarding what happened to us.

Our first troubles happened on the first day in the saddle. Not only was I riding in the heaviest rain that I had ever dealt with, but when we decided it would be time to stop, we found this amazing monastery full of monks. They were all very excited to see us and wanted to learn English and about our western culture. In return, they wanted to teach us about Buddhism. This sounded like an exceptional proposition to us! We bathed in their well, and got changed inside their monastery with an audience of two monks who wanted to have a good look at us naked. Two monks took us to a local Chinese restaurant where we were fed amazing food. We were then quickly ushered back to the monastery, where we were told we had to leave. A policeman was waiting there on his motorbike with a walky-talky next to his mouth. We expected to find accommodation in the next town.

It was getting dark so we rode as fast as possible to try to beat the blackness that was quickly coming over us. The road got absolutely horrible and we were hitting wheel-engulfing potholes that were seriously jarring my wrists as I wasn’t able to brace impact well. We found a place to stay in the next town 30km along the road however it was apparently “booked out”. We could see a key board full of keys indicating the rooms were clearly free. We literally begged to stay at their accommodation, however they pushed us out and told us to look elsewhere. It was now pitch black and we were riding through deep mud on small back roads.

A police motorbike took us to another place. As we arrived the owner ran outside, locking all of the doors, turning the lights off and shutting his front gate. He told us he was closed, and no more people were allowed. We couldn’t believe this. These people clearly had rooms for us to stay in and we had lots of money. Surely we just looked like massive cash cows to them? It was another 25km along the road where we found a place that would accept us. That means we did 55km on treacherous Burmese roads with just my miniature head torch – unbelievable.

This wasn’t the end of our troubles. At 1am when all we wanted to do was sleep, Campbell stood outside arguing with immigration officers and guesthouse staff who were trying to make us pay ridiculous amounts of money for their accommodation. All we got was nothing more than a wooden bed in a room smaller than my height. I was really proud of Campbell that night for not giving in under the toughest circumstances possible.

This occurred on so many more occasions. Only a day later, we had ridden our bikes into a new government zone. As soon as we arrived to Aunglan and tried to find accommodation, we found out we had the exact same problem as the night before. We were slightly more prepared this time, as we had gotten there at about midday. We spent over two hours arguing with a local guesthouse owner about how we needed to stay with him. A local who could speak a bit of English organised to get an immigration officer to help us out. She couldn’t speak any English at all, and told us we were only allowed to stay if we answered 30 or more questions about our reasons for being a tourist, and also under the condition that we caught a bus out of Aunglan that next morning. We agreed, were double charged for the hotel room, had an amazing time in this little town and were put on a bus the next day.

What were they hiding from two men on bikes that we couldn’t see from a bus window, I am not sure.

My friend Campbell and I decided it was a good idea to ride around Myanmar a couple of years ago. This five-part blog post will give you some insight into the things we learnt, the stories we heard, the people we met, and the history behind many of the things we saw.

Read Part Two HERE
Read Part Three HERE
Read Part Four HERE
Read Part Five HERE 

PART ONE: Political Situation – A Brief History

Traditional kingships and local governments have occurred since people populated areas of Myanmar. This was until the 19th Century when the Brits stripped the authority from these people and began their colonial administration. The union of Burma finally achieved independence of the Brits in 1948.

A military-dominated regime led by the ‘Burma Socialist Programme Party’ held power. There were no free elections, and freedom of expression was almost entirely denied. Resistance to the regime occasionally occurred. Torture, political imprisonment, and other human rights abuses were common. Throughout this period, guerrilla wars with ethnic opposition groups continued.

Under the parties’ way to socialism, the country’s economy steadily deteriorated, and by mid-1988, rice shortages and popular discontent reached crisis. The police slaying of a student sparked demonstrations by university students that were soon joined by monks, civil servants, workers, and even policemen and soldiers in cities and towns all over Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide marched to demand an elected civilian government replace the party regime. Soldiers fired on crowds of unarmed protesters, killing thousands.

The junta’s next action was to open fire with machine guns on demonstrators in Yangon and other cities. The carnage was immense. While the exact number will never be known, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 people were killed. Thousands more were arrested. Many were tortured.

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the most popular opposition party, was placed under house arrest in July 1989. Many other senior party officials were jailed. She is still under house arrest today, unable to speak to the public. The military junta operate all government situations in Myanmar, creating an exceptionally repressed nation.

10 Amazing Facts about Myanmar

1. The capital of Myanmar has been moved inland from Yangon to Naypyidaw in recent times, to protect both government officials and the capital city from sea invasion. The government is building underground bunkers 120m underneath the ground. There is lots of infrastructure under the ground, such as highways, gas supply, oxygen supply, oil, offices, meeting rooms and hotels. It has cost well over $9 billion to construct this feat, when there are people literally starving on the streets. Shop owners pay lots of money for licences to trade, for it all to go to a corrupt government who are not giving them anything back.

2. The military general, Than Shwe flies his son to Singapore weekly for his education on a private plane.

3. In 2007, the monks of Myanmar protested peacefully in the streets of the larger cities. They did so in complete silence, walking the streets in large numbers whilst praying. The military junta opened fire on them, killing many. Not only did they kill the monks, but they killed anyone who was watching the protest including women and children. A lady we spoke to named Lily was in tears telling us about her friend from Yangon whose 10-year-old son was killed watching the protest. He was literally found dead next to a river, where he was watching the protest from a distance. Lily said her friend has not been the same ever since. Good people such as a man that Lily knew, who made clothes and donated food to prisoners of the protests, has ended up in jail with a life sentence even though he had nothing to do with the protesting itself and just had interest in the welfare of the Burmese people.

4. The elections in Burma are forced. Lily, a lady that operated a hotel we stayed at told us about how the government would pick her up in a luxury car and take her to the fancy new capital city. They would pamper her, feeding her with the most amazing food and allowing her to stay in the most beautiful hotels in Myanmar. The next day they would take her into a conference room and tell her that she was to vote for them. She would have to tell her family, her friends and those affiliated with her business that they would have to vote the military in too. The penalty for Lily if these people do not vote for the Junta is the revocation of her hotel license, which would ruin her livelihood. She would literally beg everyone to do that for her. Democratic? I don’t think so.

5. In the streets of every town there are spies who could be anything from an old lady sweeping the streets to a man selling ice creams to children. They are completely literate and educated in many languages, listening out for people bad-mouthing the Junta. Local people could wind up in jail without any warning. The only place you have freedom of speech is in your own home, with your family members or with any people that you trust.

6. If you want to buy a mobile phone in Myanmar, they are relatively cheap. If you want to own a sim card and phone number however, it is between $1000-$1500us. The tax is ridiculously high to stop as much communication in Myanmar as possible.

7. There are white, brown and black zones in Myanmar. This refers to the level of security in these regions, as only certain people are allowed to move within certain regions. Campbell and I would never be able to make it to a black zone without being killed, or put in jail. A white zone is safe for us to be in and the brown zones can go either way. The reason they do this is to hide forced labour, military bases, fighting, poverty, the drug trade and areas of forced evacuation for local people. According to Lily, it is often that the Burmese have some of the worst roads in the World. She believes the reason that they aren’t repaired is to stop people being able to travel quickly or at all, once again stopping information spreading. Furthermore, petrol prices are kept high in Myanmar to make it harder and more expensive for people living there to spread any information. If roads are going to be constructed, it is almost always through forced labour. In the northern region near China, it is said that the Chinese pay for new roads to be made in order to transport oil and mineral resources up across the boarder.

8. Apparently the man who swam across the moat to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest at the time, was actually paid by the Junta. According to his ex-wife, the American would do anything for money. This allowed the government to have more leverage and keep Suu Kyi in jail for longer.

9. Lily could not fly out of Burma for less than $1000us, even though the flight itself is less than $50us. The tax on flights is purposely made very high to keep people from spreading information about Burma around, and to stop people from fleeing the country. Lily’s home country is India and she simply cannot afford to pay the government such ridiculous sums of money even to visit family.

10. Shop owners in Burma can expect to pay 50% of their earnings to the government, 30% to village and community health (only in some areas only where villagers are struggling), 10% to business costs, which leaves less than 10% of total sales for the shop owners. Burma is very rich in rubies, jewels and oil. People who deal with these products have to pay exuberant amounts of money for licences, and the government apparently just makes up new reasons for these industries to pay them more money when they need it.