"Please come" ---- The Burmese people

About a month ago in Luang Prabang I was chatting to a middle-aged Australian couple about my impending trip to Burma. She was keen to go but he said he didn't want to go to a place where the army periodically shot homeless people in the street to send the fear of God into the rest. I was a bit sceptical about his claims but my first day or so in Rangoon it seemed that there was some evidence. As I wandered around getting my bearings I noticed faded blood-stains on the pavement where someone seemed to have staggered along bleeding profusely, and further along a wall was splattered in faded burgundy like the crime-scene of the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Then I twigged. Most of the older and quite a few of the younger men had what we would describe as a disgusting habit, that of spitting betel juice. They shove green betel leaves into their gobs and masticate with the intensity of Alex Ferguson at a penalty shoot-out which converts them into a swilling mouthful of scarlet saliva which they then unleash on the general public.

In the film Titanic the scrawny 15 year old Jack incredulously wins the favours of the mature, well rounded, rich and sophisticated Kate Winslett. What was his secret seductive weapon? It was spitting. Remember the scene when he taught her the art of gobbing? Well if that's what turns Kate on she should get her shapely arse over to Rangoon; the experience would be orgasmic. When they gob here it's like a performing art. They spread their legs lean forward and using every muscle in their body extract every bit of waste that the body would prefer to off-load and then draw it up to the back of the throat. This process takes about 8 seconds and sounds like a heavy shovel being dragged over concrete. This collection is honed for a few seconds into an orb of phlegm, snot, carrots, and green gilberts all covered in betel juice, before being launched, oscillating through the air in its carrier before landing splat in someones path looking like a 3-D Jackson Pollock miniature. As you step around this blot on the landscape you're reminded of the fact that such is its consistency that apparently it take on average fourteen and a half years to evaporate.

To converse with a user compels you to avert your eyes from broken reddened teeth and gums especially if he has a half a litre of betel juice slushing about. But this is one of the few negatives about my experiences of Burma. Burma is the poorest country in Asia and one of the poorest in the world. Rangoon is the largest city in Burma and has just lost its status as capital on the whim its nasty military dictatorship. There are parts of the city that are serene and beautiful such as Kandawgyi and Inya lakes The main tourist highlight is the stunning Shawadagon Paya which is not just the most important pagoda in Burma but is part of a wider complex of Buddhist shrines and artifacts. There are very few visitors and Brits and Americans are difficult to find. How are the people coping, and what is the story of their daily existence were my initial main interests? The centre of Rangoon is a hive of activity with most of the people having a reason to get up in the morning. There is a thriving black economy and most people seem to eke out a living of some description. They are helpful and friendly with visitors and seem to have a close-knit community spirit. With the modes of transport it's hardly surprising as the buses and pick-ups are crammed with Burmese humanity. Throughout the inner-city there is a multitude of tea-shops where mainly men chat and conduct business. I was taking a photo of such a scenario when a man stepped out of the crowd and explained in pretty good English they were doing gold and gems business. He said "This is how we do it here" before stepping back into the crowd. That happened quite a lot; someone appearing at your side for few moments if you're lost or confused providing much needed advice smiling and moving on.

One corner in the centre of Rangoon was especially noisy and busy. It was like the floor of the stock exchange before the Big Bang with men shouting the odds and gesticulating in coded language. I burrowed through to see what all the fuss was about. At the centre of all this activity was a pile of what we would describe as junk with second hand merchandise such as ancient stereos, mobile phones and electronic units much of which were state-of-the art products twenty years ago. There was a constant flow of merchandise across the city in various modes of conveyance from tri-shaws to buses all, to the western eye, dangerously overloaded. The existence of this black market was reassuring to the traveller who wanted to put money into the people's pockets rather than government coffers. At the airport the kyat (pronounced chat) was offered at the official government bureau at 450 to the dollar. I was advised by a Turkish German teacher (honest) to give it a swerve and use the black market. My taxi driver from the airport led me to a money changer in his ancient dilapidated vehicle with two windows missing and whose manufacturer was a mystery as all identifiable insignias had been vibrated onto the pot-holed roads decades earlier. He pulled over, left the vehicle, returning later with a young unsmiling bloke who looked like he whacked people for the mob. He slid into the back seat with a zipped black bag and the exchange took place in great solemnity. I got 125,000 kyats for my two fifty dollar bills. They were all in the highest denomination which was 1000kyats. That's 125 notes which is quite a wedge. His fingers were a blur as counted them out in about three and half seconds. It wasn't that I didn't trust him of course but mistakes can be made so I double checked while they took a nap.

The delight of visiting an enigmatic culture such as Burma is the current lack of western influence such as MacDonald's or Starbucks. However you have to contend with the fact that the men drink tea all day and all evening, well until 9.00 pm when every place closes. There are places that sell beer or a decent coffee but they are few and far between. One of the pleasures of travelling like this especially in hot humid climates is stop for a cold beer whenever you fancy, rest your weary legs and watch the day to day life of a fascinating and alien culture. There are ex-pat places advertised in the travel books where a chap can always get a snifter and experience a few home comforts provided by wallahs in some colonial splendour and I would like to say that I'm not interested in that kind of Victorian Raj mentality but I'm a sucker for it. Being driven past the The Strand Hotel, which has the same stature and history here as the Raffles hotel in Singapore, by a topi wearing tri-shaw driver gave me a little glow. I paid the price for this kind of pathetic nostalgia as I was determined to travel the road the Mandalay rather than fly or take the sleeper train. My thirteen thousand chat (six quid) bus fair ensured that I spent the most tortuous fifteen hours of my life in battered jalopy where I happened to be the only non-Asian on board.

I loved Mandalay as did most of the travellers I met. The outer walls of Mandalay Fort and its wide moat were on scale that never imagined. The palace and buildings within the walls were destroyed by the RAF in 1945 when they wrested it back from the Japanese. At the corner of the fort was the majestic Mandalay Hill which I climbed almost immediately after my wretched and knackering bus journey such was my enthusiasm. Despite it being the wet season Mandalay was open, rugged and dusty just as I imagined. Again it was devoid of western influence and apart from the multitude of eager to please tri-shaw drivers there was no discernible acknowledgement of an identifiable tourist industry. I had to by my Mandalay T-shirt when I returned to Rangoon.

Mandalay is on the Irrawaddy River and its a 7 hour boat journey to get to Bagan which is the biggest attraction in Burma. An eleventh century king in an act of extreme ostentation and to curry favour with Buddha built hundreds of pagodas in a relatively small geographical area. You can look into the panoramic distance from the top a pagoda and they seem eerily to go on for ever into the distant dry scrub land. You reach these pagodas quaintly by pony and trap. Sunrise and sunset are particularly spectacular. Some people maintain that Bagan is more impressive than Angkor in Cambodia, but I disagree. Angkor represents the magnificent Khmer empire that stretched over Thailand, Vietnam and Laos about the same time as Bagan was being created. Angkor today still looks imposing, and exudes almost chilling power.

There are wonderful places around Mandalay to visit like the ancients cities of Amarpura and Inwa which are visually and atmospherically unique. I especially liked Mingun a couple hours boat ride across and up stream on the Irrawaddy where stands the colossal base or plinth of the unfinished Mingun Paya. I'm a big fan and have a book of paintings of Edward Hopper who painted a lot of atmospheric buildings. Like one of Hopper's paintings this mammoth construction has always fascinated me. The pagoda is only a third of its planned size and has been damaged by an earthquake. I saw a picture of it years ago in travel book and found myself staring fascinated at it for long periods. When I spotted it in the distance from the boat it had the same effect on me as it stood huge, broken but unbowed, bronzed and magnificent in the strong sunlight. I walked around it, climbed to the top of hit, and watched it disappear into the distance as we left. Now I've only got the 437 photos of as memento of that aesthetic experience.

Mandalay is dynamic and vibrant. Goods are carted around city in various modes of transport. It could be a tri-shaw driver peddling an old fridge over the battered and potholed roads on his gearless contraption without complain or a hint of an expletive or one of the many pick-ups carrying any one or all of a car engine, 100 sacks of flour, oil drums, and carpets as well as about fourteen of the human cargo variety. The pick-ups travel at break-neck speed whatever the load. In an adventurous frame of mind I decided to travel by pick-up to Pyin U Lwin which is an ex-British garrison town in the mountains. The locals still refer to it by it's colonial name of Maymyo after the influential Colonel May. There are a lot of colonial landmarks like the Purcell Tower reputedly gifted by Queen Victoria. Maymyo is verging on pretty and looks like a New England town at the turn of the twentieth century with its brightly coloured well maintained ornate wooden buildings. To add to this image instead of pony and traps like Bagan they have small stagecoaches. I wanted to ride shotgun but my jobsworth driver made me sit and sulk inside.

After a few days I returned to Mandalay. The trip up the mountain in the pick-up was OK if a little cramped and uncomfortable but it was worth it for the novelty of going native. The return trip was down the mountain and was rip roaring affair. For almost three hours I was terrified and exhilarated in equal measure. Pick-ups drum up as much business as possible before they set off which means there is human and non human cargo crammed on top and inside. The driver then puts his foot down to the floorboards and the response of the vehicle depends of its condition and the load plus or minus gravity. There are usually two youthful "helpers" on the back to load and unload and in between times they try to outdo each other and those in other pick ups on the road with motorised gymnastics as they clamber all over the vehicle at high speed and hang on by their fingertips. When we stopped they habitually waited until the driver pulled away before leaping on flamboyantly. The pick-ups race each other honking triumphantly as they pass. I don't know what G-force we experienced as we hurtled down the mountain but my cheeks were flapping against my ears. Depending on the distance these vehicles usually have to stop to hose the radiators and cool the engine. In my pick-up clean water was poured into the steaming radiator which caused it to be returned, bubbling, erupting and brown. I reckon it was 80% Radweld.

The Burmese live with a military dictatorship. In the areas I travelled there wasn't an obvious military presence. I did witness what seemed like forced labour when young disaffected looking youths seemed to do be doing some enforced involuntary community work. Armed militia don't stand on street corners or walk the streets. You won't see truckloads of uniformed thugs like the Sudanese Janjaweed. However while I was in Mandalay there were demonstrations in Rangoon and arrests because the government had doubled the price of petrol and basic foodstuffs were more than doubled. CNN stated that these outrageous moves could be a ploy to draw out the ringleaders of political dissent. These demonstrators won't be released in weeks or months but years. I saw a well known vaudeville act called the Moustache Brothers which has in the past slipped in anti-government satire and openly supported Aung San Suu Kyi. The leader of this trio was jailed for 7 years in the 90's for dissent. He was released in 2001 and was told that he's not permitted to perform outside his own home. So they perform in his lounge for tourists (about a dozen at a time at $6.00 a head.) I take this as an acceptance of tourism by this brave troupe. I had many conversations with fellow travellers and the local Burmese about the ethics of visiting Burma. I didn't hear any negative comments. All the Burmese asked us to entice more people there to help alleviate their poverty. One tri-shaw driver stated that the Brits (and the Americans) don't come because "your government don't like our government" as if they had no say in the matter and these decisions were made above their heads. Another activist Ma Thanegi who was imprisoned for three years and is a close friend Aung San Suu Kyi is of the opinion that her leader is too uncompromising and after 20 years of deterioration in the lives of the most vulnerable in Burma it's time to open up tourism and take advantage of the Asian boom where the lives of the poor have improved dramatically in countries that few would describe as democratic or liberal and who's human rights records are hardly distinguished. This is the view of the majority and every person in the street that I and other travellers spoke to.

The images of Burma are dominated by the peaceful aura of Buddhism. The ubiquitous monks in the orange robes, the thousands of pagodas and the unique landscapes. The brutal military dictatorship incongruously bestrides and undermines all this hopefully on a temporary basis. I and my fellow travellers made a lot Burmese people happy by our visit. The government are keen to develop tourism and have just built a new as yet unfinished airport in Rangoon. The last thing they want is the desired hordes of western tourists witnessing or indeed getting involved with demonstrations. Some Burmese are predicting that when the junta's leader is replaced (apparently in two years time) things will improve. Twenty years of isolation hasn't worked. The overnight transfer of power to a democratically elected government seem highly unlikely, so a gradualist approach seems worth a try and tourist could play a vital role in freeing this beleaguered nation.