A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Kyiaktiyo, Myanmar

I had been travelling half the day before I hit a major snag. By bus and truck I had made it to Kinpon village at the base of the mountain with the Golden Rock temple, but it seems that during the rainy season there just aren't many trucks going the rest of the way. So I sat myself down on a concrete bench in what seemed to be the women and children section of the truck stop and began to wait for us to reach the magic threshhold for the truck.

It was an easy trip up until that point. At the tea shop in the morning I met a former teacher with good English who helpfully got me on the right bus, one of the local variety in which you crawl over sacks of grain to get to your seat with the exposed springs. The next step, getting off the bus at the right village, was made easier by the fact that my guidebook has a big color photo of the Golden Rock on the cover. As usual, pointing and looking inquisitive did the trick, and a crowd of fellow passengers not only made sure I got off at the right time, but also found me a personal escort to guide me through the village to the trucks that would take me to the base of the mountain. Thankfully, my escorts also arranged for me to sit in the front seat with the driver for this leg -- there were already people hanging off the back and sides of the truck when I arrived. There is no concept of maximum occupancy in Myanmar.

So in Kinpon I waited with the Burmese ladies, played with the children, and began to get another taste of Rainy Season Tourism. When I arrived in the village the weather was decent; cloudy with some sunbreaks, as we say in Seattle, but here was the key thing -- I could see the golden rock from the village. That is critical -- if I could see the rock from the village, it should mean I would be able to see the village from the rock.

Unfortunately, we waited for 90 minutes for the truck to fill up. And this was no pitiful Toyota pickup this time, oh no. It was dump truck sized and wouldn't move without a minumum of 35 people. Mind you, many more than 35 could fit on this truck -- in Myanmar, a unit of public transportation is never too full to add more passengers or cargo. On my trip back, for example, we carried maybe 40 people plus 20 huge baskets full of durian (the stinkiest fruit on God's earth -- reportedly smells like rotting flesh, though I'm no expert on rotting flesh). There were six guys actually perched atop the cab and several hanging on the sides for dear life as we corkscrewed down the mountain at top speed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The truck, which winds up the mountain for 45 minutes, doesn't take you to the Golden Rock itself. It takes you to a parking lot surrounded by restaurant shacks from which you walk steeply uphill for another hour or so before you reach the government outpost where they charge you $6 for the privilege (this was one of the most annoying things about Myanmar -- very high admission prices which go not to the temple but directly to the repressive government of amoral generals. It became a bit of a game to avoid these fees in various ways.) The hike was a good workout, but I could see as I sweated my way up, swatting aside the sedan chair guys who were waiting for me to collapse in a panting heap, that I had waited for the truck for just a little too long. The fog lowered, and it started to rain. Incidentally, why do those sedan chair guys all stick so close to me on these hikes? I must look like I'm about to have a coronary.

After parking myself uninvited at the government checkpoint to wait out a sudden downpour (the guys there were quite friendly and bored with their jobs -- I found that most government workers loathed the government), I climbed the last bit, several precarious sets of stairs and a long marble walkway among temples and monuments. This was only precarious because of the requirement that you do the whole thing barefoot; with a little traction that marble wouldn't have been nearly so treacherous.

By this point, the temple complex was entirely fogged in. I gingerly made my way along, having painfully learned the lesson of slippery marble the day before, and just as I was thinking "hey, I could walk right past this damned rock and never even see it" I heard a loud "Hello Hello" from a young man who was running across the plaza toward me. Damned surefooted Asians. Anyway, I had indeed just passed the Golden Rock, so I came on back. It is indeed a cool thing, though it certainly doesn't glow in the rain like it reportedly does in the sunshine. Its billing as a "wonder of the world" on the t-shirts may be a bit of a stretch as well. The gilded rock, with a little stupa on top, is perched impossibly on another rock on a cliffside. The area is prone to earthquakes, and it is indeed remarkable that it hasn't just toppled over at some point. Here's a picture: Kyiaktiyo.

Despite the somewhat disappointing rock, no journey is wasted in Myanmar. The village at the base of the mountain was delightful, and even though they must see a fair number of tourists there, they aren't a bit jaded. Men, women and children alike say "hello" and "bye bye" somewhat interchangeably, and as I walked by mothers would point me out to their kids. The village is poor. In fact you can tell how far Myanmar is behind the other Asian countries by how few metal or tile roofs they have. The housing and shops in the southern country side are still, for the most part, built with bamboo, spare boards and stuff from the jungle; very picturesque for tourists, but I bet in the rainy season they really wish for a better roof.


Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 8:45 PM