Off to Australia

Fifteen thousand miles, thirty plus hours of travel time, four airports, three different aircraft and we made it to Perth, as did our luggage, the latter being almost as important as the former. This first leg of our trip just eked out our trips to South Africa to become the longest journey in both time and distance we’ve endured. It also, surprisingly, turned out to be one of the easiest.

I booked this one so that we could fly the longest leg, fifteen hours, on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This airplane was supposed to be designed to make long distance flying easier on people and reduce jet lag.  I must say it did. Kathy and I both had the longest, uninterrupted sleep we have ever had on an airplane and we arrived in Sydney as fresh as we could be. Which was good because we had a three-hour layover and another six hours in the air to get to Perth.

Sometimes the travel gods smile on one and we had a great flight to Perth. Once landed, our driver quickly whisked us to our hotel and soon we were checked into one of the nicest suites we ever had the pleasure of occupying.

 All we had to do now was to wait for our friends Wayne and Leah Hoover to arrive and the fun would begin. Dinner was set for Long Chim, a world class Thai restaurant by David Thompson of Nahm fame, at 6:00 PM. Needless to say, the food was fantastic Thai street food washed down by an equally fabulous Aussie Riesling.  Facing a 7:30 AM departure the next morning for an all-day trip to the Margaret River Wine Region, we retired to our respective rooms satiated and looking forward to the next day's trip.

Fortified by an amazing breakfast, we met our driver Ed and headed south for the three and one-half hour drive to our first winery, Vasse Felix, the oldest in the Region.  I don’t know if it’s part of a Divine plan or if Bacchus was really a location scout for the wine industry, but it seems wine regions are always in the most beautiful areas of any country we have visited.  Margaret River was no exception. After Vasse Felix, which disappointed, we visited Cullen, excellent, Will’s Domain, very good and were served an amazing lunch and finally ended up at Leeuwin for a tasting of their Art Series wines, which were all fabulous. After that it was a quick visit to the amazing Southern Australia Coast and a quick trip through the small town of Margaret River, think Calistoga in the ‘90’s.

We arrived back in Perth at 8:00 PM and were just in time for our dinner reservations at Post, an Italian restaurant, in our hotel, which was again excellent.  In case you are wondering, food and wine play an important part in this trip.

The next morning we were to do a tour of the Perth and its surroundings, which the Hoover’s did do, but Kathy and I saw a different side of Perth.

Suffice it to say that the emergency room at the Royal Perth Hospital was not in our plans the evening before, but things happen. I awoke that morning with a gastrointestinal issue that couldn’t be solved with over the counter preparations. So our driver Ed took us to the Royal Perth for a close-up look at a side of Perth the Hoover’s would not see.

Suffice it to say that it was not life-threatening. The folks in the emergency room were wonderful and things worked out in the end.

We were able to meet the Hoover’s in time to be transported to our next hotel and another wonderful dinner later that evening at Rock Pool.  There we all dined on different varieties of Aussie fish all cooked over an oak grill including the difficult to pronounce Dhu fish, but that’s a story for another time.

You say Ayeyarwady, I say Irrawaddy, by any name it's one long, important river

The Ayeyarwady River ( Irrawaddy is the English name) flows some 1,348 miles from the Northern most reaches of Myanmar, in the cold of the Kumon Mountain Range, to the warmth of the Andaman Sea. It was our "Road to Mandalay" for fourteen days, as we plied upstream on the river boat AMAPura, a delightful, comfortable little boat populated with well-traveled, mainly seniors from Canada, Great Britan, Mexico and the USA. With space for 56, our group of 36 bonded well over the cruise and that added to its enjoyment.

We started our journey amid the hustle and bustle of the Botataung Jetty in Yangon which is right next to the pagoda by the same name. Yangon has been a major port throughout its history and this jetty hummed with commercial activity and commuter ferries, but not like what you might imagine.

Much of the work in Myanmar is still done by hand and the ferries were really only longboats.

As nightfall came on our first night on the boat and the jetty quieted, the beauty of sunset in Myanmar began to reveal itself.

As we travelled upstream, we quickly left twenty-first-century life behind and ventured into what was, for the most part, an agrarian or fishing life with only a glimpse of the modern world in some of the larger villages we passed. Seventy percent of the population live in rural areas and over 50% are unemployed with the number living at subsistence levels incalculable because the former dictatorship refused to acknowledge the issue by publishing statistics. By any measure, it is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita annual income of $916 US.

At first, there were a few towns on the river banks, but as we travelled upstream they became mere villages and, for the most part, temporary settlements lined the shores with the few towns and villages perched on the high banks. The Ayeyarwady floods vast portions of the land it flows through and covers the delta with a rich silt that helps produce the abundant rice crops that help feed the country.

The river truly is life for the people who live along it. Everything depends on it from water for drinking, cooking and washing to putting food on the table and providing employment for those fortunate to find work on it.   

Life goes on for these people no matter that a large ship has pulled right up to the bank. These shots were taken mainly from our room.

River life is tough and the work is mainly done manually. Women and men have it equally as tough.

One of the joys of travelling on the river boat was seeing all of the pagodas and stupas sprinkled  along the banks. A surprise was the morning and evening music that wafted from them. 

One also never knew what fascinating sight might be seen on the river.

At the end of the day, no matter how tired we were from the days activities, the sunsets provided the perfect ending to it and a welcome opportunity to sip a cocktail admiring one of Myanmar's many natural beauties.

 

In future posts, we will leave the ship to delve into the many outstanding sites we saw and the things we experienced.

Time to Recap, Reflect and Write

It's hard to believe that one week ago today, we were leaving our hotel in Yangon for the long trip back to Scottsdale and home. The night before, we had dinner at Le Planteur, which is the best restaurant in Myanmar and one of the best in Asia. We had planned this occasion months earlier and after sticking to pretty much to a regimen of local cuisine, we were eager to dine in the lap of luxury. 

The setting is in this old colonial house with a long lawn that extends to the banks of Inya Lake. We were fortunate to have a table at the edge of the lawn with a clear view to the lake. I had the price-fix menu and Kathy the vegetarian one. The wine list was expansive and mainly French. We had a wonderful Gigondas to accompany our meal.  Here's a look at the menu's. As you will see, fine dining in Myanmar comes at a very reasonable cost. 

  

The meal certainly lived up to its billing. Every course was wonderful and the service was attentive without being intrusive. The pace was leisurely and it gave us ample opportunity to reminisce about what we had experienced over the last twenty-three days.  Myanmar had more than exceeded our expectations.

We had traveled over 600 miles on the Irrawaddy River from Yangon to Mandalay. Then we flew to Inle Lake, in the Shan Region, to spend three more days, before flying back to Yangon, to spend four more days on an intense, immersive, photographic adventure with our wonderful guide Win.

Even with the time we had spent in the country, we had barely scratched the surface of this land that is as large as Texas and that is currently going through momentous change as it transitions to democracy from decades of dictatorship.

In the ensuing posts, I will do my best to give you a look at the people, places and things we encountered and did during our time in the country. The posts will range from the gridlocked streets of Yangon to the quiet and tranquil villages we visited....

 And to the many the many stupas and pagodas we saw that dot this Buddhist land and also take a look at the impact Buddhism has on the people. The more we travel Buddhist countries the more confused I become. The realities of life for these people make Buddhism very different from the depictions of the Dali Lama we see and the many books I have read on the subject. Yet the religion plays a part in most people's lives far more impactful than religion in the secular west.

Stupa

Pagoda

There is so much to share, we hope you will enjoy our travels. We did try to start the trip out correctly, by visiting the Sule Pagoda, in the heart of Yangon, and making merit by honoring our birth days, there are eight in Myanmar. ( Mine was Wednesday morning as opposed to Wednesday evening. Which is a good thing since Kathy's is Saturday and she is a tiger while I am a tuskless elephant and they get along well.) We did that by praying to the buddha at our birth day shrine, pouring water on the Buddha and ringing the gong for all to receive Buddha's blessing.

It must have worked because the rest of the trip was wonderful. 

On the Road to Mandalay or Traveling without Internet

Burma has been called the “Land of the Smiling Faces” and our first week here has certainly shown  that to be true. It could also be called the “land of no connectivity.”  At the Shangri-La Hotel, we had no problems with the internet, but that changed as soon as we embarked on the river boat. Our only way to communicate has been by text and telephone, and with text, one cannot send pictures from here. It’s not that the ship doesn’t have great wi-fi. The signal is very strong. There just isn’t anything for it to connect to.

I am writing this with the hope that when we get to Bagan, in two days, I can send something to tell you all that everything is fine and that we are having a marvellous time. Hopefully there will be enough bandwidth to even transmit a few photos to wet your appetite for what will come when we get home. There are great shots everywhere.

We have seen many pagodas and stupas, also many small towns and markets. Life on the river has a certain rhythm and we are in sync with it. Although life on this floating palace is much different than what we have observed on the passing boats and shores, we still anchor at night and continue our journey at daybreak, as the locals do. 

We have been treated with warm smiles and friendliness everywhere. It’s hard not to really like the Burmese and to hope that they finally get the opportunity to live in freedom, for the history of the country is one of oppression, either by the  British during the Colonial Period or by their own military since independence in 1948. One facet of the new “openness” is that the Burmese are no longer afraid to talk about their past and their government, as well as their aspirations for the future, and talk they do. We are learning much.

We have been without internet since we boarded the ship. There is a very strong signal on board, but it doesn't connect to anything since they don't have satellite, but analog to cell towers, which are pretty much non-existent. We lucked out today as we are having a break at a nice hotel in Bagan and they have a great connection.

We are having a fantastic time and really love every aspect of the trip. I will post when I can, but it's anyone's guess when we will be able to do it again.