July 2007 Archives

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

Lord Byron

Salute to the fallen heroes and those who dare for Burma!

Some novels about Burma I have recently read are Amitav Gosh's The Glass Palace, Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning and Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner. I think they are good, but not as good as the classics by George Orwell or Maurice Collis. These old authors lived in Burma. Moreover, they knew Burmese language and the people. The recent authors did not live in Burma. Their expressions lack some real touch, especially Amy Tan's.

I have been reading Amy Tan's "Saving Fish from Drowning."

A glimpse of the book

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes." - Anonymous Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers as they come to discover that the Burma Road is paved with less-than-honorable intentions, questionable food, and tribal curses. And then, on Christmas morning, eleven of the travelers boat across a misty lake for a sunrise cruise - and disappear. Drawing from the current political reality in Burma and woven with pure confabulation, Amy Tan's picaresque novel poses the question: How can we discern what is real and what is fiction, in everything we see? How do we know what to believe?

The above text is taken from world catalog descriptions about the book.

The sad news of famous Burmese actor "Dwe", who died yesterday, was not picked up by an established news media, rather by a blogger. The blog entry came up online the same day within a few hours of the incident.

May Dar Wii has been posting regularly with an irregular internet access from Burma. Her blog gives the readers firsthand descriptions of life in Burma.

I am sure the future of Burmese news media will move to the Internet, which is a good thing because it's much harder to censor online contents. Let's look towards the future. Even the Chinese hasn't successfuly been filtering all of the so-called "unhealthy-for-citizens" information. The arms race between censorship and anti-censorship measures have already begun in Burma. I am sure anti-censorship endeavors will not fail.

The Internet and blogosphere has become a place to write contemporary history, which otherwise would have been forgotten because of censorship in printed media. I hope someone will write about 7th July in Wikipedia. Here is an article about 7th July in Burmese by Myint Zay.

About 7th July

7th July Memorial (Picture taken from Myint Zay's blog)

Bob and Ramu are my friends from Burma. Bob is originally from Chicago and currently teaching English in Burma. Ramu is a nice-smiling young man from Rangoon. Here is their adventure in Burma. Ramu wrote the detailed account of the trip.

Adventure of Bob and Ramu

Dear friends,

This is about the trip that Bob and I took during our Water Festival time. We left from Yangon on 9th April. We flew to Mandalay. We stayed one night in the Mandalay Royal City Hotel. The next day, we took a train at midnight to go to Indawgyi Lake, the biggest lake in Myanmar in Kachin State. The train was supposed to leave from Mandalay at 4:00 in the evening but we waited for the train until midnight. This is our train system in Myanmar. We spent 19 hours on the train to get to the village of Hopin. We wanted to go to Indawgyi Lake on the same day, but we didn't have any choice because there was no transportation to Indawgyi Lake at nighttime. By the way, we had a nice time on the train.

We slept one night in Hopin. The next day, we took a truck to go to the lake. We took a seat on the roof of the truck. It was a really uncomfortable seat and the roads are really bad. We still have back pain from that trip. The truck took six hours to get to the lake. Indawgyi Lake does not look like Inle Lake. We stayed there two nights in the Army Guest House. We didn't have any choice because there is only one guesthouse. Around Indawgyi Lake there is an elephant camp in the forest. We traveled there by motorbike taxi. We went there on two motorbikes with four men. Oh, I forgot to say, beginning from Hopin an officer of the SPECIAL POLICE followed us for the rest of our trip. Every morning he woke me up to ask questions about our trip. I had to report to him. It was ridiculous. I had two small motorbike accidents on the way from the elephant camp. My driver was the special police officer. He was not an expert driver. Around the lake there is nothing interesting, not like Inle Lake.

On 14th April, the first day of the Water Festival, we traveled back to the village of Hopin by motorbike. All along the way, village children gathered on the road to throw buckets of water. When we reached Hopin, we were very wet. We drank beer and Kachin whisky and danced with our drivers while we waited for the train to Myitkyina. The train took six hours to get to Myitkyina. The second day of the Water Festival, we went to the old Baptist church in Myitkyina. Bob met some of his students at that church. Then we visited the whole city. It was fun.

On the third day of the Water Festival, two of Bob's students took us on a trip outside of Myitkyina by motorbike. We went to the place where the Mehka and Malihka Rivers meet to form the Ayeyarwaddy (Irrawaddy) River. We swam in the river and the water was very cold because it comes from the Putao Ice Mountains. We had a good time there. We stayed one more day in Myikyina, but we didn't do anything. We slept and ate, that's all.

After four days in Myitkyina, we took a cargo truck to go to the town of Bhamo. It took eight hours to get there. We were very tired on that truck. We stayed three nights there. One day we took a horse cart to see a bamboo bridge. It is probably the longest bamboo bridge in Myanmar. They rebuild it every year after the rainy season. Our driver thought we were crazy. He said, "Why does everyone want to see it? It's only a bridge." It took half an hour to cross the bridge. We walked to a village on the other side and drank tea. We got back to the driver three hours later. It was so hot and we were so tired. We took a bath in the river with the children at sunset.

The next day, we took a boat trip to Katha. The scenery was beautiful, and the captain was great. He let us sit with him and he explained the history of that area. In Katha, we couldn't find a guesthouse for Bob because that town has only one guesthouse that accepts foreigners, and it was full. Finally, we begged one guesthouse manager to let us stay there. It was cheap and okay. We stayed two nights there and visited the town. George Orwell lived in Katha, and we found the house where he stayed. Then, we had another boat trip to go back to Mandalay. We slept two nights on the boat. We had a really nice time on the boat. We made new friends, took many pictures and made some funny movies.

We arrived in Mandalay on the morning of 25th April, around 11:00. On the same day at midnight, we took a train back to Yangon. This trip, we had a really nice time and a lot of adventures. Our trip took 17 days, and we traveled like local people. We took trains, trucks, boats, buses, motorbikes, horse carts, and we walked. We drank Kachin rice whiskey and ate hot and spicy Kachin food. We stayed in noisy guesthouses and shared our cabin on the boat with several rats. That's all for now. We are going to tell you more adventure stories in the future.

Cheers,
Ramu