Myanmar: Eat, pray and be surprised

Published Oct 6, 2015

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Naypyidaw - The chanting of a Buddhist monk next door (amplified by a sound system) stirs the heavy, hot night air.

He’s a bit of a rock star in this part of Myanmar and his speaking engagements (performances?) tend to be booked up more than a year in advance. And this is a potato festival after all – its importance underlined by the flags on poles up the road.

We Westerners, sitting down to a home-cooked meal with a local family, don’t expect a religious celebration nearby. But nor do we expect what happens next after sharing a curried chicken and spicy fish dish with a peanut sauce-infused green salad.

Our host, her husband and their friend produce a pair of guitars and begin to sing. The husband sings, in Burmese, of his love for coffee and his love for his wife, who makes him coffee. Then the men break into John Denver. Even here, in Bagan in the centre of what was once Asia’s second-most closed society (after North Korea), everybody, it seems, has heard of Country Roads, even if they’re not word or tone perfect: “Wes ferchinn-in-ear, Marntin mama/Tayyyke me ho countree road…”

It’s another curious contrast in a land of curiosities. The country, formerly known as Burma (until 1989), is struggling to rejoin the 21st century after decades of military rule and the destruction wrought by misapplied socialism. There’s a national election next month, although activist Aung San Syu Chi (who was put under house arrest for many years) can never be elected president. The military saw to that by forcing through a constitutional amendment which bars those married to foreigners from holding the highest office in the land.

Change is all around you in the streets which are still redolent with both Buddhist and British colonial culture and history – in cities like the capital,Yangon (formerly Rangoon) and Mandalay. The teeming multitudes of Chinese-made scooters and motorcycles flow like swarms of angry bees (except in Yangon where a general was so irritated by them, he banned them), while second-hand Japanese cars (right-hand drive although Myanmar drives on the right) point to a growing prosperity. There’s a Mercedes-Benz dealer on part of the property of the swankiest hotel in Mandalay and billboards proclaim the imminent arrival of BMW.

Yet, it remains a deeply spiritual and religious country where the hundreds of thousands (truly) of stupas (pagodas and temples) are working places of worship rather than monuments. At the most well known – the 50m-tall Shwedagon Pagoda atop a hill in Yangon – thousands of ordinary people go there every day. The massive structure is covered in gold leaf (kilograms of the stuff) and topped by a 76-carat diamond.

The best time to go to the temple, says Gavin Tollman, chief executive of guided holiday company Trafalgar, is at sunrise. It’s mystical, he says.

And he’s right. Partly because early morning is quiet and partly because it’s cooler, the pagoda at dawn has an enveloping peace about it. People are praying, making offerings, meditating.

Trafalgar is hoping to get in on the ground floor as tourism starts to gather momentum: Tollman says the country has “an amazing variety of historic and cultural interest as well as great natural beauty”.

Best thing for South Africans is that – despite religious and insurgency troubles in remote places – Myanamar is one of the safest countries in Asia. And, the reality is that, now the military have opened the bottle of the genie of tourism, the outside is coming in… and it will be impossible to go back to the bad old ways.

Despite the iron hand of the military – which included gunning down hundreds of monks conducting a peaceful protest a few years ago – the people of Myanmar still seem to be proud of their country’s history and its culture and many, like our guide Nyein Moe, welcome foreigners.

“I can learn from you and you can learn from me. And I can show you what a beautiful country this is,” he says. The former teacher and published author has been a tour guide and English interpreter for nine years and he loves his job. In his anecdotes, you can see how far the country has come.

One night, he recalls, at about 11pm – when many were asleep – the military government “demonetised”the country’s currency, the kyat (pronounced “chet”).

“When we woke up in the morning, we could no longer use our money. It was a terrible time, but we Burmese people can get by. So many started bartering things…”

These days, it is no longer illegal for ordinary citizens to hold dollars and the American banknotes (people will only accept new, unmarked ones) are accepted in most tourist places. There are also ATMs now dotted around the main cities and credit cards are taken at the big hotels and restaurants.

The infrastructure is surprisingly good: Top hotels are excellent and provide wi-fi internet access, albeit slower than we are used to. The internal airlines – most utilising an up-to-date fleet of Canadian-made ATR twin turboprops – also seem reliable and safe. And the way they check you in before boarding – with a sticker placed on your chest or arm – is quaint… but it works. Flying is the transport mode of choice when crossing the country, which stretches about 2 500km north to south and about 900km east to west. Although the road system has improved over the past five years, most vehicles travel very slowly indeed, because speed limits are low – and enforced.

Our Trafalgar itinerary started in the capital and progressed to the place of the pagodas, Bagan in the centre of the country. The company promises “Cultural Insights”and with a guide like Nyein Moe, these are plentiful. The tours also include visits to local specialists, who demonstrate everything from the ancient art of lacquer work (a simple bowl, fashioned on a reed skeleton and layered with lacquer, can take six months to make) to how to cook Burmese speciality foods. This latter is a hands-on process, as we discovered at Inle Lake, where we made our own lunch.

The evening with the local family was part of Trafalgar’s “Be My Guest” programme, which takes tour participants into the real life of the countries they visit. Our evening was memorable, because the last thing I expected was John Denver karaoke…

Another thing none of us (a group of journalists from around the world taking the tour ahead of the first commercial tours in January next year) expected was a vineyard. Outside the town of Taunggyi in the southern Shan state is the first winery in Myanmar, set up in 1999 by a German, Bert Morsbach.

It produces a range of wines, including a quite acceptable sauvignon blanc and a red. The company’s prestige white and red have a South African connection – something else I didn’t expect.

The vineyard imports grape juice from South Africa, which has already undergone a first fermentation at home. The Myanmar vineyard ferments the juice a second time and ages the red in oak barrels before bottling. We tasted the company’s range on a terrace overlooking a beautiful poll and garden and on to the vineyards themselves. A memorable setting and wine which was memorable in its unexpectedly good taste…

Taste is a central theme of Trafalgar’s Myanmar odyssey. The food is unmistakably Asian but, to a palate like mine – which is craving hotter and spicier food as I grow older – the curries did not have the bite I anticipated. However, they will be just about right for most South Africans’ tastes. There is an interesting mix of foods, from beef to pork to fish (plenty of fish, because the country’s rivers, lakes and sea teem with them), with all manner of vegetables thrown in.

You get an interesting fusion of Indian and Chinese, but the main style is Thai which, Burmese speakers will assert, is because Thailand would be nothing without Myanmar.

Hotel breakfasts offer more conventional foods for European palates and stomachs, which crave a bit of cheese and bacon and some of the croissants we sampled were really good, despite being not quite up to Parisian standards. I found myself gravitating towards the excellent Myanmar Lager beer – perhaps because it is served in large “quart” bottles. Having said that, beer is an excellent way to keep hydrated in the heat and humidity, which at times is stifling at the coast.

A highlight of the tour was an opportunity to take part in the “Trafalgar Cares” programme, which aims to put something back into the communities in which the company operates.

One day we travelled to a monastery to hand out books and writing materials to the children and then, outside Mandalay, we spent time at another monastery, which is a home of girls and young women.

To call them nuns is not quite accurate, said Nyiem Moe. Nor are they the female equivalent of monks.

But they live the same monastic life as do the other, estimated 500 000, monks in the country. (Interestingly, being a monk need not be a lifetime commitment in Myanmar: you may come and go as you please, said Nyiem Moe… and teachers often give up a month of their holiday time to become monks in monasteries before returning to their normal lives.)

At the monastery with the “nuns”, we watched in fascination as they knelt, with shaven heads, before a statue of Buddha and began their chants. Then we sat down with them to have lunch – after some of the tour party helped dish up the food…a meal sponsored by Trafalgar.

It was a lunch unlike any other I’ve had.

The prayers and chants of the girls, before we sat cross-legged at low tables, had the calming effect I had come to expect from the whole Buddhist way. And the highlight was – again unexpected – a cup of iced-coffee,which the locals make with a mixture of coffee, condensed milk and ice.

On our last evening in Myanmar, I strolled around the moat of the Royal Castle in Mandalay, watching the sky catch fire from the embers of the sun.

I noted that there weren’t any of the flying fishes as there were along Kipling’s Road to Mandalay…

Nevertheless, Myanmar is a land which will surprise you.

l Brendan Seery was a guest of Trafalgar Tours, which will be starting its Myanmar programme in January next year. The 11-day tour includes top-class hotel accommodation and a number of meals. Prices start at R45 800 a person sharing with 10 percent discount for early bookings. www.trafalgar.com

Brendan Seery, Saturday Star

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