THE CITY THAT LIVES LIKE A VILLAGE

Back in Mandalay

I used to pity the poor poll taker, trolling city sidewalks with a clipboard asking strangers questions. Until I realized my job is the same. As a guidebook author, it can feel like you're paid to ask people their telephone number, and how much they charge for a bottle of mineral water.

In nearly all the places I've gone -- Bulgaria, Mexico, Queens -- I go anonymously. It amuses me sometimes when a hotel proprietor complain 'no Lonely Planet author visited US' when one, perhaps me, actually stayed there and never told them. It's important to be anonymous so you can keep the service normal, as any random traveler would expect to get walking off the street. And it's particularly important to keep mum in a place like Myanmar, where -- if word got out that you were a 'writer' -- you could be deported on a day's notice.

No one has recognized me from the book photo, including immigration, until I got to Mandalay, a big booming city that, Yangonites like to say, 'lives like a village.' A trishaw guy who rents bikes for about $1-a-day helped me for a full week last time. Dealing with repeated questions about weird things like where to find cheap puppets, cheap chapatis, get credit card transfers. He earned my trust, and on the last day I told him what I was doing. Yesterday I was back in downtown Mandalay needing a bike, and I saw him walking a block from his stand, and he immediately recognized me. 'Robert!' I was impressed. 'You're fatter now. Very handsome. Too thin before.' I hadn't realized. 'The toy you gave me... it's up on my cupboard at home!' I had forgotten.

The downtown guesthouse I'm staying is easily the best cheapie in the city. I checked in yesterday and got one of the pricier rooms -- $7 per night, with a zany tile and wall panel job that would make Mondrian's head spin -- and negotiated it WAY down to $6.66 per night for three nights, by simply asking. The manager realized a day later she had seen me before. 'You've been here before. You came by bike, then saw a room, and wrote down the rates on a business card, then came back a day later...' She said it all with a guarded smile -- I think she's figured out why I'm here.

Yesterday I met a tiny 83-year-old Indian Muslim man who approached me on the street to ask if he could speak a little English. He retold his family story... he fought with them against the Japanese in WWII, then his father moved to Bombay, and he moved from Pwin-U-Lwin to his daughter's home in Mandalay. He then introduced me, quite formally, to his 10-year-old grandson. Wrapping up his little two-minute talk, he asked, 'Can you understand my English?' Yes, very well. 'Oh, very good, sir. Thank you for speaking with me.'

I just walked by and saw him sitting on his daughter's porch watching traffic of ancient buses filled with commuters and monks, a few trishaw drivers looking for fares, and a motorbike beeping by or two. I waved, and he gave me a quick salute.

'Hello again, sir!'

FINDING CHRISTMAS IN MYANMAR'S 'DRY ZONE'

Does Dust Count as White?

A hundred miles or so north of Yangon, where I am now, Myanmar's big fat dry belly begins. In towns like Magwe, Meiktila, Taungoo and Mingyan (rhymes with 'engime') palm leaves sway in the light breeze,
but during Christmas season – the heart of the dry season – they're
caked in dust. If you squint, it almost looks like snow. Add to that
the multi-layers of wool sweaters, wind breakers and army-style green
coats, locals put on to fight off the dusk 70-degree temperatures, wearing them all day as I sweat in a t-shirt, it actually almost looks cold.

Christmas is everywhere in Myanmar, as it's not hard to sell this
country on another light-filled festival. Everywhere you go, you see Christmas tree displays, fake Santas, fake reindeers. People put strings of rainbow lights on their lone balcony plant, or a tree before their teashop.

In Taungoo, I stopped to photograph a makeshift shop called 'Merry X'mas' (with apostrophe) selling crappy Chinese imported ornaments and fake two-foot trees. At a SuperOne 'supermarket' on Yangon's Aung San Rd, they sold gift baskets for the occasion: each filled with coffee mix, tea bags, peanuts, crackers and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label. Cost was 49,000 kyat, or about $40.

I've been wondering how it'd be to be away from Oklahoma for Christmas this year. And I've been surprised at how melancholy it can feel to brace for a 'lost Christmas.' As a kid, each Christmas had an identity – the time I got a dinosaur I was scared of, the time Chip's family got a blue van, the time I had mono. The weeks beforehand, I played a one-on-zero game of 'knee football' that I'd keep track of on successive nights in a tiny notebook from TG&Y – a one-kid series of the Christmas Bowl. Each year, one team – the Monsters – would win, usually with a lobbed TD pass late. I believe the Monsters never had a first-half lead, come to think of it. I always felt that it was a travesty that no team in college of pro football named themselves that, so I let them prevail. As a kid I knew, nothing beats a Monster.

I knew this year Christmas would be different, and it certainly began that way. After a surreal Christmas Eve in Pay Nyi Daw – the Myanmar generals' insane new project of building a new capital (more on this later) – I bused to Meiktila arriving just before midnight brought Dec 25. At the first hotel, they told me that 'all hotels are full,' givinga sideways open-hand pivot to show 'no luck…' I hesitated a few minutes in disbelief. Motioned to their courtyard bench, wondering if I could sit there till 7am? No restaurants were open, and my hotel was on a dark alley near the mosquito swarms of a Meiktila Lake.

Hesitation often works in travel, and did here. The manager and his son murmured then shyly approached, 'We have one room upstairs… would you like to see it?' Off we went, the son leading me to a concrete box closet with a single bed stuffed in and another bed frame stained in a betel-nut spit (locals check teeth-staining betel net, often spitting blood-like pools of betel/saliva mix on streets; a week ago I got a splash on my trousers), cob webs and a nasal-clearing dose of just-applied insecticide. 'Three dollars, no breakfast. OK?' Like I could refuse. (It was a rare small-town hotel with 24-hour generator, and I kept the light on all night, and the door cracked to air it out.)

The next morning, I borrowed a bike to collect a few facts, and stopped into see the British officer's club where Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris honeymooned many decades ago (now part of a hotel), I left for Mandalay. The bus guys charged me double the local price, but I insisted on a front seat, right before the cracked windshield, so I could watch the scene of passing ox carts, fast hand-offs of toll fees at gates (the driver will NOT slow down for anything), and graphic billboards of traffic accidents to calm down drivers. After three hours we pulled into Mandalay's dusty 'highway bus station,' as monk chants from a nearby monastery nearly drowned out the taxi offers. I picked one, and he soon pulled out a creased photo of a woman. I knew what was next. 'You want? 30,000 kyat' (about $25). No thanks.

Once checked into my guesthouse I rented a bike and hit the Mandalay streets determined to find some sense of Christmas. I pedaled past a lively street pwe (traditional festival), with balloon games, weird snacks, giant ancient film projectors set up showing stilted clips of traditional dance for a couple dozen sitting Indian-style in the middle of 27th St – it was all to raise money for a local monastery. I dropped into nearby BBB, a ski lodge looking place serving 'European food.' A Chinese family kept on scarves and coats during their Christmas dinner. I needed something other than noodles to tribute Dec 25, so went for a $1.50 burger. 'Sardine or beef?' asked the waiter in a striped fake Izod. (I went with beef.)

On the way back to the hotel, I drove along the long moat of Mandalay Palace – the last home of the last Burmese king (until the new one, more on this later) – and passed Sedona Hotel, the fanciest Mandalay gets. Locals were streamed in twos past the cheerful security guard to pose with an elaborate Christmaslight display. A six-year-old kid was flashing fake gang signs in front of a tree in lights, a couple women took turns photographing each other before a Santa-and-his-reindeer display in the front lawn.

My camera batteries ran out of juice and I started back. At the corner, two trishaw drivers – deeply suntanned faces, in camouflage jackets, knelt at one corner. I heard them mumble something and I looked over. Guys who make $2 to $4 a day thrive off jacked-up fares from foreigners, or commissions if we buy a puppet or gem from a shop he takes them to. I know where this is going. He'll say something like 'where you go?' or 'you need ride tomorrow… I know all the sights' or even worse 'you want woman?' One looked at me and started to say something.

'Merry Christmas,' he said bobbing his head.

Oh.

'Yes! Thank you. Merry Christmas.'

TIMELESS IN MRAUK U

Boat Collisions & Rat Sex

Some read novels by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway less for the great writing but the envy of experiencing exciting transitional times in transitional lands at ages long past. That's happening now in Myanmar. One of my favorite places seems even farther back.

The last time I visited the Rakhine ancient kingdom of Mrauk U (Monkey-Egg, no one knows why -- no monkeys around, but indeed a few eggs) I was a day behind a group of Italians who hired a 'private boat' to take them after dark on the six-hour trip from Sittwe. An unexpected storm came, capsized the boat, and five were killed. The next day it was all sun, and I was safely board a much larger ferry boat, enjoying stops at riverside towns were hawkers offered insects on a stick for a boat-time snack.

This time I tempted the night, when the temperatures drop radically and the Milky Way's smear with stars cross the sky -- something I've not seen the equal of, even in deserts. The two boat drivers used a flashlight-style device to warn oncoming boats -- or find out where shallow spots were. We never hit the shore -- not that we could make it out often -- but we did collide with a rowboat right before we arrived. The boat didn't capsize but the driver sure gave our guy ugly looks as we passed.

Soon we arrived at the Mrauk U dock. You could just make out lights ashore -- at first looking like some pagan display of fire, then realizing it was just the striped lights leaking through a thatch hut. 'Where you from?' asked a thin guy in a longyi, grabbing my offensively heavy backpack to take to his trishaw. (I let him.) Another held my hand as I waddled onto a long, thin, wobbly plank-board bridge to the shore; 'careful!'

I clicked on my flashlight as the pedal-powered trishaw squeaky pedals weaved us over bridges and past commuters not worried about light. In town a couple guys sat under a lone buzzing fluorescent bulb outside a tiny cinema (TV with VHS tapes) plucking on old acoustic guitars. Soon we pulled into a small guesthouse that had three clocks over the desk: Bangkok, Myanmar, Arakan. Arakan (the alternate name for this, Rakhaing State). Doesn't that have the same time as 'Myanmar'?, I asked. 'It does now, but we used to be 15 minutes earlier.' (I love this.)

The guesthouse rooms had plyboard walls (you hear your neighbor snoring plainly), but staff worked to make them inviting. A tiny desk in the corner, with a sculpture of Mrauk U's distinctive 64 traditional hairstyles, worn in the days before 1784, when this was a lively international capital, with samurai guides, present-day Bangladeshi Muslem archers, and occasional Portuguese pirates that were seized and executed publicly in horrible ways. On the wall, placed too high, was a tiny framed print of two eagles. The American Room.

In the morning, I was awoken by murmuring chants at 5am -- it sounded like a pagan ceremony, and it surrounded by room. Soon a loud crash came on the corrugated metal roof above me, then a hissing sigh, and another crash. Rat sex? When I went downstairs for breakfast, I skipped the subject of the frightening animal romp, but asked about the chants. With a bow, the tiny manager told me, 'Oh, that's just students next door. It's a girl school. They were memorizing their lessons. History today.' They memorize fast. 'Yes, very fast.' As he spoke, you could see -- in this town of 20,000 without much electricity, where locals get around by foot -- woman with bright dresses carrying tin water pots from Bangladesh on their heads or propped against their hips. They take them to a nearby well to collect water for the morning -- they'd be back again in the afternoon, and evening. It never ceased to be fascinating to see in four days there.

There is very little here that's changed since 1784. That's maybe something worth writing about.

SITTWE ROCKS

I have a new favorite city

A scrappy port town near Bangladesh, where the wide muddy Kaladan River mixes with the Bay of Bengal, Sittwe is not loved by most visitors. Getting here means a full-day boat ride from an already-isolated port town Taunggok – or an hour flight from Yangon or Thandwe, which I opted for. A couple hotels, powered round-the-clock by generators... don't expect a fan to be blowing after 11pm. It's a diverse place – something like 25% of the locals are referred to as kala (outsider, or foreigner), in this case meaning Muslims. Some are descendants from the nearby Arakan Kingdom of 'Monkey-Egg' (Mrauk-U), who came from today's Bangladesh as archers for a religion-tolerant king. Others are more recent arrivals – people without a nation, called outside Myanmar as the Rohingya. Nearly everyone who passes through, takes a quick taxi to the jetty for a (sometimes leaky) boat ride six or seven hours to Mrauk-U. But I had a hard time leaving. Despite its remoteness, Sittwe is not exactly unknown. During September's protests, something like 20,000 locals – most of whom are Rakhine (or Arakan), a ethnic group similar to, but distinct (very), from the Burmese – followed monks down the main road (Main Rd) and past the new government-built clock tower to the City Hall, where they shouted for democracy. No deaths occurred. One local told me, "Half of the soldiers were Arakan. We heard them warn to Burmese solidiers, 'if you shoot, you'll get my peanut" (meaning bullet). No shots were fired. My timing coincided with Arakan State Day, "a government-made holiday," one Rakhine local said dismissively. Still I went to Lakandaya, a shimmering gold zedi visible from the plane on landing (it's just after the octagonal prison if you're on the right side of the plane), where thousands of monks holding brown umbrellas, kids in t-shirts, and men and women in longyis stood on tip-toe, or climbed trees, to look over a mass of spectators at a couple traditional Rakhine events. The first was a team of bare-chested men, with their longyis wrapped into something like a padded Speedo. They climbed a greased-up bamboo pole standing at least 30 feet, to retrieve a white flag at the top. One by one, the teams would climb on each others' backs on hold on desperately to the pole, then eventually slide after making it 15 or 20 feet up.

A local I met said, "Come, wrestling's about to start. I got VIP seats." We breezed past the uniformed police and into padded armchairs in a shaded makeshift 'bandstand' looking over a round sand pit where two men kicked and grabbed and slapped at each other. There is no three-second pin in Rakhine wrestling, or fancy costumes. They took turns as an 'attacker' or 'defender,' with the simple goal of knocking the other down, however briefly. A local translated the hilarious trash-talk dialogue of the middle-aged MC with a mic and a serious look. "He's saying, 'The Sittwe guy is no good. He has cold blood. He better get it hot or he's going to lose!'" Soon he was slammed to the ground, the other picking him up and helping him brush off dirt. Some would walk off the ring arm-in-arm. Before crouching in the shade to watch other matches, wrestlers would circulate through the bandstand to collect 'prize coupons,' simple white pieces of paper you could purchase for 50 or 100 kyat (about $0.04 or $0.08 each) and give to the wrestlers, win or lose. The MC said: "Please give coupons to the wrestlers to promote our traditional sport! These guys are very poor. If you can't give there won't be anyone to play in the future." I gave. A local told me, "The best wrestlers are from very small villages – the guys here from Sittwe always get beat badly." Soon cleared-out seats were emptied. Across the ring, where locals held up hands to block the sun from their faces, were being made to sit by police in army helmets. Then the green-uniformed man in glasses and a frown rushed in to sit up front, alongside a plump-bottomed woman in a floral dress. "He's the regional commander of the military – not a good guy," one local whispered. How does it make you feel seeing him so close? "I feel like arresting him and executing him," he laughed, only half-joking I think. The military officers here are nearly all Burmese.

Later I rode with one guy I met along the Strand Rd at low tide as dusk approached. Groups of locals played soccer in the black sand offshore. Strand Rd ends at a stunning point – labeled View Point – where they charge you $1 or so to take pictures. The Sittwe local drove to the nearby navy base, locked up and restricted, and asked if we can go in to access the black-sand beach that faces the sea, and where a tricky undertow takes a few lives annually. And we rode along it for a sunset ride.

The next morning I woke early for the stunning fish market on the water in the center. it swarmed with shoppers. Trishaw wheels bumped tenderly into my shoes, and locals carrying huge baskets filled with rice or dried fish or vegetables bounced past me. At the end of the market is a wild fish market, with decapitations-in-progress. One group circled a giant eel, which was being unceremoniously de-gutted. 'You! Here!' They beckoned me closer to take a photo of the suspended guts – something very valuable around here. Nearby dried sharks and barracuda hang under a high-ceiling market, and dozens of just-caught sting ray lay on bare concrete.

I walk into a crummy looking export company, where tiger prawns were being packed "for export only – people here are too poor to buy." A thin gray-haired man with a funny beret and deeply sun-darkened skin walks up and hands me a pink piece of paper with Arakan writing. "It's an invitation to play golf," one worker explains. "I like golf," the bereted man manages, not one to let lack of language to stop a conversation. "But I don't like playing on the military course." I risk a recommendation, suggesting he could defecate into the hole so the officers behind him would get a surprise. He laughs loudly, nodding. "Yes! Very good idea!"

NGAPALI BEACH

Myanmar's Great Sun-And-Sand Destination Meets a New Sort of Traveler

I noticed the guy long before we met. A gray-haired accented foreigner with a baseball-style bamboo hat with a tiny Swiss flag sticking out the top. At the Thandwe Airport, where foreigners looking for 'escape' flies in for a few days to the Ngapali Beach resorts. Locals were meeting him warmly with embraces, as he loudly barked out praise and salutations. Turns out, the long-retired self-confessed 'millionaire' from Zurich is doing something special here, and in other needy places: overseeing charitable projects himself. He's built schools in Cambodia, dams and 'houses for the aged' in Myanmar -- he's done projects in Slovakia too. 'Never give money. Find out what they need and get it for them,' he told me frantically afoot at a leafy, laid-back squid restaurant on the Ngapali Beach road, where we met the day after arriving by plane. 'If there are 37 students that need 37 books, a school and a teacher, I arrange it. But never just hand over money -- it'll end up in the wrong pockets.'

It all started when he broke away from a tour group, years ago, and met some children begging, and after getting to know them, an eight-year relationship was formed. They’re now at a university with $300 in a savings account (which he started with $30). Breaking out of conversation, he would walk away suddenly to harass, in a good-naturedly way, a restaurant owner, whom he's known for eight years ('you do nothing but sit around!'). Returning back to me, teetering foot to foot, to explain more about why visiting Myanmar is good ('we cannot change the government, but we MUST help the people'), and a bit about his life ('I had a dream at 30 to retire at 55, and I did'). What exactly is it that he does now? 'There is no name for it. Well, other than Just Do It.' Mr. Hansruedi Schreiber is 69.

Ngapali Beach doesn't usually bring this sort in. A handful of $150-and-way-up resorts dot the 3km beach, like the newish Aureum Palace (run by Myanmar leader's son-in-law -- don't go) or the startling luxurious Amata (with $420 bungalows with satellite TVs in an area with electricity access only a blip of the day). Some visitors bee-line here after arriving Myanmar, like the American couple complaining out loud how hard it is 'to pay a bill' -- must be newcomers. The beach is lovely -- facing the turquoise Bay of Bengal (or 'Bagel' in one misprint of a local brochure), and occasional ox-cart tracks in the mostly empty gold-sand beach, as local fishers and hay-movers still prefer the beach for intra-village transport to the one-lane, seriously dodgy road. At dusk, it's nice to listen to the chugging motors from a stream of fishermen heading to sea, where they soon dot the darkened horizon with lights -- looking like a skyline over in India. They're squid fishermen, using the light to attract 'sea monkeys' and other assorted critters that will make up the menu for the $2/plate restaurants the next day.

Somehow, in an impoverished country with more than its fair share of unrest, it just feels a little odd sticking around an insulated, luxury resort like this for long. The main reason to come is to meet and talk with locals that have so long been shut off from the world. Unless, of course, you're here to build a dam.

YANGON'S OLD AIRPORT

Earlier this year, Yangon opened up a fancy new international airport for the big jets to come and go, but the old one -- now handling domestic flights -- is my favorite. I showed up this morning for a flight to Sittwe, an old port town on the Bay of Bengal, and a man in an orange vest got my bulging bag and brought it in the airport (35-cent tip) where a friendly 20-year-old airline staff member greeted me and took me bag to the service counter. 'No passport needed.' He hurriedly weighed the bag, tagged it and took it to the baggage handlers, as another person got me my boarding pass in 40 seconds. I put my bag on the X-ray belt -- no one looking at it -- as I beeped loudly going through the x-ray myself -- no one cared. The fading waiting lounge is busy with activity. Kids play on the carpeted floors with toy cars, business people sit over a coffee at a stylish cafe with this (quick) email access (for $1.60 for 30 minutes). Nearby rows of red vinyl and blue plastic seats are filled with a few foreigners, a few monks and plenty of locals headed to Bagan, the beach or Sittwe like myself.

For tea, I followed the 'Airport Restaurant' sign to the mezzanine lounge -- faintly formal, and seriously fading. And sat with a cheap tea and looked over a wall mural showing Burmese nat spirits, horses, mountains. Out the window, a military air force plane took off as domestic propeller planes of Air Bagan and Air Mandalay quietly waited.

'Thank you sir,' said the staff as I left with my empty plastic tea cup.

YANGON ROCKS

I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE BAND

Last time I was in Myanmar, the frequent music videos I'd see on TV, or playing on TVs in overnight buses or market stalls, caught my eye and ear. I called a rock journalist of a local paper on my last day and asked him to tea and to shop-around at local CD stores. I wanted to know who was 'the Stones, the Nirvana, the Madonna of Myanmar' and get some of the key releases. A few key names kept coming up – Iron Cross, mostly – but also Lazy Club, which I got to see for $3 the other night outside Yangon International Hotel.

Yangon concerts are frequent once the rains stop – mostly outdoor events with opening-act fashion shows, a few bands and giant posters advertising things like coffee mix or instant noodles. The audience swarm around the stage: mostly upper-class local kids, including drunk young men with shirts off, young punks with cobweb designs painted on their face and spiked haircuts and leather jackets that read 'Sex Pistols,' couples hugging while shouting out the lyrics.

Lazy Club (like Iron Cross) is a band with rotating singers. Their CDs are labeled not only as 'Lazy Club' but also with the individual singer featured, such as the outrageous Phyu Phyu Kyaw Thein, a 30-year-old (or so) Catholic Burmese woman who has delighted many with her strong voice, but alienated others by her stage persona. 'A bit too confident,' one Yangon local said. 'No one is used to seeing that.' Her set began as all sets should: with Lazy Club's guitarist doing Eddie Van Halen finger-lifts on a triple-necked guitar blasting through a Marshall stack. Nearby the pudgy bass player in glasses and a pea-green shirt shyly looked down at the frets of his six-string bass. A keyboard player hid behind a rack of synths, the drummer behind the cymbals. As the guitarist started into a chugging death-metal rift, on walked the Grim Reaper, in a full black cloak, face obscured by a black veil. The Reap held a mic and belt out words in Burmese, as leather-jacketed kids up front showered the stage with middle fingers and 'hang loose' signs they see on Malaysia TV. As the song wound down, Reap ripped off the cloak: and Phyu Phyu stood in shiny gold pants and top, with gold streaks and sparkles in a faintly bee-hive haircut. She straddled monitors and held the mic out for fans to sing along. The drunk guy next to me yelled 'I love you' in English, a mosh pit appeared briefly behind. Women with dyed blonde hair shouted out lyrics or fist-pumped along.

The next song was a cover of Bonnie Tyler's 'Making Love (Out of Nothing At All).' Celine Dion and Bon Jovi songs followed, somehow the guitarist found innovative ways to get chugging, distorted riffs into everything. The hour set never got old. None of this would fall flat in Brooklyn. Except here the sponsor is Mama's Instant Noodles.

Throughout the set, four middle-aged people sat stone-faced in chairs to the right-side of the stage, and in plain view of everyone. Three gray-haired women and a pudgy balding man. Censors? I asked a kid next to me with a outgrown buzz cut who they were. 'I don't know.' What did he think of the show though? 'She is everyone's favorite Myanmar singer.' Mine too.

ROUND & ROUND (Not the Ratt Song)

A RIDE ON YANGON'S CIRCULAR TRAIN

A British travel photographer I met here – pressing well into his middle ages, but with close-cropped dyed-black hair, and looking like he'd double as Brutus' cousin in a Popeye cartoon – told me Burma's like any other ex-British colonial place: 'As soon as they got in, they'd build a train.' Yangon's 'circular line' ($1 per ride for foreigners, or 1 cent for locals) is that legacy. The slow-going ride bounces on a long three-hour loop, counter-clockwise or clockwise around Yangon, connecting 25 or so stops used by commuters not willing to shell out the more expensive bus fare (up to 15 or 20 cents). The rails are the 1890 originals. Nice for history buffs, but hard on the butts.

This morning, I went out on a ride with a Yangon friend. We joined a team of commuters – Indian women in saris, Muslem men with turbans and long beards, betel nut-chewing Karen men in skirt-like longyi, vendors carrying (now empty) pots of mohinga (fish noodle soup), sold at morning markets in the center – and rolled out of central Aung San Station at 5mph. The train would slow as it come to frequent stops, then stop briefly, then roll backward slightly, before it pressed on. Out of the center, we passed simple wood huts, canals covered in water cress, and recently planted teak trees: in 15 minutes you feel like you're in the countryside.

A man in the back of the eighth car – where we stood— asked if we'd like to sit. He carried a green flag he wove out the window at stops. A couple seats sat bare on the packed train, but behind a small cord. VIP section?, I asked my friend. 'No, it's for foreigners.' Despite my inflated ticket price, I wasn't 100% comfortable with the segregation, so stuck with standing. After 30 minutes we got off at Gyo Gone stop, a couple blocks west of the former 'Rangoon Institute of Technology' (that's right: RIOT), and one stop before reaching the infamous octagonal-shaped Insein Prison. In 1988, students at a teashop across the street from RIOT got into a fistfight over the music playing – one group had a Shan singer Sai Hti Sai on, another wanted something more poppy. The police were called, and when they couldn't break it up, a student was shot. Things spun out of control. The students merged to protest the shooting, the government backed the police, and students took to the streets in protest, and it soon became something a lot bigger than a fight over music: but a call for democracy, a full year before Tianemmen Square. Afterwards, the government changed the name of the city to Yangon, so that the institute wouldn't remind anyone of the event: from RIOT to the less explosive YIOT.

My friend took me to the little teashop where a revolution began, a bare concrete-floor spot with a simple roof with faded ads draped down. 'You shouldn't have your camera out here,' he said, untucking his nice white shirt to look 'less formal.' 'People may be watching.' The shop was closed – being Sunday – so we went on to quickly peek at the former RIOT – a Soviet-built institute from 1964 with overgrown yard and fading gold buildings.

The train could be a great way of getting around town, and stopping to see various sites outside the center, but once you hop off another doesn't come for '45 minutes or so.' We took a cab back.

First Impressions of Yangon

It's odd to go to any place that's experienced recent disaster -- Phuket after the tsunami, the World Trade Center site after 9/11 or here in Yangon after peaceful protests by monks in robes turned violent across TVs and newspapers worldwide a couple months ago. Being back in Yangon, my first time here in three years, feels remarkably the same -- as it never happened. Last night I wandered down 19th Street in Chinatown, where barbecue shops plop out plastic tables and chairs onto the tiny street after dark and serve grilled mutton, shrimp, vegetables for beer-drinkers in the open air. Street vendors with antique wood carts pushed by displays of pineapples or smoking roasting peanuts, as cars ebbed slowly down, tapping the horn for beggars and a foreign tourist or two to get out of the way. Over by the central Sule Paya, a gold-topped pagoda on a main downtown street, moneychangers asked 'you want to change money? Good price!' I crossed the wide boulevard, dodging oncoming cars along with monks and businessmen and into a bookstore selling 80-year-old copies of 'Treasure Island,' left behind from the English colonial days. All this I've done before here, but still there's a sense something's changed. The difference only comes when you speak to people.

A 60-year-old bald guy at a teashop adopted me, and was clearly outraged that monks would be shot by the military. 'There have only been two times the government has killed monks,' he told me. 'The first was years ago when a non-Buddhist Shan king killed monks at Inwa. And then in September.' He holds out hope that change can come -- 'but it must go through China,' he said. 'I hope the US will boycott the Olympics.'

Another 20-something tattooed guy I met, with a seemingly a permanent smile, said his brother marched in the streets. 'They knew how far to stay away because the soldiers' rifles can only shoot 600m, so they stood 601m away.' But as the soldiers edged closer, disguising their steps by stepping with one foot and dragging the other behind, a guy next to his brother ripped open his shirt and yelled out, then suddenly fell to the ground, killed by a gunshot. 'My brother got away, but he's in some of the photos you see.'

Yesterday I walked by the now-infamous spot where the Japanese photographer was shot and snapped a few photos of the building and billboard behind him. I looked back across the street to see where the video had been shot from -- a corner apartment block had half a dozen storeys with balconies. With a little geometry, I'm guessing, you could figure out where the video camera was set. Thank goodness the government is so anti-education.

ReidOnTravel Update

A BREATHER & A HARD TRIP

The past several months have been busy for me -- finishing up maps for the website, tracking the Central Vietnam floods, and finishing up the last text for the free Vietnam guidebook. I've also been talking with a publisher about making a pocket-sized 'alternative guidebook' to Vietnam, which I'd like to see IF it can be made for dirt-cheap prices.

So many of the travelers I see in Vietnam have a good time. Still I'm a bit worried most are falling into a trap. Whether they're carrying backpacks or Gucci roller suitcases, they pretty much see Vietnam the same way. Hopping up or down the coast, staying in the same places (Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue), and taking variants of the same group tours -- Halong Bay cruises, Mekong Delta boat tours, Sapa treks. Nothing wrong with that of course. All three places are wonderful, and sometimes it's just as well going on a tour, but I hope -- with this guide -- to push travelers JUST a bit beyond the usual travel ways of the country. It's a lot more rewarding to get just a taste of what's on the next block.

I just wrote about how to see the Mekong Delta on your own in 'DIY Mekong Delta Adventures' for Transitions Abroad's new Nov/Dec issue (in print version only). Somewhere over the years, no one's noticed how easy it is to go and around the famed boat trips on your own -- and get more out of the trip. Also, the good folks at GoNomad.com recently posted an excerpt from my blog about how to find the best Hue food away from the traveler's guesthouse ghetto.

Next Up: Burma
I'm heading off tomorrow night for a research trip updating Lonely Planet's Myanmar (Burma) guide. I was last in the troubled country three years ago for LP and have been following the military crackdown closely. Because of the military government's brutal regime, many outsiders believe travelers shouldn't visit (to money out of the government's hands), others -- including most Burmese people you meet in the country -- want 'independent travelers' to come. Just not on group tours or staying in high-end hotels. Tourism has fallen by 90% to the country during its high season, mostly affecting small privately run businesses. Every year, off-shore oil reserves -- not to mention the trade of rubies (and heroin) -- brings in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to a select few up top; an average traveler staying in family guesthouses for a couple weeks spends about $300 -- with all but a fraction staying in private hands.

I'll be gone through mid to late January, and will try to post on-the-ground reports of what's going on in destination areas like Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan and other places in between.


Robert, in snowy Brooklyn