In the Myanmar language, taung means mountain and gyi means large. So the town of Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, is named for being on a big mountain. It's not the mountain that it itself is located on (and it is), it's named for the mountain above the town. It's this place that I visit at the start of this video.
I wasn't thrilled to be going back to Loikaw. It's a nice enough place. The capital of Kayah State here in Myanmar is a place not many people have been to. But I have. These motorcycle tours are about visiting new places. If you'd like to see more of Loikaw, watch this video from a year ago when I went there the first time.
That said, I was going to Loikaw by a different route than before. New road; new experiences. New ancient pagodas to visit.
When I started this journey, I didn't know whether or not I'd be allowed down this road. The original plan had me heading into territory that was even more forbidden. However, I decided to play it safe and go down roads that I knew I could. Even though I only learned I could go this was when I was in Hsipaw.
See, large parts of Shan State are still under armed separatist control and they do a lot of business in the opium trade. Not areas the gov't here wants foreigners roaming through.
Of all the roads I traveled through during the epic, this stretch, Hwy 43, connecting northern and southern Shan State was one of my favorites. Quite deserted. Sufficiently windy. Paved to my staisfaction.
Not much else to see on this road other than the road itself. Consequently, the video is the most me-driving of the collection so far.
This was the high point of my recent journey. By high point, I mean it was the northernmost place I visited. After a couple days in Hsipaw, it was time to turn around and make a pivot southwards, back towards Yangon and home.
Still though, there were some things to see and do in Hsipaw. As was the case in my last big motorcycle journey through Myanmar, there was a bit of literary tourism in this journey. A couple decades back, Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess was published by Inge Sargent. Hers was an unusual tale. She was an Austrian aristocrat who was courted and wooed to marry by the last prince of Hsipaw. That being unusual in of itself, the fate of the prince makes it more so. I really need to avoid political stances here on Leaving Amerika, even on stuff that happened 50+ years ago. Suffice to say
that after the 1962 change of government here in Myanmar, the Prince of Hsipaw disappeared, and his fate has not been definitively determined since. I visited his last home before his disappearance and am entertained by the wife of his nephew.
It was then on to the next leg of the journey. As I was a bit out of Hsipaw itself, getting back to the main road allowed me go down some backroads. Through rice paddies and narrow paths.
The road between Goke Hteik and Naung Cho is one I will never forget. It was my second time passing through it, having come that way on my way up to Hsipaw. Knowing what was coming, twenty-some 180 degree hairpin turns, through steeped roads full of trucks making coming from China, made it that much more interesting. See, I didn't think of it as a nasty bit of traffic to endure, instead it was a challenge to be overcome. The many trucks weren't obstacles; they were a puzzle.
Mainly due to the realities of the map, being at the junction of the road road to Taunggyi, I spent the night at the only hotel in Naung Cho. The Naung Cho Hotel. Cheap. Nice. This mountain town hasn't made it onto Lonely Planet or Trip Advisor yet, although it's got everythinh Kyaukme has.
Ain't no tourists visiting Naung Cho. That night, I shared dinner with a Burman-Shan-Nepalese football club that was coming off winning a regional tournament.
Three years ago this week, I entered the pink doorway of my Yangon apartment for the first time. Today, I moved all my stuff to my new place. Well, to be honest, I didn't move it. I had it moved.
This was a first for me. I misspoke in the video. I'm only 46 years old. But even then, never before in my life have I had movers. Guys who picked up all my stuff and put it in a truck. I didn't have to lift a finger. However, I did. I moved one small batch of crap to the truck. Symbolically. Better yet, these same mover guys took all my stuff up to my new place.
I think I'm going to like my new place a lot. It's newly built, and when it comes to things like cockroach accessabilty, leaky rooves and doorways, overall fit and finish, new matters. I'm the first person to live in my flat. It's a place of flickering (at least on video) lights and really slippery floors. At least, Badger found them slippery.
Exactly two weeks into my time off, and I was at a high
point, both geographically and in spirit. Hsipaw, Shan State, was as north as I
was going to go. The following day, I was turning around and heading back south
again. As for how I felt about the trip, I couldn’t have been in better spirits
than I was up in the Shan Hills. I’d seen some incredible sights over the
previous two weeks. The bike was running great, and physically, it seemed I was
pacing myself well as I wasn’t tired of riding in the least.
Still, I had budgeted myself some rest days, and Hsipaw was
definitely a place worth spending an entire day.
Another traveler. Looks a bit like Knut.
As I began my sightseeing for the day, I ran into someone
eerily familiar, but completely unexpected. I didn’t catch his name, but here
on this little village road well south of Hsipaw proper was a German tourist, on
his own, touring on a rented motorbike (I even knew the rental company where he’s
got it) with a GoPro camera on top of his head. There in the rice paddies, we
exchanged
pleasantries, stories from the road and well wishes. Then we went our
separate ways, he a bit faster than I. How strange to run into another
foreigner doing the same thing I was doing out in the middle of nowhere like
that.
First thing on my list of stuff to do was visiting “Little
Bagan”. I doubt the local Shan people like having it be called that, Bagan
being the former capital of the Bamar people, but that’s what it’s called on the
tourist maps. Before finding it, I came across an
These ladies are writing their wishes onto little
strips of paper to be offered, along with incense
and money, to the Nat god.
unusual temple, absolutely
bustling with activity. Nominally a Buddhist shrine, there was a Buddha in the
main hall, what it really was a center for Nat worship. The Nats are the
traditional gods of Myanmar, ancient spirits whom the locals have revered since
before Buddhism arrived 2000 years ago. Nowadays, the Nats have intertwined
themselves with the orthodox Theravada Buddhism, and you’ll find places like
where I was all over the country. Note in the picture, Buddha on the right, a
Nat on the left. Which image has more offerings?
Little Bagan itself lives up to its name. Like its namesake,
it’s an area just jam packed full of ancient stupas and temples. There were
some subtle differences, which I talk about in the video, and whereas the Shan
and Bamar people have been at odds off and on for centuries, you can see how
much they’re linked by viewing this architecture from hundreds of years ago.
Even more so than in Bagan, I was a bit taken aback by the crumbling nature of
these ancient monuments. Sometimes, the
ruins can be
fascinating, like this tree growing straight up out of a pagoda.
On the whole, I think Little Bagan is in dire need of preservation.
Next on the agenda was visiting a waterfall a ways out of
town. It took me a bit to find the little country road that would take me the
ten miles off the main road to the waterfall, and after about a mile, when I
stopped to admire the view and contemplate the road ahead, I stopped and turned
around.
See, I had just visited a beautiful waterfall the day before and
endured a horrible road to get there. My full day in Hsipaw was supposed to be
about rest, and so when I came to this junction, I turned around and headed
back to town. Discretion is the better part of valor.
By then, it was time for lunch. I visited an overpriced
resort on the other side of the river, and then had lunch at the Club Terrace,
a wonderful riverfront restaurant with reasonable prices and delicious food.
A couple people, myself included, noted after the first few
videos of my Myanmar Motorcycle Epic that my camera was pointed too low. You
got to see a great view of the pavement, but little of the countryside. That’s
a result of using a camera that is a little cube, 5 centimeters on a side. No
viewfinder. You don’t really know what you’re recording until after you
download it and look at it, which in this instance, is a month later. The rest
of my video in Hsipaw was beset by two problems: the camera being angled too
high (you get a great view of the sky but can’t see the pavement) and the lens
got dirty. I think it’s food residue from my lunch.
I am a Moslem. I don't like Trump.
The dirty lens led to a bunch of interesting shots not being
in this video. It also accounts for the angelic glow coming off this man’s
white shirt. I try to abstain from politics here on Leaving Amerika, but this was an interesting moment. I mentioned the comments I got in
a Facebook post, so I’ll just save some keystrokes here.
Finally, it was off (again, they were closed the first time
I was there) to what was labeled on the tourist maps as the “Shan Palace”, like
a king had lived there. Well, Shan hasn’t ever really had a king. Perhaps it’s
not surprising given the similar
topography, but Shan has historically been a bit like Switzerland. Lots of
different ethnic groups. Lots of
The wife of the nephew
of the last Prince of Hsibaw
different princes in this valley or that. But
never really a kingdom. There’s never been a unified Shan nation. That said,
one of the most important local hereditary chiefs was the “prince” of Hsipaw. The “Shan Palace” was
his last home.
But by this point in the video, I had reached the seven minute
mark, and since the next part of the story, the story of the last Prince of
Hsipaw and his Austrian Princess wife is quite remarkable, I stopped and will
present that in its own vid, Episode 16.
Enjoy the video.
Shan State comprises about a quarter of the entire nation of Myanmar. It's in the northeast, it's hilly and the people there maintain an ethnic identity of their own. Mind you, lots of different ethnicities live in Shan, but most of them are of the broader ethnic group known as the Tai. This group includes people in Yunnan Province, China, Laos and of course, Thailand. As I left Pyin Oo Lwin, my plan was to spend the next week exploring Shan State. Just before the border between Mandalay Division and Shan State, there's a cave called Peik Chin Myaung. Before I left Yangon, on my last
day with my students at the time, I'd explained where I was going, and asked for recommendations of things to see along my route. One student recommended this cave. Whereas I've seen lots of caves filled with Buddhist imagery on other trips around Myanmar, Peik Chin Myaung did not disappoint. Definitely worth visiting.
Just east of a town called Naungkio (remember this name; it's going to come up later in the narrative) there's a river canyon cutting a huge gap in the Shan plateau. 80 years ago, the British built a rail bridge over this canyon that is considered to be one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. No pictures of that bridge, still in use today, but I got to experience driving without a bridge.
Get along little doggie. I'd love to ride a water buffalo one day.
The road through the Gokhteik Canyon is one of the most remarkable roads I've ever been on. Trucks need to make their way cautiously and slowly. Me on a motorcycle, I wanted to speed through it. What resulted was a fun puzzle in traffic negotiation. Finally, I made my way to my destination for the day, the Shan town of Hsipaw. The owner of the company I work for has lots of connections throughout Myanmar. I knew he had a relationship with a hotelier there in Hsipaw, so I e-mailed my boss asking for a referral. Sure enough, just by explaining who I was and my connection to my boss, I was able to get a $25/night room at Mr Charles Hotel for only $15/night. Connections, baby.
Interesting decor on the resort grounds.
Thing was, it was a $20/night hotel room. No desk. One electrical outlet in the whole room. No fridge. 80% of the space of the room was taken up by the bed itself. Yeah, fine if you're a backpacker on a budget, but I wanted something nicer. Well, Mr Charles also owns a riverfront resort. I was very happy that even after checking in, they let me upgrade to the $45/night resort on the edge of town with a similar discount to what I was getting at the hotel. I'm too old for cheap hotel rooms.
Time for a bath, so it's down to the river.
Adjacent to the resort was a traditional Shan village. The cool thing was that these folks, living so close to this busy resort, had become accustomed to foreigners wandering down to take a look around. In most villages in Myanmar, my presence would have stopped everything. Everyone would have just wanted to stand around and stare at the foreigner. As you'll see, I got a chance to look at how these people live their everyday lives.
