The 80-minute flight from Yangon to Sittwe in western Myanmar touched down softer than any recent flight I can recall. In the air I had wondered if Myanmar’s domestic airline fleet was in a similar state of disrepair as its automobiles. Outside the airport lobby I was approached by a tout pushing seats for his boat to Mrauk-U the next day. I could either go with him, or wait three days for the government ferry that chugged upstream twice a week. My mouth watered in advance of the haggle, and the soft look in his eye was unguarded.
‘How much?’ I asked, letting on a smirk of anticipation.
‘Twenty five dollars. Nice boat, max five people.’
‘I’ll pay ten.’
‘For friend price, I can do it twenty for you brother, no less.’
‘Ten.’
‘Hmmm... Well, Fifteen. My final offer.’
‘Ten.’
‘Ahhhhhhaaa. OK, ten. But our secret, yes?’
We were to leave the jetty at 7am Sunday morning. Around 4am, I awoke to the call for prayer, but it was distant, the main mosque being about five blocks away. Then at 4:30, the Buddhist prayer music dialed up; it was across the street and tore into my brain like a power drill. The window rattled. There were cymbals, flutes, chimes, chanting, and a live monk who must’ve been on methamphetamine. The music paused; shrieking ensued, and another pause… then it came back, flooding into my room and twisting me in knots, and I wanted to cry. When I left the hotel at 6:30, the music was still going strong. It was outrageous to me, but it was me, afterall, who was not at home.
For six hours we puttered up the Lemro River, against the current and the wind, which was frigid considering the oppressive heat that would soon smother Myanmar (and it’s winter!). River life was emerging. Boats and canoes passed up and down, most oaring, and a few with collage sails quilted from nets, clothing, tarpaulins, etc. Children paced the shoreline with triangular trawl nets extended in front, holding the bamboo arms like wheelbarrow handles. Among water buffalo, men wearing conical basket hats trudged knee-deep in mud, fisting for mollusks. The river was tinted green, precisely the color of San Francisco Bay. And similarly, human life was abundant, but not wildlife, and I imagined what the delta might have been like in its natural state.
The behavior of children is a useful metric for gauging how impacted a place is by tourism, and, by this measure, Mrauk-U fails on account of its ‘bye-bye! bye-bye!’ screaming children. But this ancient town is a worthwhile visit, where village life is interspersed with 16th century pagodas throughout the countryside. In the smoky mornings, villagers huddle around smoldering leaf piles to warm their fanned hands, and in the evening, cane ball matches inspire impressive acrobatics as players scissor-kick at the net.
The government ferry returning to Sittwe was a rusting shoebox with two decks, and a kitchen downstairs at the stern. There were lots of green jackets aboard, most of which being second-hand rags donated from America, brought to Myanmar from Bangladesh, and bearing novelty patches like ‘U.S. Air Force’. I boarded the brimming vessel late and was the only foreigner. A group of noisy women, like a gallery of squatting chickens, offered me a seat on their wood pallet, and I folded in with four of them lying, leaning, and drooling on me, and lost feeling in my left leg for three hours. It was early, but the crowd buzzed in animated bickering and laughter, cigars flinging through the air, cheeks bulging with quids of kun-ya. For each passenger there were two straw barrels of produce lining the ferry, mostly cauliflower, cabbage, squash, and foot-long string beans, en route to the market in Sittwe. Later in the morning, passengers revolved through the kitchen bench, kneading fistfuls of rice and fish curry with their right hand, and spooning soup with their left. And so another seven hours went, of good travel in true Burmese style.
