Where the hell is Brian?
May 10th, 2009
Okay, I have been super slack on the blogging front. I’ve been home back in Australia for two weeks and I still haven’t updated the rest of the blog from my travels. No excuse really. Just slack. I had full intentions to blog when I was travelling, but then I got so far behind (courtesy of no internet network in Burma for nine days) that I just never got around to catching up. BUT, I am back on board and I’ve got a lot of travel blogging and general blogging news to catch up on. I’ll start with some stories and pics from the rest of my trip for my new book.
When I left you (yes, and I know it was a month ago!) I was on my way to Burma. Wow, talk about a culture shock after coming from Thailand. That A-hole General who ‘rules’ the country has sure done his best to run the country down into the ground. The streets of Rangoon were a mess of broken footpaths, dilapidated buildings and dilapidated locals. The poor folk don’t even have electricity most of the time and the streets are full of noisy and smelly generators just so they can have some light at night. I stayed at the YMCA (which was the recommended place to stay back in 74), although the clientele has changed somewhat from backpackers…
… to dogs and lepers!
At least I didn’t eat like a dog or a leper. I’m sure they don’t eat fried crickets because that’s what I had for dinner on my first night in Rangoon. I ate a whole bowl of them that I got from a street stall. They didn’t taste too bad although their little legs do get stuck in your teeth…
At my next stop Mandalay I did find a few of the original hotels including the Man Shwe Myo Hotel. But, the Burmese government had taken away their license to ‘house’ tourists because the rooms weren’t ‘fit for people’ the owner told me.
The room did look very basic (and dirty). ‘Now only Burmese can stay here,’ the owner told me.
Mandalay is also home to the ‘famous’ Moustache Brothers who have been performing shows (that combine screwball comedy, classic Burmese dance and sharply satirical criticism of the totalitarian Burmese military regime) for tourists and locals since 1974. Except they don’t perform to locals anymore. They perform in the front room of their house. They haven’t put on a show for the locals since two of the three ‘brothers’ were sent to a hard-labour prison camp for seven years for telling a joke about the government in public. So they’ve been out of prison for a couple of years now and they are still telling jokes about the government and even making light of their time in prison…
Mind you, he did say that if the police came the brothers were bolting out the back door to leave us tourists to the police!
Next stop was Bagan, which hasn’t changed much at all since 1974. Oh, except the government moved the entire town (and gave the locals a couple of days notice and then just tore down their houses). I did follow the suggestion in the old guidebook, though, and hired a horse-and-buggy for the day to visit the 5,000 or so temples scattered around the countryside (although I didn’t quite get to see all 5,000). Here’s a shot of me on a temple and another of Myu Myu my driver (his teeth are black from chewing betel nuts!)
On to Laos next where nothing had changed but everything else had. The temples still had roaming monks…
… but the hotels had been turned into ‘gym and spa centres’…
I finished my trip in Singapore where Tony and Maureen Wheeler finished their trip and put together the first ‘South East Asia on a Shoestring’ in room 5 at the Palace Hotel in Singapore. So, that is where I finished my trip. Except the Palace Hotel is now called the ‘Madras Hotel Eminence’…
… and room number 5 is now room-half-of-number-5. The rooms have been split into half to make more rooms (and more money)…
On the last night of my ‘South East Asia on a Shoestring’ trip I ate at one of Tony and Maureen’s ‘personal favourite’ restaurants. Komala Vilas in Little India has been around since 1949. And it still looks the same…
… and is still popular…
… and still serves the Tony’s recommended dish exactly the same way it was served in 1974…
So, now here comes the fun part. Writing the book. I’ve certainly got plenty of material (and of course I’ve only told you a tiny part of it because you wouldn’t need to buy the book if I told you all the good bits). Oh, and I promise I’ll be blogging regularly (and I mean proper regularly) even if I do have a 90,000 word book to write!
On May 11th, 2009 Peter Copell said:
On May 12th, 2009 Liz Carberry said:
On May 13th, 2009 Steven French said:
On May 13th, 2009 brianthacker said: