Adventure travel

Back to Burma

Our writer joins the steadily growing trickle of tourists into Burma and finds amid its fairytale Buddhist shrines and chaotic cities a nation desperate to talk to the outside world

It was when I found myself frantically ironing $50 bills, literally laundering money, that the oddity of the Union of Myanmar – as it was named by the military junta – sank in. Burma doesn't do ATMs, and we'd been warned by Burmese friends to bring only new notes. The exchange rate set by the generals is a ridiculous seven kyat to the dollar. The true rate is closer to 850 kyat, so tourists have to use the black market, collecting bricks of cash. The slightest crease will see your dollars rejected by the money changers on the street or in your hotel – which was why I could be seen scurrying back to my room to do some last-minute housekeeping.

We had arrived in the former capital, Rangoon (renamed Yangon by the junta), the day before with little idea what to expect. Since the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi announced a tourism boycott back in 1992, few western tourists have entered the country. Travel supplements, magazines and guidebooks (apart from Lonely Planet) followed suit, so what information did come out of Burma was mostly desperate human rights reports and grim news stories.

But last November, after the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest – she had been detained for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 – and after extremely dubious elections leading to the pretence of a civilian government, the boycott was lifted. Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, said visitors were once again welcome – so long as they eschewed large-scale package tours in favour of gaining "an insight into the cultural, political and social life of the country while enjoying a happy and fulfilling holiday in Burma".

Tour agencies have responded, with companies such as Bales Worldwide and Wild Frontiers starting to operate, and readers of Wanderlust voted the country a "top emerging destination" last February – even though the magazine hasn't covered the country since 1994.

For me the timing could not have been better. My friend Anna had just announced that she was celebrating her wedding in Burma (the UK government refuses to use the name Myanmar, as it implies the unelected military regime has the right to change the country's name), where much of the family of her fiancé, Sithu, still live. Afterwards, she promised, we could explore the country with the help of their local knowledge.

On the long flight over I read the autobiography of an uncle of mine, who had been born in Rangoon. It was filled with childhood memories of escaped pet monkeys, sprawling family houses and exorcisms by holy men. Yet the moment we touched down, any dreams of the country's colonial past were quickly barged from our minds by the chaos of Rangoon. (This is by far the country's biggest city, though the administrative capital is now Naypyidaw, to the north.)

The city's pavements were so broken we could have been visiting in the aftermath of an earthquake. The streets teemed with men and women in traditional sarongs, or longyis, and hawkers selling fragrant noodle soup and pirated DVDs of Hollywood films. Elsewhere, stalls sold secondhand remote controls, out-of-date magazines and lurid posters of waterfalls, Buddha and Justin Bieber.

Outside one city-centre temple, palm readers touted for business under banyan trees. (One of our friends was told she would live to exactly 84.) And every so often we spotted little linoleum-topped occasional tables furnished with a doily and a 1970s-style telephone. We were charmed by these low-tech public phones until a Burmese friend told us that while the rest of Asia is flooded with cheap mobiles, in Burma their price is kept high to limit their spread and prevent uprisings. A mobile phone can cost as much as $500; the average wage is $3 or $4 a day.

When evening fell in the city, we followed the ochre-robed monks and shaven-headed nuns in spotless pink to the country's most sacred site.

In a country where, the groom's father told me, "they stick a stupa [a structure containing Buddhist relics] on every beauty spot", the Shwedagon Pagoda is still the undisputed highlight. There are few tall buildings in Rangoon, so the pagoda's golden spire dominates the skyline and calls pilgrims from across the country.

Climbing the broad marble stairs, we passed shops that shimmered with gold painted Buddhas, offerings and icons stacked from floor to ceiling. Stepping out into the courtyard we were confronted with a breathtaking forest of curved, delicate spires rising from the small temples and shrines that fill the site. Each houses one or scores of gold leaf-covered Buddhas. In the centre is the 98m Shwedagon dome itself – said to be covered in more gold than is contained in all the vaults of the Bank of England (presumably before our reserves were sold off) – and created to house eight hairs from the Buddha's head.

Twilight is the perfect time to visit: as the sun sinks, the golden stupa seems to glow more brightly, and incense and the sound of chanting fill the air as barefoot pilgrims lay offerings of flowers, fruit and miniature silver and gold parasols. I watched worshippers carefully washing a small statue, while children took it in turns to bash the 23-tonne prayer bell, and families and monks posed for photographs. It was one of the most beautiful sites I have seen.

There are so few tourists here that our group of foreign wedding guests attracted smiles, waves and easy conversations. One woman kindly sat me down and tried to explain some decidedly esoteric points about Buddhism, and when we tentatively approached a huge seated Buddha, some amused locals laughingly handed us the rope stretching up to a huge ceiling fan and invited us to fan him.

Outside the city this friendliness only increased. While sightseeing is a foreign concept, pilgrimages are normal behaviour. So my husband and I squeezed into a local bus heading for the Golden Rock, a mountain-top shrine in Mon state, east of Rangoon, near the town of Kyaikto. Munching on fried prawn patties, corn on the cob (which our neighbours showed us how to eat in Burmese style – picking off each corn separately) and little packets of boiled quails' eggs, we passed fishermen throwing their nets into ponds, and farmers tilling their fields with ox-drawn ploughs.

The next stage was an open-topped truck, with wooden boards for seats, on which were crammed an impossible number of people. We squeezed in with rural families, groups of teenagers from Rangoon and tribal women in black as the truck plunged through the bamboo forests. Then it was an hour's climb – for the truly lazy, or those with mobility problems, there are sedan chairs – on a path crowded with gift shops. The buckets of local medicine in one shop were truly terrifying. When the owner explained that the brown fluid in which beetles, scorpions and even a goat skull floated was for rubbing on your legs if you were tired, we swiftly found a second wind.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the shrine, but it was worth the wait. It is a huge gold-covered boulder teetering so precariously on Mount Kyaiktiyo that it seemed a passing breeze could set it rolling down the bamboo-covered hill. On top is a pagoda said to house yet more of the Buddha's hairs. The magic, however, is not just the setting but the joyful, holiday atmosphere. The air was filled with incense, and thin strips of gold leaf that had come unstuck from the boulder fluttered in the breeze. In the evening we chatted to a sweet-faced nun taking a break from being a lawyer in the capital: she was spreading out her blankets to sleep in the open.

Not being quite as spiritual as her, we retired to the Mountain Top Inn, near the shrine entrance. It can be difficult to pick a hotel in Burma. Most used to be owned by the government, and the charity the Burma Campaign UK (burmacampaign.org.uk) issued dire warnings about tourist dollars funding the regime. Today almost all hotels are private – although there are likely to be generals on the make somewhere along the line.

Our local friends said the military rulers, who took over this country rich in natural resources in 1962, care little about tourist dollars, especially now China is helping them exploit their gas and oil fields. But tourists need to think carefully about minimising the amount of their money that could find its way to the brutal regime, and avoid anything that could be seen as legitimising the generals. NGOs and human rights groups suggest staying in family homes or small guest houses. We were too large a group for that but we did try to cross-check hotels in the Lonely Planet guidebook with those on a list kept by the Burma Campaign.

Back in Rangoon it was time for the wedding, and a shot of Burmese culture. Dressed in beautiful silk longyis, the couple had their marriage blessed by their grandparents while being serenaded by a traditional orchestra, including a boat-like Mandalay harp and a conch shell. After that came a singer, then another, then another – and then the karaoke.

Over dinner, teachers from the international school told us that karaoke is so popular that many of the generals have purpose-built karaoke rooms in their mansions. And it's probably a better night out than a nightclub. After the wedding we headed to one of the city's best: it was a seedy one-room affair with a few fed-up looking sex workers and some hard drinking men. Luckily the raucous and glamorous army of the groom's cousins quickly filled the dance floor and lightened the atmosphere.

We started our tour the next day, heading north into central Burma. The historic sites are breathtaking, and the friendliness of the people is seductive. At Mount Popa you can commune with Nats – supernatural, pre-Buddhist spirits still worshipped alongside more orthodox religion, and protected by an aggressive monkey population. In the Pindaya caves you can get lost among more than 8,000 gold-painted Buddha statues in a natural cave.

Bagan – the Angkor Wat of Burma – would be the highlight of any holiday, with more than 2,000 brick stupas from the 11th to 13th centuries in an area 16 miles across. As the sun sets, they look like fairytale kingdoms.

Lovely Inle Lake is busy by Burmese standards, but at 13 miles long and more than seven miles wide it is big enough for a boat ride to be a peaceful experience. You pass fishermen punting their boats in the traditional way, with one leg wrapped around a paddle, and their floating rice paddies – on bamboo-moored beds – are extraordinary. Here, too, there is some silly relief if you are templed out – a monastery where the monks have taught cats to jump through hoops.

Outside the capital there are so few foreigners that our group found ourselves posing for as many photographs as we took. In Rangoon some students from Mon treated my husband and me to a performance of their regional anthem.

En route to Bagan we passed a village festival celebrating a novice's initiation into holy orders. (Almost everyone in the country spends some time as a monk or nun, many as children and often for as little as a week.) First came the parade: young girls carrying flowers. Then the tiny nuns-to-be, decked in silver headdresses and sitting in flower-strewn ox carts. Afterwards came the boys – some no more than toddlers, again dressed in amazing costumes, with made-up faces and some with unlit cigarettes in their mouths. Women with orange paste on their faces to protect from the sun passed us plates of food and made room for us to join them watching the musicians in a huge roadside tent.

We had heard that engaging local people in political debate could have serious consequences, but the Burmese are so desperate for change that even the most oblique expression of sympathy releases a torrent of repressed fury. A motorcycle taxi driver, seeing us looking at a sinister poster extolling the government, rode up and hissed, "Do you know who they are? It is not the government. It is the military government. And they are stupid. Our government is stupid!"

From others we heard about damage done to Inle Lake (through deforestation and the planting of thirsty rubber trees) and roads going unbuilt as army personnel lined their pockets with money from the oil fields, gas fields and ruby mines. One man said he had few qualms about talking to British tourists because he knew we'd be sympathetic. "Obviously we do not talk like this in front of the Chinese tourists," he added, before talking at length about repressed ethnic communities and admitting proudly, albeit in a whisper, that he had refused to vote in the sham elections.

We'd also been warned not to ask taxis to take us to Aung San Suu Kyi's lakeside house in case it put drivers in danger, so we asked to be set down 10 minutes' walk away and pretended to stroll along the shore. The roadblock had been removed and we took a hurried but undisturbed walk beneath her high walls.

A man in a T-shirt bearing the face of the leader locals call The Lady proudly told us he cooked for Aung San Suu Kyi and showed us a picture of them together before handing us a laminated picture of her as a souvenir. Our next taxi driver said, "Don't you want to see Aung San Suu Kyi's house? She is nearby – you shouldn't leave without seeing it. She's our hero."

The Moustache Brothers are also heroes: Amnesty International took up the cause of these satirical Burmese comedians after two of the trio were arrested and jailed. Banned from performing, they put on "rehearsals" for tourists while their mother keeps watch outside. They're in their sixties, their English is terrible, and their jokes are as weak as their freedom, but it's impossible not to be impressed with their refusal to be silenced.

"The government won't let us perform so it's dangerous for us, but we don't care," they tell me. "We need people to know what is happening. Tourists should come here, because they are like a Trojan horse – they will make the country more open."

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