The Ayeyarwaddy, once called Irrawaddy by the British, is a river 1240 miles (2000 km) long that bisects Myanmar [Burma] from north to south. The confluence lies some 25 miles north of Myitkyina, capital of the far northern state of Kachin. I was there with two photographer friends for a big festival in December 2001 when Kachin clans from all over the world gathered to feast and dance. On the way from Myitkyina to Bahmo, a riverside trading post on the ancient overland route to China, the Ayeyarwaddy narrows into the First Defile, a 36-mile-long gorge of sharp turns, white frothing waves and jagged rocks.
The express ferry to Bahmo left at nine, it said on the ticket, but in my excitement I was wide awake and up by six in the dingy Myitkyina hotel room. Last night Ko Sonny had insisted on giving me Ks50,000 to last me through the remainder of my trip, as well as a long list of phone numbers of friends in the region in case I should get into trouble. He was not sure how I was going to find a phone booth on the First Defile, however.
He, Ko Maung Latt and I decided to forgo the cow-piss coffee at the hotel and walk to a teashop, where we ate two Indian parata each. They were fluffy, buttery, and served with peas cooked to melting tenderness and fragrant with deep-fried onions. The tea was strong and sweetly thick with condensed milk. I wolfed down the food enthusiastically, licking my fingers and smacking my lips. My male companions ate more decorously.
I forgave the hotel owner for the quality of his coffee when he personally took charge of arranging my transportation to the jetty by trishaw. My friends had to catch the flight home and could not see me off.
As they all stood in front of the hotel waving goodbye, the hotel proprietor called out to the trishaw driver that he must see me safely on board before he came back, and to pedal slowly and to be careful of traffic (which in Myitkyina at 8 a.m. was nonexistent). He spoke in a loud, firm voice that warned he would be most upset if his orders were not followed through.
I glanced back at my friends and grinned at the look of anxiety mixed with annoyance on their faces. "Damn that woman! Off she goes, and she could well be drowned dead, and then we're in real trouble for not stopping her!"
The trishaw man got lost on the way to the jetty and pedalled up and down the river bank until we finally spotted my ride: a long slender boat painted a sickly green with seats along its length much like in a bus. The boat's name was Shwe Zin Yaw (Golden Sea Gull). The sea has an allure for those who live in the mountains.
There were two wooden gangways leading up to the boat. My trishaw driver led the way, carrying my bag up one of the shaky planks, and I followed wobbling behind. I thanked the man and tipped him well for his kindness, then placed my bag under my feet and looked around. A few other passengers were also climbing into the boat and looking for seats. We walked around on the lower deck with backs bent, as the ceiling had lethal-looking iron bars running across its breadth to reinforce the roof, where the cargo was stacked.
There were some 15 rows with four seats to a row, and benches ran along either side of the bow as well. I was in the front row and had ample legroom, but the seats behind were cramped—the passengers in those rows would have to sit with their knees practically up against their chests.
I decided to look for the loo before we cast off. I found it way at the back of the upper deck. To get to there, I had to climb onto the side of the ferry, grab hold of the railing and edge along a three-inch-narrow ledge, first past the bridge and then past a glassed-in private cabin with Western tourists inside. The loo had no roof and a wall that was only shoulder height, so everyone around could see whoever was about to sit down. On the other hand, it was well ventilated—and in any case in Myanmar we tend to ignore these sorts of difficulties, relying on modesty and good manners to assure us of privacy.
By the time I got back to my seat, more passengers had settled in. A seventies love song blared from the amp. Then a large brass bell clanged and in a few minutes we were chugging down the Ayeyarwaddy. On one side ran the Myitkyina Strand, on the other a range of hills that changed in colour from blue-green to misty blue to light mauve as it trailed off into the distance.
A young man dozed on my right. Sitting kitty-cornered from me and surrounded by bags and baskets of food was a slim, attractive woman in her thirties with sparkling dark eyes under thick scraggly eyebrows. I found a lively companion in her and did not have to pry too much to get her story.
As she bit into a large bun, which she first offered to everyone nearby, she told me that she lived in Bahmo and was going home with goods she'd bought in China for her store. It was cheaper than buying them in Myitkyina.
Mar Mar Soe, which literally means "Hard Hard Rule" (I am being tongue-in-cheek here because our names are actually given for their sound rather than their meaning), told me that she had driven to China, taking the new bridge that spanned the Ayeyarwaddy and which we passed under soon enough. Apparently, the roads were good.
"Did you go alone?" I asked in amazement. Even on business trips, women are apt to go in groups. "Yes, I went alone. It's quicker if I don't have to hang around waiting for others," she said. "Women spend too much time looking in mirrors. They do it endlessly." I beamed at her. "At first I was scared to be alone, but I'm used to it now. Every trip takes about ten days." She chewed on her bun some more. "Besides, our people are always willing to help you, wherever you are."
I asked her if she had faced any problems. "Oh, no, we're legally allowed to go over the border to trade so there are a lot of us, and once there I keep in touch with the other Myanmar."
She chatted about her shop, her family and her two kids. Her husband worked in Bahmo and looked after the children. When she was home, she liked to relax by going to the video halls to watch a double feature.
"I just love Nandar Hlaing, Khaing Thin Kyi and Htet Htet Moe Oo," she sighed, naming three top movie stars. "They're so pretty! Like porcelain dolls."
Girls and women in my country admire male actors, but they adore the actresses. My Western friends have really never appreciated the type of soft, even-featured women we think of as beautiful, while we consider Western notions of Myanmar beauty too overtly sexy.
Mar Mar Soe went on to say she preferred to make this trip by ferry, which had started operations about a month ago, to going by road.
"I was in a truck once, between Bahmo and Myitkyina," she said, "and we were going really fast when the wheel suddenly came off! That wheel rolled away for miles. Lucky we were not on a cliff at that moment or I'd be dead!"
After a while, she curled up to doze across the two empty seats in her row. Not wanting to attract attention, I casually took up and opened my notebook, now and again glancing up at the river bank so that it would appear I was writing about the scenery. But really I was scribbling down furiously what Mar Mar Soe had told me (and now, as I sit at my computer, I am peering at handwriting I can barely read).
We stopped for a while at Pan Dee Village, where I bought some steamed sticky rice, bananas and a few oranges from the vendors who crowded over the side of the boat. We were on our way again in a few minutes, and soon the sandy banks were bare of any trace of people and tall trees formed a thick curtain just beyond the sands.
Fat brown waterfowl sat patiently in groups like officials at a town meeting. A black cormorant swooped down to the water and then flew off with a wriggling fish in its beak. Several miles later I saw a whole group of cormorants sitting in the shallows, beaks upturned to the skies. And I saw an elephant being scrubbed down by his handler and wriggling like a two-year-old.
From time to time, we passed small canoes or even smaller rafts rigged with a simple apparatus for sieving gold: a bamboo frame covered with swaths of banana stem fibres. The one or two people on board waved at us; in the green expanse of the river, devoid of traffic or villages, it must have felt good to see other people.
Once we passed a hill, one side of which had broken off into the water, sliced cleanly by nature in a perfect vertical, like a cut cake. Below, black-limbed trees lay half-submerged in the water, their claw-like branches reaching up as if for help: I could almost hear them screaming, frozen at the moment of drowning.
We slowed down as we neared a village, which I later learned was Tarlaw. I saw an isolated farm perched on a cliff and set in a sweep of green grass and yellow mustard flowers that sparkled in the sunlight. The thatched roof of the hut could be glimpsed in a far corner with blue smoke rising from the rear. Thick dark woods formed the backdrop, and the tops of the trees were brushed with sunlight. I felt I was seeing the one place in the world where I might find perfect happiness, if I could get Internet access of course.
The young man to my right woke up and offered his rice to me. I smiled and thanked him, taking out and offering him my own sticky rice cakes, which he in turn declined. It is polite to offer and good manners to refuse, but there have been times when I have happily accepted the offer of strangers, much to their delight.
We chewed companionably for some time in silence. He told me that he worked for a lumber company situated in the forest. Legally, he added when he saw my suspicious expression, and that he had gone to Myitkyina for supplies. Because of the festival he could not find a room anywhere so the trishaw driver he had hired took him home to stay for a few days. The driver wanted to put him up for free, but he had insisted on leaving the family some money.
We passed yet more drowning trees and I asked him if anyone ever took them home to use as firewood. He laughed and said no, there was plenty of firewood around. Who would want to bother going into the river when you could just break off a branch? Then, giving me a glance which seemed to take in everything about me, he said that understandably the waterlogged trees would be like gold in Yangon, but not here.
I saw a plantation of grasslike but very tall plants topped with thick silvery strands that shone in the light like blonde heads. "What's that?" I pointed. "Sugar cane," he replied. I had seen sugar cane before but never as lush as this—and with Marilyn Monroe hair.
By 1 p.m., we were nearing the First Defile and the river was beginning to narrow.
As we neared Hsin Bo "Male Elephant" Village, the town just before the mouth of the Defile, the scenery grew even more spectacular with high blue hills and craggy cliffs. The river, which up to now had been a clear jade green, started to show tinges of muddy yellow.
"After Hsin Bo," said Mar Mar Soe as she uncurled herself, "we're going right into the Kyauk-Twin." The Rock Pit. What a name, I thought, recalling stories of jagged rocks and white foaming waters.
We docked for a few minutes at Hsin Bo where we were again besieged by vendors selling snacks. People bathed in the river and five naked children of varying ages stood in a row as their father worked his way from one end to the other, soaping them down vigorously and covering them in thick suds.
The boat started to slow down as we went beyond Hsin Bo. Sensing my interest, both Mar Mar Soe and the young man, whose name I now learnt was Moe Zaw ("Top Sky"), promised to point out the landmarks: the Buddha image on the left bank near the entrance and the pagodas in the middle and near the exit.
The first was built by a group of jade miners. It was so high up on the humped back of a boulder that I could not really make out if it was an image in a shrine or a small spire.
"Some say it was erected in gratitude for the gems they found," Mar Mar Soe explained. "Some say it was in memory of their mates who drowned at this spot." Both stories seemed plausible.
"This is a rich river, she gives you gold, she gives you silver," she sang. She did not need to add that it could also kill.
The water rushed by faster. It had turned completely muddy by now. The river was narrower at some places than others, going around bends almost at right angles so that a hill would loom up just in front of you until you thought you had reached its foot, and then the boat would turn just in the nick of time.
Large reddish rocks jutted out of the river like mammoths sleeping in the shallows. There was a narrow passage between the rocks where our small boat could just pass through. We heard the alarming sound of something hard scraping against the bottom of the boat. We drew in a collective breath, and when we did not sink … let it out… slowly.
The steep banks of the river were dark with trees, their top branches locked into one another. Vines fell from great heights, sometimes entwined with languid purple trumpet flowers, sometimes with perky white blossoms. In the shadows cast by the cliffs the air was icy.
Once we passed along a bank of thick trees that almost came down to the water's edge. At their centre stood a tree straight and tall with all its branches clustered right at the top like a bouquet. Its leaves were large, round and golden yellow. The tree stood a bit higher than the dark green trees that surrounded it, and the sunlight lit up the golden leaves like a torch. My companions had nodded off to sleep and I refrained from waking them to show them this amazing sight. But I stared hard, not wanting to blink and miss one second of this enchantment as we passed slowly by.
Moe Zaw woke up in time to point to a whitewashed spire almost hidden in the grass at the top of a hill close to the river on the right. By that time, we must have passed through the Rock Pit, for although the river had not widened, there were fewer hulking boulders in the water.
Finally, we were about to exit—but there was yet another landmark, a pagoda on the right bank on the side of a cliff. The river curved and narrowed there, and the current did not seem to be flowing very strongly. But some of the boatmen rushed from bow to stern and back again, and I heard one tell another that this was a very treacherous place.
I peered around but to my inexperienced eye nothing seemed to be wrong. The channel was very narrow, but the boat seemed to be doing fine, despite making strange detours to avoid rocks or whatever lurked underneath. If things do not actually go bump, I am content to leave my fate in the hands of those more experienced than I.
Once out of the First Defile, the river became placid and wide, the smooth surface showing only the slightest ripple. It had such a look of innocence about it, like a purring cat cleaning its whiskers.
As we neared Bahmo, the sun darkened to a rich golden red and began to sink and the purple sky became streaked with yellow. We neared the jetty, and Mar Mar Soe, Moe Zaw and I scanned the waterfront to try and find the boat to Mandalay that I hoped to take the next morning. It came on alternative days so if it wasn't leaving the next day, I would have to stay an extra day in Bahmo. It was Moe Zaw who spotted it, docked about a mile away from where our express would land.
"There it is, Aunt," he said. "I think you have time to get a ticket. If the cabins are full, just get a place in the front room. It's better than the lower open decks."
After saying goodbye to Mar Mar Soe, I gathered up my bag and turned to make my way out. Moe Zaw had already disappeared.
The landing was steep. Steps of a sort had been cut from the sandy soil but hardly looked stable. Grumpily wishing I had a walking stick, I tried to ease my bulk up the steps, when a hand came down to take my bag and pull me up at the same time—Moe Zaw. I smiled thankfully at him and clambered up. At the top of the bank he was away with a nod, handing my bag to a man I took to be a horse-cart driver because of the whip he was holding. The man was dressed in a clean but tattered shirt and had an open, good-natured face. When he smiled he showed betel-stained teeth. He beckoned to a boy of about ten.
"Here, son," he said, handing the boy my bag, "take this bag and this Old Mother to our cart. I'll see if I can find another passenger." He turned back towards the other passengers now milling about on the road.
Old Mother? Old Mother? I truly value the respect my people show towards age, but Old Mother?
I sat down in the horse cart, sulking. The boy sat quietly in front. His face was the spitting image of his father's, but his teeth were still nice and white, and he had a very shapely pair of lips that any girl would envy, and sweeping feathered black eyebrows. He was a very dignified little boy. While we waited, a street peddler carrying a bamboo frame laden with little plastic cars passed by, blowing shrill bursts on a whistle. The boy glanced at him and let his eyes run over the toys but no desire to own one showed on his young face. He looked as if childhood games had nothing to do with him; he was already burdened with life.
The deluded moronic blind horse-cart driver came back without any more passengers. If he goes around calling people Old Mother, I thought, he is not going to get much business. At least he was fond of his son. Climbing up onto the cart, he ruffled the boy's hair and looked at him affectionately, and the boy grinned happily. It was good to see that exchange and I forgave him for calling me Mother. And Old, at that.
There was some confusion as the cart turned around and met a cyclist head on, and neither man nor horse was willing to give way. The Bahmo Standoff ended only when onlookers started laughing and the man on the bike was shamed into stepping aside.
"Go to talk to someone on the boat first," my driver said when I asked about the boat to Mandalay. "You can buy a space then and there."
His name was Tun Tun, and his son had the grand name of Yan Naing Tun ("Conquering Enemies with Brilliance"). The horse's name was Mya Hmwe—"Emerald Fragrance" or "Fragrant Emerald", whichever you prefer. He was a reddish pony with a shaggy coat and a mind of his own, I was to discover. There was nothing the least emerald-like about him, nor was he fragrant.
Off we went along the road to where the boat was moored. The cart hardly moved, though the horse's steps were quick enough. I suspected he was almost trotting in place.
At the jetty where the bigger boats dock, the bank sloped down at an alarming angle. Leaving my bag with Tun Tun, I clutched young Conquering Enemies' hand and inched down towards the shaky gangplank, over which porters were carrying bags of goods on board. There was a man checking the goods who seemed to be in charge. The crisp white boat had Pyay Gyi D'kun, or Banner of the Mighty Country, painted on her prow.
Several minutes later, having shouted myself hoarse about tickets, a cabin, a space, anywhere at all, and receiving no reply from anyone, I gave up and we climbed up the bank again. The porters muttered with understandable irritation as I kept getting in their way. They were wiry men, with thin hard muscles, and they carried the heavy bags on their naked shoulders, necks bent and strong bare toes gripping the sandy soil. Their sunburnt torsos gleamed with sweat.
Back at the cart, Tun Tun had managed to drum up passengers and what looked like a household's worth of furnishings. A couple wanted to be dropped off in town on our way to the Port Authority Office, where I was told I was bound to get a ticket (if the office was still open at this hour, especially after a detour that involved delivering a houseful of furniture).
"Not to worry," Tun Tun said, tying a mattress to the side of the cart. "Plenty of time." The other side of the cart was already hung with pots, pans and a couple of large bags. On the roof were more bags. Inside the cart was a full basket with a few framed photos tied carefully on top. I thought that with this load Fragrant Emerald would probably lie down in the dust and refuse to budge, but much to my surprise, he actually went off at a much faster trot.
I glanced at the top photo in the pile: the same couple with caps and gowns at a university graduation. At Ks15 a month, tuition at universities is still very low. People have a great respect for learning, and a university degree is the best sign of prestige, especially during the Socialist era (1962-1988) when there may have been no jobs available but even people from villages managed to obtain degrees.
I listened in on the young couple's conversation and learnt they were staying with cousins for a while before finding a place of their own. When we arrived the cousins came running out, crying out greetings and jumping around happily. Everything was unloaded in a few minutes.
By the time we arrived at the Port Authority Office, it was near dark but the sales office was still open. All the cabins were full but I was told I could have a space in the Front Room, which I learnt was the saloon at the bow right under the bridge. I thought I could easily curl up on the polished wooden floors of the saloon and use my bag as a pillow. I had slept in worse places.
Relieved at getting a space booked ("Pay the manager on board," I was told), I asked Tun Tun to take me to a clean hotel. At that point, Fragrant Emerald refused to let me climb into the cart, moving away a few inches every time I tried to put my foot on the step. When I finally managed to crawl in, pulled up by Conquering Enemies, the horse would not move an inch from the dirt lane in front of the Port Authority Office.
Tun Tun had to sweet-talk him with many clucks of the tongue before we were on our way again. Another horse cart which had been waiting at the office started up smartly, and the driver, wielding his whip, called out to Tun Tun, "Hey, let me have that horse of yours for just one morning and see me make him behave. I'll learn him!"
Tun Tun was furious. "That bastard, "he muttered under his breath, grinding his teeth. "He'd whip my poor boy and break his spirit. How dare he? I'll learn him, I will, that son of a bitch." I noticed that he used his whip only to scare away flies from his supposedly fragrant horse.
They dropped me off at a biggish hotel, Tun Tun promising to pick me up at 4.30 the next morning.
I watched the cart turn away, Fragrant Emerald trotting with a high head and light heels, and then went into the hotel. The clerk at the front desk asked if I wanted a basement room—it was cheaper. I was horrified: to be in a hotel but to stay underground with no windows? I felt sick at the thought. The only other room available, he said, was a Special Room on the first floor. When I asked the rate he hesitated before saying Ks2000.
"Yes, yes, yes!" I said. "I'll take it."
I had to be up at the crack of dawn and I was looking forward to a nice comfy night.
The pillow was like a damn rock.
Ma Thanegi is a painter, writer and journalist who was born and educated in Myanmar [Burma]. Her paintings have been featured in numerous exhibitions since 1967. She is a contributing editor of the Myanmar Times, and editor of Enchanting Myanmar, a travel magazine. Her book The Native Tourist: A Holiday Pilgrimage through Myanmar was published in 2004 by Silkworm Books. She was detained for three years in Insein prison for her involvement in the 1988 uprisings as personal assistant to Daw Aung San Suu Ky. Ma Thanegi lives in Yangon.
