Hpa-An (pronounced Pa’an) was our favorite city in Myanmar without question. It is a bit less traveled than many of the other destinations we visited making the people and experiences more authentic and often funny.
For example, on our way there our bus company took our dinner order before we left. We both ordered the “fried chicken rice” assuming it was fried rice with chicken. Instead, it was a single fried chicken leg with white rice. Same, same? Plus the “taxi” ride we mentioned at the end of our last post. (And when we finally arrived at around 2 or 3 in the morning, we grabbed taxi to our hotel. Except in this case, the taxi was a single motorbike holding me, Brandon, both our big bags, both our little bags, a tube with some art we bought, and a bag of school supplies we were planning to donate in Thailand. ALL ON ONE BIKE! I wish we could have had someone take a picture because I still cannot believe how we fit, though we were riding very, VERY low. Luckily it was a short ride or Brandon may have lost a toe if we’d hit a bit bump! Good news is that we made it intact. Thought by the time we left town, we could no longer say that.)
We started our first day off with a bike tour of the city including caves with Buddhist temples in them, local tribal villages, a gorgeous monastery and unbelievable scenery.
Our tour guide Diamond picked us up at our hotel with the bikes ready to go. Devon’s bike was a bit big for her, but when we saw an 8-year-old kid riding an even bigger bike with 3 other kids balanced on it she couldn’t complain too much about it. (Seriously those kids are impressive.) Our first stop was a cave with 38 images of Buddha throughout, and a crawlspace with relics and other offerings for Buddha. It should have been a 10-15-minute stop maximum, but we were bombarded by the “paparazzi”.
While we were walking around, people kept asking to take pictures with us. Turns out many people who come to these sites rarely (if ever) see tourists, and they were all very excited to get proof of a sighting! Brandon was an extra popular target because of his height. Luckily Diamond explained this to us, because it had happened a few times before and we did not understand why. But we had fun with it! We also took these photos because it was a great opportunity to capture the local dress and culture. For example, many of the women and some of the men have what looks like mud on their faces. It is ground up sandalwood mixed with water and is good for the skin. It acts as a skin tightener, moisturizer and protectant. It is also often applied as makeup in creative patterns that are quite beautiful to see.
So we had groups of locals stopping us to take pictures with us. Picture after picture after picture. Everyone wanted to make sure they got to be in one of the group shots, and some wanted solos with us. All of this added a few minutes to every stop we made.
We visited a few Karen villages and learned about their lives. (I may have thought our guide said Korean at first – which I thought was odd. Whoops!) In one community, we played with some of the local kids a bit and a badass woman. She swaggered over to check us out with a fat cigar hanging from her mouth. She asked if we were married, why we didn’t have kids yet, and then laughed at our rubber travel rings. It didn’t take much to see she was no one to be messed with and we obviously loved her.
Lunch was made in the local Karen style in another small village. While we were eating all of the delicious (and some not so delicious) foods, other people from the village started gathering in the yard to check us out. No one asked for pictures this time, but everyone wanted to get a good look. At the end of the meal, they wanted to show us a live catfish. (We don’t know why. We told them we know what catfish look like, but they wanted to show us anyway.) Unfortunately, it had somehow jumped ship from the pot it was swimming in! They found it eventually but it was pretty funny.
We also stopped to watch kids learning to bamboo dance. This was a crazy difficult dance where couples weaved in and out of a bamboo tic-tac-toe board while others would move the bamboo sticks up and down, back and forth. It was fascinating to watch and the kids were pros!
The next cave we visited was really great. There were two entrances so we walked all the way through and took a boat ride back around. By this point, Devon was pretty exhausted. We had a cold we were passing back and forth and it took her down hard that day. She got a ride home and took a nap while Brandon finished the tour.
Brandon visited a football game against two teams competing for a 1,000,000 kyat prize – about $200/person for the winner. It was a pretty one sided match but still a lot of fun to see.
Then we headed to a monastery that’s famous for its healing properties. There’s a holy shrine situated on top of a balancing rock and a temple built into the middle of a lake. It was truly beautiful. After a long day, we headed back into town. After riding dirt roads through the heat of Myanmar for 8+ hours, I was filthy. When I got into the shower, layers of dirt would just come off. I had to scrub 4-5 times to get most of the dirt off me but man, what a day. This had to be one of my favorite days of the trip so far!
The next day, we took it a bit easier and rented a scooter for the day to explore some of the other local caves. One included a hot spring.
Remember when we said we removed our shoes, well cave walking was included in that too (no matter how much bat guano was in there.) And Myanmar really didn’t want Brandon to leave so as a going away gift, the cave sliced Brandon’s toe nice and open. Ouch! (We have a pretty picture of it too, so if you want it, just ask.) It is worth noting that Myanmar spends less on healthcare than almost any other country in the world, a whopping .5% of its GDP. So after copious amounts of cleaning and peroxide, we moved on to Thailand. Dinner, peroxide, bed.
Brandon & Devon (BaD) Journey 