Joe and Dick's Asian adventure 2010: Burma pictures

In my Shan outfit

This was my guide's grandfather with a grandaughter

This was one of four dancers we followed through the streets of Malamyine as they tried to rase money for their Hindu temple. They did the most incredible dances while balancing flowers and ceramic bowls of fire on their heads. A truck with blaring speakers led the way.

Novice quarters in a monastery

Malamyine monastery

Chin woman in Chin State smoking. The older Chin women still smoke opium regularly

We came upon these three Akah men who worked for the Shan army. They were digging out a mole hole to try and capture the mole deep inside. Presumably they were hungry. They gave up after their 10ft bamboo harpoon didn't reach it.

Many people believe that the Buddha's scriptures tatooed on their persons will protect them.

These sandals were provided in the bathroom of my guest house in very rural Chin State.

The whole family pitches in

It is customary for family and friends to make offerings to both the novice and the monastery at the time of a noviation ceremony. It can be an amazing public display of prosperity. It may also be a display of buying indulgence. Many of the stupas are kept up by the generals and their cronies.

I was told that this buddha represented the time when he abstained from eating before finding "the middle way"

An Akah woman in the market in Keng Tong

At this restaurant they gave you all these dishes and you ate what you chose to. If you finished anything, they replenished it. was about 105 degrees and not the light lunch I had in mind.

In Chin state the road was blocked by this typical truck. This looked like a rebel army, but in fact they were volunteers who were headed off to spend a month camping in the woods and rebuilding a road leading to their rural village in hopes of making their village more accessible. No help from the government.

We came upon this noviation procession. At the end were musicians and this fake elephant and dancer who hopped around to the music. Real elephants are preferred but not available for most because of the expense

This woman is cooking tofu crackers with heated gravel. We ate many things cooked both with sand and gravel. Peanuts, blah laab beans, rice crackers. We never had a spec of sand in anything we ate.

The water buffalo market in Keng Tong. These animals are mostly not eaten in this area as they are considered sacred because they help to till the rice paddies. The Chinese buy them for meat. The broker will then hire a man (who will be paid $20) to walk the buffalo for five days through the forests to reach the Chinese border. This avoids paying road taxes.

Bagan

I asked the guide if the marks on this man's chest were tattoos. He told me that the man had rubbed tiger balm in this pattern and then scraped it in order to let his fever out.

Lahu Shi village chief and his wife

Loi woman

This is a Loi long house. In this one twenty families lived. About one hundred people. Ten fmilies on each side, each with a fireplace. The men stay with the family and the daughters join their spouse's family in their house. As the family outgrows their house an extension is added on one end. There were no windows the only light came from the doors at each end. A few people had battery operated lights. Most of the people were in the fields when I was there but 20 or so elderly, sick and youngsters were hanging around. Three woman were making shoulder bags. One man was making a woven bamboo mat for the family to sleep on. I asked how long it would last. He said 15 years! Apparently the life expectancy of the Loi is among the shortest of all the hill tribe people because of the quality of the air they breath.

This man was entirely covered with tattoos. Apparently it started after he was robbed as a young man. He said that it took 8 passes to become uniformly blue. Originally he began with Buddhist scriptures. He went on to tell us about all his miraculous feats that came with his acquired powers. He showed us his club and knife skills. I didn't offer to demonstrate my nunchuck skills.

Shan women on the trail. They were drinking tea from bamboo cups and eating papaya which they shared with us.

Most pickup trucks on the road in Burma double as semi-trucks/greyhound busses. Bus fare is too high for many people. You can imagine the potential difficulties. There was a head-on collision on the road between Tachileik and Keng Tong the day before I got there I heard that somewhere between eight and twenty people were killed.
Some of the larger trucks coming from China actually have a man riding on the top lifting the overhead wires over the truck's load.

The Shan people have their own deal with the government. Part of that deal (including growing tea instead of poppies, though apparently it is still going on) is that they do as they please. Our friend and also guide in Yangon who came along, said that he felt free here. His mother was Shan. This man made rifles with his wife. She carved the stock and he made the metal pieces. They could make one every two days. They sold as fast as they could make them. There were gunpowder kits in the market.

These were some of the 52 orphans in this orphanage run by Burmese Christians.

This is a nat shrine. What is unusual about it is that they have provided canopy beds for the nat spirits should they need to rest. There were also swords under the beds in case they had to defend themselves.

An animal path through the newly burned hillside. There were fires everywhere I went as people prepared for the growing season. As a result the forests are quickly disappearing, the air quality is terrible, there are landslides regularly as well as a host of other problems.