Eerie Travel Secrets

Who has not seen the pics in TV in 2007-soldiers up to their teeth in weapons- hitting unarmed people to death – like a Japanese journalist. Monks with bloody heads. This is how the mass-demonstration of the monks was crashed.

Mandalay today is a rather (not tops) modern city- noisy – but without the hectic of other Asian metropoles. And you see relatively few soldiers. Modern buildings surround the clock – tower, erected by the colonial masters to teach their oriental charges to be "on time" – which is so much likely as the proverbial snow in hell. A few streets from there you find the Zegyo market.

In a few years – so the talk goes – this will vanish and be replaced by yet another neon-lit supermarket hall, but right now, the market-women still reign over the food on this town. Tomatoes, bananas, two dozen kinds of dried fish – but also with mountains of crab-paste, bean-cookies, and the best of all:  snake fish – supposed to supercharge male potency.  Not too far away we find men with white streaked faces – and flex-machines drilling into a huge white marble block – ahhh – we hear with surprise – this is going to be one of Buddhas toes.

Other families work on Buddhas elbow and Buddhas stomach. A very special artist will be in charge of Buddhas face. Apparently this is a real profession in Burma – "the maker of Buddhas face".  A rather strange profession, we find, but interesting all the same, just like the other one – that of the gold-beater: he beats 10m2 hair-thin foil of gold out of a 32gram piece of real gold, as he hammers on that piece for days on end. This – is also for the Buddha, of course.

We all love Thailand, but let’s face it, it has it’s ugly side, too. Whereas Myanmar is – on the surface of course- the virgin – (as yet untouched by Tommy Hilfinger, Mercedes and Burger King style buildings and stores, it is still somewhat authentic) and Thailand (in comparison) is the whore. 

Apparently 400 000 tourists came to Mayanmar in 2006, 20 000 of those were Germans. After the monks’ demonstrations and the following unrest, tourism collapsed.  Hotels released staff or closed down all together, souvenir shops closed.

The generals don’t really care. They are making big profits with  Jade, Teak-wood, gas and minerals. The chambermaids, bell-boys, gardeners – in short – the small people of the population have no income now.  And even the more educated people don’t understand the "boykott" for political reasons = the cold shoulder the Western world is showing them.

Shwedagon Pagoda of Yangon is surely fascinating. Especially in the evening, when the last rays of sun touch the golden needle of it’s top, with a slight pink-rosè touch…. Women with jasmin-chains around their neck kneel in awe and prayer. Pink clothed nuns are saying their ritsch-ratsch prayers in endless monotony.  Pictures of peace and pure bliss. These are just as true as the other side: the violence – the death of innocent people.

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RE: TWO MONTHS IN MAYANMAR POSSIBLE?

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Mayanmar Yet Again

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UNICEF UK’s Work Continues in Mayanmar

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Probably few people in the West are familiar with the country of Mayanmar although we have recently been seeing and reading about events taking place there for weeks. In this column I would lik…   Read more…

Jawa 175, Mandalay, Burma on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

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 This travel secret isn’t a secret, but do you know why going slow can mean saving money and having more fun?

Our top travel secret isn’t really a secret at all, but it takes a while for some of us to learn and apply it. Here it is: Slow down. Slowing down and spending more time in each location is not only a secret of cheap travel, but in our experience, it means more fun. 

Slowing Down For Cheap Travel

We returned yesterday  from a ten-day road trip, and I can report that going slower saved us money, as it usually does. This isn’t just about driving less, though when we started driving 200 miles in a day instead of 600 we certainly saved on gas. However, we also found that with time on our hands, we could do a better job shopping for a place to stay or to eat.

Make the big mile days the ones that pass through the boring stretches. Then when you come to an interesting place, find nice, affordable lodging and stick around a while. Once, while driving around the country camping in our van, we discovered hot springs in a wild part of Arizona, with picnic tables and bathrooms and desert hills to explore – everything we needed at the time. It cost just $3 per night, so it was easy to stay a while.

In fact, we stayed for eight days, enjoying the hot pools even during an unusual snowy day in the desert. We took daily hikes and hunted for antiquities and rocks in the surrounding hills, but more on that in a moment. Just once, we drove into the nearest town for groceries and water, so the entire eight days might have cost us $80 or so. That’s cheap travel.

Five years back we stumbled into a great mountain town where we wanted to stay a while. We were in town early, instead of our usual driving until evening and scrambling to find a hotel, so we had time to check things out without rushing.

We asked around and heard about a hotel above a pub. The rest of the hotel rooms in town were generally $60 per night and up, but we got a room above the pub for $120 – for an entire week. It had a stove and refrigerator, so we could cook our own meals if we wanted to save more.

Slowing Down Means Better Travel Experiences

More important than the fact that slowing down means cheap travel is the fact that when you go slower you discover things you would have missed. While at the hot springs mentioned above, for example, we befriended a Mayan Indian who brought us to an old Pony Express station in the desert hills. It still had parts of the old walls remaining.

He showed us areas where we could find old arrowheads, and we found some. Out in the middle of the desert, he showed us perfectly round holes that had been drilled into the rocks hundreds of years earlier. They were used for water storage. In our van, we followed him to an area where ancient pottery littered the desert, and where gemstones could be found as well.

We wouldn’t have found these things on our own. The eerie experiences were also only possible because we didn’t rush from one park to another, trying to fit as many "sights" into a trip as possible. It may not be a secret that a slow trip can be more interesting, but not many people seem to want to try this more relaxing, slower pace.

Where we stayed a week for $120 in that mountain town, we discovered area waterfalls and secret mountain lakes that only the locals knew about. The town was our base as we made trips into the surrounding area. Talking to people in local bars lead us to a well-preserved ghost town that wasn’t on our map. Its streets were still full of buildings and foundations, but no tourists – one other car pulled in while we were there.

Our travel secret number one: slow down to save money and enjoy the trip more.

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