Travels on Burma's Irrawaddy River

 cross reference:  

www.wimvblog.blogspot.com

 http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/wim1101

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNXCKj3rHrY&t=60s            Wim in Inle Lake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFoScCbPqHI&t=50s        Wim on the Irrawaddy

Irrawaddy 

From up high, the delta is a brilliant green, cut into smaller squares and rectangles and trapezoids by ditches and canals. There are a few very small villages, not more than clusters of thatched or rusty-tin-roofed huts, but mostly it is just rice paddies in full glorious lush stages of growth. It is all terribly flat, and wonderfully green. Slight color variations may tell of earlier or later plantings. There are almost no trees. But in that sea of green there is the occasional bright white sparkle of a pagoda, like a single tooth sticking up. A few are gold, mostly when near a town.

 The river flows red-brown in easy, lazy meanders and curves. But wait- it is not the main river- it is only a branch. And then another and another, and soon I am lost in the realization that there is no main river, that the Irrawaddy in its final dash to the Gulf flares out into a convoluted dance of channel-partners that playfully merge and then part again, leap, bend, and diverge and ripple in the wind,  the sun glistening here and there as if stage lights are spotting the movements of the dancers who course left and right but slowly, elegantly, inevitably, reach the sea, golden brown with silt.

We bank right and descend north over the city, and land at Mingaladon Airport.

 The name Irrawaddy Flotilla Company in itself was enough to spark curiosity. I found a dog-eared copy of George Orwell's Burmese Days, and, in a bookstore, coincidentally, Andrew Marshal's The Trouser People about the life of Shway Yoe - in the still troublesome Shan states. That book's cover photo had me hooked: a very young Scott, bearded and in a rugby shirt, poses with his football team of extremely handsome athletic dark young men clad in strangely wrapped, and promisingly bulging, sarongs or, as I later learned, what were called longhyis, so commonly worn in Burma still. I finished the book in only a few sittings, frequently gazing at those football players, especially one with his hands coyly on his hips, who most certainly was one of the family. I referenced the locations on maps and on Google Earth, and got drawn in deeper and deeper into the country. I did some searches on Wikipedia, and was fascinated, but the idea of traveling there was somewhat far from my mind. Too many problems with getting a visa, only a two week travel permit and the hassles of Foreign Exchange Certificates, I learned from various web sites.

 But I should have trusted all those omens, the synchronicity of all those books coming together in such a short time were telling me something.

 Somewhat suddenly I decide to take time off after a bit of a scuffle at work, and head for Bangkok that September of 2003, a trip without itinerary and little in the way of time constraints- I budgeted for four months- a retirement present to myself.

 I wander along Silom Road towards the river, turn left at the gaudy Hindu temple with its clouds of incense and flower garlands and an oily-haired priest, his bare chest matted with sweaty hair, in search of a place to eat, and then find myself standing in front of a dull navy-ship-grey barbed wired fortress: the Burmese embassy. Inside, gruff  bureaucrats tell me that a visa can be had for 4 weeks and that the dreaded FEC's are optional.

 I have 4 passport pictures taken across the street, and with sweaty hands fill out endless forms that require, along with the usual questions, also my father's occupation, my mother's maiden name and  my religion. I pay 806 Bahts and 2 days later I have my visa.