Myanmar, Part 1
When the doors opened, which counter to join was not obvious. A small sign at window 4 indicated business visas. So we joined that. However, having got to the front of the queue, the woman said, that we had to join the main tourist queue, to get a queue number, and then re-join the business queue to put the passports in. Several people were caught like this. So we tried to ask at the front of the huge tourist queue, now stretching out the door, causing much wailing and nashing of teeth, as this one window handed out numbers, forms and took in applications, operating treacle-like. So, rejoining the back of the tourist queue, it took an hour to get to the window just to get a number. And then a wait for the number to come up for the biz visa. According to a couple of people who did this application frequently there were often fights and punch-ups.
Needless to say though a/c machines were present, they were only ornaments. 60 people were serviced by one ineffectual fan in a small, hot, common-sense proof concrete bunker. Pick up, the next day, was equally dumb, made more urgent by closing the day after for 'Peasants Day'. All this could have been solved by one member of staff walking along the orderly queue outside the embassy before the doors opened to hand out forms and appropriate queue numbers. This stupidity, shouting, fighting, sweating, dismal human condition is played out day after day.
Disappointingly, the visa issued was only for the days planned in the country, rather than six months or a year. So any logistics fluff-up, breakdown, internal flight commandeered by an army commander wanting to get his farm’s fruit to Yangon market in a hurry, and we were going to be in trouble.
The next day, Jim and I flew from BKK to Yangon. Yangon? Who the hell flies to Yangon? Who on earth can get in? Our security clearance took six weeks alone. All the traffic flows the other way, driven by economic refugees and the very poor Burmese looking for work in Thailand. Thailand is kept moving by Burmese prepared to work for wages a Thai wouldn’t stop eating their snacks for. We were expecting to be rattling around in an empty plane, playing tiddly winks with the crew and taking turns flying the the plane. Actually a shockingly smartly dressed crowd of senior Italians and Dutch, coloured cords and Hermes scarves, were on a package tour and the flight in an aged Airbus was rammed. Our tiddles and winks didn’t see the light of day.
Since I was last in Myanmar in 2002 they have built a new international terminal. All efficiency, smiles and granite. Some porter had managed to do the Indian trick of picking out all our luggage before we had cleared immigration and had it loaded up on a trolley. Jim, being the good soul, let him get us out of airside, and into a taxi for the short ride to the domestic terminal, the old terminal I remembered, which resembled and smelt like a cross between a crumbling Indian bus station and Krabi hospital outpatients dept. Meeting Dr O and two local FAO staff, we got onto our internal prop flight up to Thandwe, a short 45 minute hop up-country. Surreal experience # 7, bouncing around at 14,000 feet over this notionally militarised country, in an old Alitalia prop, listening to ‘Close To Me’ by The Cure.
This was the easy bit. This flight got us part way up the country to the popular resort of Ngapali, where we chilled out for the rest of the day, trying to working out how many inches of Kyet local currency to the dollar, in a nice little set of low-tech bungalow rooms facing the sea. Elec from 6pm to 6am.
The next day, however, we needed to drive 10 hours in a minivan and old car further up country from Ngapali to Kyauk Phuy (KP). The problem with these roads is that the surfaces are so bad, the teakwood bridges so rickety and fully of tyre-pricking nails sticking their heads up from the warped boards, that time travelling by road is downtime. Seatbelts would be a huge help to stop passengers from banging their heads on the vehicle ceiling and to hold bags in place. Unfortunately, old minivans and cars in this end of the world are rarely equipped with the aforementioned and all the shocks are worn out, causing sickening thuds when they bottomed out in a big pothole. So travel is watching the world go buy. And this was in the dry season.
Fish and rice drying out in the sun. Huge piles of rice straw piled up in cones, off the ground. Mini terraced rice paddies, lying uselessly in the sun for eight months, waiting for the one rain-fed crop per year. Filthy kids playing in the road, seeming unphased by the huge dust clouds we threw up. Vast areas of trashed landscape and trees mullered for cooking fuelwood. Pagodas rather than the temples of Thailand. Surprisingly clean and free of rubbish because the local people can’t afford snacks and shite in plastic wrappers. And a hundreds of collapsing bridges (note the split in a main beam). 
Having left at 7am we arrived at the town we were going to work at (KP) by 5pm in Rakhine State. We had a good look at this on Google Earth before coming as it’s in a ‘restricted area’ due to being close to Bangladesh. Ie no whities, tourists, reporters or anyone who isn’t in the oil and gas world. After a lot of grief Dr O had found a hall for us and for four days we were going to conduct mangrove restoration training for the FAO, as part of a much larger mangrove project. We knew Dr O from a mangrove training in India in 2005 so that’s why Jim (at MAP but in Myanmar as a private individual, like me) got the call, and he asked me to support him. Ironically there was an airstrip (and golf course!) about a five iron away from the hall but this was for government staff only.
The next day was spent talking with the two local FAO staff, U (Mr) San and Miss Khin (who had an MSc from Bangor Uni of all places + Dresden). We had previously explained the training we were going to do, but they hadn’t seen the .ppt nor how were going to keep 50 people from falling off their chairs from boredom and heat exhaustion for four days. An added difficulty was the mix of the crowd. Some Myanmar forestry dept staff, NGOs, UNDP staff and local villagers from mangrove areas.
The first evening we came across a group of 9 Indians, bored out of theirs skulls in the hotel. They were part of a gas pipeline dredging team, waiting for their dredger to arrive from India - ten days to wait and weren’t allowed to leave the hotel, drink, party or cause any trouble at all. No internet as internet penetration in Myanmar is like Rolls Royce Phantom ownership in Yangon. No mobiles as ownership is restricted and CDMA rather than GSM. Four of them were newly married. They were so bored that the cricket on TV and 1970s Indian films being shown, all wobbling heads and needless dancing, failed to enliven them. Even their Indian curry multi-compartment plates looked like prison canteen trays. They were desperate.
The Mangrove training was fun. For once there was complete .ppt freedom from corporate ID and colour use, so we went mad. Loads of pictures. Very few words. Loads of build. Dancing arrows and indicators of where to do what. You can take the suit off the ad-man…
More on the training in the next installment.
