Clark's Crazy Adventures: November 2015

Myanmar on Crack.....

All Asian countries are slightly crazy. Occupational Health and Safety seems to be non-existent, there are defiantly no Responsible Service of Alcohol rules and any health inspector would shut most of the country down. With all of that in mind the “Tuanggyi Balloon Festival’ takes the prize. It truly ‘one-ups’ everything I have ever seen or experienced, Burmese people are absolutely nuts!!!!

Tuanggyi is around 1 hour by car from Inle Lake. Every October/November, depending on the full moon the Balloon Festival is held. It runs for 5 consecutive nights and locals come from miles away to compete in the balloon competition. It has a lot of other significance but with crap-o-la wi fi the above explanation will need to suffice.

I knew the festival was on while we were there and asked our guide if he would arrange for us to go. I have no idea what our guides name was as I can barely pronounce English so we will call him Bob. “Sure, I arrange for you”, “lot of people, no toilets and people have died, is that OK?” hmmmmm why not……

So off we went, fingers crossed it would be a happy ending. We arrived and just stared. Picture the Sydney Easter Show with no rules and over a hundred thousand people drunk, on crack or just really happy. Thank god for Bob who advised he attended every year and would lead us around. I would have kissed the ground if I wasn’t scared of dying 20 minutes later of a disease that hasn’t been discovered yet. We weaved through hundreds of happy locals, dodged food stalls, pop up beer shops and kids running in every direction. We came out in a huge field with locals singing, chanting and dancing.

The first balloons to go up, according to Bob, weren’t the exciting ones. I however thought they were brilliant. Thousands of candles were lit and somehow attached to the balloon as it was filled with hot air from a fire. Off to one side another group were attaching hundreds more candles in various colours to a bamboo structure. When the main balloon was upright the bamboo structure was attached to the bottom and the whole thing floated into the night ski. We clapped and cheered along with everyone until we realised we were becoming the main attraction. People requested photos with us, would lightly touch our arms then giggle or try and take ‘sneaky’ photos. This was now a game for us as well and we tried to jump into as many photos as we could. Bob was very concerned and worried every time we would move. Although trying to explain to your boss that you lost a few western tourists entrusted to you would be a hard call for any guide. When locals would see me with my camera they would often grab my hand and push my shoulder to lead me to where they considered I would get the best picture. Bob of course would freak out at this and run over…..

After the candle balloons floated away whistles were blown and trucks came driving onto the field. “Fun part now” Bob advised. Then indicated the clearest path to run if we needed to. WTF. Singing and music continued and another balloon starting taking shape. Once it was fully inflated an enormous teared wooden structure covered in 80kg of fireworks was attached, a wick lit and everyone held their breath. The balloon slowly lifted and suddenly the fireworks started exploding in every direction. It was fucking insane!!!! But Oh so cool. We discovered that they send up around 30 balloons each night and party till dawn. After watching a few we decided to escape while all our limbs were still attached. By this time we were desperate to go to the loo. Whilst trying to locate our driver myself and Lucy ducked behind a minivan, we didn’t see the people sitting in it until we stood…………..

Waiting for the balloons.....

Snack....

Lighting the candles...

Up and away.....

The main event - a firework balloon....

But wait there's more....

Beer anyone?

Inle Lake

The bed bug bites are still itchy but I’m ever so clean and it’s hard to take my 80 sq/m of pure luxury, especially after sleeping on the floor. Inle Lake is beautiful and our hotel is to die for! We spent the last 2 days exploring the lake and watching locals go about their day-to-day life. There are hundreds of inlets around the lake and each one takes you to another village. Thankfully I’m not navigating as a disaster would emanate. Even here we are still the novelty with locals asking for photos and monks filming us on their ‘hello kitty phones’ ha ha ha.

Our hotel is quite ‘exclusive’ and one must take a 45 minute boat ride to even get to it. We appear to be the youngest guests here and the sad news for the boys is that the beers are quite expensive. However the rainfall shower head that’s about a metre square hands down outweighs the beer prices. In fact I’m lounging on my private verandah right now watching weird arse fish jumping around and under my little residence….

Local fishermen on Inle Lake

A local trying to sell us her wares....

Meeting our guides family

When one gets bored, one hires bikes!

Local markets

Our amazingly fabulous hotel

Sunset

And another sunset.......

45km trek!

From Mandalay we flew to Heho, picked up our next guide and had a lovely tour of the surrounds of Halaw. More temples, more amazing views and the start of our two day trek. Oh! and I nearly forgot about the hallucinogenic soup… Most restaurants here and I use that word very lightly, serve a type of soup or broth before your main meal. It looks totally gross and comes out of a huge caldron type thingy…. I’m assuming you’re getting the picture. Anyhow, back to the story, I was being slightly, extremely cautious at this point of time and sticking to rice, rice and more rice. Thus I didn’t eat my soup, however those of us that did had, let’s say, very vivid dreams. Me thinks that’s why it was so popular…..

The following morning we meet our guide bright and early in reception to start our 2 day trek to Inle Lake. We were so eager and keen given our extreme level of fitness and knew we would be able to endure the heat and elements of Myanmar easily. There was a huge trekking map located on the wall so we asked our guide where he would be taking us. He laughed and asked us to point to Inle Lake, shit was my first thought. He then took a photo of the map on his phone ‘just in case’ he again laughed. Hmmm we weren’t laughing that much. We headed off in our mini-van to the starting point when our guide, we will call him guide 1, received a call stating we needed to go back to our hotel to pick up our guide. Confused, yep we were too. So now we had another guide, guide 2. Guide 1 spoke some English, guide 2 spoke no English. Guide 1 assured us that it would be a flat easy walk, roughly 10 km. 22.5km we crawled into a local village where we would be spending the night. And no it definitely wasn’t flat, insert swear words….

The only 5 stars at our accommodation were above us. There was no power, no running water, no toilet, big spiders and warm beer. The last point really didn’t bother me. I was very tired, very dirty, very smelly and the 60 odd bed bug bites were slightly itchy from the heat and the 22.5km trek. HOWEVER, the family we stayed with were beautiful, they couldn’t have done more for us. The village was extraordinary. We watched kids play, men returning home on bullocks, woman weaving baskets and preparing dinner. Guide 1 turned out to be very funny and guide 2 could cook, although I was still on rice only. Later that evening, while hunting beer, we ran into a group of Polish tourists. We got talking and asked them about how they liked their trek. They smiled, laughed and informed us that they paid a local at lunch to drive them the rest of the way – what the fuck, OMG an epiphany was coming…. Immediately I found guide 1 and asked if we could hire a local to drive us the next day, of course he said!!!! With this knowledge we all slept soundly on the ground.

The following day we piled into an open truck and drove along an immensely dusty road. It was great as the dust was able to blend into the layers of sweat, bug repellent and sun screen. After a few hours on the road we piled into a long boat and spent another hour weaving through reeds on Inle Lake. Eventually we immerged triumphant and behold not only running water, electricity, and limited Wi Fi but the most beautiful looking western resort you have ever seen. We were slightly afraid that they may not let us in as we all looked like chiko rolls, but here we are….