Take-Aways

The gate is locked and there is not a sign of life in the overgrown, flower filled garden. We are in the Shan Palace in Hsipaw. I wanted to see it. There is a book, a real story written by the Austrian born last princess of Hsipaw. In it she speaks of a land of progress and prosperity. She speaks of a profoundly benevolent prince that was the last prince of the state before the new regime took over. A true democrat and by the sounds of it committed to bettering the lives of the people under his rule. He is missing, has been for the last 40 years. In reality he was arrested in the coup of 1962 and by all accounts, executed. But this has never been officially acknowledged. There is no open invitation to visit. The master of the house has been arrested for the last 2 years, allegedly for disseminating unpatriotic information, in reality for speaking his mind to foreigners who care to hear his story. It must be frightening to live under arbitrary rule, to have no control over your life. The house is quiet, seems abandoned but if you care to insist, if you care to cycle round the back, the dogs might hear you and alert whoever is inside. Hsipaw is idyllic in so many ways. The plantations are abundant and range from rice to pineapple, bananas to coffee and mountains of Taiwanese grain corn. The river is wide, even though it’s called Dotawaddy or “small river”. The town seems prosperous and busy and it adores English football. The surrounding area is filled with waterfalls and a hot spring that the rain has made inaccessible to us. The pop corn factory just outside of town is really a pop corn manufacture run by one family and supplying Hsipaw only. When the corn is a bit damp and not too eager to pop, they make a potato based paste, mixed with flour and ginger, dried in the sun and cut in strips that they then fry in a big wok until it expands like an inflatable mattress and turns into a crisp gold. All hand made, bagged and sent into town maybe 2 km down the road. Every day the same. The train that comes from Mandalay takes a day, once a day. It’s a distance of 209 km. The ride goes over Gogteik bridge, at one time the second highest railroad in the world. People must still think the technology is unsurpassable or I cannot explain the presence of the benevolent official who stood above us during the entire crossing making sure we did not take any photographs. We did not take the train from Mandalay, we took it from PiUlWin, half way through and therefore only rode it for 7 hours. It’s a quaint mountain station, predominantly Indian. It seems the British brought with them “Gurkas” or Indian soldiers everywhere they went in Burma and many of them stayed on. The town is filled with Cinderella-like horse and carriage vehicles that are the main mode of transportation there, if you discount the motorbikes that you can also hitch a ride with. It looks prosperous, no doubt thanks to the mountain air that draws the rich kids of Mandalay and to the Military Defense Academy that keeps them here. It is also home to lots of waterfalls and an annual flower show, the second of which will take place in December this year. It is a lovely region this. Increasingly open to foreigners and up until Lashio of easy if slow access. Beyond it one must seek permits, a semi-official name for bribes. We head down to Mandalay instead, slowly making our way back South. We have now used up the better part of our 28 day visa and still there is so much to explore. Maybe it would have been enough to spend our days next to the “Little river”. Or maybe we will do so one day when we are allowed to come back again to see the long awaited changes. Maybe next time when we go up to Sunset Hill to look down on the town next to the winding river we will see it shining in the night for electricity for all will have come, at last!