Burma

Ben and I recently spent three weeks in Burma, which was certainly different to any of the other countries we've been to here in Asia. Probably the main reason behind these differences is the bizarre and seemingly arbitrary behaviour of the Burmese government. As you may know, Burma has a military dictatorship. In 1990, the opposition party won the election in a landslide, but they were then outlawed by the government, and their leader is still under house arrest today.

Surprisingly, we saw very little military presence anywhere on the streets, but they certainly made themselves felt in other ways.

Currency

There are no ATMs in Burma, no banks for foreigners, and no-one accepts travellers cheques or credit cards (due to international trade restrictions). This means before you go, you have to withdraw and carry with you all the money you will need for your whole trip. As you can imagine, for a month-long holiday that can be quite a bit - Ben and I took US$1600 in cash!

The Burmese have their own currency of course - the kyat (K) - but no-one really trusts it. You can't trade kyat on foreign exchange markets, and everyone there prefers to deal in US dollars for anything but small purchases, even though it's illegal for locals to possess US currency without a license.

So for small change, you need to convert USD to K, which you have to do on the black market. This is because the "official" exchange rate is about 6K per US dollar, but on the street you can get over 1000K per dollar - almost a two hundred times better rate!

The reason why no-one really wants kyat is because on several occasions in the past, the government has suddenly declared that certain notes (eg the 100K note) are no longer legal tender. This doesn't mean you could exchange them for new notes, it means all those notes were instantly worthless (you can see why no-one wants to keep their savings in kyat!). They also introduced strange new denominations like 35, 45, 75 and 90K notes.

Today the biggest denomination you can get is 1000K, equivalent to a mere US$1. Actually these are the only notes being printed any more, because the smaller ones (eg 100K, equal to one dime) cost more to produce than they are actually worth. They are still in circulation, but are so old they they're hard to read and practically falling apart.

Apparently this situation is better than it used to be - until 2003, foreigners had to change at least US$200 into FECs (Foreign Exchange Certificates), basically the government equivalent of Disney Dollars. Of course that money went straight in the government's pockets, which you can mostly avoid doing these days.


Foreigners

It's normal for foreigners to get treated differently in Asia (see: "tourist price") but on top of this, Burma has a bunch of extra laws that only apply to us.

• We can only stay in government-registered hotels. Each place you stay will take down your full passport and visa details and report this to the authorities, so they know exactly where you are and where you're going all the time.
• Foreigners are not allowed to drive cars, if you hire a car you have to get a driver with it.
• Much of the country is off-limit to foreigners, and other areas you must apply for a special visa to enter. This includes a lot of the roads to border crossings, so you need to fly to the border to cross overland. Some of the borders are actually one-way, so you can enter, but can't leave the country the same way.
  
• Foreigners are not allowed in the capital city, Naypyidaw. Our trekking guide suggested this was because the Burmese were obtaining nuclear technology from the Indians and were paranoid about future invasion by the US. He says this is also why in 2005 they moved the capital from Rangoon to the more mountainous, easily defended area.
• Tourists can't buy a mobile phone SIM in Burma, and even for locals it's prohibitively expensive (several thousand USD).
  

Censorship

As could be expected under a military regime, all media outlets are either government owned, or have to go through government censors. Even the internet access is restricted, albeit inconsistently and almost randomly. For example, most news sites are unaffected yet some (eg abc.net.au) are blocked. Wikipedia and Google are fine, even articles critical of the local government. Access to most blog sites is unfettered, but blogger.com is not available. Flickr is OK, but Picasa Web albums is not. Gmail and Yahoo Mail are blocked, but can easily be accessed by using their secure or mobile versions.

Regardless, most of the internet cafes have proxies set up to circumvent these restrictions on request.

Electricity

Blackouts are not just a common occurance in Burma, they are a daily scheduled event. Even in Rangoon and Mandalay, two of the biggest cities, the power goes out for most of the day. Hotels and offices all have big generators out the front, so there are thousands of these spewing out unneeded noise and air pollution constantly. Usually the "scheduled hours" for electricity are just bizarre, like 11pm to 6am, when most people are asleep anyway. Even during these hours, blackouts are common. Apparently Naypyidaw is the only city which has 24 hour electricity.

It is quite an experience to ride down a main city road at night with no street lights though, with only the headlights of the occasional car glowing through the thick, fog-like dust.


Transport

Apart from flying, moving around between cities in Burma is a slow and painful experience. Because of the terrible state of most roads, even a short 100km journey can take 3 or 4 hours by bus. The local buses are usually packed full, although this doesn't stop them from trying to pick up more people along the way. They are certainly not designed for people over 6" either - once I had to buy two tickets and sit sideways just to fit in the seat.

Although we didn't catch any, the trains are apparently even slower than buses. Most of them seem to only average a glacial 25 kph.

Strangely, although they drive on the right, most of the cars in Burma are right-hand drive. At some point the government must have changed from driving on the left, in their tradition of making unnecessary changes for the sake of it.

---

Despite sounding like a bumbling and ineffective government, the Burmese military junta has a history of extreme corruption and violent repression. It is far more concerned with making billions by selling out it's country's natural resources to China and India than with the welfare of it's people. More people need to learn about what's happening over there if there is ever going to be a chance to fix it.

Asia Update #5 - Malaysia, Singapore

Been a few weeks since the last update, since then we've actually moved on from Indonesia - but even after two months we didn't see everything there that we wanted to.

Our last week in Sumatra was spent riding around giant crater lakes, firstly Lake Maninjau which takes almost 3 hours to get around; where Ben stacked his bike good and proper but remains alive; where we got drenched coming home and sheltered in a friendly barber shop. To get down to the lake you need to negotiate the famous 44 hairpin bends, which one local didn't negotiate so well - came off, lost a brake handle, then jumped back up with a grin and rode off. We saw him go off the next hairpin too since he couldn't stop any more.

The second was Lake Toba, where we stayed for a few days on the island on it (the one bigger than Singapore). It was one of the most relaxing places we've been so far, and both want to go back. The accomodation was great and super-cheap ($6 a night?), and we made some good friends: Laurence and Kasia, an English/Polish couple. On a day ride with them and some Spanish girls we suffered dodgy brakes, a flat tire, riding dirt roads downhill in torrential rain, a soak in hot springs (ok not so bad), another flat tire, then a very slow ride home in the rain at night.

We arrived early for our flight to Malaysia, which was then delayed for hours without notice, so after 10 hours at the airport we arrived at our place in KL at 4:30am. I take back everything nice I said about Air Asia. The lady we stayed with had been into couchsurfing only a year, but had already had about 250 people crash at her house. One of the nights we stayed, there was 6 of us sleeping on the floor. One of them was a hardcore Polish guy who had been travelling for almost two years, and had hitchhiked all the way from Poland, including rafting down the Ganges in a tiny canoe.

Malaysia is a bit more civilised than Indonesia (for better or worse) but prices are correspondingly higher. Kuala Lumpur is clean, with good roads and public transportation. We spent most of our time there in museums, mosques, parks, and a whole day in the Petronas twin towers. It's not as pretty a name when you realise it's the headquarters of a multi-national oil giant.

We also visited the Batu Caves just outside of town, which sport a massive gold statue at the base of the stairs leading up to the main cave. Inside the cave is a Hindu temple, and there are various other statues and temples around the complex.

After KL we went two hours south to Melaka, an old trading port which has been colonised by the Portuguese, Dutch, and the English. It's now world heritage listed, and is a great city to walk around, checking out Chinatown, the old forts and ruins, and the refreshing public pool.

From there we continued south to Singapore, where Ben was taken aside for a friendly chat with Customs. An hour later, turns out they'd found the knife he'd been given as a gift by the family in Jakarta. Somehow he escaped without a fine and even managed to get the knife back a few days later.

Anyway we spent a day walking around the city and Chinatown, and a day at the Singapore Zoo, which I'd half-seen before but had been rained out. Well this time we got rained out too but at least I was prepared, and we saw pretty much everything there. Except the white tigers - that exhibit was closed because apparently a few days ago a zoo employee tried to commit suicide by jumping into their enclosure, and succeeded.

From Singapore we took a sleeper train to Ipoh, a few hours north of KL (using "sleeper" in the loosest sense). The train broke down for two and a half hours, and we got to our new place in the Cameron Highlands after almost 24 hours on the move.

So that's where we are now, staying with another great couchsurfer, Nash. It's beautiful and cool up here, with rain every afternoon. We've been to a butterfly farm, tea plantation and a trek in the jungle this afternoon.

Tomorrow we'll head to Penang and Langkawi off the west coast of Malaysia, and then to Thailand at the end of the month. Can't believe we've been here for ten weeks already, it's disappearing too easily.

Until next time...

PS. Happy birthday Matt!

Asia Update #4 - Java

Sorry, this is going to be a long one, I really should update more often. For those who just want the précis: we finally left Bali, got through Java, and are now in Sumatra. We've passed the 50 day mark, and only have one week left in Indonesia. It's gone really fast, yet somehow it feels like years ago since we were in Bali. Probably quicker to just look at the photos and map.

So just after the last update (from Ubud), we went for another all-day scooter ride around central Bali and all the way up to the north coast. We saw a famous lakeside temple which appears on the 50,000 rupiah note, and monkeys right on the road. About halfway to the coast we had to cross a ridge with crater lakes on it (around Danau Bratan) when it suddenly started to rain. As in, we literally saw the wall of rain hit the road 20 feet in front of us, and a second later we were soaked. Riding along in a wet t-shirt - I never knew it got so cold in Bali! All up we did about 450km in two days, and with averaging about 30km/h, that's a lot of time on a scooter and it sure felt it.

From Ubud we headed back down to Kuta where we stayed for a few nights - figured we had to at least check it out. It was good doing the tourist spot last instead of first though; we didn't look quite so fresh off the plane, and already had an idea what things were worth, could speak some bahasa, etc. Turns out it's actually pretty good, who knew. Bizarrely, the prices for some things (eg food and beer) are the cheapest we'd seen anywhere!

I also decided I'd check out the Bali health care system by coming down with a fever, which they had to test wasn't malaria. Three days of tests and $900 later, turns out I didn't have malaria, dengue or appendicitis, but I did discover that the tourist hospital is actually quite good. Anyway they weren't sure what it was, but I felt better by then, so we hopped on an overnight coach to Java.

We crossed on the ferry at about midnight, and after a surreal 2am meal stop, we were dumped in Probolinggo at 3am to head up to Mount Bromo. It's a smallish volcano which is constantly venting sulphuric gas which as it turns out, is not the best smell ever. From there we took a mini bus halfway across Java to Yogyakarta (aka Jogja). After 20 hours on buses with no sleep, even washing with a bucket looked appealing.

In Jogja we stayed with a couchsurfer girl called Ciluk, saw a huge Hindu temple at Prabanan, met a bunch of funny uni students who took us to the beach, and we ended up hanging out with them for the next few days. It's easier to just look at the photos :)

On the way out of Jogja we visited Borobodur, one of the biggest Buddhist temples around, that was pretty impressive too, but hot. Also we had at least a dozen groups of people come up wanting photos with us, I guess foreigners are still a novelty.

From there we went to Semarang for one night, to stay with our mate Habibi (who we'd met in Bali and again in Lombok), in his university dorms. The next day it was another overnight coach trip to Jakarta where we stayed a few days with one of the girls we'd met in Jogja, at her family's house about an hour from the centre. Jakarta is basically a huge stinky city with open sewers and terrible traffic, and I don't think you could pay me enough to live there.

From JK we flew to Padang, which is halfway up Sumatra - saving ourselves a 30 hour coach ride. The Air Asia flight was surprisingly painless, dare I say pleasant. The check-in and security was faster than home, and the plane was a clean new A320. It was just like flying Jetstar - basic, but nice enough.

On the bus from the airport we met a girl who was an English teacher (and oil baroness in the making), who was really helpful, getting us a hotel and showing us around Padang. She left for her village the next morning and we spent the day exploring the city. They have these amazing public buses and vans driving around that are really done up with artwork, stickers, body work, lighting and sound systems. Most of them are basically crazy mobile discos.

So this morning we took a car to Bukittinggi, 100km north of Padang. There were 9 of us crammed in there and the stupid guy insisted on having his huge subwoofer (which took up most of the boot) cranked to ear-bleeding volume the whole time.

Anyway, there's a huge volcano lake about an hour from here (yes another one), so we'll get some scooters and ride out around it tomorrow. After that we're heading to Lake Toba, which is a crater lake so big, it has an island the size of Singapore inside it! Then to Medan, hang out with orang-utans for a while, until we have to fly to KL on the 8th.

That's all for now folks.