Travel Report 21: On the River to Mandalay

“When traveling downriver from Bamo to Mandalay, on the Irrawaddy, one must make sure to reserve a cabin in advance”, is what the, I thought, friendly travel agent in Yangon told me and Volker on the 14th of November, two days before our departure to fly to Myitkyina. Friendly, as usual, being a relative term. My Uncle seemed to agree with this assessment. Although there were no papers handled or tickets given it was understood that we would be secured a safe and covered birth on the ship from Bamo to Mandalay. I imagined the below in case we would not reserve our spot. Rustic, romantic even, but 500 km of it? I don't think so. Plus, have you ever actually tried balancing on one of those?


You can imagine our consternation a few days later when, after visiting my Uncle’s projects in Bamo and environs, on return to the Friendship Hotel and its friendly Chinese staff, we were informed by same staff that, alas, we would not have such luxury, as it were. In fact, there was no room left on that boat at all, which seemed rather unfortunate, because how the hell were we going to go back south, if not via ship? At this point you should JFGI Bamo, if you have not done so yet, in order to know where it is located, and also a couple of pictures of road to Mandalay. An overnight bus ride seemed out of the question, especially since floating down the Irrawaddy on a pre 1940 Made in China lemon of a passenger ship had always been a fantasy of mine. I just didn’t know that until I arrived in Burma.

The Bangkok airport snafu was only starting at that time, so we did not have the proper blasé, quasi-fatalistic attitude “Well, we ain’t getting a flight, so we might as well stay”. Being the well-seasoned traveler that my Uncle is, he took it in stride and asked, “Well, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? SWIM down the bloody thing?!?’ No, just kidding, of course he didn’t say that. In South East Asia (SEA) one does not get far with angry outbursts. It becomes a sort of quicksand situation. The more you yell and holler the deeper you sink into a hole of no help at all and only mute empty eyes staring back at you. Like a Gila Monster would look at you, should you, unfortunately, fall into a La Brea tar pit. So instead we shook our heads sadly, wrung our hands forcefully, and beseeched the friendly Chinese staff at the Friendship Hotel how on earth we were going to make our next appointment in Mandalay.

“There is another ship tomorrow morning instead of the day after”. We smell the second oldest rip-off in the book, the one after the shell game. And casinos. And taxes. OK, it’s the fourth oldest. So we shake our heads, and wring our hands, and beseech some more. And it turns out that the ship tomorrow is not 3 times as expensive as the original ticket, but instead cheaper then the passenger ship a day later. Now we consider how much we appreciate the continued presence of kidneys in our own bodies, instead of in the midsection of some mid level Chinese Gov official on dialysis in Yunan Province.No more shaking of heads, wringing of hands and beseeching. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more kowtowing to inscrutable eyes and blank faces. No more trying to fit into the local culture, being anthropologically and/or politically correct. Now these lazy, good-for-nothing, unorganized, ungerman, vegetable-eating inheritors of the Golden Land (yep, JFGI this too) shall feel the wrath that is Austria.

We go ahead and buy the tickets. What can I say; the only time Austria does anything wrathy, is when our skiers do not win 95 % of all downhill races in any given year. Or if our Kaiserschmarrn isn’t good enough for the Kaiser.

And truly blessed we were to go with the flow. To bend in the wind as the willow will. To forge on ahead in the thought that surely, on a pre 1940 Made in China freight ship, instead of the passenger version there will be no silly tourists asking for their warm water when it is clear that north of Yangon nobody has any.


We were correct in our estimate. No foreigners, no intrepid co-travelers, no organized travel group from France. Only Betel-chewing, Cheroot-smoking, gum-rotting, Longi-wearing, hugely smiling, tripping-over-the-foreigners-on-their-boat crew, and a couple of Kachin and Burmese passengers. Only crazies, who don't know any better would get on this baby. Except that the ship has been plowing the river's waters for 60 years, and is apparently still going strong, if rather slow. The morning mists rise over the river. The sun breaks over the paddies.

And Volker and I once again counted our blessings for sending us such an adventure. Admittedly, we also briefly wondered who would tell my mother and my Uncle’s sister that we are not coming home should the boat, as expected, not make it around the first bend. But as all you seasoned travelers know, the most important requisite, when traveling is: ignorance in the face of danger. We Schmidts/Illetschkos seem to be blessed with that particular attribute.

Again we need to get signed into various lists of dubious importance and less durability, and finally settled into our rather spartan cabin. You all know that my appreciation of a bed rises inversely to the thickness of its mattress, but I have to tell you, that bunk was bloody rock hard. As usual, if my geriatric (love you man, sorry, it’s really a compliment) Uncle can do this, I will certainly, or at least follow his lead. The only people that I know who go further and harder are Reinhold Messner. And my parents.

In we are and down we go; down this wonder of a river; this blesser of myriads of beings; this giver of life and eternal fertilizer of a land that has only ever known the richness of Loess-rich waters brought down from the Chinese borderlands; this romance-inducing mirage. Let it roll of your tongue “I floated down the Irrawaddy”. Nearly as good, if not as stony as “I swam amongst the candles of the sea”. I don’t know what it is about this thing that always runs, but never walks, but for some reason it grabs you and holds you in its thrall for as long as you are near it. Or at least until you pass out; lulled to sleep by the constant drone of a couple of overworked and underserviced diesel engines, which pretend to speed the ship along faster than the current of the river; which is pretty slow. We settle. There is a young Pongi - Buddhist monk - on board. He and I spend time teaching each other the other's language. Burmese is a lot harder than English, or I am a lot dumber than the Pongi.

Once we come to the second defile (a narrows), a few hours down river from Bamo, one of the ever friendly Burmese passengers on the ship interrupts my hand and feet sign language conversation with the young Pongi to tell us with hands and feet that we should make our way up on the bridge because that is were the best view is. And there we enjoy a view, a vibe of the jungle, with its screaming monkeys and chattering parrots, and moments of quiet, green depths that I shall remember to the end of my days.


This Pongi tells me that he is a great fan of a bunch of Footballers in Europe. He does tell me names but I must concede ignorance in the face of his knowledge. I have no idea who he is talking about. Appropriately languid is what I would call the time spent on the ship. The lull only interrupted by stops in various small villages along the river. One of them being Kathar.


As I mentioned before, Orwell's longest post in Burma, where I catch this young gent deep in thought. Another is a nameless village. We stop, the two wood planks come down, and all the girls and women of this village proceed to sprint up it with bales of charcoal balanced on their heads. We think its charcoal because it can’t be too heavy. There are only two men out of 30 people who are doing this work. The rest of the men chill, watching the race, and a couple of toddlers. It’s a constant coming and going and lasts for 20 minutes, and we wonder where the bloody hell they put this stuff, because there certainly wasn’t any more room on the ship when we embarked two days ago. The grace with which these ladies carried their bales down a sandy bank and up a wobbly plank is only matched by their constant laughter laced banter.


Finally the captain puts his foot down and convinces the apparent boss woman on shore that enough is enough. I assume he threatened her with feeding her coal into his diesel engine. I am sure they can do it somehow. They build their own CNG engines, so this should be easy. We push off, and float on.


It gets dark. These boats do not travel on the river at night. This is because of the sand banks that constantly shift, which to this day I do not know we avoided – there are no discernable signposts. Or because of the ghosts that do their ungodly thing at night. We randomly stop in one spot along the river just after darkness. The crew ties the ship to a couple of trees. The stars are appropriate, I lie on the roof and smoke a last cheroot with my red label and realize that I do not have to imagine anything to make this a perfect moment. Writing this two month later I am afraid that there were so many perfect moments that I shall forget the most of them. How must it have been when the King had his Buddha shipped up the Irrawaddy? Was it any different than today? Farmers with their bulloks, little villages on stilts, a completely rural life that seems to be entirely unchanged for eons. It remains a constant struggle to balance my desire to experience this ancient life as it has been for generations, with my wish to give every Irrawaddy dweller a water filter and a fridge.