Editors Note: Tourist visas were issued for a maximum stay of one week. Much of the country was off-limits to foreigners. Place names used are those that were in use at the time.

We flew in to Rangoon (Yangon) from Kathmandu with a one hour stopover in Calcutta (Kolkata). After we filled out a myriad of forms and passed through Customs and Immigration, we shared a taxi into town with another fellow. We sold our Johnny Walker whisky and 555 cigarettes to the driver and also changed US cash at the street rate of 25 Kyat/dollar. Tourist Burma staff were equally friendly and easy going, but no flights going north were available so we purchased train tickets for that evening.. All the seats on the 9:00pm Mandalay Express were sold out, so we accepted "no seat" (unreserved) tickets..

We then ambled over to the Stand Hotel, a legacy from the colonial days, and still the best hotel in Burma. We sat under the slowly revolving fans, enjoying our Mandalay Beer for $0.60 per quart bottle. Then we sauntered into the main dining room where we knocked back more beers with shrimp cocktails, lobster tails on rice and fruit cocktails for $3 each. The hotel atmosphere was wonderful; little changed since the British had left. A short time later, we were laying on the floor of a second class train, trying to sleep while the train car jolted from side to side. Throughout the 14 hour journey, there was a continuous flow of food vendors. I sampled fried grasshoppers, curried chicken, vegetable rolls while Sheila stuck with fruit.

We reached Mandalay and hopped into another transportation form, the trishaw, a bicycle with a side car with passengers sitting back to back. We had an afternoon tour for 50 Kyat.. In the evening, we strolled the night market and each purchased a sarong. The following day, we did another trishaw tour and saw enough pagodas and Buddhas to last a lifetime. Mandalay Hill was especially enjoyable. Trashy stalls and tacky photo stalls were set up to service Burmese pilgrims. The pagodas and Buddhas were beautiful and often surrounded by gaudy mirrors, more mirrors and power lines. .Buddhas were for the most part covered in gold leaf that the devout bring and then the monks place them on the images. We visited a shop where a fellow stood pounding away making gold paper, thinner than tracing paper. Mandalay was a lovely town that moved a slow pace. The people were all smiling at our new dress attire.

We piled into a Jeep with 12 people and made the 2 1/2 hour drive up to Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin ), an old British Hill station ( 1,050m.) Time appeared to have stood still with transport primarily bicycles and horse drawn stage coaches. We stayed at the Candacraig, built in 1904 for the Bombay Burma Trading Company. It is set out on beautiful gardens and features a bar, dining room, lounge with fireplace and an overall magnificent aura. The staff were pleasant and efficient and our bedroom had a balcony facing out onto the garden. We had dinner of soup, followed by a healthy serving of roast beef, potatoes and vegetables with fruit cocktail and coffee to finish, all for $1 a serving. It was very British except the vegetables weren't over cooked. We met a Chinese fellow in Maymyo who brought us to his house and took us to the botanical gardens. We had some good conversations with him.

I had partially mastered the art of the sarong, in fact I was almost competent. It did have its moments, once while admiring a pagoda, it began to unravel and slipped off my hips. A demonstration by a friendly chap in Maymyo set me straight. Our sarongs certainly broke the ice quickly.

Returning to Mandalay, we had the energy to visit the night market. The atmosphere was very busy as people ate at outdoor restaurants and there were plenty of shoppers at the stalls selling food, clothing, trinkets, etc. Sheila had a sit-down back massage in the street market to assuage the Jeep journey. Our trishaw driver told us all about Burmese movie houses, so we went to a 9:00pm showing. We were one of the attractions that night. After the national anthem, the poor quality black & white Burmese movie commenced. While the movie played, we thought that we could hear the sounds of thousands of mice eating, but it turned out to be the audience munching on sunflower seed, peanuts, chips and assorted Burmese snacks. The following day, we wandered the giant Saturday market. Roses cost 10 for 2 Kyats while papaya shakes went for 5 Kyats.

We left Mandalay with some regret as we enjoyed the place very much, particularly the morning market.

We went to Pagan (Bagan) the easy way. The old Burma Airways plane lumbered out of Mandalay, just barely clearing the houses of Mandalay. It cost us $15, though we could have taken a full day boat to Pagan.

Pagan was an amazing place with temples and pagodas as far as the eye can see, 2217 to be exact. A day of temple viewing around Pagan in a horse cart with Momo was exhausting. We slept in a bamboo thatched bungalow in an ideal location to listen to the loudspeakers blaring away into the night. The festival that was taking place ran till 4:00am each day.

One evening, we were in the village festival, entered a photo studio and got all dressed up as a prince and princess in Mandalay Palace. We had such a choice of backdrops, we could have walked away with a mitt full of photos. They had the Taj Mahal, a garden, a band stage, Mandalay Palace, a huge Love sign, motorcycle and half a car.

We had managed to book a flight from Pagan to Rangoon, so we skipped a night on the train and stayed at the Strand Hotel instead. A room cost 125 Kyats and I somehow managed to pay without an entry on my currency form, so I was able to pay for it with "street money" or $5/night. The room was not restored but kept in beautiful pristine condition with all the old furniture in it. We had another lobster dinner.

We visited Shwedagon Pagoda on our last morning. It is a massive,sprawling complex with such unusual temples and attractions that it almost felt like a Burmese Disneyland.

We felt somewhat rushed with only a week in the country, but we had done fine with the limited time. That day, we entered a time machine; Burma Airways flight 221 took us forward many decades to Bangkok.

While we sat in Bangkok rush hour traffic in a tropical rainstorm, we didn't think that we were going to make our Biman flight to Rangoon but we did. The plane touched down three times, a perfect kangaroo landing. We filled out two forms on the plane and a further two at Customs & Immigration. The official who served us was a jovial character and laughed at everything. We got the idea and just put something down on the form while some tourists got bogged down in the form filling. Our taxi driver crank started his vehicle and I held onto the door to keep it from flying open during our drive into town. It was dark and flying insects (were told crickets) were in the air and people were catching them, a delicacy.

Later, we wandered the quiet night streets, slurped down strawberry lassis and made contact with a money changer. We haggled some and then followed the odd character through the dark streets of Rangoon and into another man's home. We woke him up and he rustled through the cupboard and produced a wad of 10 Kyat notes. The government had demonetized the 100, 50 and 20 Kyat notes, so wheelbarrows were almost needed to cart around large values of money.

We took the ferry across the river from Rangoon to Syrian(Thanlyin) . It cost us 1 Kyat and then we rented chairs for 15 Piaysis (less than a penny). Books were also available for rent during the 45 minute journey. For us, it was mostly about watching people, baskets, bicycles, chickens and whatever else they could load on the boat.

We took the night train from Rangoon to Thazi and tried to sleep on the floor under the wooden benches. Eleven hours later, we arrived at Thazi at 5:30am and were crammed into a "taxi" (small pick-up truck with benches in the back) for the five hour trip to Inle Lake Within an hour into the ride , our bodies ached and the exhaust fumes were too much, so we climbed up onto the roof with a few Burmese passengers.. One of our fellow riders joked that we were travelling "Upper Class". We enjoyed the scenery, watched the bullock carts and waved at people by the roadside. All was good until the rain started.

In Nyaungshwe we met four New Zealenders who were travelling by chartered pick-up truck. We teamed up with them and shared the cost of the Inle Lake boat charter (Tourist Burma controlled rate of 350 Kyat). The lake (880m) was surrounded by hills and low rain clouds. People travel in long narrow wooden boats, mostly powered by oar. The Inle style of paddling is standing, wrapping one's leg around the oar and pull it through the water. We motored by villages, monasteries and rows of tomato, potato and beans on earth mounds around the lake.

A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal created a rainy trip for us. After Inle Lake, we moved on to Pindaya (1280m) We waited a long time for transport. While we waited in an Aung Ban restaurant for the 8 Kyat pick-up truck ride, we met a group of university students. We were invited to stay at a teacher's home in Pindaya. However, Sheila was fading fast with the flu and we opted for the quiet of a Pindaya hotel room. Sheila had diarrhea and I picked up a case of giardia, so our Pindaya stay was low key. Pindaya is known for the cave temple filled with over 1,000 Buddhas (Wikipedia indicates over 8,000 Buddha images) and its long staircase.

After our excursion to the caves, I went over to the teacher's house. Before the hotel was built, tourists used to stay at his home. His English was quite good and he provided considerable insight into Burmese life. He was relatively well-off and explained that he allocated his salary equally to living expenses, children's education, pension and to the monastery. Whenever, he had additional funds, once or twice a year, he made significant donations to the monastery. A festive event surrounded such donations, so he would gain community status by giving. This was in contrast to the Western approach to gain self-esteem through material accumulation and job titles. We would return to Pindaya in the Spring of 1986.

The rain continued and the puddles and mud grew. We moved onto Kalaw, (1300m) still in the Shan State hill country. Sheila's flu lingered but my giardia was largely defeated by a full dose of Tinadazole. We stayed at the Kalaw Hotel and I arranged for a guide to visit a hill country village. It took a little while to organize, so I wandered the soggy Kalaw market. Then my guide, Joseph, and I slipped and slid through mud for an hour before reaching a village perched on the crest of hill. The village had a couple of brick houses, but mostly wooden houses, plenty of pigs and mud and a monastery. We marched up to the plain wooden monastery and were greeted by two dozen young (10 year old) monks. After we sat down inside on the wooden floor, I asked Joseph if I could take some photos. Once my question was translated, the monks scattered in different directions. It turns out that they went to get changed from their day-to-day orange robes into their maroon outfits. I took a number of photographs.

Word travelled through the village and I was pressed to take their photographs.

It was another hard journey back to Rangoon. We rode a public pick-up truck down the windy road to Thazi. However, when we were about 45 minutes from the train station, we hit a road block, where a huge tow truck was trying to pull up a truck that hung nose down over a muddy cliff. The rain started and after an hour and half of no progress, it didn't look like we were going to catch the "6 Down". Then the tow truck seemed to give up and let the traffic through. We arrived at Thazi station with a few minutes to spare for the 8:30pm express that was naturally late by an hour anyways. On board, we attempted sleep and then watched the rural landscape light up with the first sun rays. We pulled into Pegu (Bago) and we were the only ones to disembark. We had a dodgy Burmese breakfast of curried noodle soup with all sorts of odd things in it. We arranged to leave our bags with the railway police. I naturally thanked the official and rattled off about half of my Burmese vocabulary ("kyay-zoo-tin-bah-de") and he immediately assumed that I spoke Burmese. He found out to the contrary quickly.

We set outside the Pegu train station into the jaws of the rickshaw and tonga drivers to negotiate a tour of the town. "Good morning brother" got our attention and business. A little pleasant haggling and we established a 40 Kyat price for a half day tour. We visited several interesting monuments and pagodas before jumping on a bus for the two hour trip into Rangoon. We spent the afternoon in the lobby of the Strand drinking beer. We knew the lay of the land and took alternating trips to the showers upstairs to clean up for our customary lobster dinner before our evening flight to Dhaka and onto Kathmandu.

On our third visit to Burma, we were joined by friends Scott & Sue, after our somewhat dysfunctional trek in Nepal. We all flew from Kathmandu via Dhaka to Rangoon.We skipped through Customs & Immigration quickly and I sold my 555 cigarettes before I even reached the taxi and we did exchange business on the way into town. The official exchange rate was 8 Kyat to the USD, while the street rate was 28 and the smokes captured a whopping 40 Kyat/dollar. There was a new bill in town; a 75 Kyat banknote that sometimes required a little extra mental gymnastics. The Tourist Burma office offered us standing room only tickets on the train that night. We dropped off some of our extra luggage at the YMCA for safekeeping and set off to the Strand in trishaws. Everyone enjoyed the prawn cocktails and grilled lobster washed down with Mandalay Beer. We were whisked away in trishaws to the train station and an unusually busy platform. The reality of Burma hit hard and finding a spot on the floor of the second class car was difficult. We all lay on the floor near the lavatory, packed in tight. Call it a snake pit or a hell hole, it was hard travel. Our group separated at Thazi with the other two going on a more conventional trip and we went on for different torture in a small pick-up truck for three hours to Kalaw. The conductor would not allow women to sit on top, so while Glenn hung on, sitting on the roof, Sheila toughed it out down below enduring collective nausea & claustrophobia.

We spent a night at the Kalaw Hotel and we were astonished that the receptionist recognized me and remembered my name instantly from our stay in November 1985. The Kalaw market was winding down when we arrived but the hill tribe people had not cleared out yet. There were plenty of men wearing towels on their heads, chomping on cheroots. We sat down to a lunch of sticky rice mixed with egg served on a banana leaf with green onions, garlic cloves, chili pepper and chili sauce. Later, I tried a dry noodle concoction that which I could not begin to describe the flavours. We had Burmese curry that evening and caught a ride onto Pindaya with a western couple who had chartered a vehicle. The weekly Pindiya market was in full force at our arrival and we bought papaya, melon, yellow strawberries that tasted like raspberries, red strawberries candy popcorn, peanuts and peanut brittle.

We were warmly welcomed at the school teacher's home that I had visited one evening the previous year. U-Win means Uncle Win; his given name proved unpronounceable by us, and he offered his common name in its stead. Our intention was to find a guide who could take us into the hill tribe area. However, U-Win was "concerned for our safety" and recommended day walks only. There did not appear to be any specific dangers, but we believed the main concern was with the government and regulations with tourists. So we stayed in Pindaya at the teacher's home for a couple of days and we enjoyed their overwhelming generosity and hospitality. We faced danger in the form of over-eating. We were escorted by one of the older students, U-Win's younger son and other friends on walks through the farmlands. The higher elevations of the Pindaya area allowed them to grow a variety of fruits and vegetables. We were a couple of months early to enjoy fresh fruits but we did eat plenty of raspberries and strawberries.

Tea was picked in the fields and many homes had tea leaves out drying on straw mats in front of their homes. Thanat plants were also picked, pressed and dried to make cheroots (Burmese cigars). Flowers were also grown in abundance for sale in the local markets. People used them to decorate their in-house and public Buddhist shrines.

We visited many people's homes along the way. We were often fed various Burmese dishes and plenty of Burmese tea. We were eating 6 meals a day. The Burmese word "toby", meaning "full" came in handy at times. Everyone would make a big effort to speak their few words of English and they were thrilled when we responded with our paltry Burmese vocabulary of hello, thank-you and good-bye. Our hosts would always break out in joyous laughter with our limited linguistic exchanges. We went for a swim in a nearby river that was fed by a mountain spring. And of course, we all had a picnic afterwards.

In the evenings, we retired to the teacher's home and enjoyed the cool nights sitting on the balcony. Traditional Burmese homes had just two rooms; a kitchen with hearth and a large bare room with a Buddhist shrine decorated with fresh flowers. Shoes are never allowed in the house. Meals are served on a stunted round table with everyone sitting on the floor. After the meal, the table is put away. However, the teacher was relatively well off and their home had tables, chairs, cassette player and a 1950's Chevrolet outside. And rather than sleep on a straw mat, we slept in proper beds in our own room.

After 2 1/2 days, we made our farewells, exchanging addresses and gifts with promises to return one day. We did exchange letters and photographs some time later. We reached Aung Ban which was busy with the morning market. Hill tribe women were dressed all in black and we wondered how they could wear such warm clothing in warm weather. We had another pick-up ride to Kalaw, packed with 23 people, including 10 standing on the back.

The following day, we had arranged for a guide to visit a hill tribe village. When we started early at 6:00 am, it was cold enough to see your breath but by mid-morning it was already 30C. The village people lived in long houses on stilts. On one side of the long house were partitioned, raised floors for eating and sleeping. In front of each living area was a cooking fire area. Along the other wall, were looms used to make their traditional red weave for their lungis (sarongs). The women wore barking deer skin belts while weaving. Beams of light came down through openings of the straw roof, illuminated their work and created a nice atmospheric effect.

The women wore red lungis with short blue jackets. They wore coin necklaces that apparently would have been old British coins, now replaced with Burmese coins. The older women wore numerous loose fitting thin red bamboo rings around their waists and their head-dresses were covered in small threaded beads with coloured strings hanging down their back to indicate age and marital status. The younger girls wore caps covered in colourful pom-poms. They were poor but appeared happy. The kids attended a nearby school for at least the primary years. Religion played a big part in their lives and each village supported it own monastery.

On our last day in Kalaw, there was a ceremony at the large monastery on the hill overlooking the city (Hnee Pagoda). The young boys were being initiated into monkhood and the older monks were reaching a new stage. The young boys were dressed in colourful, gaudy clothes (pink and yellow) covered in bright stones and wore crowns on their freshly shaven heads. After the head monk's sermon, the boys disrobed and put on monk's robes. The older monks were given practical gifts such as toothpaste, writing paper by the local people.

We took the six hour train ride back to Thazi rather than the overcrowded carbon monoxide poisoning three hour jeep ride. The train was just as crowded but we, along with many Burmese, rode the roof. The train was slow and food vendors paraded up and down the train roof. Some Burmese played a game of running from the first car roof to the last when the train went through tunnels. The views were good as we passed through hills and we saw various hill tribe villages along the way. We boarded the Rangoon Overnight Express with upper class seats. However, it was just as loony as ordinary class. The seats were large and comfortable but once the train started, the seat springs sent us flying up and down and the next 12 hours were like trying to sleep on a moving pogo stick.

Back at our old haunt, the Strand Hotel, we slipped up stairs for showers before retiring to the lounge for a few ice cold lime sodas. Sue & Scott were also there, selling their extra Kyats to incoming tourists. We all caught our flight onto Bangkok that afternoon.

After an overnight stay in Dhaka at the Zakoria Hotel, included in our airfare from Calcutta, our Biman flight characteristically made a kangaroo landing on the Rangoon runway. We had experience with Burmese Customs & Immigration and quickly filled out the requisite forms and jumped into a YMCA bound taxi. There had been some changes since our last visit. Foreign Independent Tourists (FIT's) were now required to change 100 USD at the official rate. I did change $100, but it was the lesser valued Canadian version. Later the 100 became a 200 with the help of a ball point pen. Another key change was that the blue tablecloth pattern of men's lungis (sarongs) was out of fashion and the green & purple plaid was in vogue. We went for our traditional lobster thermidor dinner at the Strand, however they were out of lobster and we settled on pepper steaks. We also changed $50 on the street at the 40 Kyat rate.

We killed the better part of the following day in Rangoon but by late afternoon we came across the Garden Restaurant that offered good Chinese food for 50 Kyat. Then, as in all our Burmese trips, it was off to the train station, this time we jumped on the spring loaded seats of the upper class chair car. We hit the floor and slept some overnight. Tourist Burma was operating a counter at the Thazi train station and we took advantage of their offering of relatively luxurious bus to Pagan that included a breakfast stop at a tourist hotel on route. How easy was that?

Pagan was as peaceful as ever with more guesthouses, but it was off-season and it was a quiet as ever. We stayed at the New Pagan Guest House and put the word out that we were looking for Momo, our horse cart diver of 2 1/2 years earlier. We had a look around at some of the lacquerware shops and by the following morning we struck a deal. We ended up with a 24" trunk and a couple of nice end tables. It involved some haggling but the woman who negotiated the sale kept saying that it was a good price and we believed her. It cost $40 for the lot. Our tour was delayed by Ne Win, the general and leader of the country, who was also in Pagan, so we couldn't start till the afternoon. Momo, with horse cart #7, was as pleasant as ever. He was wealthier and a fairly astute business man with some small businesses on the side and a fair sized money changing business. He had moved out of his parents house into a place that he had built. Two of his three children had already undergone the monk initiation ceremonies. We visited several pagodas and watched a nice sunset.

We were the only FITs on board the Burma Airways flight to Mandalay. A little over a week later the same Fokker F-27 didn't arrive in Pagan but crashed killing all crew and passengers. That was a little too close for comfort. In Mandalay, we once again wandered the central market with its strange odours and had a beautiful chicken biryani. There were still few cars in Mandalay and the bicycle trishaws were they way to get around. We patronized a young fellow, Ko Toe and went back to Mandalay Hill for views of the Irawaddy in flood. Ko Toe read comic books and sometimes went to see private video showings while he waited for us. On the following day, we took buses and horse carts and climbed up to the Sagaing Pagoda and walked across the U Bein's foot bridge to Kyauktawgyi Pagoda in Amarapura. Later we caught the night train (upper class) and somehow, we both managed reasonable sleeps on the floor.

Back in Rangoon, we stayed at the Strand (assisted by a minor alteration of a currency form) and revisited the Sule and Shwedagon Pagodas. Our Strand economy room had been recently renovated with a shower installed on a raised platform in the corner of the room. We spent our remaining Kyat and I had some small US dollars on hand should the lacquerware pose any issues on exit. When the Customs officer saw the wrapped trunk, he exclaimed "Big Problem!". I replied "No problem at all". To that he replied "I can help you" and he stamped my currency form and we were onto Bangkok.