lonelywombat
February 23rd, 2014, 09:22
This was published in News limited Sunday magazine, rarely do you get the chance to read all their articles so I have posted the whole article
I have used the old spelling Irrawaddy
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/ ... 832889455# (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/five-wives-and-a-boat/story-e6frg8rf-1226832889455#)
Five wives and a boat
SUSAN KUROSAWA
The Australian
February 22, 2014 12:00AM
[attachment=0:2spc5wbh]890330-34b60bee-9839-11e3-986c-06d72cd520ac.jpg[/attachment:2spc5wbh]
Picture: Susan Kurosawa Source: News Corp Australia
FLYING into Bagan from Yangon, I am fortunate to have a window seat. Across the vast, dusty-green plains are ancient temples and stupas, seemingly in their thousands, all arranged as tidily as haystacks.
Later that day my four companions and I will climb the narrow stone steps of one of the finest of these sacred stupas to watch the deepening sunset from an elevation that feels so enlightened we get giddy-headed and oddly emotional.
Bagan is our starting point for a seven-night Ayeyarwady River cruise south to Yangon aboard the 50-passenger Orcaella, which last year joined the long-established Road to Mandalay as Orient-ExpressтАЩs second cruiser in Myanmar.
Orcaella operates seven and 11-night seasonal itineraries along the Ayeyarwady and the northerly Chindwin rivers; the latter, with less-visited towns and villages, is recommended as just the shot for repeat visitors.
For all options, joining passengers are flown to departure points from Yangon, with the flight and transfers included in the cruise fare. It is all exceptionally streamlined and well-organised in an emerging destination where tourism is a fledgling and sometimes unmanageable thing and English not yet widely spoken.
Once aboard the snub-nosed Orcaella - named for a species of river dolphin - itтАЩs clear this new four-decked vessel has been most cleverly designed. There are deluxe cabins, staterooms and suites over two levels; all configurations are well-designed chambers with good storage, powerful rainshowers and Bulgari green-tea toiletries. At night, turn-down gifts appear as if popped on pillows by passing fairies - a tiny owl made from petrified wood; a packet of sheets of hand-beaten gold leaf; a silken fan; a booklet detailing a тАЬfive-minute meditation method for quick deliverance from all sufferingтАЭ; and, to the potential detriment of dentistry, a circular wooden hand and foot massage device that looks like a chocolate in the half-light.
OrcaellaтАЩs dining and leisure facilities are on the upper two decks, and thereтАЩs an open sun area, small pool and lovely little day spa curtained into several treatment areas; after thorough rose-oil massages, passengers are served steaming ginger tea in lacquered cups.
The velvet-and-chrome lounge bar could have been lifted from a chic nightclub, waitstaff are kitted up in perky red uniforms, and sweeping staircases between decks make for grand swishing about. It is all very light and bright, with pale timbers, polished surfaces and substantial artworks in the public areas.
With a few exceptions, the staff, under the charge of amiable hotel manager Win Min, are young Burmese. Mingarlaba! they greet us day and night. тАЬHello! Welcome!тАЭ We return each day from shore visits to the embrace of Orcaella and the prospect of ice-cold towels rolled like offerings; shot glasses of strawberry smoothie, watermelon fizz and lychee juice; and the prompt offer of shoe removal and cleaning.
EveryoneтАЩs favourite staff member is executive chef Bansani (Ban) Nawisamphan from Thailand who produces extraordinary meals, particularly her crunchy and spice-enlivened salads and tofu hotpots on the luncheon buffet table with, say, melon and sago pudding and lemony marshmallows to follow.
ThereтАЩs truffled mayonnaise with the breakfast boiled eggs and an abundance of big prawns from clear, cold lakes to the north; one day Ban runs a convivial cooking class in which we learn the secrets of lemongrass-scented Burmese fish soup and pennyworth salad.
We encounter Ban ashore at almost every stop with her retinue of kitchen helpers headed in search of the best produce, from the juiciest limes to the springiest vegetables.
She carries a tremendous cane basket, typically topped up with dragonfruit, as pink and twirly as Christmas decorations, mandarins as tiny as squashes, and supplies of okra, which she uses plentifully in her curries. At one market Ban peels me a mangosteen, showing me that the petals on the purple shell correspond to the number of segments within.
Our guide Aung Zaw Min (тАЭKhunтАЭ) from Yangon leads our group of five women with utmost care and courtesy; I am the eldest, and thus have the most potential to be argumentative, and am promptly given status as his тАЬsenior wifeтАЭ, which makes our excursions feel like family outings.
OrcaellaтАЩs logistical shore staff carry walkie-talkies and wear matching T-shirts; they look like a touring sports team. We passengers opt for stout shoes and shady hats this muggy week in December. We feel mildly adventurous and encounter few other tourists but we know we are lightly tethered at all times to Orcaella by an invisible but reassuring thread.
Everywhere ashore we are met with sunbeam smiles - most memorably, the reddened grins of old ladies chewing betel nut and smoking corn-husk cheroots. Some of OrcaellaтАЩs landings are beside steep banks; a few have mud-cut steps amid tall grasses and enveloping banyan trees but at others waiting villagers stand side by side to steady us up over paths hastily constructed from sandbags and crates.
At village markets, the stallholders meet our half-hearted bargaining with shrieks of laughter and soon we are piled about like packhorses with striped textiles, ornamented puppets, green and blue lacquered bowls, sequinned shoulder bags and battered old brass gongs.
At shops with names such as Treasure Island we run amok and scoop up semi-precious jewellery in lolly colours and chunky silver bangles. KhunтАЩs new wives are starting to clink and gleam royally as we idle along beside him, like spoilt courtesans.
The itinerary is organised to give ample time ashore but with plenty of opportunity to laze aboard. I eschew the flat-screen television in my stateroom in favour of the IMAX-worthy views beyond. Floor-to-ceiling windows slide right back, the bed is positioned for horizontal sightseeing. ItтАЩs like watching a slide show of panoramic images, with pagoda spires peeping above palms like golden hats. There are banana groves and rice paddies, river gypsy villages on stilts, women carrying vegetables in flat woven baskets atop their heads, their faces streaked with powdered bark paste, or thanaka, and in the gloaming they look like ghosts.
Such sit-still sightseeing is the ease of river cruising and surely one of the chief reasons this form of travel is increasing in popularity along the worldтАЩs most desirable riverways, from the Danube to the Mekong.
But it is not all about lying down for five-star river rovers in Myanmar; life along the Ayeyarwady River is agricultural and unsophisticated and while OrcaellaтАЩs excursions are done with appropriate comfort, you need to be up for the occasional bicycle trishaw tango through muddled traffic.
A parade of conveyances waits for OrcaellaтАЩs disembarking passengers at most stops; sometimes there are standard buses but often (and surprisingly more enjoyably) are trucks with bench seats that rumble along and make impromptu stops for snakes crossing. тАЬVery bad luck to kill a snake,тАЭ says Khun, ominously.
At Gwechaung village, after a squishy walk over mudflats, we are positioned, two-by-two, aboard bullock carts for a journey that feels as up and down as a fairground ride to a ruined 19th-century fort with imperial views.
In the commanding afternoon heat, my friend Fiona and I laugh like loons as we rock along and all but slip off the tray of the cart (later we discover splinters in our seats); safely viewing from a distance, Khun looks frankly alarmed at the loud behaviour this afternoon of his senior and upper-middle wives.
Orcaella moors each night and thereтАЩs no swell or sway to interrupt our sleep. For evening entertainment, instead of venturing out, the locals come to us, sometimes from many villages distant. There are dextrous puppeteers with marionettes decked in glittery costumes; musicians who sit cross-legged on deck with their xylophones, flutes and gongs, like a gamelan orchestra; and folk dancing shows in which passengers are encouraged to have a go and given a longhi sarong to wear. We glide coolly in the muggy night wondering at the absurdity of trousers in the tropics.
On the second-last night all passengers gather at the rear of the top deck and we each write a wish on a scrap of paper to pin to a fire-lit Shan balloon. One by one they are released to fly high and white like shooting moons.
Then KhunтАЩs wives gather to do a debrief of our Orcaella experiences. At Shwemyatmyan, we have seen the worldтАЩs only bespectacled image of Buddha. We have inspected powerfully aromatic bamboo shoot pickles marinating in giant lidded urns. At the little town of Danuphyu, trishaws decked with eugenia flowers deposited us at a charming teahouse for chai sweetened with condensed milk and yellow-bean pastries. Afterwards we walked the unpaved streets, past signboards heralding the march of progress: Omo, Nivea, Horlicks, First-Class Bottled Water, Internet Cafe.
We have seen a teak monastery of ineffable beauty and, at Zalon, visited the Returning Home Pagoda to which a particularly precious statue of Buddha, тАЬstolen by the British armyтАЭ was later returned by order of Queen Victoria.
It has not been a single pagoda that has impressed us but the sheer scale and volume of Buddhist monuments in rural Myanmar; the whole gilded panoply has left us dazzled and humbled.
Amid all these wonders, we agree there is one occasion we can never forget. On the evening of day three, after our splintery bullock-cart jaunt, we had returned to Orcaella and dressed for dinner. Then we climbed the riverbank and were led through the village to a courtyard with semi-ruined walls and high rows of stone seats, like an amphitheatre.
As loudspeakers bellowed what sounded like martial music, there appeared on a makeshift stage two female gymnasts with hula hoops and juggling rings. They each jiggled and juggled and kicked cane balls with their knees and feet while balancing on tiny stools and precarious chairs and even upturned bottles, and never let the balls hit the ground. It went on and on for more than an hour and villagers gathered to cheer and we all applauded such stamina and skill.
In the candle-lit shadows, Ban and her brigade were presiding over a pop-up barbecue restaurant. A long buffet of two laden wings held a feast of dishes and OrcaellaтАЩs waitstaff ferried drinks to and fro the white-clothed tables and replenished our used silverware.
As candles flickered and the cane balls flew higher and higher, KhunтАЩs five wives dined on BanтАЩs delicate tea-leaf salads and vigorously spiced curries and declared, almost tearfully, that there was nowhere else on earth we could possibly want to be.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Orient-Express and Singapore Airlines.
Checklist
OrcaellaтАЩs eight-day Ayeyarwady Experience starts at $5410 a person twin-share; included are internal flights, meals on board, beer and soft drinks, shore excursions and entertainment. More: 1800 000 395; orient-express.com.
Singapore Airlines operates 121 flights a week between Australia and Singapore; Singapore Airlines and SilkAir offer onward connections to Yangon, with 16 flights a week. SilkAir will begin flights from Singapore to Mandalay via Yangon from June 10 (return direct service from Mandalay to Singapore). More: 131 011; singaporeair.com; silkair.com.
Australian author Len Rutledge has released Experience Myanmar, a new title in his e-book travel series, available in Kindle edition from amazon.com.
I have used the old spelling Irrawaddy
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/ ... 832889455# (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/five-wives-and-a-boat/story-e6frg8rf-1226832889455#)
Five wives and a boat
SUSAN KUROSAWA
The Australian
February 22, 2014 12:00AM
[attachment=0:2spc5wbh]890330-34b60bee-9839-11e3-986c-06d72cd520ac.jpg[/attachment:2spc5wbh]
Picture: Susan Kurosawa Source: News Corp Australia
FLYING into Bagan from Yangon, I am fortunate to have a window seat. Across the vast, dusty-green plains are ancient temples and stupas, seemingly in their thousands, all arranged as tidily as haystacks.
Later that day my four companions and I will climb the narrow stone steps of one of the finest of these sacred stupas to watch the deepening sunset from an elevation that feels so enlightened we get giddy-headed and oddly emotional.
Bagan is our starting point for a seven-night Ayeyarwady River cruise south to Yangon aboard the 50-passenger Orcaella, which last year joined the long-established Road to Mandalay as Orient-ExpressтАЩs second cruiser in Myanmar.
Orcaella operates seven and 11-night seasonal itineraries along the Ayeyarwady and the northerly Chindwin rivers; the latter, with less-visited towns and villages, is recommended as just the shot for repeat visitors.
For all options, joining passengers are flown to departure points from Yangon, with the flight and transfers included in the cruise fare. It is all exceptionally streamlined and well-organised in an emerging destination where tourism is a fledgling and sometimes unmanageable thing and English not yet widely spoken.
Once aboard the snub-nosed Orcaella - named for a species of river dolphin - itтАЩs clear this new four-decked vessel has been most cleverly designed. There are deluxe cabins, staterooms and suites over two levels; all configurations are well-designed chambers with good storage, powerful rainshowers and Bulgari green-tea toiletries. At night, turn-down gifts appear as if popped on pillows by passing fairies - a tiny owl made from petrified wood; a packet of sheets of hand-beaten gold leaf; a silken fan; a booklet detailing a тАЬfive-minute meditation method for quick deliverance from all sufferingтАЭ; and, to the potential detriment of dentistry, a circular wooden hand and foot massage device that looks like a chocolate in the half-light.
OrcaellaтАЩs dining and leisure facilities are on the upper two decks, and thereтАЩs an open sun area, small pool and lovely little day spa curtained into several treatment areas; after thorough rose-oil massages, passengers are served steaming ginger tea in lacquered cups.
The velvet-and-chrome lounge bar could have been lifted from a chic nightclub, waitstaff are kitted up in perky red uniforms, and sweeping staircases between decks make for grand swishing about. It is all very light and bright, with pale timbers, polished surfaces and substantial artworks in the public areas.
With a few exceptions, the staff, under the charge of amiable hotel manager Win Min, are young Burmese. Mingarlaba! they greet us day and night. тАЬHello! Welcome!тАЭ We return each day from shore visits to the embrace of Orcaella and the prospect of ice-cold towels rolled like offerings; shot glasses of strawberry smoothie, watermelon fizz and lychee juice; and the prompt offer of shoe removal and cleaning.
EveryoneтАЩs favourite staff member is executive chef Bansani (Ban) Nawisamphan from Thailand who produces extraordinary meals, particularly her crunchy and spice-enlivened salads and tofu hotpots on the luncheon buffet table with, say, melon and sago pudding and lemony marshmallows to follow.
ThereтАЩs truffled mayonnaise with the breakfast boiled eggs and an abundance of big prawns from clear, cold lakes to the north; one day Ban runs a convivial cooking class in which we learn the secrets of lemongrass-scented Burmese fish soup and pennyworth salad.
We encounter Ban ashore at almost every stop with her retinue of kitchen helpers headed in search of the best produce, from the juiciest limes to the springiest vegetables.
She carries a tremendous cane basket, typically topped up with dragonfruit, as pink and twirly as Christmas decorations, mandarins as tiny as squashes, and supplies of okra, which she uses plentifully in her curries. At one market Ban peels me a mangosteen, showing me that the petals on the purple shell correspond to the number of segments within.
Our guide Aung Zaw Min (тАЭKhunтАЭ) from Yangon leads our group of five women with utmost care and courtesy; I am the eldest, and thus have the most potential to be argumentative, and am promptly given status as his тАЬsenior wifeтАЭ, which makes our excursions feel like family outings.
OrcaellaтАЩs logistical shore staff carry walkie-talkies and wear matching T-shirts; they look like a touring sports team. We passengers opt for stout shoes and shady hats this muggy week in December. We feel mildly adventurous and encounter few other tourists but we know we are lightly tethered at all times to Orcaella by an invisible but reassuring thread.
Everywhere ashore we are met with sunbeam smiles - most memorably, the reddened grins of old ladies chewing betel nut and smoking corn-husk cheroots. Some of OrcaellaтАЩs landings are beside steep banks; a few have mud-cut steps amid tall grasses and enveloping banyan trees but at others waiting villagers stand side by side to steady us up over paths hastily constructed from sandbags and crates.
At village markets, the stallholders meet our half-hearted bargaining with shrieks of laughter and soon we are piled about like packhorses with striped textiles, ornamented puppets, green and blue lacquered bowls, sequinned shoulder bags and battered old brass gongs.
At shops with names such as Treasure Island we run amok and scoop up semi-precious jewellery in lolly colours and chunky silver bangles. KhunтАЩs new wives are starting to clink and gleam royally as we idle along beside him, like spoilt courtesans.
The itinerary is organised to give ample time ashore but with plenty of opportunity to laze aboard. I eschew the flat-screen television in my stateroom in favour of the IMAX-worthy views beyond. Floor-to-ceiling windows slide right back, the bed is positioned for horizontal sightseeing. ItтАЩs like watching a slide show of panoramic images, with pagoda spires peeping above palms like golden hats. There are banana groves and rice paddies, river gypsy villages on stilts, women carrying vegetables in flat woven baskets atop their heads, their faces streaked with powdered bark paste, or thanaka, and in the gloaming they look like ghosts.
Such sit-still sightseeing is the ease of river cruising and surely one of the chief reasons this form of travel is increasing in popularity along the worldтАЩs most desirable riverways, from the Danube to the Mekong.
But it is not all about lying down for five-star river rovers in Myanmar; life along the Ayeyarwady River is agricultural and unsophisticated and while OrcaellaтАЩs excursions are done with appropriate comfort, you need to be up for the occasional bicycle trishaw tango through muddled traffic.
A parade of conveyances waits for OrcaellaтАЩs disembarking passengers at most stops; sometimes there are standard buses but often (and surprisingly more enjoyably) are trucks with bench seats that rumble along and make impromptu stops for snakes crossing. тАЬVery bad luck to kill a snake,тАЭ says Khun, ominously.
At Gwechaung village, after a squishy walk over mudflats, we are positioned, two-by-two, aboard bullock carts for a journey that feels as up and down as a fairground ride to a ruined 19th-century fort with imperial views.
In the commanding afternoon heat, my friend Fiona and I laugh like loons as we rock along and all but slip off the tray of the cart (later we discover splinters in our seats); safely viewing from a distance, Khun looks frankly alarmed at the loud behaviour this afternoon of his senior and upper-middle wives.
Orcaella moors each night and thereтАЩs no swell or sway to interrupt our sleep. For evening entertainment, instead of venturing out, the locals come to us, sometimes from many villages distant. There are dextrous puppeteers with marionettes decked in glittery costumes; musicians who sit cross-legged on deck with their xylophones, flutes and gongs, like a gamelan orchestra; and folk dancing shows in which passengers are encouraged to have a go and given a longhi sarong to wear. We glide coolly in the muggy night wondering at the absurdity of trousers in the tropics.
On the second-last night all passengers gather at the rear of the top deck and we each write a wish on a scrap of paper to pin to a fire-lit Shan balloon. One by one they are released to fly high and white like shooting moons.
Then KhunтАЩs wives gather to do a debrief of our Orcaella experiences. At Shwemyatmyan, we have seen the worldтАЩs only bespectacled image of Buddha. We have inspected powerfully aromatic bamboo shoot pickles marinating in giant lidded urns. At the little town of Danuphyu, trishaws decked with eugenia flowers deposited us at a charming teahouse for chai sweetened with condensed milk and yellow-bean pastries. Afterwards we walked the unpaved streets, past signboards heralding the march of progress: Omo, Nivea, Horlicks, First-Class Bottled Water, Internet Cafe.
We have seen a teak monastery of ineffable beauty and, at Zalon, visited the Returning Home Pagoda to which a particularly precious statue of Buddha, тАЬstolen by the British armyтАЭ was later returned by order of Queen Victoria.
It has not been a single pagoda that has impressed us but the sheer scale and volume of Buddhist monuments in rural Myanmar; the whole gilded panoply has left us dazzled and humbled.
Amid all these wonders, we agree there is one occasion we can never forget. On the evening of day three, after our splintery bullock-cart jaunt, we had returned to Orcaella and dressed for dinner. Then we climbed the riverbank and were led through the village to a courtyard with semi-ruined walls and high rows of stone seats, like an amphitheatre.
As loudspeakers bellowed what sounded like martial music, there appeared on a makeshift stage two female gymnasts with hula hoops and juggling rings. They each jiggled and juggled and kicked cane balls with their knees and feet while balancing on tiny stools and precarious chairs and even upturned bottles, and never let the balls hit the ground. It went on and on for more than an hour and villagers gathered to cheer and we all applauded such stamina and skill.
In the candle-lit shadows, Ban and her brigade were presiding over a pop-up barbecue restaurant. A long buffet of two laden wings held a feast of dishes and OrcaellaтАЩs waitstaff ferried drinks to and fro the white-clothed tables and replenished our used silverware.
As candles flickered and the cane balls flew higher and higher, KhunтАЩs five wives dined on BanтАЩs delicate tea-leaf salads and vigorously spiced curries and declared, almost tearfully, that there was nowhere else on earth we could possibly want to be.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Orient-Express and Singapore Airlines.
Checklist
OrcaellaтАЩs eight-day Ayeyarwady Experience starts at $5410 a person twin-share; included are internal flights, meals on board, beer and soft drinks, shore excursions and entertainment. More: 1800 000 395; orient-express.com.
Singapore Airlines operates 121 flights a week between Australia and Singapore; Singapore Airlines and SilkAir offer onward connections to Yangon, with 16 flights a week. SilkAir will begin flights from Singapore to Mandalay via Yangon from June 10 (return direct service from Mandalay to Singapore). More: 131 011; singaporeair.com; silkair.com.
Australian author Len Rutledge has released Experience Myanmar, a new title in his e-book travel series, available in Kindle edition from amazon.com.