Paul Strachan Goes Back to the Irrawaddy: December 2009/January 2010

I confess that it has been nearly a decade since I sailed the Irrawaddy in its navigable entirety - near 1000 miles of it. I have hopped on and off ships on inspection visits, a day here, a quick cruise between stops there. Now 'retired' from the day-to-day running of the company, our family would have the time and leisure to actually enjoy these strange floating objects, otherwise known as the Pandaws. Roser, my wife, was a bit worried that I would go on board, get worked up about things, and start tinkering. Back in the 1990s Roser and I between us were cooks, barmen, guides and lecturers and even the occasional plumbers (adept at unblocking loos!). It was going to be hard to be hands off.

No chance now, the ship under Purser Ko Win Hlaing's management surpassed all expectations. Of the six Pandaw ships dotted in Asia, Pandaw II gets the prize for being the best run. It is also the oldest member of the fleet, built in 2001, so is now, in ship terms, just about run in and working smoothly. Here in Burma, where we started, we found one of the best levels of food, maintenance, passenger care and excursions of all the Pandaw Fleet now spread across five countries. All this has been achieved with local management, no expats. It helps being on the Irrawaddy, the most moving of rivers, with its spiritual and cultural life along the riverbanks.

'The Irrawaddy', as the cruise is known, starts in Rangoon with a five-hour bus transfer to Prome (or Pyay). Then fourteen nights on Pandaw II going all the way up to the 2nd Defile, the largest of three gorges, close to Bhamo. Now two weeks on a river ship may seem an awful long time but there is a growing demand for longer and longer river cruises. In fact our twenty-one night Chindwin-Upper Irrawaddy, that runs only once a year in the monsoon, is a sell out - often with waiting lists to get on. 'The Irrawaddy' may be segmented, enabling passengers to hop or off at Pagan or Mandalay. Out of the thirty on board with us, six got off in Mandalay and all told me that they were furious that they had not booked the whole cruise. 

On board was the usual mix of very adventurous and often seriously well-travelled Pandaw passengers. There were ten nationalities on board: American, Canadian, Australian, German, Dutch, Thai, Japanese, Spanish, Swiss and British. There was an authority on oriental cartography, who in the sixties had toured Africa in her Volkswagen Beetle. A hotelier from Dusseldorf that spends her winters doing two month dog sledge treks across Alaska. A Swiss chief of police that had come to get away from it all. A jolly German balloonist who lives in Bangkok. A submariner, RN (Rtd.) who looked worried every time we hit a sandbank. A Canadian architect. A transatlantic yachtsman. A couple from Australia who run a ski resort. A family of seven very glamorous Californians who run a travel agency for the Hollywood great and good. An American novelist and his Japanese wife. A Swiss industrialist and his charming lady who turned out to be a professional golf photographer. Then there was a young man who headed up a small city ban. All we need was Hercule Poirot!

I had forgotten just how entrancing the Irrawaddy can be. Most passengers spend their days glued to the sundeck just observing the great theatre of landscape and human activity unfolding before their eyes. December was low water so the channels wended their way through great sand islands, some inhabited and cultivated. From the lush delta, to the wooded hills around Prome and into the dry zone around Pagan, the landscape was ever changing. Above Mandalay we enter hill country passing through the lowermost defile into the rich planes of sugar cane where the river becomes incredibly busy once again with rafts laden with pots, barges of teak, bazaar boats and steamer services. We all saw the normally elusive Irrawaddy river dolphins.

The pot-making village at Nyun Nyein where two men roll out three gallon pots a day is another marvel. Here you see the Irrawaddy economy at its best - the clay dug in the hills behind, kilns the size of squash courts fired by drift wood caught in nets strung across the river, the end products floated down the river in great pot rafts, the bamboo frames that hold the rafts together sold off on arrival for building materials. All materials are sourced locally and ecologically and the pots are still preferred and competitive with China made plastic alternatives. It was good to see large orders of pots being assembled for Unicef and other NGOs destined for the Delta area, devastated in 2008 by Cyclone Nargis.

Another highlight was the elephant training camp at Katha. After an hour-long ride in a rickety local bus we trekked about a mile along a good path to a clearing in the forest. I had not been here before and my own twelve year old son was humbled at the sight of a bunch of other twelve year olds running around making log piles, etc., each on their own personal elephant. The elephants were about the same age as the boys as in Burma an oozie and his elephant grow up together from an early age, a life long partnership.

From Katha a not very comfortable and rather noisy speedboat was laid on to take people to the 2nd Defile. We did not go, having been before and preferring to potter around Katha, our favourite Burmese town. Despite the discomforts, the boat trip went well with a stop to see the thousand pagoda island at Kyun Daw where the picnic was served.

What really impressed me is the way Ko Win Hlaing and his crew have evolved our Burma cruises to an incredibly high level of service with constant little enhancements that no one expected. Champagne was produced at sunset as we passed in sampans under the U Bein Bridge at Amarapura. At night cocktails would be served round a fire on sand bank whilst we were serenaded by members of the crew with their guitars. Floating candles would waft past the ship in the dark. I asked why they never put the anchor down anymore, preferring an elaborate system of staves and ropes dug into the sand banks. I was told so that the anchor winch would not disturb lower deck passengers first thing when the ship sails. Your shoes are taken from you when you come back on board from sightseeing, washed and returned to your cabin. Sailors accompanied each excursion bearing cold towels and water flasks. Many of the crew go back fifteen years to when we started. Back then none of us dreamed that river cruising in Burma would or could soar to such heights of excellence.

Being December it was cold on deck in the mornings (7C) and I always advise passengers to bring a jumper or fleece, which I did not - fortunately one of the crew loaned me the Pandaw 'bomber jacket' that is standard crew issue at this time of year. We never used the aircon in our cabin once and had the windows open all the time. Pandaw windows come with mosquito netting that was not necessary as we never saw a single mosquito all the time we were onboard.

The chef on Pandaw II is Ko Saw Thar Gay. He joined us in 1996 aged sixteen and he has developed into a really top chef. Nearly all the food was locally sourced, except two dinners where the sirloin was Australian. We had great prawns at Katha which Saw Thar Gay found in the market. On Christmas Eve Saw Thar Gay produced a gammon baked in honey and a roast turkey with all the trimmings. The galley got the balance between Western and Asian cuisine just right but I did not comment to Win Hlaing that we got beef and fish several meals running and chicken completely disappeared off the menu for several days (apparently this is because of some arcane supply issue and the fact that Saw Thar Gay still gets into a bit of a muddle now and again). The good thing was that there was loads of very fresh Irrawaddy fish at every meal.

Whilst on board Roser and I did just once interfere and do away with the lunch buffet bringing Pandaw II in line with the other ships. We hate buffets and find them really tacky. Of course we kept the salad selection and the soup of the day but main courses are a la carte and thus freshly cooked to order. Less waste too which warms the cockles of my Scottish heart!

Our crowd certainly enjoyed their cocktails, which on a Pandaw are of course free. There was a worrying moment when we nearly ran out of gin! Certainly by the end of the cruise the ship seemed to be sitting in higher water. Passengers pay for wines and I thought the wine list a bit imbalanced. A problem is the consistency of supply in Burma - one week you can get something really good and then it never happens again. I suggested a simpler more general wine list and that we feature what wines come available on an ad-hoc basis.

As with the Irrawaddy cruise the real joy are not just the visits to the tourist centres like Pagan and Mandalay but the explorations of the small villages and townships along the way. I always say no two Burmese cruises are the same and after fifteen years this still stands. We did manage two stops at villages that we had never moored at before and were the first tourists that the locals had ever seen.

Whilst at Pagan, Roser, Toni and I left the ship and spent a day touring the Thiri Island project. On this huge island our passengers have built five schools. A further school was under construction at Ye Ywar on the west bank of the river. These schools are really well built and each has between 100 and 200 pupils. They costed just under US$ 15,000 each. We saw two new ones, donated by Brian and Sam Wilkie from Dubai and the other by Dr Ian Smith, an English coroner who raised funds with a sponsored run.

On the east bank we finally saw our clinic at the Gantgar completed. The clinic serves all five villages on the island and the hinterland south of Pagan. We have a doctor and a nurse on duty all day four days a week and on an average day they will see 150 people. Some villagers walk or come by bullock cart from as far as 10 miles away. We want to expand the clinic and the headman has offered us his own land for free to build a hospital. Needless to say the local health department are refusing permission. In addition we were pleased this trip to initiate a new school project up at Khan-nyat where I met up with my old friend Saya U Tin Win Oo, the retired school master and archaeologist. He will co-ordinate the project for us.

Our son Toni had a great time, he has been on and off these ships since he was two and for all these years various members of the crew have acted as nanny, tutor and now seemingly best mate. We hardly saw him in the two weeks. Few people realise just how good a Pandaw cruise is for kids, though I recently met an Australian couple who regularly bring various grandchildren. Places like Burma or Cambodia are child friendly and very safe - kids can go ashore and play football with the local kids, there is loads to see and do, onboard and ashore.

It was several years since I was last up at Katha and I have a number of observations on the state of affairs in Upper Burma today. First of all, there was far greater prosperity than there used to be or indeed we were led to believe. These river towns are booming. New houses going up everywhere and the quaint old teak houses disappearing fast. Even small towns now had metered power supplies. People are running around on scooters rather than push bikes. Fishermen in their canoes have outboard motors where before they relied on a trusty paddle.

In Katha an enormous railway terminus was under construction connecting the river station to Bhamo and thence Yunnan. Across the river from Pagan another railway is under construction connecting Pakokku with Bassein with a spur through the Yoma to Akyab (Sittwe) through the Yoma. A six-lane highway linking the new capital with Rangoon and Mandalay nears completion. These are engineering projects the colonial British did not even think of in their wildest dreams. So much for sanctions!

Burma is now a major transit corridor linking SW China to the Indian Ocean. An oil pipeline will bring Middle Eastern oil up through Burma cutting out the long sea journey round Singapore. We saw the effects of this opening up all around. The wealth generation is far greater than one might expect. Hand in hand with these strategic projects is the mass migration of Chinese people into Burma. A trend that began in the early nineties but has now accelerated. A guesstimate would be that at least 10 million Chinese have moved into Burma taking over most businesses, buying prime property and effectively taking over the city centres of Rangoon and Mandalay. Even in Katha the main street shops are now run by Chinese.

Yet there must be a trickle down. Roser, Toni and I took a walk to a village situated a couple of miles upstream of Katha. I first went there in 1986 and was overjoyed by its rusticity - little wooden houses, everyone making things. I went back in 1996 and it was exactly as it was ten years before, nothing changed. Last time I walked here was around 2003 and again nothing had stirred. Now in 2010 over half the teak houses had been replaced by rather grand brick mansions. People had trucks and tractors parked in front. Every house had a satellite dish. The girls were wearing jeans and the boys base ball caps. There were Burmese folk, not Yunnanese migrants.

The Chinese colonisation of Burma is a reality that nothing and nobody can change. Chinese interests are too great to allow any form of regime change or transition to democracy. China's power in the world is now too strong for anyone to stick their neck out and try and interfere with. The last time the Burmese enjoyed any real form of prosperity and economic development was under the colonial British. Perhaps the only real hope for improving the Burman's lot is this new style of colonialism. Certainly we in the west with our sanctions and denial of aid and investment have only served to make the Burmese poorer.

Back to the Irrawaddy: I would counsel people who want to see the timeless Burma to go soon as things are changing fast. Already Rangoon and Mandalay have been blitzkrieged by Chinese developers and there is not much left to see. The one consolation is that thanks to political correctness very few tourists come to Burma so there is little tourism damage. Compare Pagan with Angkor Wat: Angkor has over ten international flights a day and Pagan not one. At Angkor you queue to see round the monuments. At Pagan you can still enjoy wonderful solitary moments.

Certainly on our cruises there was little political correctness evident. Only the savvy, smart traveller goes to Burma, as we could see from our fellow passengers. These are the sort of people who have seen it all and done it all. In our shrunken world, a timeless Burma is perhaps all that we have left. But time is running out, for Burma and for those who are getting on. The Pandaw passenger is not going to be told by a bunch of politicians or newspapermen where they can and cant go on holiday. Thanks to the crew of Pandaw II, we were seeing the real Burma for ourselves and at the same time enjoying ourselves. The Burmese waving from the river banks seemed to be enjoying our visit too.

For photos please go to: http://picasaweb.google.com/pandawcruises/BestOfBurmaByHansLauten