Visiting the Kayah State

The walk over the high grass fields looking for the Kayan woman working her plot of land is still fresh in my mind. It took place two days ago, at noon and it was very hot. The dry grass was cutting my feet and spikes were all over my cotton dress. Many thoughts running through my head: are there any snakes hiding in the grass?...it is definitely too hot for this time of the year...the landscape looks familiar, it reminds me of home..will the buffalo sense I am a stranger?...are the bare feet of the little boy not hurting? In front of us a little boy and his father were showing us the way. Finally we reached the paddy field. We saw a very slim old Kayan old woman bent in two, concentrated on cutting rice stalks with a sickle. The harvested crop was bundled all around her, on the dry earth, to ease the transport. Looking around there were only empty fields. The sun was blaring. She looked up at us in surprise.

This is just one of the many short stories I could write about my two-days trip in the Kayah State. The time spent there was such an enrichment for both eye, heart and mind. I remember the meeting with Rosalia, a Catholic woman, in the Demawso market. I hold her wrinkled hand. I think about my grandmother. Rosalia is 70 years old but she looks older with her wrinkled face and bent back. She indeed tells us that she feels much older. All her children died, and she does not get along well with her family-in-law. A cross hangs from her neck. She believes in God, and one of the few who are visiting her is the priest. 

Rosalia, an old woman we met in Demawso market

I visited Loikaw and the surrounding area during a two-day visit. I met different ethnic tribes, I learnt more about the traditions and beliefs, and about the way of life of these people whose main source of livelihood remains agriculture.  I visited Kayah State to admire the hills, lakes and the mountains which adorn the horizon, and to breathe the fresh air. This is the smallest state in Myanmar in terms of area and population, one hour flight from Yangon. Despite its small size, these lands are home to a multitude of tribes with such a rich culture, and unique traditions.

Kayah State opened its doors to tourism in 2012. But only for some of the areas around Loikaw, the State's capital. There are many places where access if prohibited mainly due to land mines, and access to some villages (like Dawdemagyi (Kayah) and Htekko (Kayaw)) is only allowed after receiving a permission from the local authorities. 

I knew the tribes speak their own language and many old people do not speak or understand Myanmar. You sometimes feel you are not in Myanmar. I was nevertheless surprised that my mingalabar and jezu be, the Myanmar hello and thanks were usually not answered. Many times a smile was all I got in return. 

Once you arrive, and you travel outside Loikaw to different villages to see the different tribes (Kayah, Kayan, Kayin, Pa-O, etc), you will realise it is such a special place. I enjoyed very much the quietude and the laid back atmosphere of the villages, the fresh air in the mornings and the smell of flowers and grass during the day. I admired the beautiful traditional costumes and their unique accessories. Nowadays less and less villagers dress traditionally every day, and the reasons are easy to guess (expensive fabrics and accessories, reduced fields of cotton, inexpensive market clothes, many layers of fabrics - too hot).

Lisu village 

Most houses do not have windows - but as you notice in this picture they have a satellite dish

Kayan women

Kayah woman

lacquered cotton leg ring

I left Kayah State having the feeling that I saw very little of this amazing country called Myanmar.

More information about the history, geography, culture, food, etc you can find here.

- what to see in Loikaw, and in the surrounding area:

Demawso market takes place each Wednesday and Saturday morning in the Demawso township.

Saturdays are busier with more local ethnic groups dressed in their traditional costumes gathering to sell and buy products (from food to clothes) in this medium sized market. Amongst the curiosities you will see are dried frogs and small dried birds. You can also taste the Kayah millet wine and rice wine made and sold by local women. 

Dried frogs

Birds on sale which are bought to be cooked

Taung Kwe Pagoda (or the Broken Mountain) built on a hillock, has beautiful 360 degrees views over Loikaw and the surrounding mountains. The pagoda is best visited during sunset. The mist which starts to rise while the last rays of the sunshine disappear behind the mountains is caused by the burning of garbage outside Loikaw's houses. 

Taung Kwe Pagoda - Loikaw view

Naung Yah lake is beautiful for an afternoon walk or you could have your dinner in one of the restaurants there.

The State Cultural Museum is a good place to learn more about the different ethnic races of Kakah State and their way of life with an impressive display of bronze drums. The visit will not take more than one hour. Unfortunately the English-language captions are not always available. The museum clearly needs to be modernized in the near future.

You will sometimes notice along the road animist poles that are erected by men when celebrating harvest festivals in April and May. During these ceremonies villagers offer food and animals to the spirits in return for protection. In the Kayah State the majority of the population is either Buddhist or Christian but their animist beliefs and superstitions are still deeply rooted and present in their religious practice.

The umbrella lake and the seven-tired lake are two natural sights not to be missed, and they are a 20-minute drive outside the city. The umbrella lake is a small muddy pond where volcanic activity shoots up sand which takes the shape of an umbrella. It does not always produce the umbrella shaped forms so you must be lucky to see them.

Umbrella Lake

Seven-tired lake

The guide will propose you a series of villages to see the Kayah and Kayan women. Ask her/him to also take you to a Lisu village.

- good to know when planning your trip:

Search for a flight and avoid the long drive to Loikaw from Yangon (around 13 hours). There are two companies which fly almost daily from Yangon to Loikaw: Air KBZ (with a stopover in Naypyitaw) and MNA (direct flight). Check your flight options and book your flight on flymya.com. Be aware that delays might happen especially in the high season. If you have only two days, I would recommend you to fly Air KBZ (current arrival at 8:10) and book the return with MNA.

If, at the same time, you want to visit Inle lake, you can fly to Heho and from there rent a boat to cross Inle lake to Phekon. It takes around four hours and a half. From Phekon jetty it is just 45 minutes by car to Loikaw. This option is of course more tiring and time consuming. However the landscape must be picturesque. 

Book a hotel. We stayed at LoikawLodge By The Lake, and I would recommend you this cosy and new family-owned hotel. The owners, German and Myanmar,  speak excellent English, and they will be very responsive to your emails and inquiries. You will feel like home. Additionally, they have their own fully-licensed in-house travel agency, Ancient Geographic Travels & Tours. Therefore they can help you with your itinerary, in organising a car with a guide or apply on your behalf for the permission to visit some of the villages. There are other hotel options in Loikaw as well. What I believe distinguishes this place and makes it hard to beat are the efforts they make to cook high quality food, and the easiness with which they understand your wishes and try to make your stay unforgettable.

Hire a guide. You may either ask the hotel to organise everything for you, for an additional fee, or you can search yourself for a local guide. As you can imagine, the official guides are few in the area. Here are two local certified guides: Mary 09 788 014 338 or Phoo Kae 09 792 570 063.

Eat local. Do not forget to taste their famous pork sausages seasoned with the beautifully flavoured Sechuan pepper. Additionally I am sure you will enjoy a Shan noodles soup or salad in one of the tea shops in the city. 

Traditional pork sausage bought by our guide for us to taste

There are plenty of sights to fill up a two days stay. If you have the possibility, take one or two days extra to visit more ethnic groups (do not forget to apply in advance for the permission) and maybe do a longer trek. Take a look below at the beautiful landscape (!without enhancing the colours in the photographs!) of Kayah State.

Landscape around Loikaw

19 July - Martyrs' Day

Today is a day of remembrance in Myanmar. The people commemorate and remember Bogyoke (General) Aung San who was assasinated on the 19 of July 1947 in Yangon.

To this day General Aung San remains one of the most popular and beloved iconic figure in the country mainly due to his tireless struggle for an independent Burma.

inside the Secretariat building

He is considered the Father of the Nation, a personality loved by the people. Sadly his vision of unity in diversity for all Myanmar's ethnic groups remained just a dream the day he was assassinated in Yangon, on the 19 of July 1947. 

Today, 19 of July, I also think at the struggle of this resilient people who kept its faith in the future. Without their constant struggle for survival, freedom and human rights the country would today not be on its way to democracy and development.

Not a single day passes by since I arrived in Myanmar without seeing, reading or hearing about the constant struggle of Myanmar's diverse population. The causes for this continuous struggle, in many cases for survival, are multiple: internal conflict, natural disasters, corruption, lack of education, economic hardships, lack of proper sanitation, and deathly diseases. The suffering is not recent. The past proved to be a difficult one for this country with a long and agitated history of colonialism, war and oppression. The Burmese kings and Great Britain, the colonial power who ruled Burma for over 120 years, proved to have little consideration for the people's needs. Not long after the country's independence from colonial rule, the military took power. The ordinary people suffered even more with Myanmar becoming one of the most impoverish countries in the world due to internal fights between the Burmese army and the ethnic groups, economic mismanagement and international isolation following economic sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union. In the past years the political climate slowly improved. Last year, in the general elections, citizens were able to cast their vote freely. As a result Myanmar is now a young democracy but still very much a developing country. The people's hopes and expectations are high. It is for the first time in many years that they look up to their rulers with admiration and belief. 

People visiting the Secretariat building in Yangon

Myanmar is a country with over 50 million people who belong to eight major ethnic groups:  Bamar, Shan, Kayin (Karen), Rakhine, Mon, Kayah and Kachin, and numerous ethnic sub-groups. Despite the national ceasefire agreement which was signed between the army and a majority of ethnic armed groups, fighting still continues in some parts of the country. The ones who suffer most are the villagers from these areas who are affected by continued armed conflict. They struggle to survive from one day to another. Thousands became refugees in Thailand. Many were not able to cross the border in their flight and are now part of the countries tens of thousands of Internally Displaced People. Their survival in the Myanmar jungle is hanging on a thread of international support quite often. The children fall sick with malaria and fever. Their only meal during endless days is rice. They live in a constant fear of being attacked. Last but not least you have the Rohingya's plight to be recognised as a minority in this country. With many thousands currently housed in displacement camps following inter-ethnic violence in 2012, the end of their struggle is still far from sight and the issue remains very sensitive. 

Migration inside the country is mainly forced by the economic hardship. The rural exodus towards the cities where many arrive in the hope of a better life often remains unfulfilled with many struggling to make ends meet. Many are day labourers and often work on the countless construction sites in dire conditions. The small income they receive is sent back home to support their family. But you also see children working at the tea shops in Yangon, serving clients, washing dishes or cleaning the tables. In the evenings or mornings you find them at street crossings hoping to sell jasmine flowers or water bottles to the drivers. What an unsafe place to be, as some street-vending children are being hit by speeding cars! The destitute parents risk their children's life out of desperation. These families' situation will not improve without support from Government. In Myanmar there is no social safety net. There is no pension system, and only recently work contracts and a minimum wage have been introduced.

In Myanmar's press you often read sad news or stories. Mothers with small children abandoned by their husbands, orphan children trying to survive on their own, the drama of people with disabilities and the discrimination they face, the uncertainty of the future for the young people who interrupted school at a young age to support the family's income, the drama of the scavengers looking for jade (and other precious stones) caught by landslides, and so many more.

Stories of abusive land expropriation are frequent in the newspapers. People who used the land for decades are forcibly pushed out. While driving out of Yangon you notice the squatters' homes on the city's outskirts. The inhabitants are mostly the displaced families or the young working force who moved to the big city by promises of a better life. Their current living conditions are worse than in the places they have left. The diseases flourish in this environment which sees high water in the rainy season and which is overflowing with trash due to the absence of a proper waste management and sewage system.

Because of the elusive promises by unscrupulous human traffickers you still have today thousands of Myanmar people working as slaves on fishing boats in Thailand. Their working conditions are indescribable, with no pay and endless months at sea. The Government tried to address the problem under international pressure but without a strong regional crackdown on this phenomenon reports of human trafficking and modern-day slavery will continue to be reported by NGOs or the press.

Natural disasters are no less frequent in Myanmar. The last major natural disaster which happened in 2008 caused the death of more than 120000 people. Every year, during the monsoon season landslides happen in some of the country's region with high causalities due to poor constructing materials and lack of information on the dangers of building houses in high risk areas. Last year's floods cost the lives of dozens of people and destroyed thousands of houses, schools, hospitals and other buildings. More importantly it destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of people whose fields were flooded and whose harvest was ruined.

Actually the Government is lacking proper funding for two of the arguably most important sectors: education and health. An urgent switch in the country's policy priorities is needed.  The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Aung San has a difficult task ahead. She needs to rise to the expectations of all the people of Myanmar. There is no doubt that the most challenging period of her life has only just started. 

Today is a day of remembrance. The former house of General Aung San, now a museum close to Kandawgyi lake, has been cleaned and refurbished for weeks, the streets around the house have been repaved, the house's gardens trimmed. 

Huge numbers of people waiting to visit the Bogyoke Aung San Museum

The Secretariat (or the Ministers' Building), the building where General Aung San was assassinated together with six cabinet ministers, was today opened to the public. This year there were record numbers of people waiting to visit these places despite the rain so that they could pay their respects and remember the great General. I joined them.