Monkeyrockworld

It’s not rare to see a horse cart on the right, a woman carrying a huge basket full of goods over her head and a tractor alike machine transporting as many as 10 people on the same stretch of unpaved road, while women with dark faces smeared in golden thanhaka fry samosas and chapatis as if there was no tomorrow. The strength of this place lies in its unique captivating mixture of Southeast Asia and mountainous South China, the background of an untamed mountain valley  filled with humanity and machinery out of a science fiction movie set in 1845. It’s really quiet, and welcoming, and beautiful, because the sky here is so blue that you would wonder what’s wrong in your country’s sky, when compared to this. Pollution is something that here is still largely unknown, and my lungs almost suffer as I inhale some fresh air. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve recently had a pretty stupid message board interaction with someone with a fairly immense ego problem. Stating that I don’t give a damn is the most appropriate sentence, but buried inside the flow of shit talk this person addressed my way, there was a line about this blog that made me think, and I thought I’d like to clarify:

“I’ve checked your blog out. It seems a bit folk and naive, too clean and politically correct, as if Asia was just an enchanted land suspended in time.” Read the rest of this entry →

The Shan State expands out of Mandalay to the East, and reaches out in its vast, sheer mountainous beauty to Yunnan’s western border, and Northern Thailand to the Southeast. This is Myanmar hotspot for trouble, or better, the place where 10% of the world’s heroin production has hardened the plight of these people for a few decades now. The rest is mostly produced in Afghanistan. The Shan State is also where different rebel mountain ethnic groups have been trying to fight back the Burmese junta, and it’s a territory mostly out of reach to foreigners, us included. Read the rest of this entry →

Trying to type on a bumpy, scenic mountain road from Mandalay to Hsipaw. We had quite a few interesting days lost in the bustle and hustle of Myanmar’s two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. We visited the Shwedagon Paya at sunset, and it was the stuff of legend: just plain beautiful, colors melting in the dark, surreal lights coloring the tiles and a circular array of monks, some tourists, locals and beggars, all together sanctifying the night. Stuck in the middle of Yangon, one of the busiest cities I have ever been, Shwedagon Paya is like an oasis of greatness, a monolith of golden grandeur.
A monk approached me. I think he was totally high, his eyes were watering grey, melting pupils and light altogether. Possibly a fake one, someone trying to steal draped in that dark red vest. Read the rest of this entry →