Monkeyrockworld

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. Luckily enough, the sheer beauty of this place can still be seen in a couple areas, and we decide to go up to Hsipaw, one of the most visited, and possibly beautiful, cities of the Northeast. As soon as we head out of Mandalay’s flat surroundings, we are welcomed by windy roads laid over the mountains as a sleepy snake, bend over bend, and the bus struggles sometimes when climbing up like a mountain goat.

The sky is so blue and the clouds so fluffy I immediately think of Shan State’s next of kin, my loved Yunnan province in China. And exactly as I was expecting, to foster the theory that are just the men thinking some lousy borders, it’s indeed Mother Earth who actually shows us its incredible topography. I think of all the places I’ve seen in the world, this is so far the area I like the most, because it’s just beautiful, and for a series of depreciable political decisions, one of the most underdeveloped and laid back, stuck back in a time where farmers still plough the land with carts pulled by oxen and women plant and harvest rice by hand, peddling in mud up to their knees. The tentacular claws of China sunk deep into this place: at the first rest stop, Chinese characters ornate the walls and a delicious blend of Southwestern Chinese cuisine is  steaming and sizzling from a large number of hotplates laid on a table on display. The language barrier is easily overcome when Kit Yeng gently asks to the woman seller “Ni shuo putongua ma?” and the cunning sound of Chinese starts filling the air. And even the toilets start becoming the ones of the sewerish channel type, so dear across the not so far away border.

Hsipaw itself is one of those places you probably, as a westerner, wouldn’t like to stop if just glancing from a bus window: small but bustling, clean but dirty, old as a city out of a middle century fairy tale could be. A big covered wet market welcomes us as we step out of the bus’ doors and many eyes start sinking into our bodies, everywhere, who’s smiling and who just saw their next prey… I remember the smell of fresh mountain air, and the temperature that definitely dropped a few degrees leaving a sense of restoration and warm welcome after the sticky afternoon spent roaming around Mandalay.

TO BE CONTINUED