In Mandalay the internet is very bad. Many things in Burma are different, but many are still the same.
In Bangkok it started to rain as we taxied towards the runway, in that sudden and torrential way it does here. We stopped and soon we were waiting in a river. This was channeled neatly beneath us by the nature of grass, and of tarmac. For a while, we didn’t know if we would be able to take off at all. Perhaps we could float instead.
Many people had been anxious already, before the rain began. They became very tense, as we listened to many litres of water hitting the roof and the wings. Two aeroplanes in front of us sat very still. Eventually they were obscured completely by screens of rain, and then slowly we began to wade towards the runway. We sped forwards for a very long time, into the weather. We took off shaking and creaking. It took a long time to come level, and for the plane to stop groaning.
I stayed in Yangon for six days. I had time to do this because in Bangkok I was given a meditation visa in one day. In England, I waited a month for one of these, before leaving without it. In Bangkok I expected it to take at least a week, and to be interrogated at least a little bit, and so I told Phaung Daw Oo that I wouldn’t be there for a while. Actually, it was incredibly easy; I wasn’t asked any questions, and didn’t have to wait any days, at all.
(TLDR: At the moment, you can get a three month Burmese meditation visa in Bangkok in one day, without any questions, if you have an invitation letter).
On the way to Yangon from the airport the wall said, ‘Obama, come back’. The taxi driver showed me a photograph of the wall before Obama visited, too. It said ‘welcome, Obama’ then, and used a lot of colours. Now, they don’t just sell Aung San Suu Kyi t-shirts, they sell t-shirts with Obama on too.
In Yangon I stayed with my friend John, he also comes from America.
It was very nice of him to let me stay, because hotels are expensive in Yangon, now.
We went to Shwedagon Paya and to the museum.
Most people in most places had heard of our Burmese teacher, John Okell, and were very impressed that we knew him, and a tiny bit of Burmese, too.
I still really like Shwedagon.
In the last 18 months, most of the cars and taxis have been replaced with ‘new’ cars from Japan. Two years ago the government taxed and fee’d too hard for normal people to import vehicles, so the cars were all decades old and had no doors, no roof, no windows or were riddled with holes. On the way back from Shwedagon, it was a nice piece of history to find that a taxi that still had a small hole in the bottom, beneath my flipflop.
Phaung Daw Oo, in Mandalay
Phaung Daw Oo is very big. I wanted to go to a village, but I couldn’t find one because they’re all very small and hard to see. Instead I am in Mandalay, where there are one million people and I am teaching at PDO, where there are about 6000.
I am very tired a lot, because I don’t have much time to sleep or to be on my own, except between twelve and five AM, but I really like it here. It is incredibly interesting and inspiring and stimulating, because my students are all of these things. It is nice when John visits too. I would like to freeze time, but it’s too hot to find enough ice.
Now, I have finished my fifth week of teaching. Next week I will go on holiday; I have imported half term so that I can visit Chin state or Rakhine state with John. I feel a little guilty and a little sad about being away for a week, but I have cancelled everything else I was supposed to do this summer so that after half term I can go back for longer than I planned.
Pyin Oo Lwin
Last weekend we were taken all around Mandalay by some of my friends. The one after this, we spent in Pyin Oo Lwin. Pyin Oo Lwin is up in the hills and much less hot than Mandalay. The monsoon in Mandalay is a myth; it has been 40 degrees and almost entirely dry all this time.
Visiting Pyin Oo Lwin was very interesting, because I’ve been there before. Before, it was very shabby and archaic and odd, but now it is very built up and has many banks.
I was especially excited by a particularly shiny new ATM that looked very convincing for a joke. The story is that Burma now has many ATMS, but almost none ever have any money in. Visitors are still advised to bring in all their cash in dollars, and to change it to kyat when they get here. Although now, you can do this in real banks rather than at the market. Before, there were very few banks and the exchange rate in these, and in other proper places, was far away from what it really was. If you had changed your money in these places, you would have lost 80% or so in the process.
In Pyin Oo Lwin I tried the ATM as an experiment. To my wild excitement, it gave me 5000 kyat that was all flat and new and not full of holes or sellotape. Doing this may not have made sound economic sense, as I expect the bank charges will exceed the withdrawal, but it was a momentous and thrilling occasion nonetheless. I took many pictures, lest I forget.
I am glad, however, that in Pyin Oo Lwin the street food has not changed; in Pyin Oo Lwin, people still sell flying saucers of no u (quails egg) or chickpeas, chilli and tomato in batter. These are the undisputable best thing in the whole world of food. When we went home to Mandalay, I almost decided not to leave because the market wasn’t open until evening, and there were none of these for sale.
These things are actually not called flying saucers, but moun lin maya, I think. If you ever come here, the most important thing you should do is eat moun lin maya and myin kwa yuweq thouq.
In Pyin Oo Lwin, I ate a lot of lots of things and swum in a waterfall pool.
These men were in the army, which lives outside Pyin Oo Lwin. At the weekend they like to stroke rabbits.
In Pyin Oo Lwin, the only thing I disliked is that there were many (other) tourists. I am not really used to this because last time I came there weren’t any and now I live far out in the ‘burbs, and hardly go into the city centre at all. I don’t like the way many tourists look at things, and I am worried that sometimes I look at things like they look at things and don’t realise that I’m doing it.
Speaking (self-righteously) of tourists, here are some places we went in Mandalay, the weekend before the weekend that we went to Pyin Oo Lwin.
Mandalay Palace:
From left to right: Eliza (Weh Weh Lwin), Su Nan Da, Mo Mo Shin (Olivia), Now Si
From left to right: Sophie, War War Khine and Eliza. War War Khine always blinks and ruins all my photos.
The world inside Maha Myat Muni Paya:
U Bein’s bridge:
John Poses.
Yann Aye ponders the nature of water chestnuts.
The second man from the left is wearing a helmet. I think he was scared of falling in and hitting his head on a rock. John thinks he probably just rode his motorbike there and didn’t know what else to do with it.
.
Mandalay Hill. Eliza was ‘maaaaaaaaw deh, theiq maaaaaaaaaaaw deh, ayaaaaaan maaaaaw deh’ (tired, very tired, SO tired) all the way up. It took a long time.
We got there eventually.
I love Phaung Daw Oo, but this week I have been worn out of institutionalistation, and propelled into a phase of sporadic claustrophobia; the hot, busy road outside the school has changed from nightmarish to frequently, very appealing. I think one day they will find me delirious on the ground, kissing the tarmac and crying, because maybe there, for five minutes I will be left on my own. Mostly, this is the result of Eliza.
Eliza is my new nyi ma leh (little sister). I already have one nyi ma leh in England, but she’s too far away. Eliza can’t speak enough English or use computers sufficiently enough yet to read this, but it is only a matter of time; she is very fast like a shark, so, hi Eliza!
Eliza is very sweet, she puts thanaka on me every morning (and insistently on my sunburn, because it is cool, and not at all drying like facepack…) and ties my longyi when I have done it a little bit wrong (usually in public, after having ripped it most of the way off me, which is totally acceptable unlike pulling it up past mid-calf to aid walking, which is indecent and ‘not nice’). However, Eliza is also always here. Always. And when she isn’t someone else is. Or a crowd of someone elses. A significant amount of this was written in the shower, because the door locks and the light doesn’t work so nobody knows that I’m in there.
Walking back from the shower, along the external corridors at the back of the girl’s dorm, where I live, hundreds of thousands of bats swoop around, in and out of the trees beside the river behind the building. I really like bats. I really like living in the girls dorm, most of the time. Mostly I like my visitors and don’t want to kiss the road. Anyway, I sucked a marble I found on the ground today and it didn’t taste very nice so I’m put off.
In the evenings my room, which is big and has air-con, as well as me in it, attracts a small flock of visitors. They come in and out in tides and try on my clothes and take photographs of themselves and teach me Burmese. Eliza often tells everyone else to leave or hits them, and then steals something small but usually of significant sentimental value to me when she leaves. Sometimes, I want to kill her.
My favourite class isn’t a real class, they were made up for another volunteer, who left and so they were left and I had to inherit them, or leave them sitting all on their own.
At first I was annoyed because they class are very loud and large and often slow to understand things. It is quite tiring to stand in front of thirty eight teenagers and force them to listen to you every day. However, after a little while they turned out to actually all be lovely and clever. They also started demanding all of my time.
My special, best favourites are all novices (apart from Eliza and her friend Sophie). I like Su Nan Da, Yan Aye and Ben the most. Su Nan Da doesn’t really like anybody, he spends most of his time studying or teasing people in an awkward and often offensive way. He is pedantic, sarcastic and sometimes really mean, but rarely to me. Instead, he brings me grade one Burmese books to study from and spends hours forcing me to practice handwriting and vowel sounds.
Su Nan Da comes from Shan state, but he is only half Shan, he is also half Bamar. When he is insisting he doesn’t speak Burmese with a funny accent he is definitely very much half Bamar, the rest of the time he is only really Shan.
Sometimes Su Nan Da makes Eliza look like she’s going to cry, but I think she would win in a fight so it’s ok. The other day I asked Su Nan Da to walk Eliza home because it was late and I wanted to stay out, and he told me very quickly that actually he wouldn’t walk her home, instead he would sell her to China, because ‘they buy people there’. He hoped he would get lots of money, but maybe not because not many people would want her.
Yann Aye is very clever and enthusiastic and curious about everything, and very kind and wise. However, he also has some strange theories and many large holes in his knowledge, for example he is certain that the army do not kill people ever, this is an inexplicable notion that many seem to share.
Yann Aye really likes biology, and gave a presentation in class called ‘the nature of people the other day’. I asked him to speak for 5-10 minutes, it lasted half an hour. He covered everything from foetuses and umbilical cords to how people are all different, particularly because some are attractive, like him, and others are not, like his friend Winston.
Ben is only 17 and like bambi or an elf or a fairy. He always has rapt, encouraging expressions in lessons. He doesn’t talk very much but is always around bearing thoughtful gifts and helpful advice. He gave a presentation on a story he found on the floor, and he spent 3 nights memorizing it.
Together, this class and I are going to start a blog, I hope, based on their presentations. I am going to edit and upload it for now, but they will do all the writing. I hope this will let me keep teaching them from England and that they can use it to show prospective employers and educators their English and computer skills. I also want to be able to show everyone how interesting and clever they all are, and their unique, self-decided perspectives on all the things changing in Burma, that are almost completely neglected by the press.
My morning class are my real class with a proper name and actual text books. They should be the best, but actually I don’t like teaching them that much. I think this is mostly because lessons are at 7am every day. I don’t really like 7am, especially because sometimes there is no power so I can’t make coffee. Coffee is also bad here. I think my students also don’t like 7am very much because they are quite mean. Often this is probably because they haven’t had breakfast yet, but I think it is a bit unfair to take it out on me.
Individually, however, many are very sweet and one has hair to her waist, which is really cool.
These are some of my students.
Thu Zar Win
Htet Htet
War War Khine
All the boys love Wah Wah Khine. Su Nan Da has many opinions about things like her hair and the freckle on her lip. He has opinions on many things like this; democracy, he says, is good except for the short skirts. However he is very adamant that although they shouldn’t have short hair or skirts or freckles on their lips, women are people too and are equal in everything to men.
Mo Mo Shin (Olivia)
Aye Thandar Kyaw
My other friend at Phaung Daw Oo is Weh Phyo. Weh Phyo is 5 years old and probably evil. He spends his days wreaking havoc to the best of his ability. He is getting very good at this because he menaces sweets and money out of people and is growing fat and strong as a consequence. He likes me more than most people, because we share a love of dinosaurs. There is no sound on the office computers so we watch walking with dinosaurs and make our own sound effects. He also makes inciteful comments, like ‘the same fate for him’ when watching a herd of herbivores being eaten by carnivorous dinosaur.
However, our shared love of dinosaurs hasn’t stopped him attempting to disrupt all my lessons, biting me, hitting my and smashing my laptop. It was fixed by very kind computer people, but all my work is gone and I can’t get online anymore. Today he hit all the girls in my class with a soft toy cat and bit me when I removed him. Last night it is alleged that he climbed along a ledge and through a window into another teacher’s room, where he ate a mango, stole all his sweets and messed everything up and then climbed out again.
Other things that have happened are that I bought a pink umbrella and a longyi and had my hair cut like the nineties. Eliza made me because it was free, by trainee hairdressers who came to PDO to practice. They all had very funny hair, and cut everyone else’s very short and full of layers. I look like a bit like a spaniel. I had to stay for more time than the haircut, while they all took photographs. Su Nan Da was very upset, because I didn’t have long enough hair anyway. He began teasing me and War War Khine for being bald…
Novices shave their heads every ten days, and must not eat after lunch time, drink, smoke, ride motorbikes in Mandalay or ‘stay’ with women. Lots of the little ones sneak out to the teashop in the evenings to eat and watch Bollywood movies anyway, while the monks aren’t looking.
In Yangon, John and I went to see Side Effect. Side Effect are a Burmese punk band that I interviewed for SOAS Radio, and then Anthony Bourdain copied me and interviewed them too. They were really good. We also went to the Bogyoke Aung San Museum which is only open once a year, and we shuffled around in a vast herd that was more interesting than the museum itself.
I can speak a little bit of Burmese now.
I am interviewing everyone who doesn’t mind for my dissertation, it’s really fascinating. I might write about this later.
In 2011, by chance I met independent Burmese film director, Midi Z, in Mandalay, where he was making his first feature film, Return to Burma, illegally and without funding. Midi Z has recently released his second feature film, Poor Folk. In the interim period, his ascending career has mirrored the trajectory of change in Burma, as he too has attracted international attention and legitimation. The content of his films, however, continues to reflect the numerous social, political and economic obstacles that still afflict Burma.
It was very peaceful, in the shadow that spread like spilled ink along the teak deck, under the lip of the elaborate wooden roof. Perching on a small wall, I stared past my blackened bare feet, into the darkness behind an empty doorway. Inside, Burmese actor Shin-Hong Wang sat sedately, cross-legged on the floor, conversing intensely with two women. Despite the serenity of the setting, both were visibly nervous. One woman, who looked very old, clung tightly to the broom she used to sweep the temple floor, her fingers wound tightly around its willowy handle. The other, younger woman had flung hers recklessly down, across the boards. She seemed to regret this now, anxiously twisting her wiry arms together and turning her big, bowl like eyes frequently to the floor. Behind a single camera, director Midi Z zoomed in on the small group.
This took place in February 2011. I had met Midi Z and his tiny cast and crew, in the city of Mandalay, where they were making his first feature film, Return to Burma. This documents the impotence of democracy in the country in the wake of the 2010 general election, which was boycotted by the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy; it shows just how little had changed for normal people. Reflecting this, free speech was still so restricted that the film had to be made illegally, ‘under the radar’, lest the footage be confiscated and the team punished for producing an unflattering portrayal of the regime.
On this occasion, there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the film makers and the women (or ‘non-professional actors’, as Midi Z refers to the normal people he frequently absorbs into his narratives) that, despite the risks, this interview was a necessary ordeal. In Burma, exercising free speech, whenever the opportunity arises, seems to be a duty that everybody feels, because of the repression they experience, rather than despite it. In this way, they can refuse to be powerless. Midi Z was facilitating this.
After several weeks of filming, the team had become adept at working surreptitiously, but in Mandalay they had to be particularly careful. As Midi Z explained later, not only had they acquired a far more conspicuous team member, in me, but they were also filming in the palace grounds and several temples around the city. Legally this required permits they couldn’t acquire, and there was a heavy police presence to enforce this.
I wondered if their apparent fearlessness was bolstered somewhat by the fact that Shin-Hong and Midi Z lived in Taiwan now. They had an air of immunity about them. In many ways they were like me, protected, to an extent, by being foreign. However, the authenticity of Return to Burma results from the fact that neither Shin-Hong nor Midi Z are really foreigners. Both were born in Burma and, just like in the story, they had returned to see if anything had changed. Using the power which their Taiwanese identity cards bequeathed them, they were able to channel the frustrations of growing up surrounded by poverty and injustice into something they could take back out again, and show to true outsiders.
Later Shin-Hong offered to smuggle me into Bagan in the back of their truck, dodging the junta tourist fee. Although he acquiesced, Midi Z was less enthusiastic. His focus was immovably on making the film, and his determination to tell a story shows in his insightful work, as much as in the fact that it was made at all.
A year after this, Return to Burma premiered in Europe at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, before being screened in many other cities around the world and nominated for a number of awards.
Recently I met Midi Z again, this time in London, at the closing night gala of the Pan-Asia Film Festival. I had just watched his second feature film, Poor Folk. Shin-Hong, meanwhile, was in Osaka, promoting Poor Folk there. Evidently, much had changed for them, following the success of Return to Burma, and, likewise, much has changed for Burma.
Poor Folk was released almost exactly a year after a second set of elections, in April 2012. The main opposition party, the NLD, won 43 of the 44 seats they were allowed to contest- a small but significant victory. Consequently many sanctions have been removed, and Burma is beginning to be transformed. However, Poor Folk documents the persisting poverty in Burma, and the subsequent desperation that make human trafficking and people smuggling prevalent, particularly along the borders. It demonstrates that many people remain untouched by any improvements.
I asked Midi Z how things had changed, in his opinion, since Return to Burma, and he explained that things were very different for him, but this was due primarily to the success of his first film. Later, he elaborated on this, “it’s changing very quickly,” he said, “for the economy I think it’s very good, it’s improving in a positive way. But for film-making, for the lower class, nothing is changing; it’s just changing for businessmen”.
Midi Z secured coveted European funding to make his second feature film. Because of this, Poor Folk includes a CGI crashed plane and professional cast members. Yet it also, again, includes many ‘non-professional’ actors. Again, Midi Z wrote, directed and shot the film and Shin-Hong co-stars, albeit beside Taiwanese stage actress Wu Ke-Xi. Wu Ke-Xi, however, was taken thoroughly out of her comfort zone in making Poor Folk. She spent a year learning the dialect spoken in the film, and almost three months living on the border, where she was known by her character’s name, San Mei. She was also expected to improvise frequently while filming. Perhaps because of this, Poor Folk is pervaded by the same feeling of authenticity as Return to Burma.
Of course, not everybody appreciated the lingering cinematography as I did; in the cinema, the man behind me fell asleep and snored throughout the second half of the film. At the end, he asked why each shot was so long, and the action so slow. Midi Z explained that he had wanted to juxtapose a dramatic plot with an honest portrayal of the drudgery of daily life in the poverty stricken border towns. This, he argued, is how tragedy really happens, interspersed with boredom; with eating, and driving and talking and sitting.
The same man, the sole dissenter among an enthralled audience, asked if there was a point to the film, or if it was self-indulgent. The film, Midi Z explained, was inspired by the many people, including friends and cousins, that he had watched smuggled or trafficked into Thailand, Taiwan and Malaysia, while he was growing up in Lashio in Northern Burma. “I am very lucky”, he said repeatedly, “to have been able to study abroad legitimately”. He was able to do this only through a Taiwanese government initiative, which allows the ‘obviously’ Chinese overseas to sit an examination, and to study in Taipei if they succeeded in this. Midi Z’s grandfather is Chinese.
Like Return to Burma, Poor Folk, considered in this context, appears to be a vessel for other people to present their small lives and normal tragedies to the otherwise ignorant outside world. In keeping with this, the English title was inspired by a Burmese man Midi Z met working illegally as a tour guide in Thailand. He passed his time reading Tolstoy stories, and his favourite was called Poor Folk.
In the cinema, the audience listened intently as Midi Z described this. Inspired, someone asked: ‘Do your friends in Burma like it?’ Midi Z answered immediately that no, of course they didn’t; they thought it was accurate, but they liked Jackie Chan films. To me, this was uncomfortably poignant. Perhaps the ‘point’ of Poor Folk is to illustrate the inequality that leaves many of us privileged enough to want to watch something so unsettling, while those it depicts just want to escape.
Are non-profit pay to volunteer organisations actually ethical? Why it is still better to independently organise a voluntary placement abroad, without paying.
On January 21st SOAS hosted the International Development and Volunteering Fair. Two floors of the Brunei Gallery were filled with stalls, but in almost every instance their occupants could be placed into one of two categories; there were established NGOs offering potential involvement in their own projects to qualified applicants, and there were pay to volunteer organisations (PTVOs) geared primarily towards the inexperienced under 25s. Most of these facilitated placements with local partner organisations rather than offering positions in projects they had created themselves.
Many students at the fair described feeling that if they chose an organisation carefully enough, paying to volunteer would be the most efficient and ethical way to work abroad. One History and Development Studies student explained that, “the support, guidance and guarantee that pay to volunteer organisations offer is invaluable to me. I would rather pay, and know that I’m doing something worthwhile which will also help me to find work in the future”.
Evan Hancock, head of SOAS Careers Service, supported this idea and defended the event, explaining that “all the volunteering organisations at the fair were registered charities or non-profit organisations and all had been involved with SOAS in the past or recommended by SOAS students or staff”.
So, what’s wrong with paying to volunteer abroad?
Although it appears all the PTVOs that exhibited at SOAS were ethical, paying a middle man to facilitate a voluntary placement under any circumstances is problematic for several reasons.
1. PTVOs obscure alternatives. In 2011 I taught English on the Thai-Burma border, without paying anything to the coordinating organisation, Burma Volunteer Program (BVP). I received free training, orientation and support. Elsewhere, many local organisations offer similar opportunities, because they place value on the volunteer’s contribution to their work. The only obstacle to accessing these placements is a dearth of information on the subject. PTVOs exacerbate this problem.
Successful PTVOs can afford to professionally market themselves with the funds they accrue through charging participants. Free organisations and independent NGOs cannot afford to do this. This means that PTVOs push to the front and obscure other opportunities.
When asked about the absence of free organisations at the careers fair Hancock’s comments illustrated this point. He explained that “we do all we can to signpost students to reputable zero fee organisations when we are made aware of them” but added that he had not personally heard of BVP before receiving my email. He explained that “unfortunately, some organisations do not have the people or time resources to attend fairs of this sort”.
While facilitating volunteering for those who choose to do so through them, fee charging organisations have thus made volunteering abroad increasingly inaccessible for potential volunteers and local NGOs who wish to operate independently.
2. PTVOs operate with a negative incentive structure. Justifying the situation described above, is the common belief that PTVOs at least guarantee the most worthwhile placements, but this is arguable. Willy Oppenheim, the founder of Omprakash, an organisation that facilitates free volunteering, and an experienced volunteer himself, believes otherwise. He argues that PTVOs are actually inclined to offer an inferior service because of the incentive structure fee charging creates. This includes:
– The incentive to find a placement for every volunteer whether or not both the placement and volunteer are suitable. Likewise for partner organisations to accept all volunteers regardless of their suitability.
– The incentive not to facilitate direct contact beforehand, as this would enable the volunteer to make arrangements with the partner organisation directly and bypass the middle man.
– No incentive for the volunteer to ‘earn’ their position.
Oppenheim says “if your invitation to visit somewhere revolves around your payment of a fee, it seems hard to avoid feeling like your host ‘owes’ you something in return, regardless of your skills or your work ethic.”
3. PTVOs waste money. Another mark against PTVOs is the money they absorb like sponges, which could otherwise go directly to charity. Even non-profit organisations take a sizeable chunk of fees to cover their expenditure on things like marketing, premises and salaries. For example, PoD volunteering, an exhibitor at the SOAS fair state that, “For PoD’s most recent financial year, approximately 60% of volunteer fees went to the countries and projects they were working in, the remainder covering UK costs including marketing, insurance, staff costs and administration”. This means that participating in a 24 week voluntary placement on a marine conservation project in Belize, arranged by PoD, could potentially result in paying up to £5438 towards a PTVO’s costs (based on prices listed on PoD’s website).
But, isn’t organising it yourself risky?
Many organisations argue that you pay for their expertise, which makes the placement more worthwhile. Meanwhile, they suggest, volunteering on your own is dangerous. Raleigh International, for example, claim that, “You can organise your own volunteering – but it’s hard work, there are no guarantees, little pre-departure and in-country support, you may actually be a burden on your host and you need to like the unknown and be able to work unsupported”.
While concerns about a lack of guarantees and support are valid, associating them primarily with free placements is not.
A barrage of anecdotal evidence suggests that local organisations support their volunteers. Living on the mosquito ridden Thai-Burma border during the wet season, a huge percentage of BVP volunteers contract dengue fever. Many told me how their hosts had nursed them through this, enjoying the opportunity to do something in recompense for their work. Care like this negates the need for support from an external organisation, making it wasteful to pay them to behave like parents (reinforcing this comparison is ICYE-UK, who even dole out ‘pocket money’ to their volunteers).
On the other hand, when volunteering abroad there are no guarantees, ever. But paying an organisation to arrange a placement for you, however reputable they seem, cannot change this. For this reason, “SOAS does not officially endorse any voluntary organisation or directly broker volunteering opportunities”. Hancock elaborates that, “unfortunately there is no accepted quality mark to identify good organisations or official black list to identify bad ones so decisions have to be made on an individual basis”.
So,whether or not you pay it might go wrong, but Steve McElhinney- founder of the free online database, volunteersouthamerica.net- believes that if you don’t pay this is less likely to happen. McElhinney points out that, “if an organisation is going to rip-off its gringo volunteers, charging high volunteer fees is the most effective way to do it. If a volunteer program is free or charges very low-level fees, it’s a pretty good bet that they genuinely need you for your work – there is no financial incentive for the organisation to have you there”.
Furthermore, if you have organised your own free placement and find it isn’t what you thought it would be, you are free to leave with your finances intact, and you should have the experience and confidence necessary to arrange and alternative. On the other hand, if you have paid an organisation to arrange a placement for you it may be difficult to recover fees paid up-front, and you are likely to be reliant on them to find you an alternative.
So, what are the alternatives?
Burma Volunteer Program (www.burmavolunteers.org) is an organisation that serves Burmese refugees on the Thai side of the border. In the past they accepted volunteers themselves and assigned them to local partners. This has changed recently and they now facilitate direct contact with a number of organizations based along the border. Placements range from teaching to documenting human rights violations.
Omprakash (www.omprakash.org) provide a platform to facilitate free volunteering, based around an online database of 180 organisations in over 30 countries, all of which host volunteers free. After making arrangements directly with a local partner organisation, it is possible to apply for a grant from Omprakash to defray the costs of travelling and living abroad.
volunteersouthamerica.net was created by Steve McElhinney, as a result of looking for somewhere to volunteer in Argentina in 2005. McElhinney “soon discovered that finding volunteer work that didn’t involve paying a middle-man a large amount of cash was much more difficult than I had expected”. Using his own research he put together a list of free and low cost opportunities in South America and today also provides a helpful FAQ section.
Workaway.info charges a small registration fee before you can contact potential hosts but lists numerous placements posted by individuals, rather than organisations, around the world. Sift through the au-pairing and decorating and there are often requests posted for teachers of community volunteers in developing countries. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that workaway is a platform that posts adverts when hosts pay, and without verification.
Another option is to decide upon a specific area you are interested in and to start researching this independently. SOAS careers service (www.soas.ac.uk/volunteering/) also suggest you talk to them and check frequently for voluntary positions on their online database.
–
Case study: Carlyn Miller, Omprakash grant recipient
Carlyn Miller graduated from the University of Glasgow in September an MA in International Politics and Human Rights. Carlyn received a grant of £2500 from Omprakash to teach at Shanti Bhavan, an organisation in India which educates children from the most discriminated against castes.
“When I first decided I wanted to work abroad, I knew that paying to volunteer was not an option.
£2000 to build huts in Peru for 6 weeks didn’t quite seem right. I wondered where does the £2000 go? How much of a cut do these organisations take for simply putting you in touch with a charity overseas? This kind of enterprise, in my eyes, doesn’t reflect the values of people who choose to volunteer. Besides, I had just completed my masters and was working in a restaurant and still paying rent, there was no way I could save enough money to go within the next year.
I started to look around for alternatives. I completed a TEFL Qualification to allow me to work abroad as a paid teacher. However, in the process of doing this I found out about Omprakash, a way to volunteer abroad without paying out money to third parties. I had always wanted to go to India and within minutes I was reading through various different projects I could be involved in.
(After contacting Shanti Bhavan) I decided there was nothing to lose and filled in the grant application form. It took me about a week, I did it bit by bit after finishing shifts at work. I then had an interview with three of Omprakash’s directors. A week went by before I got an email saying I had been awarded $2500 towards my time in India.
I was planning on coming for a few months but I have now been here for 4 and plan to stay until June. The grant has allowed me to extend my trip and meant that I can give my all to Shanti Bhavan.”
Lacey Worel, of Omprakash, helped select Carlyn to receive a grant.
“Carlyn had proper training to teach (skill matched needs). Her educational background seemed to give her a great foundation for volunteering. She doesn’t believe in charging administrative fees and values the relationship aspect of Omprakash. She is tracking all of her lesson plans and will contribute to the resource section of our site. She contacted institutions in Scotland to present to when she returns home.”
In Penang we stayed with our lovely friend Eugene, this meant that we ate much, much better food than we had become used to in expensive KL and Southern Thailand. In fact we spent entire days doing little else; Eugene gave us the full island food tour, driving round to multiple eating places that were like food festivals- markets of stalls, in which you wander round ordering from everywhere and giving your table number so that your food can be delivered to you in your seat.
I think Eugene decided, after a day of this, that he was making it all to easy for us and- as proper hardcore travellers- we needed a challenge to stay interested, so, kindly, he took us to a small Indian stall for our last meal and ordered bull ‘torpedo’ soup. This is soup made from testicles, and to go with it we got some nice penis.
We tried telling Eugene that we’re both vegetarian and he just laughed, mercilessly, assuming we were joking. Ironically this is actually true, at home.
Both soups were disgusting. I expected the taste to be much less bad than the idea, but for once this wasn’t the case…
…testicles taste like sewage, and penis sort of rancid. I think my expression is testament to this:
I managed a small taste of both and Jonny a mouthful. Eugene, however, bravely slurped down most of both soups.
We did do some much less disgusting things in Penang too: we saw some terrapins…
…(one was really big like an aquatic African tortoise)…
…and a lovely snake.
In theory Burma has changed a lot in the last year.
When I last and first visited, in spring 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from house arrest but wasn’t allowed to participate in elections. A year later, in early 2012, the NLD (her party) won 43 of the 45 seats for which they were allowed to compete; although a minuscule proportion of the total number of seats in parliament this was, debatably, of huge symbolic importance.
Aung San Suu Kyi has also been given seemingly free rein in the last few months to leave the country and to meet with foreign politicians such as Hilary Clinton and (unfortunately) David Cameron.
Other changes have included the apparent abolishment of media censorship (although the board of censors still exists and checks everything post publication) and the removal of 2000 names from the barred-from-entering blacklist.
In response to these apparent improvements many trade sanctions have been suspended by the US and the EU, (something that can be seen as either progress for Burma or simply condoning what is still an inherently evil junta).
In light of all this it was extremely interesting to go back, and to see whether anything was visibly different, or if these changes were too vague and distant to effect normal people.
Our initial verdict was that, on the surface (as it would be ridiculous to claim we saw any deeper in the short time we were there) little actually appeared any different, for better or for worse.
I was scared that the negative side of a potentially positive thing would be Burma becoming exposed to Thailand style mass tourism, however in Kawthoung we only met one middle aged American who had also decided to stay for a few days.
Despite the fact that this is now Air Asia’s virtual front page…
… it seems that the average traveller in Thailand is actually now more afraid of the country than before, having gone from barely knowing it existed to being vaguely aware that something bad happened there at some point; considering that the now politically pretty tame Cambodia and Laos are still widely considered dangerous new frontiers by most of the people you tend to meet in Southern Thailand, I think I was worrying prematurely.
Having said this I actually ended up wishing some more people would stay, or else would visa run somewhere different, because at the moment the government get to gather many, many tourist ten dollars while the very poor local people don’t get any. I felt bad for contributing to this problem by buying an entry permit, but at least by staying we had the opportunity to distribute more than we gave to the government to real, very poor Burmese people.
Although it makes little material difference I’m also glad that we weren’t completely oblivious to the moral implications of what we were doing. Although in some ways this makes us more guilty than the oblivious majority, at least it also allowed us to make a considered decision and to compensate as much as possible for funding evil; I don’t think that Lonely Planet should cheerfully advertise the simplicity of visa runs to Kawthoung without even a paragraph encouraging people to consider the drawbacks.
Ranong Pier, where many, many boats wait to visa run across the border.
Anyway, hypocritically we actually benefited hugely from precisely what I’ve just been complaining about; Kawthoung was a bizarre and delightful mixture of very accessible and totally ‘unspoiled’.
The immigration department has evolved to be very efficient and even (almost) friendly, in order to profit nearly effortlessly from the abundant supply of visa-runners who pop over, complain only about their dollar notes having to be immaculate, and then leave minutes later on the same boat. Meanwhile in the town itself people still smile, stare and love you just for being such a novelty; on the outskirts and in the suburbs, especially, we were complete anomalies simply for staying a couple of days.
From Kawthoung we hoped we’d be able to go a little further into Burma (I had some extra dollars set aside as encouragement) but the country was so closed and the area so carefully guarded that we were strictly limited to the 5km radius allowed by our permits; our passports were kept at the immigration office by the pier.
Instead we settled for exploring Kawthoung.
Assuming that all of Burma is the same in some government controlled ways the only big differences we observed between this time and last were a shiny new bank (there still weren’t any ATMs though) and a new, prominence to the ubiquitous Aung San Suu Kyi posters; whereas a year ago everyone had them but many were hidden- or at least subtly located behind counters and in dark corners- they were now in pride of place everywhere. We visited a church when our driver-come-tour-guide couldn’t think of anywhere else to take us, and even there Aung San Suu Kyi beamed out from one wall, at Jesus on the other.
In other ways everything was much the same, surprisingly so for such a different region; it was still lovely, beautiful, uplifting Burma, where the abundant smiles seemed to contrast jarringly with the equally abundant, very obvious poverty.
This poverty, in itself, seems to me to imply that in many ways little has changed politically, as you would assume that in a fair and equal economy many people in Kawthoung would be reasonably prosperous, considering its ability to trade with rich, neighbouring Thailand. Instead a few people look very rich (in the immigration office and at the posh hotels), and are probably related to members of the military, and everyone else appears very poor .
Painfully, we had to stay in one of the only three very expensive hotels that are allowed to take foreigners- no doubt these were selected with the normal dose of nepotism and the profits go primarily to the government.
The only compensation for this was that ours had a television with an English language Burmese news channel, that was very interesting to watch (and they did really good rice soup for breakfast).
The peoples’ poverty was also very apparent in their attitudes, although conversely so was their honesty.
An example of this was when I impulse bought a beautiful red jacket in the small, town market. After much confusion we sort of managed to understand that it cost 2500 kyat, but we had just arrived and only had baht. Most people in Kawthoung happily accept this so I offered him 100 baht, which is 2 pounds, and very slightly more than 2500 kyat. The very small, pretty old man looked very concerned, handed me change and then made me wait when I tried to leave, while he sent his friend to get more change in the precise, correct denominations. The entire change amounted to about 40p, and this extra change was about 5p, but despite the small amount he was very careful not to rip me off a penny.
Later similar happened in reverse; we stopped by a park to buy sesame snaps, and our driver converted the price into baht for us. The sesame snap woman scowled and scowled when we gave her the amount he had told us and snapped at him in Burmese. Eventually we gathered that she was arguing for a further 2 baht and handed this straight over, at which she broke into a big, sincere Burmese smile, her mood changing in a second over 4p.
On our tour- with a driver who seemed fairly horrid when we haggled at the beginning but actually turned out to be really sweet- we were taken to temple after temple, up very steep hills and through almost rural, coconut lined streets.
Every temple was beautiful and calm and cheerful and welcoming. People slept in them and children played and women gossiped and signs spoke of noble umbrellas.
At the second temple we were adopted by a small child pack who gave me a flower to offer Buddha and ‘tricked’ us into saying mingala ba (hello), with our stupid accents, repeatedly for their entertainment.
When we left- on a steep, spiraling road wrapped around and around the hilltop temple- they ran to each entrance to wave and to shout mingala ba some more.
At another temple I found a flea aneamic kitten and fed it melted ice cream, with the help of some small Burmese girls. The kitten’s siblings ate lots but the littlest, boniest most flea aneamic one wouldn’t eat anything however hard I tried.
When we went back to the pier at the end of the day the whole town seemed to know our plans and to have been looking for us, which was both disconcerting, unnerving and rather sweet, and were waiting to hurry us on to the last boat out.
We got our passports back and then walked a long way down the street to a boat, and thought how in theory we could have just made a break for it and escaped into Burma, although actually everyone was watching us, checking we left.
It was sad to leave.
P.S. I know it’s got less fashionable/politically correct to call it Burma not Myanmar, but to me discarding the colonial name in exchange for the junta’s choice seems pointless, and, if anything, it seems counter productive to reject the lingering term of a ghost oppressor in favour of that of a real, current one. All the change does is imply the wests new acceptance of the junta (who renamed it Myanmar in 1989) and it seems a bit hypocritical really; as we lift the sanctions we accept the government as so legitimate that they get to name the place. Also Aung San Suu Kyi still frequently calls it Burma, and has been told off by the government for doing so, so perhaps its a good small sign of subtle resistance to follow her lead and continue to call it Burma and remember that it doesn’t belong to the junta. Or maybe we should make up an entirely new name- in Burma people told me they disliked both names; it made little difference to them what I called it because Burma belonged to the British and Myanmar to the junta- they’re much the same.
A year ago I really didn’t like Thailand. I arrived from England wanting to be somewhere different and, although it was all very nice, it was also really very similar in some frustrating ways. It annoyed me to have travelled half way around the world just to walk down a notorious Bangkok street and bump into someone I knew from a small corner of England, and presumably it annoyed them a lot too. It annoyed me that everyone rushed to give English kids beer and elephants and it annoyed me that the English kids couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere else.
Despite much of this remaining the case I wish to retract all previous negative statements and announce that I love Thailand now, just because it’s nice.
In Thailand most of all I love:
1. The abundance of vegetables.
2. Lady boys; Thais think women are so great that even the men want to be ladies.
3. The sewage system; not very much of it is in the streets.
I also love the weather, the abundant smiles, the not yet extinct honesty, the presence of transport that doesn’t require planning months in advance, the awareness of personal hygiene and love of medicine, the people who feed stray animals and have poodles in their motorbike baskets, and coconuts.
Many of these things were lacking almost entirely in another country I recently visited. This has made me really, really love Thailand. I love Thailand now.
Some more specific things I have loved in Thailand this trip have been:
1. When, In Bangkok, we went to a bar fifty nine stories above the city and ate aubergines (they said eggplants but they meant aubergines). This cost about the same as pizza express in England.
Last time we were at the same place, fifty nine stories above Bangkok, we borrowed trousers and shoes to abide by the dress-code and then tried to leave in them, we slipped whisky into our virgin cocktails on a Buddha day and I tried repeatedly to steal an ashtray as a souvenir, but they let us in again anyway.
2. When we took the train to Chumphon and ate shrimps and vermicelli in clay pots at the market and looked at poor, dead squids.
3. When we went to the hot springs in Ranong and the biggest, hottest one bubbled bubbles that glowed as they floated up what looked like miles and miles because of strange, refracting light effects, and water spilled over the edge and the whole thing looked like an immense, man-eating cauldron.
In another one Jonny went swimming.
4. When we climbed up rocks over the sea (I was a bit rubbish at it because I could hardly get up the ladder but Jonny was very good) and swum with phosphorescent plankton in Krabi.
If you want to go on an adventure, don’t go to Thailand, but if you want to go somewhere very nice, it is very nice.
We decided (very sadly) to skip Bangladesh this trip, primarily because a lot of the country is flooded; as much of what we wanted to do would have been impossible it didn’t seem worth braving the humidity and the mosquitoes.
Instead we booked flights straight out of Kolkata to Bangkok, leaving us with only a few more days in India.
Having broken our guidebook we assumed Kolkata would be just another unpleasant Indian city, but actually we both liked the place a lot; in a winter I think I will go back, spend a few weeks volunteering in Kolkata and then head into Bangladesh for the travels we missed this time.
Kolkata is nice because it has good urban wildlife; on our second day there I saw a piglet running wild with a dog pack. Its family were asleep underneath a nearby truck.
It is also very nice because you can volunteer, for any amount of time, free at Kolkata’s Mother Teresa centre.
To volunteer at the Mother Teresa centre all you have to do is turn up at 3pm on Monday, Wednesday or Friday with your passport, and register.
We did this the day we arrived and it sounded brilliant (although if you visit be prepared to be put off by the ‘advice’ and rules sheets they hand out, which are almost aggressively rude, patronising and authoritarian. The most charitable thing I could have done for the organisation would have been to rewrite these; they should definitely be ignored).
With the Mother Teresa centre you can work in one of about 8 ‘houses’, with children, ill people, dying people or handicapped people, for as long as you want and are of use. You can express your preference at the orientation session, although you’re not guaranteed to be sent to the house your request.
Men aren’t allowed to go to some of the houses with small and disabled children and women can’t go to one helping street boys, because, after all, it is in India and run by nuns, so can’t be too progressive.
Jonny and I offered to go wherever we were most needed, and were assigned to some ill people. We were also warned repeatedly not to turn up to work with ill people if we weren’t entirely well ourselves. I’d been frequently sick for most of the last six weeks but judged it to be ok because I’m pretty sure I’ve just repeatedly been poisoned, rather than suffering anything infectious. However, typically, we both woke up the next day with matching sore throats. We compared our identical symptoms and realised we would be arseholes to go anyway. This proved a good decision because I then spent the day vomitting out of my achey throat, if I’d been to see the ill people it probably would have triggered a Stand By Me pie-eating contest style disaster.
The Mother Teresa centre also runs trips out of Kolkata for volunteers and one of these (unfortunately leaving the day after we left) was to a leper colony, which sounded morbidly fascinating.
We did manage to stumble out in Kolkata to go as far as the botanical gardens.
This was actually not very far, although the taxi drivers all told us it was one and a half hours to make sure we overpaid for the twenty minute drive.
The botanical gardens were very cool because they include the largest Banyan tree in India. This is so large it looks like an entire forest- the centre trunk has actually died and rotted away completely but the tree has gone on without it since 1925- now it is a mass of arterial roots reaching down from the branches to the ground. It looks like lots of little trees until you look up and see that the entire thing is connected by the branches.
We also went to see our first and last Bollywood film in Kolkata.
Attempting to have a very Indian last night we found a relatively posh Bengali restaurant at which to dine before the cinema. Our careful plans, however, were thwarted when we discovered that the restaurant opened later than the film started. Because of this we ended up eating 2 for 1 paneer subways and very un-Indian noodles in the ‘mall’.
We did, however, have a brilliant view of Kolkata.
We were a bit traumatised by the film- Cocktail- which was extremely intense (Isa and Doina should have warned us!); we expected light-hearted, naff Bollywood, and we got that for approximately half of it, but then, after the interval, people started to go mad and to be graphically hit by cars. It also wasn’t very Indian as it was set in London with a brief holiday to South Africa for the weekend (as you do). It was all ok in the end though, the boy ended up with the nice, good Indian girl and the bad, mad Indian girl reformed and was very sorry, and they all went back to Delhi to get married.
Leaving Kolkata we managed to fit in a quick car crash, just so that we hadn’t missed out in India. As we drove to the airport our rather wobbly and unspatially aware taxi driver, strayed gradually towards the middle of the road, as a bus did the same thing on the other side of another taxi. For absolutely no reason they were drawn closer and closer together until the taxi in the centre was crushed between the two other vehicles. It sighed and squeaked and the crumpled and the bumper was torn away. We all stopped.
In India it is traditional that if an accident occurs the responsible driver is beaten up. If someone is killed or seriously injured an angry mob will probably kill him. Many rich people get driven around, rather than driving themselves, to be certain of avoiding this in a land of very bad roads and very frequent crashes.
As our accident was minor our taxi driver only got punched in the face through the window. I was sitting behind him and so I leaned over the seat to shield him, badly blocking the window, and shouting a lot at the other driver. This worked very little; our driver got hit a bit more before a policeman turned up and the other man desisted.
A pleasant, mild, rich Indian man left the other taxi to find a new one and advised we do the same, as it would probably take a very long time. Our driver objected violently to this and quickly ushered us back into the car, argued that he had to take us to the airport and drove away. At the airport he asked desperately for a tip while looking sadly at his rather scratched taxi.
On The Train
Varanasi was interesting, but my favourite part was the train journey there.
This was especially good because in Amritsar, after the border ceremony, Doina and Isa and I got a bit obsessive about crisps.
This might have been an expression of homesickness, for me, as crisps are akin to a national dish in my family.
In India, Lays, which we assume is Walkers, have 6 exciting ‘Guess Who’s Flavour?’s. Obviously, like the manipulable consumers we are, we had to attempt collecting them all.
Very sadly we could only find five- the last one is in a red packet and rhymes with spice. If you ever go to India please find this and report back.
In the end Isa and Doina didn’t have time to eat any of the five flavours we did find, they were forgotten in a very tired evening and Isa and Doina left super early the next day, so Jonny and I ended up with them all to ourselves on the train (sorry guys).
We took this responsibility very seriously, and worked out who’s flavour was who’s before carefully reviewing and rating each one, this took up a considerable portion of the journey. (Western Mirchi Burst was by far the best, but Eastern Chilli Mustard Hit was pretty good too. Royal Herb and Chilli Punch tasted like dishwater, Oz Cheese n Onion Cut was sweet and Coastal Pepper Blast pretty bland. None were quite as good as Walker’s Cheese and Onion.)
Later on this train I saw my first Indian ladyboys.
Jonny had been promising throughout our trip that I would encounter some soon, but, after 5 weeks without meeting any, I was a little worried, then finally they appeared, like some rare nocturnal train dwelling animal, slapping Jonny to wake him up and demanding money.
In India ladyboys are far more frightening, and even more amusing than in South East Asia; while there are a lot of pretty, relatively hairless Thai men (and lots who start taking the pill at puberty) few Indian men are as naturally feminine, or as committed to being ladies, and so Indian ladyboys are mostly rather hairy and unconvincing.
In India ladyboys are feared rather than mostly accepted, as in liberal South East Asia, and so they live outcast from society, riding the trains backwards and forwards in small packs, demanding money from scared men and cursing those who don’t pay up.
Most of the many beggars, who also walk continually up and down the trains, appear, usually, to have gathered very little money, and what they do acquire is almost entirely in small coins, in comparison the lady boys had (large, manly) fists full of rupee notes and demanded more as if it were a tax- the not getting cursed tax, I suppose. Perhaps this demonstrates how much more powerful a motivating force fear is than compassion, in most people.
I really wanted to be cursed but unfortunately we got off lightly (probably because I’m a girl and everything in India sucks for girls, even to the extent that they miss out on ladyboy hassle); they left us alone very quickly when they realised we had no intention of giving them money and were pretty immune to the fear.
I decided then that if I were an Indian woman I would draw on a beard and run away to live as a ladyboy, tormenting men and doing exactly what I wanted all the time and getting to ride a lot of trains, exempt from, or actively subverting, many of India’s oppressive social rules, with a pack of fellow ladyboys for solidarity and protection; it seems an infinitely preferable lifestyle to that of a real Indian female(not that this takes much), the aura of fear around the ladyboys meant they commanded far more respect and wielded significantly more power than the average woman. Either this or I’d be a revolutionary.
Varanasi
Varanasi epitomises India in a lot of ways; it is very crowded, very hot and excessively dirty and there’s a lot of religion going on.
Walking down the cobbled alleyways surrounding the Ganges involves dodging enormous stray cows with sharp horns (it’s a common misconception that cows are docile or harmless animals anywhere, but in Varanasi they’re especially savage, frequently charging without warning, sending pedestrians crashing in all directions), herds of great, clay-coloured water buffalo, litter-eating goats, balding dogs, spitting, hissing monkeys, flesh eating babas and vast funeral processions, sometimes baring bodies.
Sometimes all of these obstacles fight each other; below is a picture of a dog versus cow versus monkey battle.
The sewage in Varanasi is impossible to dodge in monsoon season as it’s absolutely everywhere; human and animal shit mingle in the inches of river or rain water that coat the street, you have no choice but to paddle through.
While in Varanasi we saw some bodies burning and floated down the river in a small boat, watching pilgrims wash in the filthy water.
As well as bathing in the Ganges, some people sieve the water for the melted gold of the burned peoples’ jewellery, and some babas (mad ‘holy men’ in orange robes) called Aghori Sadhus pull body pieces out to eat.
From Varanasi we almost missed our train to Kolkata and I was a little terrified we would have to stay any longer, dreading another night of showering off a sewage coating.
We were saved by a cycle rickshaw driver, who insisted he could get us to the station faster than any autorickshaw by bumping down the backstreets. He did indeed do this, speeding along ringing his bell at pedestrians, while Jonny and I clung to our bags and each other, trying not to topple out of the very small, narrow seat we were precariously balanced upon, with all our luggage, as we bumped in and out of large holes.
When we got to the main road our driver rivalled the autorickshaws for speed, overtaking every other cycle rickshaw and barely even breaking into a sweat, despite looking twice the age of most other drivers.
He wove in and out of traffic and calmly insisted cars move aside for him. This was extremely frightening, and several times I closed my eyes preparing for impact, as motorbikes slid narrowly past us, opening my eyes again only as we went over another bump and I almost tumbled out sideways.
He got us to the station with four minutes to spare and we made it onto the train just as it was due to depart, only to sit there for twenty minutes before it actually left.
Getting there and the Golden Temple
Amritsar is one of Jonny’s favourite bits of India (he’s been before), but when we arrived- feeling very sick and hot and dirty- I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
This was largely because of the very long journey we had just embarked upon, which included a:
– 9 hour jeep ride to Jammu.
– brief interval watching man attacked by savage street goat (Jammu had many of these)(it was brilliant, he ran a very long way before it caught him).
– change of station via very hot, entirely man-packed public bus-van.
– Battle through an onslaught of ticket touts.
– further four sweaty, uncomfortable bus hours to Amritsar.
Thanks to paved roads we’d come 457 very beautiful kilometres in a single day, but we were too tired to take much satisfaction in this.
We went straight to the Golden Temple, where you can sleep free in a large dorm beside the temple itself.
Outside Sikh pilgrims sleep on every available bit of marble floor because the Indian dorms fill up so quickly, but one dorm is reserved especially for foreigners, which doesn’t really seem fair but helpfully means that there is usually space.
Jonny and I even got our own little room beside the main one. We peeped into the other rooms looking for Isa and Doina, who had gone the other way from Leh- back via Manali- but were due to arrive in Amritsar that day too. One was very dark but we thought the shadowy, sleepy shapes inside could be them and decided to check back in the morning.
In the main dorm a sign explained the rules. We decided we’d better be very careful of lusting backpackers. I warned Jonny that he better not do any lusting at anybody either.
The temple itself was very beautiful and very gold, suspended over an immense, square pool of water full of big, wiggly black eels. These swum wherever they wanted and probably soaked up most of the holiness while the pilgrims were confined to bathing in small roped off sections around the edge. Even this was only permissable for men; Sikh guards patrolled the edges with large spears, in edition to their usual daggers, and made sure women kept out. The next day, when we had found Isa, Doina and it was very hot, we were tempted to jump in, like suffragettes protesting against the sexism, but feared being speared, and the eels.
It seemed the Golden Temple had a lot of rules. We were told off for sitting wrong and forced to cross our legs, and herded forwards by a tank-like Sikh man when we tried to escape the crush to see the temple itself. It was also very, very bad to keep your shoes in your bag rather than leaving them outside and absolutely unacceptable not to wear a headscarf all the time.
However we weren’t hassled by anybody as long as we obeyed the many rules, in fact the large Sikh men were so oblivious to our existence that one plowed straight into me in a crowd of people and knocked me aside so hard I couldn’t breath for a minute, without seeming to notice.
However outside the temple it was a different story, rather than the pleasant greetings of pilgrims we were deafened by an onslaught of sales cries and touts grabbing at our arms.
It was so hot and so dirty outside that- to poor Jonny’s despair- all Isa, Doina and I wanted to do was stumble to Cafe Coffee Day (tacky Indian Starbucks) and drink blue slush puppies. I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere so painfully, meltingly hot before and was ashamed at how badly I coped.
We ate the free food that the Golden Temple kitchen dolloped onto our trays, but only once. Although it was very nice (dal, rice pudding and chapatis) everyone but Jonny struggled with eating in the heat and we all seemed to be ill all the time.
Jallawallahwallahbad and the Cinema and Paneer Burgers
With Isa and Doina we managed to visit Jalianwala Bagh where the British army once massacred a lot of peacefully gathering Indians. Apparently unperturbed by this several people asked for photographs, we imagined them explaining: ‘Look this is me with my British friends in front of the bullet holes their ancestors made massacring mine’.
We looked at a large well many people had jumped into and then watched a crackly film about it all. This was interesting but very sad.
After this we went to see another film- The Dark Knight Rising in a large air-conditioned cinema in the ‘mall’. Jonny got momos delivered to his seat in the cinema; I think they should do this in England.
On the way out we went to McDonald’s. We had vowed that while in India we would go there at least once and try paneer burgers. Amritsar, where is was too hot to eat without aircon, seemed the perfect opportunity.
This was actually very nice, much better than English McDonald’s, although my burger was a bit ruined by a lot of sweet, pink sauce all over it- some things are the same in McDonald’s everywhere.
In McDonald’s a big pack of small boys surrounded us. Apparently they were celebrating one’s fifteenth birthday with a McDonald’s party, but actually it was hard to believe any were older than twelve.
They boys were very sweet and took a million photos while we cruelly lied to them about ourselves and our lives (‘facebook? what is that?’). When we finally insisted on leaving they came with us to pirate every passing rickshaw, attempting to kick out the passengers and demanding they take us back to the Golden Temple for hardly any money.
The Border Ceremony and Getting Groped
The next day Isa, Doina and I went to the India/Pakistan border closing ceremony.
This is a very bizarre thing; every night when they close the border and lower the flags the guards on both sides march around in mutations of archaic British Army uniforms looking like something out of Blackadder. They kick around and exhaust themselves pretending to intimidate the soldiers on the other side. Actually the guards from both sides have been drinking tea together all day.
At the ceremony we got to bypass the main queue because we’re foreigners, which again seemed unfair, and because we’re ladies we also got to ladies queue.
Ladies queues are a measure to stop women being groped by their fellow queuers and by security men, but in this case it just meant that instead of being groped by men I got pretty thoroughly groped by a security woman. First she brushed down Isa and Doina to check for guns and bombs, confiscated their drinks and waved them through very efficiently, then she patted me down very slowly, stood very close to me and gazed into my eyes a lot. After too long she asked my name and replied “Lossie you have beautiful eyes” while continuing to stroke me.
This was very frightening, but also I am very grateful that this was the only groping I got in all of India, which is pretty impressive considering India’s groping reputation and the many, many off-putting stories I’d been told about it.
The border ceremony itself was actually very sweet and nice.
Before the ceremony properly started people, including lots of very old women, raced up and down carrying huge flags, after this all the women got up and danced, mostly to Ji Hao over and over again.
The guards were also very nice, gently managing a huge, raucous crowd including some very bolshy Israelis.
The only thing I regretted was being on the wrong side of the gate; while India’s side was packed to bursting point, with a whole section designated for foreigners, Pakistan’s was nearly empty, and looked exciting, with not a tourist in sight.
India
Pakistan
Another Temple
The next day Jonny and I went to see a Hindu temple where you had to crawl in places and splash through tunnels of ankle deep water.
Jonny found this especially exciting, probably because it looked like something he would draw.
It appeared that some mad, genius, Hindu artist was adding new bits all the time.
Starting a Ticket Queue Revolution
Soon after this we left Amritsar in victorious glory, having won the ticket queue.
Before departure we had to have our waiting list tickets upgraded to real tickets (Indian train tickets are very, very complicated like this). I was very hot and ill but as the ‘lady’ I had to do the queueing anyway.
The ladies queue in Amritsar was shared with senior citizens and ‘the handicapped’, presumably because in India being any of these things constitutes a similar level of disability.
The queue was divided into two halves and while I queued patiently in one behind a lot of very pushy handicapped people, senior citizens and ladies, an old Sikh man walked straight down the other side.
Our train left very soon and I had been waiting a very long time and so I was very annoyed and told him to go to the back of the queue.
He retorted that actually I was wrong and he was in the correct queue, that ‘no one will help you here, you have to learn to read, you are in the wrong’ blahblahblah.
I pointed out that everyone else must be the wrong queue also.
He then changed tack, arguing that, as senior citizens was written first on the list, they got priority.
Finally a very small, very squashed Indian girl joined in, informing him that ‘actually ‘uncle-ji’ you are pushing in- go to the back’.
Instead of doing this he kept on pushing, despite a small fight to keep him back. Eventually, due to his tank like Sikhiness, he reached the front.
Here the ticket selling woman, having observed the chaos, coolly refused to serve him. She explained that ladies were just as important as senior citizens, that he had pushed in and (probably) that he didn’t even look over 65 anyway and made him go to the back.
It was so satisfying to stir up trouble and see the Indian ladies telling this big, old, Sikh man off that we left gloating all the way to our train, hoping we’d triggered a small revolution in Amritsar and that at least one nasty old man would stop pushing the ladies around.
Srinagar is the (summer) capital of Jammu and Kashmir, it’s famous for houseboats (originally used by the British escaping the summer heat in the early 20th century) and manipulative touts.
The British Foreign Commonwealth advises against all travel to Jammu and Kashmir, outside of Ladakh, the American equivalent says if you go there you will be kidnapped, and don’t expect any help from us, and the Norwegian version says, politely, don’t go, but also don’t not go. This is because India and Pakistan and Kashmiri independence groups all like to blow each other and the tourist office up sometimes.
We worried a bit but then decided to listen to people who lived there or who had recently been, and to read the news, and decided it was probably less of a risk than taking the cliff-hanging, desert eaten Leh-Manali road back the way we came.
In Srinagar we noticed a lot of uniquely Kashmiri characteristics; for example, immediately everyone one told us they liked Europeans, not Indians, and tried, somewhat manipulatively, to align themselves with us rather than the hoards of domestic tourists who had descended for the summer (lots of people elaborated on this, explaining that they didn’t want to be part of India or Pakistan and weren’t really either). In their quiet, civilised way they also almost all followed this befriending by trying to trick or charm money out of us.
We followed our German friends to a guesthouse they’d booked in advance from Kargil. Predictably this wasn’t very simple. We were actually taken to the homestay of a man who claimed he’d inherited the guesthouse’s phone number and that they’d spoken to him to make the booking; he’d apparently been completely unaware that his phone number was listed in a popular guidebook as that of a busy guesthouse.
We didn’t stay, and we didn’t like the guesthouse either, so me and Jonny went room hunting.
We were swept up by the part -owning brother of a very nice, very cheap, hidden place that was half their house, built almost floating on the lake.
We acquired a nice guesthousey room for our friends and chose one for us that was in the old family house and all wooden. The family made us tea and said that the next day we could rent flat, one-oared dinghys and explore the lake on our own.
Kashmiri tea, which is made with cinnamon, cardamon, sugar and tea leaves, is delicious.
The family was extra expanded because the youngest sister had just been married and everyone else had travelled back to Srinagar to attend the ceremony. One or two of the brothers worked miles away, in Dharamsala, without their families, and so they were very happy to be home. Our favourite one had a very sweet, doted upon baby girl who toddled around us draped in handbags and made her dad lift her up to pick grapes.
This brother sold Kashmiri saffron in Dharamsala, and ended up giving us an impromptu saffron identifying lesson. I had a little tub of it that I’d bought in Lamayuru for half the price it was sold at in Kashmir; this turned out to be a weird amalgam of the best, the second best and the worst (fake saffron). The best bit, which is the red stamen of the crocus, swells up extra red and ripe in water, while the synthetic leaks out a lot of dye then shrivels and fades.
The brother made us saffron tea while I amused myself working out how much each single crocus in Kashmir is worth.
It takes 150,000 flowers to make one kilogram of saffron, so it takes 150 flowers to make one gram so- according to their price of 300 rupees per gram- each little flower is worth 2 rupees.
He also explained that pashmina shawls- which are the other Kashmiri specialty- are made from only goats beards (their other wool makes just plain cashmere) this means that each shawl is made from the pashmina wool of 40 goats. This means that the beard of every goat in Kashmir is worth £1.25.
The next day we went rowing.
The guesthouse brothers said that we had to take two boats because then it would be a race to reach Old Town: England versus Germany.
Jonny and I floundered around for a bit, crashing and squealing (mostly me) but then got the hang of it, inventing our own zig-zagging technique because we couldn’t get the hang of going in a straight line with only one oar each. We made it to Old Town after a very long row off the wide lake and down tiny, overgrown river roads. The Germans drifted back to the guesthouse far sooner, so I think England won.
In Old Town we found interesting grafitti that none of the very religous Kashmiri population flocking past seemed to acknowledge, and got invited for tea by an unusually socially inept Kashmiri man who tried to sell us wooden carvings.
On the way back we got lost, achey and a bit fed up of being repeatedly splashed with sewagey lake water, but I cheered myself up by finding a dead crow rotting away in the weeds. All the skin fell of so I could see its perfect, little skull. It made an interesting change to the dead fish.
That night our other German friend, Robin, who’d we left in Lamayuru, caught us up. We went to the wine shop to celebrate.
Wine shops in India are always very seedy places, extra free of women and usually very busy at night. This one, in Muslim Srinagar the day before Ramadan, was particulary unhappy about me taking a photo to document their brilliant sign and quickly pulled the shutter down before telling me to stop.
The next morning Ramadan began and I decided to fast for the first day out of curiousity and sympathy. Pathetically, by the evening I couldn’t stop fainting. To make up for this the next day we got 4 drinks, a veggie burger and two sandwiches in sterile, air-conditioned Cafe Coffee Day and sat there until slush puppies turned our lips blue, so I did very badly at Ramadan. It was some consilation, however, that no one else seemed be doing very well either; almost every restaurant was open and both guesthouse brothers, who also occasionally drank alcohol, decided not to fast. One explained that it was ok, his wife was doing it for both of them.
Ramadan did mean, however, that we were woken at 4am, for the next two days, by an hour of very nearby call to prayer. This made me very bad tempered.
On out last day we went to see one of Srinagar’s famous Mughal gardens, but it wasn’t very special, sort of like a boggy English park.
So many Indians asked to take photos with us- always asking for one (ek) ‘snap’ when they meant ten- that we finally snapped; as we a group of about 8 men approached we decided to make a break for it and sprinted across the gardens. Unperturbed they caught us ten minutes later, and without bothering to speak to us, show any interest in us as human beings, or really be nice at all, they all made us pose for photos with them. At the end, feeling like a used tourist attraction, I asked for 100 rupees to wind them up, but it didn’t work.
LottePress 