Sunday, December 29. Keng Tung, Myanmar.
Awoke early and hit market in town one last time. Folks friendlier as I begin to lower my guard and become accustomed to the place. Some attempt English - they will say hi or hello. The folks in the city are much more likely to engage than the hill tribe people. Ate some of the fried things (one was like a corn hush puppy, one was like a fried zuchini, and one was like a deep fried chopped onion and pancake batter fritter) from the same lady I bought from 2 days ago. Took her picture. Paid for the assortment of 7 fried things with a 500 Kyat note, received 200 Kyat in change. Breakfast cost - $0.30 US.
Took pics all over market. Made second trip into the pork house and the fish stalls. The meat house was selling either beef or water buffalo....I am sure both were there. The beef house has almost been empty both visits. Beef is not eaten much. All through the market I never saw one chicken for sale, but chicken is often on the menus in restaurants.
There are no stainless steel counters that are washed down with bleach in Keng Tung' pork Market.
Back to the hotel to xfer photos to iPad. Met travel partners at 9:00. Before departing to Mong La, we had to run to market to change Thai Bhat into Chinese Yuan. 1 Yuan = $0.18 US. The exchange rates are much better in Kaing Tung. Met w driver and made the 3 hour drive over to Mong La on the border with China. Nice newer car. Road not nice nor newer.
About 5 miles outside of Keng Tung there was a roadblock with about a half dozen police. There was lots of discussion between the driver and the older, presumably senior policeman. Turned out that our driver did not have a vaild license to transport foreigners. After some negotiations he paid a 10,000 Kyat fine or bribe and we were back on our way. 2 or 3 other checkpoints were uneventful.
Nice scenery as we drove up hill about 3000 feet from the valley floor of Keng Tung. Road at times was deplorable, other times OK. Travel partner Tom made it clear to Slim that he was hungry - real hungry (it is all about him all the time) so the driver started driving faster, a bit fast for me, but I was in the front passenger seat and figured that I had air bags and Tom and Slim in the back did not.
Passed through some hill tribe villages and saw bamboo huts and very poor living conditions. Approaching Mung La, it started looking greener and more prosperous. There were telephone poles and wires. There was a piece or two of heavy equipment like a backhoe or a front loader. Pole green beans growing on 3 pole teepees. Acres and acres of them.
Construction equipment of any type was not to be seen anywhere around Keng Tung. It started looking more prosperous....signage switched to Chinese.
Arriving in town it started looking like the China you see on TV. Mung La, about 40,000 folks, is a gambling destination for The Chinese and there are 3 casinos in town. There is considerable prosperity; the Chinese are well dressed...even fashionable. Saw many Chinese women in very high heels, nice silk jackets, makeup and designer style clothing. The wild west look of Keng Tung is absent. Looks like a developing city with dozens of buildings under construction. Backhoes, cranes, and other heavy construction equipment. I even saw a single tractor, the first in Myanmar. We ended up going to 3 or 4 hotels to look at rooms.....Tom was like Goldilocks and the three Bears. This one is too hard, this is too soft. The 4th hotel had only one room and Tom said he wanted to stay there. It had twin beds. He offered to share the room with me. That would be unbearable and I think I would have prefered the floor of the police station over sharing a room. I declined and told Slim I wanted to stay in the nicest hotel in town.
Went several blocks down the road and got a room in a new hotel that was nicer than any of the others for about $50.00 US. Paid in Yuan - about 298 Yuan and I was required to place a 500 Yuan deposit, which about left me broke with Yuan, but I do have Kyat, Bhat and US dollars which I can exchange, but at a lower rate than in Keng Tung.
After checking into room TV would not work. Went down the hall to get the housekeeping supervisor to assist and this skinny young Chinese man popped out of his room right in front of me wearing the ubiquious Chinese slippers, a white tank top undershirt and his skivies. He entered another room further down the hall. Apparently the hallway is just an extension of your hotel room to the Chinese. The housekeeping supervisor showed me the card reader that the room key card must be inserted into for power to work in the room, similar to the hotel in Bangkok. All patrons at the hotel - in fact every hotel in town - are Chinese here to gamble.
Received message on my iPhone that said "Welcome to China" and the message explained calling charges and texting charges. TV is all in Chinese except for one station in English. Channel surfing further I came across a Station with Japanese porn that looked like it was shot with a black and white camera by an amateur. This is still Myanmar, but it is more like China.
Met my 2 traveling partners for a walk around town. Every third store was a cell phone store, intermixed with designer clothing stores and a few stores selling ivory tusks, tiger skins, tiger teeth and most interestingly, a 5 gallon glass jar - like the old glass 5 gallon bottle used for drinking water before they all became plastic - with a little spigot on the bottom for draining the liquid from the jar - which appeared to be snakes, salamanders, lizards and who knows what else in some type of liquid.
Most enjoyable part of the evening was the Chinese street musician that had a little boom box like contraption slung over his shoulder and a mandolin like instrument. We heard him playing across the street and I said "let's go check that out." He could cue up background music on something like a karoke machine and then play his Chinese mnadolin and sing traditional Chinese music into a microphone attached on his mandolin that was connected to the mini boom box. The sound quality was amazingly good. It was quite enjoyable. Wa sat and watched as he played several songs and sang. T and I tipped him.
At dinner, I ordered a sweet and sour chicken to compare to that in the US. Slim described it as 1/2 of a chicken - sounded like too much for me to eat, but since there were 3 of us to share the dishes with, I said ok. After 1/2 of the dish I determined that they must have cut all the meat off a breast piece, then chopped the remains into 20 pieces and served that to me because all I could find was rib bones with tiny scraps of meat attached and a couple pieces of fat. I doubt there was more than 1 oz of meat in the dish. I had one bite that was all meat and no bone or fat. At least it was a relatively inexpensive dinner - $6.00 each, including my 2 beers. The Chinese in the restaurant continously stared at us.
Back to the hotel and to the room and could not get lights to work. The room had a card detector like in Bangkok. It requires the room key card to be inserted for power to come on. It is an electrical saver....when you exit the room you take your door card key, the sensor notices that the card is gone and turns off all the power. I tried the card every which way, every switch every which way, over and over. After 20 minutes of fussing and using my flashlight to see, I went down to the desk. Someone was called and they went with me to my room, walked in, placed the card in the slot, banged the card reader with their fist and poof - the lights came on. I got a look like - hey, you dumb American, you should know that you need to pound the card reader with your fist to make it work.
Laid down and decided that the matress was really just a piece of 1/2" plywood with a 1/4 inch of foam padding and a sheet on it. It is harder and has less padding than the carpeted floor. Tore the bedding off to look at the mattress and it looked normal but is the hardest bed I have ever slept in or ever imagined. Put the unused hand towels and bath towel beneath me for an additional 1/4 inch of padding and also,added the blanket I bought on the visit to the British Hill Station several days ago.
The toilets runs due to a leaky stopper valve, there is a karoke speaker system blasting below my room and it sounds like the noise is transmitted directly to my room via the toilet. About 1/2 hour ago there was some absolutely terrible singing by a woman singing off key wafting through the room with the boom, boom, boom of the subwoofers shaking the walls and the floors.
I can drown out the karoke and the runny toilet with a pair of earbuds and an iPod I have along, but the hard bed is just something I will need to endure until morning.
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