Strange

The photographs were not good to begin with, because the weather was awful. After 43 years, they are discoloured with age, but they remind me of a country that enchanted me.

My parents took me to Southeast Asia in 1956 and we lived there for 6 years, yet we never visited Burma and I still longed to go. In 1961, I had a strange sort of tease.

My parents were in Thailand while I was at boarding school in neighbouring Cambodia. Border disputes like the recent one occurred frequently and weeks before I was due to leave for Christmas, diplomatic relations between the two countries broke off, which meant I was unable to obtain the Thai visa I required.

My father had charged an ex-colleague in Phnom Penh with facilitating my transfers, so he held my passport and arranged air tickets, but I was many miles away, out of communication in the town of Kep, on the coast.

As there were no phones and no mail was getting through, I had no idea what would become of me, so I was a rather unhappy child. Then one day a car turned up to collect me and I got into trouble with sister superior because no-one had notified her.

As my bits and pieces were thrown together, I got a lecture from her. She told me snidely that I spoke very good French, but without a Parisian accent. She also found it necessary to say that she had known the “Tommies” during the war and that they had not had much nerve.

How was a 13-year old child supposed to respond?

That nun, I discovered recently, lived a very long life. Before she died in 2023 at the age of 118, she was recognised as the world’s oldest woman.

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Delivered in Phnom Penh to my guardian (the man who had previously caused my first hangover), I found my reunion with Mum and Dad was further delayed by an Air France strike. Eventually I flew out on Christmas Eve, at which time I was told that my passport contained a visa for Burma which I should present to the Thai authorities in Bangkok.

Having had difficulties with such issues in the past, this made me a little apprehensive and when I offered the document for inspection I received a dark look. However, the man was apparently satisfied with my answers to his questions and he affixed his stamp.

Finally, I was going to see my mother! But as I exited the customs hall, the face I saw was not hers. My parents had decided they could not wait any longer for the strike to end and they had gone off to Malaya, leaving yet another person to take care of their child. As if the woman had nothing better to do on Christmas Eve than go out to Don Muang Airport to collect me.

By then, I had put so many people out, so many times, it was embarrassing.

Long story to explain that tease of a Burmese visa!

After leaving Asia then, my father returned for a job in Laos, but still we did not go to Burma. My parents never even discussed it, so I assume they were not interested, but it was one of those places I had a yen to discover, like Tibet and Borneo.

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If fate had not engineered a meeting with a compulsive traveller, it is unlikely I would have satisfied my desire to visit those places and I shall always be thankful for it.

Tim was not a conventional traveller. It was he who took me camping in Sudan, for example. The first time we went to Burma, we arrived there on a ship which was considered a little unorthodox. Indeed the officials were not sure quite what to do with us, so although we were allowed to join the rest of the passengers for the day out to Pagan, our documents had to be scrutinised for an entire day before we were allowed to land officially, which we did just in time to see the ship sail.

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We stood on the dock, hot and sweaty from our day out, waving as our fellow travellers departed, freshly showered and sipping cool beverages.

We turned, desperate for a drink and crossed the road to the Strand Hotel where Joe’s gasp for “Beer!” was met with “No beer in the bar.” I thought my poor friend would faint.

What you had to do was go up to your room and order beer through room service. Then, if you chose, you could go drink it in the bar, but it could not be served to you there.

Luckily, we found a Chinese restaurant nearby where there were no such complications.

Our rooms were faded but fine, however the bathroom was along the corridor. When we stayed there again the following year, I got up in the night and met a rat out there.

Breakfast in that place was the second worst I have ever eaten, cold limp toast and watery jam served by a waiter who was as sullen as anyone I have ever met.

For transport we used taxis which were decrepit vehicles that were as likely to break down as to get you to destination (and did on one occasion).

The back of rickety cars was also the only sensible place to exchange money, given the official rate, but I left all of that to my banker!

The hotel was adjacent to the British Embassy and I remember that a notice on the wall advised that it would reopen after lunch at 1355. It seemed an odd time, but everything there was a bit different.

None of that mattered. I was enchanted with Burma and the Burmese people who, unlike that waiter, were friendly and perfectly charming.

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The Strand Hotel has since then been twice upgraded and is now a very posh establishment.

After that first brief visit in 1982, we were determined to go back for the full week you were allowed in those days, so I contacted the agent who had handled our excursion the year before and booked a package. The four of us had our own guide who sorted out all our accommodation and transfers most efficiently.

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There had been a cyclone, so the aquatic community at Inle Lake was really wet. We went out on the lake to see the leg rowers fishing.

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And to a lakeside temple. The people in the boat above were taking a young boy to join the monastery, with much musical fanfare.

We saw beautiful spires like this everywhere in Burma.

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Never mind. We were going to Mandalay.

In the dry zone…

Oh.

Never seen mud like this before or since.

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But life must carry on.

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How I would love to have seen Mandalay before. Before the war when it was so badly damaged, but also before the palace was looted by the British in 1925.

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We took a boat along the Irrawaddy to see a temple at Mingun. The white structure on the shore sits in front of a much larger temple that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1839.

Earthquakes are all too common. There was another serious one just last year.

A gentleman on the boat contemplated our small group and said to me that I would be married three times. At the age of 78, I’ve left it a little late to get started, but perhaps he meant to look at the girl who was travelling with us.

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The 2025 earthquake struck the Sagaing Region, where the above photos were taken.

Animals will always catch my attention.

We flew back to Rangoon (now Yangon) stopping en-route at Heho where we had the unique experience of remaining on board while the entire crew disembarked for lunch.

Doing geography puzzles alerted me that Rangoon is no longer the capital of Burma.

While I was aware of the name changes, Yangon and Myanmar, this was news to me and I decided to investigate.

Even for Burma…this is….odd!

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