Hsipaw to Kyaukme (“Chowkmay”)

15th November

After the excellent day yesterday we had a bit of a challenge today. We transferred to Kyaukme, which is a little town in the foothills of the mountains. Being old and frail, we had arranged to go on a taxi trip around the local area and visit a hill tribe or two. unfortunately this message hadn’t got through to the people on the ground, and instead we found ourselves on an 11-kilometer trek up a “hill” and back down again. The whole excusion started at 9am and ended when we crawled back into our hotel at 4.30pm.

As we had realised when we were planning the trip, a trek like that, hard work at the best of times, would be pretty challenging in temperatures of up to 30°C and following straight on from the 4-hour walk the day before. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the last 30 minutes or so were down a near-vertical track in wet clay, very treacherous and alarmingly steep.

There were some good bits, nontheless. The day started with a local bus ride, which was certainly a bit of an adventure. An old an spontaneously started giving a German tourist a massage on the bus, which must have been wonderful after an hour or so of bumpy driving. The bus was, as usual, pretty crowded – though like many other aspects of the ccountry, not by any means as extreme or chaotic as, say, India can be.

Once on the trek we visited a village school and saw lots of cute kids, and had lunch in the house of a Palaung family which was interesting – they’re quite distinct from the rest of the state’s population,, with a different look and their own language.

Unfortunately got back too late to get to a Shan restaurant, so ate Chinese again. Still nice, though.

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