Traveling to Southeast Asia: Hiking through rebel area in Myanmar(2...

This is part 2 of my hike if you havent read part 1 I would recommend doing so first: Part 1

Day 2

When I woke up beneath the mosquitonet, it took some time until I realized where I was. In a village in Myanmar, so remote the spoke another language than the people in the nearest town with people living simple but happy lifes. Definitely more happy than most people in Austria at least.
I slept rather well that night, due to the walking and all the new and amazing things I experienced the day before. At about 8am I got up and went downstairs. It turned out that I was not even the last one to get up (which is very rare)! Mike was still snoring away, but the rest of the group was already out and about.

View from our "bath", it was just a tap behind the house. The toilet was extra
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Dogs everywhere guarding the houses, this one chased off a soldier in the morning
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After a quick breakfast we started off into the rainy morning. Due to the rain I didn't make any pictures while hiking, since I didn't want to expose my camera too much. Despite the rain it was very warm, so it didnt take long and I wasnt sure whether I was wet from rain or sweat. The passing landscapes were lush with green and even though it was raining all day long the mood in the group was great. At some point we were walking past a corn field when suddenly literally out of the corn a man showed up right where we were walking! He had a rifle in his hand and startled us pretty bad. Turned out he was one of the rebels we had heard about. He didn't seem to be dangerous quite the contrary! He greeted us with a smile and exchanged some words with our guide, then he was off into another field. I didn't make any pictures of him for one because it was raining but the main reason was, because I didn't want to piss of a guy with a gun by making a picture he might not want.

Nature provides the best motives
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Trees against the cloudy sky
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I bet some people would pay a lot of cash for such a beauty
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Soon after midday we arrived at our destination: another village, where people spoke even ANOTHER language!
Mr. Win again thaught us how to say "hello" and "thank you" we showed off our sick language skills to the villagers and caused quite some laughter doing so. The rain didn't stop in the afternoon, so instead of exploring the village, which was by the way stuffed with soldiers, we played cards games all day long.
Next to us the man of the house was sitting, smoking his palmleaf cigarettes, drinking tea and watching the rain. After some time Mr. Win offered to translate, so we could talk a little. The man told us, that he and his family depended on winning the national lottery at least once a year. It sounded weird to us, since winning the lottery just once isn't something you can count on in Austria. Mr. Win explained, that the lottery was different here. There were only 3 numbers you had to choose and the amount you got from winning was much lower than in Europe or the USA. To decide which numbers to choose the man was writing a dream diary. Whenever he had a dream he wrote down what he saw and later checked in a book, which sign means which number. The system seemed to be working since they won about 1-2 times a year!

Just a small monk casually throwing around his machete
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This oversized grass made me feel kinda small
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After another (delicious) dinner we kept playing cards. This time another game called "games" (I'm not joking that's how it's called). In this game you also get into teams of 2, there is always 4 cards on the table and every person has 4 cards in their hand. The goal is to get 4 of the same kind (for example kings of 10s) and signal your partner somehow that you got it. When the partner gets the sign he calls "games" (or doublegames when he also got 4). If you spot another team making the sign you can call "pineapple" and steal their points.
Needless to say, we all got a little overly excited playing, so it didn't take long and we where all shouting across the table. Our host family tried to watch a movie, but they ended up watching us. Must have been confusing to host people at your house and the suddenly throw cards around and shout "PINEAPPLE" (one of the few words they understood).

Some snack along the way
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Day 3

The next day we got up at 8 and had a big breakfast later a woman brought a big round stone, some water and a piece of wood. It was Thanaka, the sunscreen/moisturiser/makeup you only find in Myanmar. We all got a nice layer of it on our faces to protect us from the sun while hiking. This day it wasn't raining all the time so I had the chance to get some shots of the amazing views. After about 2 hours of walking on muddy paths (our shoes easily weighed 2 kilos each because of the mud on them) we came across an abandoned camp of the military. Mr. Win couldn't tell us whether it was abandoned because the rebels took the area or because the "frontline" if you can call it that way moved further on.

These beautiful hill begged to be photographed
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Neither of us understood a word of what the other said but he was happy to be in the picture
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Happily trekking through the cornfields
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We also came across some more water buffalos, who were pretty scared of us. After a few hours we arrived at another village. There was a big house of prayer where many monks sat and prayed. Outside the house some people where making food for the monks. They offered some to us, it was some orange vegetable grated into small pieces. It turned out to be very spicy ginger. We had trouble eating one plate together.
After the village our path lead us into deep jungle, through some more cornfields an finally to the last village, there we waited for a tuk-tuk to pick us up and bring us back to the hostel.

They even tried to run away when we came too close, even though they had a string through their nose
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Heading into the thick jungle
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Wearing light pants wasn't one of my best decisions
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We decided to take a nightbus the same evening to get to Bagan, the most famous sight of Myanmar. It's a plain covered with over 3000 (!) temples. More on that next week.

All shots in this post were made with my Olympus OMD EM-10 Mark II with a 14-150mm lense in manual mode.

If you want to learn more about my travel through southeast Asia you can read the previous posts here:

There is a new chapter coming each Thursday

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