Arriving In Kalaw the Local Way

The morning after our love affair with the e-bikes, I took stock of all the bruises it left me. A hefty one on my left thigh, a bunch on the back of my left calve, left ankle, right shin is pretty gnarly and one on my abdomen which fell on the key bending it in the process. I spent some time unbending it to it'll fit in the ignition again. It'll probably be a few more days before I indulge myself with a massage. E-bikes and sand... we laugh every time we think about it..approach with caution!

We arrived in Kalaw two days ago and as I'm writing this, I'm overlooking the mountains in it's early morning light waiting for the sun to ride over the mountains. To get to Kalaw, we flew from Bagan to Heho. Flights in Myanmar are another story. I've learned that in many cases, regardless of what airline your ticket is with, every airline kind of merges which makes boarding and such just a little bit confusing. Other observations we've made in the week we've been in this country is that "fried" on the menu actually means stir fry. WiFi service here is kind of like electricity in sub-Saharan Africa: if it's available, it's available a couple of hours at a time. A majority of travelers that come to Myanmar are with large tourist groups. Noreen and I are in the minority group known as FITs (foreign independent travelers). There are many benefits to traveling as a FIT: more of your money goes to the people of Myanmar, you can choose where to spend your money, you choose your own itinerary and you're not targeted in fee collections. In Bagan, by the time we landed in the afternoon, all the groups must have landed already as there was no one there to collect the $15 archeological fee. Quite frankly, sticking me on a big bus to follow a flag is not my type of travel.

Anyway, back to flights! We landed in Kalaw and put our negotiation hats on for a taxi to get us to Kalaw from Heho which was an hour away. Turns out, it wasn't much of a negotiation at all as the drivers set the price at 30,000k and Maung Po had told us no more than 20,000k. The drivers said we could go for 25,000k but it would be in a pick up truck. Fine by us, let's do this the local way, in the back of a caged pick up truck we went through the windy roads of this region.

We arrived to a town that's very much focused on local life aside from a handful of trek tour agencies. No one has tried to sell us anything. Like everywhere else, we get asked where we are from. I'm known as California. Noreen is known as New York. Our favorite thing to do in this town was hitting the evening street eats. Two samosas, two sweet rice egg rolls and a sweet chapatti will cost you all of 80 cents. We went big one night and hit up a restaurant for clay pot noodles..that set us back $1.20 each. A local habit we've noticed are chewing of tobacco basil leaves. From a vendor stand, locals coat these large basil leaves with a white paste and a couple shakes of tobacco powder that turn their mouths disgustingly blood red. Which now explains all the red  spots that decorate the streets.

I originally put Kalaw on my itinerary as a possible launch point to trek into Inle but after talking to a guide from Lonely Planet's recommendation, Ever Smile, we decided to forego the trek and I personally would not recommend this company between her lack of descriptions and her dog stealing my shoe, I think we might have woken her up from a nap during business hours.

Prior to coming on this trip, I knew I wanted to do something with elephants. I didn't want to do it in Luang Prabang because it seemed like too much of a circus and not enough of an authentic experience. I steer clear away from companies that advertise "elephant riding" as a selling point. It's actually very detrimental to the health of elephants and as we learned, the carts they put on top of elephants for you to ride are so heavy that it takes five adults to carry it. You put that on top of an elephant and a couple of people, well, it just breaks my heart. I googled around and found a company called Green Hill Valley elephant camp here in the hills of Kalaw. Green Valley is a retirement home for elephants. They have seven elephants and with that seven mahouts (elephant caretakers). It was costly at $90US each plus $40US for the driver that accompanies us for the day. Having spent the day there, it was worth every penny knowing it will go to caring for these elephants, up keeping of this amazing camp which also houses the mahouts and their families. Upon arrival, we were greeted by our guide, Pouri who grew up in Kalaw but his origin is Nepalese. We spent the day learning about the Asian elephants, African elephants too for that matter and how the elephants end up here. We fed them, bathed them, we got fed well, planted a teak tree and then we fed and played with the elephants some more after a short post lunch trek. It was a day well spent and will probably end up as one of my favorite days in my years. These gentle giants are a big love of mine. After all, I do have a memory of one!