Don Feidner

Last Update:  1 December 2015

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The Market in Kalaw seems to be the center of activity where everyone goes to get their fresh vegetables, fruit and just about anything else they need - even duck eggs. Watermelons are a favorite and are sold everywhere.

In every city, the traffic is dominated by mopeds and bicycles. Cars are expensive, so mostly only taxi drivers have them. Taxis are inexpensive - about 1/8 what they cost in Germany. 

Some are more fortunate and have homes on dry land. Along the roads, you can often see people working in the rice fields.

Some sell baskets and other articles along the roadside.

Here, my son is trying on a hat. In the trek that we have before us, this hat will be a very useful thing to have. As you can see, everyone is wearing such a hat while working in the fields.

Only a hundred miles to the west, life is entirely different. On the Bengali Bay, life is all about earning a living by fishing.

Every morning at 6 a.m. the fisherman return from a night’s fishing and the people from the fishing village wait on the beach to receive the catch of fish from the night.

Only a stone’s throw away is the tourist beach. Unfortunately, although the tourist beach is kept very clean, the normal local beach of the fishing village looks terrible and the dogs pick through the garbage that the people have left lying around. .

Oxen and pigs are valuable assets.

How do the people in Burma live? As soon as you get out of the city, you find that most people live in grass or bamboo huts. These homes are in the Wetlands - east of Yangon. and are built on stilts on the water.

In the larger cities, you often see people taking their goods to market.

Nearly everyone is either smoking a thin cigar or chewing beetle nut, which makes their teeth reddish brown.

It is not unusual to see some of them playing volleyball, but they never touch the ball with their hands - only with their feet or their heads. 

Oxen are a very valuable animal. The farmer here allowed us to eat in his home. His wife and son also joined us.

The kitchen and cook, Rambo, shows how the people there live. That’s right! An open wood fire is how they cook. In a house made of bamboo, the cook hasto be careful not to burn the house down.

Child labor is common in Burma. The kids were threshing the wheat until they saw us hiking past. They took a short break to watch us walk by. Below another kitchen.

Left: Gathering wood for the kitchen. Heating is not necessary, because these people live only a short distance north of the equator.

A taxi boat takes the locals to their homes at the end of the day.

The old woman on the left is a rare sight. Rarely did I see old people in Burma. Most die of Malaria, Denge fever or diahrrea at a much younger age.

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