Doc Dick and the Dick Doc, Hinthada, Burma 2009
We went bashing round Hinthada (formerly Henzada) in 2006. This area in the north of Irrawaddy Division has a much lower rice mill density than further south, but their modest size means smaller engines and a better chance of turning up something unusual (for an example see my Burmese 10). It is definitely not on the tourist route and in 2006 we had continual hassle from officials of the immigration department who basically just wanted us off their patch so they could get on with the most important thing in their life which was to do anything to avoid disturbing their superiors' all day slumber in the office. In early 2009, any tourists going west from Yangon required official permission to travel, even to the beach areas. Han had to spend a day persuading the authorities in Yangon to let us become the first tourists to (officially) visit Hinthada since Cyclone Nargis passed a long way south. Even then our permission is for only a very limited area near the town and since our planned destinations are some way outside it, we anticipate some difficulties. However, Burma being what it is, the permitted areas are hand written and it is a 15 second job to add a few more, something old hands will be familiar with from bashing India.
Without the permit, we would never have even been allowed on the bus and there is another check point before the Irrawaddy bridge, but thereafter no-one seems to care. It was always going to be just another bumpy, dusty 5 hour journey on a Burmese bus, Yuehong's eyes are definitely not designed for this kind of experience and I pity the poor farmers as the land 50 metres either side of the road after the bridge is uniformly brown instead of green like the rest of the countryside.
Interestingly, it is clear that the devastating effects of Cyclone Nargis must have been very localised (similarly from observation the Central Java earthquake in 2006) as the landscape is exactly as I remembered it on our last trip here three years earlier. Fortunately, it is a former (left hand drive) Korean bus and we have the seats next to the middle entrance, so we can watch the assistants at work which is always good for a laugh as the countryside 'flashes' by at about 20 mph / 30 kph.
What's that on his hat? He seems to be very highly qualified...
My god, he's the California State Dick Doc! Long ago when I was teaching chemistry, many of my students, not always affectionately, called me Doc Dick, but this was the almost the first Dick Doc I had met since my grandfather (Dr. Robert Forgan) died. He was a medic in France in the First World War, and besides winning the Military Cross he found he spent more time treating STDs than war wounds; afterwards he was in practice in a poorer part of Glasgow, found much the same problem and became something of an acknowledged expert in the subject. When people at socials discovered I was a 'Doctor' I used to tell them I was a gynecologist to get rid of them, I can't imagine what he did... Anyway after a short and colourful political career (look it up on Google), he was approached by May and Baker to help test and promote their M&B 693 sulphonamide drug which would prove to be far more efficacious than anything before in this field (this was in the days before penicillin) and thereafter settled down to a much quieter life with his second wife.
As so often, I have lost my thread. The road deteriorates more and more and at the same time the bus fills up well beyond the 'standing room only' level. The hawkers at the roadside have literally dozens of potential customers but no way to access them, for this one at least it is just as well as far as I am concerned. These birds are too big to be the sparrows which I have just about got used to seeing, but the beaks make it quite clear they aren't small chickens either. I ask Han what they are, but he is too polite, as always, to admit he knows!
I would repeat the 'smelly armpits' jibe except that I am surrounded by a group of very fragrant (Karen) Christian pilgrims including three nuns who are bound for some retreat between Danubyu and Zalun:
Mercifully, the road improves for the last few miles and we are dropped right outside the guest house we used before. It's right in the middle of Chinatown in Hinthada (all one street and 200 metres of it) and we head for one of the Chinese restaurants where we were made very welcome in 2006, I recall they all closed for two days at Chinese New Year on that occasion which resulted in the worst two dinners I have ever had in the country. As we sit down, the owner says in English "Beer!" followed by "Fried Potato", I can only guess we were the only foreign customers he has ever had. While he remembers us, sadly his father who used to run the place has since passed away. By the time the jar hits the table, we have visited the kitchen and lined up a more than decent dinner. That's the right way to run a business in my judgement. We discuss the next day's plans with Han whose blood pressure is definitely showing the strain of dealing with bad tempered Mr. Rob for a month and prepare for the usual early start and a hoped-for series of previously unvisited mills - it is not going to be a cheap day out at all.