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Kenbo Road and River Test, Burma 2009

This is the twenty second part of our 2009 Burmese Odyssey. To read more about our 2009 bash which includes many non-steam items, please see Rob and Yuehong in the Golden Land 2009.

The most popular motorcycle in Burma these days seems to be the Kenbo CITV 110 cc model. Han and I hire one for my last full day's steam rice mill gricing of the trip - I use the word 'my' because the previous day in the pick-up has destroyed both Yuehong's resolve and her health. In any case, Yuehong has the same opinion about motorcycles as I do about mobile phones. All the mills on my list are south of Hinthada, not only can we not afford to use the pick-up again, there are two mills which it couldn't possibly reach. First impressions of the Kenbo are favourable, the bike moves smoothly through the gears and once we have pumped up the tyres it gives us a fair ride down the road to Zalun, which is probably one of the best in the country having recently been resurfaced for the most part. The first mill is a damp squib, despite the chimney it is diesel operated and had been for a long time.

I decline to visit the famous Buddha image in Zalun which packs in local tourists and relieves them of lots of money no doubt. We bounce along the riverside bund and first doubts about the Kenbo begin to surface as it does not cope too well with the undulations, in fact the suspension is best described as crap. Never mind, we have reached one of my favourite mills in the area which I want to revisit in the morning because the afternoon sunshine illuminates just half the engine system with predictably dire results. There is only one problem, the mill is not operating today. I hoped to inspect the portable engine's wheels in some detail but as the pictures show, they are not accessible under the oil and dust mixture which has the consistency of soft rubber. Not shown is the replacement boiler used for current steam raising.

I leave heartily glad I saw it working three years ago. At least on the dirt track back to the main road, we only have our own dust to eat. On south to Danubyu, the authorities have obviously failed to budget for a roller to crush the stones on the soon to be sealed road and are relying on users' rubber tyres to do the job, something they are not equal to. We take a break at a mill which was not been working in 2006, but it isn't working this time either. Despite its lack of markings it has like several similar engines (most of which are badged for Hosain Hamadanee) what appears to be a 'late' Tangye number, in this case #12378. Compared to the conventional Tangyes they have a 'round the corner connection' in the valve gear, from observation this is a severe design weakness as very few (such as this one) appear to have the original system still functioning, the rest have all sorts of empirical variants such as the previous day's roller bearing job.

The friendly owner advises us not to travel to our furthest mill south as it is another 'chimney only' mill. Instead it's time to venture across the Irrawaddy River to visit the last mill on the other side - we ran out of time on our day there in 2006. All three of us (ie including the Kenbo) board the small chartered boat (Ky 2500 = USD 2.50 each way) and disembark safely. We then have to negotiate another dirt track for the best part of five miles parallel to the river. We have two alternatives; one designed for bicycles and one for bullock carts. One is rock hard with bumps and the other soft and ankle deep in dust. The Kenbo does not like either and my nether regions are beginning to feel rather tender. When we get to the mill it is locked and bolted (with the owner in Danubyu) having closed some three years earlier. I poke the camera through a broken board as usual but soon a key appears and we were able to look at the rather attractive, but unmarked, 9" MacDonald engine:

I confess to feeling somewhat drained and I am glad it is not I who has to lift the Kenbo on and off the boat:

Normally when we finish a boat trip Han has a big smile as he is definitely a non-swimmer, but this time his body language shows what he thinks about having to ride the little beauty nearly 40 miles back to base. To make matters worse, it decides to have periodic sulks when the engine cuts out completely and we have to wait a couple of minutes before it will run again, probably it is either overheating causing a loss of oil pressure or the air filter is blocked, but at least it doesn't die completely . When we get back two hours later, Yuehong has the last laugh of course after a less than perfect day, she insists on photographing the effects on my posterior but that is something which will not be uploaded to this site. My verdict on the Kenbo - it just about does the job but I won't be rushing out to buy one when I get back to China. I doubt it will last as long as the steam engines we are researching or the 86 year old lady whose last journey we observed in the middle of the day:

I am as thirsty as I am hungry and so an early visit to the restaurant is in order. Ready, steady, cook. It doesn't take long from ordering to the dinner table, in fact less time that it takes us to drain a full jar of beer.

After which it is an early bed all round as we have an 03.30 start next day.

The full list of 2009 trip pages is on:

These are the individual (stationary steam) pages from the 2009 trip:

Our earlier explorations are described in pages linked from:

Rob and Yuehong Dickinson

Email: webmaster@internationalsteam.co.uk