Timetable
Our short trip was from Friday 4th to Monday 7th. Like last time, I found it too shirt. But the atmosphere was totally different. In January, the 25 monks in "school trip", especially the 6 or 7 I was always hanging around with, plus the constant presence of Pulawit, made it that I had fun from the very first to the very end. The group was rather small and united, and it had been the highlight of my trip, as much as the discovery of Burma.
This time, you had two buses et two vans. Pulawit was lost somewhere in one of the two buses, you had nor more than 10 monks who hardly spoke any English, and I don't remember the face of 90% of the people who came "with" us.
Fortunately enough, "we" were put into one of the vans. "We" means the people who didn't come to Chiang Tung 4 years ago to start the funding of the chedi whose inauguration was on the saturday. The other vas were architecture students from BKK. So... Except for my van, Pulawit (my personal hero - I'm always happy when he's around), the driver who was here in January and some of the staff... Except for them, I just didn't care at all about the group. I didn't feel attach to them.
So I concentrated on my environment. And on political talks with Stanley and Tom. Stan, he's a Hongkie (meaning a guy from Hong-Kong) who lives in Beijing now. Being a Hongkie, he's not a "real" Chinese, in the way that they have some different status sometimes and in that they have more of a critical political conscience. And he's interested by dictatorship, politics and propaganda as much as I am... So we got along pretty well ^^
Kengtung is the European name of Chiang Tung. Mong Lar is another writing of Mong La (which can also be written Muang La). Yeah, names can be pretty confusing sometimes here ^^
On Friday, we left CM around 4am, then had breakfast at Mae Sai (the border), passed Tachilek, ate somewhere on the road. We arrived in Chiang Tung about 4 hours after Tachilek, about 4.30pm, left some donations in a temple and then took on the road again to Mong La. We spent the night there, for nothing much except for walking a little in China ^^
The rest of the time, we spent it in Chiang Tung. Buddhist ceremony on Saturday evening and Sunday morning in Ban Mao, 5min from Chiang Tung. Celebration at Phra Chai's village on Sunday evening. For the rest... it was rather poorly organised and I took the opportunity to slip into the gaps to go and discover Burma.
This time, you had two buses et two vans. Pulawit was lost somewhere in one of the two buses, you had nor more than 10 monks who hardly spoke any English, and I don't remember the face of 90% of the people who came "with" us.
Fortunately enough, "we" were put into one of the vans. "We" means the people who didn't come to Chiang Tung 4 years ago to start the funding of the chedi whose inauguration was on the saturday. The other vas were architecture students from BKK. So... Except for my van, Pulawit (my personal hero - I'm always happy when he's around), the driver who was here in January and some of the staff... Except for them, I just didn't care at all about the group. I didn't feel attach to them.
So I concentrated on my environment. And on political talks with Stanley and Tom. Stan, he's a Hongkie (meaning a guy from Hong-Kong) who lives in Beijing now. Being a Hongkie, he's not a "real" Chinese, in the way that they have some different status sometimes and in that they have more of a critical political conscience. And he's interested by dictatorship, politics and propaganda as much as I am... So we got along pretty well ^^
Small map of the east side of the Shan state :
Kengtung is the European name of Chiang Tung. Mong Lar is another writing of Mong La (which can also be written Muang La). Yeah, names can be pretty confusing sometimes here ^^
Program (more or less)
On Friday, we left CM around 4am, then had breakfast at Mae Sai (the border), passed Tachilek, ate somewhere on the road. We arrived in Chiang Tung about 4 hours after Tachilek, about 4.30pm, left some donations in a temple and then took on the road again to Mong La. We spent the night there, for nothing much except for walking a little in China ^^
The rest of the time, we spent it in Chiang Tung. Buddhist ceremony on Saturday evening and Sunday morning in Ban Mao, 5min from Chiang Tung. Celebration at Phra Chai's village on Sunday evening. For the rest... it was rather poorly organised and I took the opportunity to slip into the gaps to go and discover Burma.
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