My favourite photo

This is one of my favorite photos. I took this photo in Kanpetlet, Chin Hills. The mother was looking at the foreigners who were visiting their village, while the boy was looking at me and my camera. I grasp the moment and get a snapshot of the boy.

Chin Head Basket

Have you ever heard about head basket? Well, we have in Chin Hills. Lets call it Chin head basket. It is a kind of basket that you carry by hanging around your head with a string. You don't carry it by hand. The basket is quite a large one, big enough to carry a 5 gallon water container. And people, even young women and children, carry them by a string hung over their head. It is a tiring thing to do so. I once tried to carry one with some weight in it but couldn't carry more than a few minutes. For the Chin people, they have been carrying a big load since they were young so seem no problem carrying a heavy head basket over their head.

Technorati Tags: Myanmar, Burma, Chin Hills, Chin State, Mindat

How to go to Mindat?

If you are interested in going to Mindat, here is a guide. You cannot go there direct from Yangon. First, go to Pakokku, a big city on the west bank of Irrawaddy (Ayarwaddy). To go to Pakokku, you have two options. One is the direct bus trip to Pakokku from Yangon. The buses are quite old and slow, and carry a lot of goods and cargo. I recommend the second option which is to take a bus to Pagan (Bagan) and from there, cross the Irrawaddy. The bus to Bagan leaves around 3 PM from Yangon, and arrives there around 5 AM the next morning. You can take a ship from Bagan to Pakokku. This ship travels between Bagan and Mandalay, but you can drop in Pakokku. The trip will take around one and half hour. Alternatively, if you are more adventurous, you can take a ferry boat to Pakokku. From the boat pier, you can take a tricycle or a horse cart to Mindat bus station. The station is called "Mindat Gyar Sakhan", meaning "In between camp". From there, you take a bus to Mindat. It is actually a Jeep that carries people and goods from Pakokku to Mindat. The road is not bad for Burmese standards, but quite rough compared to other roads in neighboring Asian countries. The trip from Pakokku to Mindat usually takes around 6 to 8 hours although it is only 96 miles. If you use your own car, it will take around 4 to 5 hours, depending on the condition of the car as well as the weather. On the way, you will have to pass Pauk Town and Kyauktu Town. Only around 10 miles near Mindat is mountain road. The road trip is generally safe so you don't need to be worry to much.

Technorati Tags: Myanmar, Burma, Chin Hills, Chin State, Mindat

Mindat - a Southern Chin Town

If you ever want to visit Chin Hills, Mindat is the most convenient and easiest to reach town in Chin Hills. Situated in Southern part of Chin Hills, Mindat is a small but peaceful, beautiful and tranquil town. With a total population of nearly 10,000 people, it is considered a sizable town in Chin Hills. The town is built along the top of a mountain range that runs east and west. So practically, Mindat is a long line of houses built along the main road with some small side roads fanning out here and there.

Situated at 4,860 feet above the sea level, it is cool in summer and very cold in winter. And a lot of rain falls during the rainy season. The best season to visit Mindat is during summer where the weather is cool but not cold, and the roads are dry.

As soon as you reach Mindat, you will notice immediately how beautiful the town is. Tall pine trees line the approaching road while distant mountains shadows the town. It is a scenery that will definitely impress the first time visitors. Then you see the small, beautiful wooden houses with scenic backdrop along the main road. Curious faces of locals will pop through the windows of these houses while the smiling faces of their children will follow you. Welcome to Mindat.

You can see many aspect of Chin life in Mindat. Local people still wear Chin dress and carry Chin buskets and knives while some men carry locally made shot guns on the streets of Mindat. Many women dress beautiful Chin necklaces while some old women still wear enormous Chin traditional earrings. Many people carry woods or rice in Chin head baskets, the one that they carry with a string hung over their head. If you are lucky, you can even observe a Chin wedding or funeral rite. You can also observe the way they make famous Chin Khaung (Chin Beer).

Walk around the town along the small dart roads the run around the road. There are many Chin traditional huts that were built of pine wood and roofed with thatch. See the way real Chin village people live and work over the harsh terrains of Chin land.


If you are a Buddhist, go and visit the Taung Pu Lu (Taungpulu) Buddhist monastery in Mindat. The head abbot is the famous Ashin Pyinnyar Thiri. You can make donation for the monastic school for the local poor children opened at the monastery and operated by the abbot. These children really need your help.

If your guide can arrange for you to stay in a Chin village for a night, ask him. If he cannot, you can still take a walk to a near by village. One thing to be careful is that this area is a malaria area so take a malaria precaution and prophylaxis.

Technorati Tags: Myanmar, Burma, Chin Hills, Chin State, Mindat

Memorial stones from Chin Hills

If you travel in Chin Hills, you will see many stone slabs erected on the side of the road. They are all written in Chin language so you won't know what the meaning is. They are actually the memorial stones erected in the memory of the deceased. Usually, they give a brief description of the person who passed away, with achievements while they were alive. They include the awards, possessions, wives and children, animals killed, enemies killed in battles, positions held in the government service, etc. Usually, these memorials are erected by the children of the deceased. There usually is a grand feast to those who come the the stone erection ceremony. It is indeed an expensive ceremony with many cows and pigs killed to serve the guests. Although the expense is quite huge, this is considered a great honor to the deceased and the family so the family will try their best to continue this honorable tradition.

In my opinion, these memorials are the written history of Chin State and Chin people. Before the old and neglected memorials are destroyed, we should do something to protect and restore them, and record the contents of the memorials.

A point to note here is that they are not tomb stones, but the real memorials.

Technorati Tags: Myanmar, Burma, Chin Hills, Chin State, Mindat

Khaung (Indigenous Beer)

“Khaung” is a kind of alcoholic beverage made locally in some parts of Myanmar, mostly among ethnic people. There are various kinds of “khaung” produced locally but most widely known are Kachin and Chin khaungs. I don’t know about Kachin khaung, but I have some knowledge about Chin khaung that I could share with you.

In Chin state, the most famous khaung is made in Southern Chin State, especially in Mindat Township. In contrast to khaung from other ethnic people, Chin khaung is made from millet seeds, not rice or sticky rice. Every family in Mindat grows millet seeds in their farms solely for the purpose of making khaung.

The process of khaung making is as follows. First, red millet seed is cooked until it becomes thick. Then it is allowed to cool down. Once it is cool down, yeast is added to it and blends properly. Then it is put into a clay pot and sealed air tight. Fermentation takes place inside the sealed pot. This process takes at least a month, but the longer the fermentation time, the better the quality of khaung. To get a really good quality khaung, it needs at least six months of fermentation.

After a certain period, it is ready to drink, but you need to make beverage or khaung from this mixture. The pot is opened, and water added into the pot. Banana leaves are put above the content and a straw is inserted into the pot. Khaung is then siphoned through the straw and into the cup. First cup is the best and usually served to the guest of honor. When water contents in the pot lowers, more water is added, again and again, until there is no more taste.

The taste of Chin khaung is sweet, and a bit sour. It tastes somewhat like a mix of alcohol, grape fruit juice and lemonade. Khaung plays a very important part in Chin culture. If you are offered a cup of khaung in Chin Hills, don’t refuse under any circumstance. You are considered a guest of honor and refusal of the offer will be considered rude.

Chin Hills

Here is a group of local people in a small town in Chin State of Myanmar (Burma) pulling a cow to the market. This is a large mountain found abundant in Chin Hills. They are bringing this cow to the butcher.

Chin National Day on 20 February

Just a quick reminder. Chin National Day is on 20 February, and there will be a big official celebration in Hakha, the capital of Chin State, Myanmar. There will be Chin traditional costume shows, Chin traditional dances and Chin traditional wrestling. Interested visitors should plan their visit in advanced as there is only one guest house in Hakha.

Payae Facial Tattoo

People in Chin Hills used to have the custom of tattooing (Payae) the face of the women. Nobody is really sure how the custom became established, but a legend was that hundreds of years ago, Burmese kings and nobles used to come to Chin Hills and hunt for the beautiful Chin girls, as the fame of their beauty reached the court of Burma. To avoid their women being captured by the Burmese, they had no way but to destroy this beauty. This they done by tattooing the face of young girls.Although nobody could authenticate the validity of this story, many Chin girls, especially those from the North are indeed very beautiful.

As soon as a girl enters the age of puberty, tattoo is applied onto her face - the pattern of the tattoo being the one according to the race she belongs. Thus the facial tattoo of Mun is different from that of Dai. The process of facial tattooing is quite painful and dangerous. Some even died of infection. The practice has been outlawed since 1960s, but some still practiced until around 1980s. The youngest woman I had seen with a facial tattoo was 26 years old. The facial tattooing is no longer practiced anymore, even in the remotest areas of Chin Hills.


Technorati Tags: Chin Hills, Myanmar, Facial Tattoo

Mindat

Here is a video I took in Mindat, a town in southern Chin State, Myanmar, Burma.

Hakha, the capital of Chin State, and the way to it.

Here is the video of Hakha, the Chin State capital, and the way to the city.

Made in Myanmar

It was pretty boring. It was raining most of the day, and when it is not raining, it was cloudy. I was feeling quite lonely and bored. Suddenly, when I looked out of the window of my room, I saw some children playing with an interesting toy. It was a car! Well, not actually. It was a home made wooden cart with four wheels. However, in the imagination of these children, it was a real big car. They might be imagining that this was a really big truck. (For these children, trucks are the largest, grandest and smartest car on earth). The children took turn to ride the car while other children pushed the car. For them, it was really a great thing to do. They kept on doing the same thing again and again but never seemed to be tiring. This was truly a car made in Myanmar.

Burmese Cricket

Looks like this is the Burmese version of English cricket. These are the children in Chin Hills playing a ball game which resembles cricket. (I am not sure as I don’t know how to play cricket). The ball is actually a roll of old cloths tied together with a string. I don’t know where they got the idea for this game. I’ve never seen any child in Yangon play such a game, and as a child, I have never played a game like this when I was young. Anyway, it is so cute to see these poor kids playing a ball game with home made materials like this.

PCO

This is what a PCO looks like in Myanmar. PCO stands for Public Call Outlet, a public telephone. Unlike those from other countries, there are no public phones using coins or card. Instead, at a PCO, there are one or two ordinary fixed land line telephones with an attendance to mark time and charge the user. Although not as convenient and as private as true public telephone booths, it is a popular and widely used public communication system in a country where very few people have fixed land line phone or mobile phone.
In small towns and villages, usually there are no automatic telephone exchanges. They have to rely on old and outdated manual telephone exchanges where the caller has to ask the operator to connect his or her call. To call other towns, that is, to make trunk calls, you have to book the call with the operator, or come to one of a few PCOs in the town. This is how I my family while I am in Chin State.

Start of Rainy Season in Chin Hills

In Myanmar, rainy season usually starts in June. In Chin Hills, it usually starts near the end of May. However, this year the rain starts even before May. It started raining at the end of April, one whole month ahead of usual time. It rained quite heavily during the whole month of May. It was still raining the whole month of June.
Rainy season in Chin Hills is quite different from other places in Myanmar. During the rainy season, you rarely see the sun. Not because it is always raining. Although it rains almost everyday, the rain is not continuous. However, whether it rains or not, the sky is usually covered with could. Sunny days in Chin state, during the rainy season are quite a rarity.
When it starts raining, the sky suddenly gets dark, the wind suddenly gets stronger, and cloud suddenly covers everything. In Chin Hills, the cloud not only hangs above the sky. It is everywhere. It is above, around you and below. Because the mountains are so high, some of the cloud hangs lower than the mountains. And when cloud blows towards you, you suddenly disappeared in it.
Because it sometimes rains heavily, landslides are quite frequent. Sometimes because of heavy landslides, roads become inaccessible for days, or sometimes even weeks. In that case, travelers have to walk across the landslide to get to the other side of the mountain. There are occasional road accidents in Chin Hills during the rainy season with some casualties too. Well, life here in Chin Hills is quite tough.

Chin National Day

Chin National Day 2007 was held at U Wumthu Maung Stadium in Hakha, Chin State, on 20th of February, 2007. The origin of Chin National Day or Chin State Day dated back to 1948. On 20 February 1948, a people's assembly was held in Falam, and decided unanimously to reject feudalism and in support of the Union. Since then, February 20 was marked as Chin Day, and ceremonies were held every year. This year's ceremony was 59th.

Starting from 19 February, show rooms and shops were open in U Wumthu Maung Stadium. Chin traditional wrestling competition was also held. At night, Chin fashion show and Chin traditional dances were held in the stadium.
On 20 February, winners were given awards, and groups from Hakha and Falam performed traditional dances. After that, "Khaung Kauk Pwe" was held. In ancient time, the saw bwa or local lord chose a girl as her minor wife. The wife to be was accompanied to the saw bwa with a ceremonary. That ceremony was named "Khaung Kauk Pwe". Nowadays, the descendents of former saw bwas do the ceremonary just as an honour, to show their former glory.

First, the honored maiden was carried on a seat to the ceremony. The lady was allowed to get off near by, a carpet was laid (the lady was not allowed to touch the ground) and the lady stand on the carpet. At the chosen time, guns were fired to mark the start of the ceremony, and the lady was walked to the seat in a grand ceremony. Once seated, the seat was carried by the people who danced with the music. People formed a circle around the lady and danced with the music too. After a while, the ceremony was complete.

Almost all the town, both old and young, came to the National Day ceremony. They wear colorful dresses made by beautiful Chin fabrics. Chin National flags were also proudly flied at every house.

At night, a pop band from Kalay performed at the stadium.

Technorati Tag : Chin Hills, Chin State, Myanmar, Burma, Hakha, Chin National Day

Chin National Day (2)

ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ (၂) - ေခါင္ေကာက္ပြဲ

ဦးစြာ ပထမ အေကာက္ခံ အမ်ိဳးသမီးပ်ိဳကို ေဝါနဲ႔ထမ္းၿပီး အခမ္းအနားနဲ႔ ကြင္းဆီ သယ္ေဆာင္လာ ၾကပါတယ္။ ေသနတ္မ်ားလဲ ပစ္ေဖါက္ ၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီ့ေနာက္ မိန္းမပ်ိဳကို ေဝါနဲ႔ မလွမ္းမကမ္းမွာ ေနရာခ်ေပး ပါတယ္။ မိန္းမပ်ိဳဟာ အခမ္းအနား အတြင္း ေျမမထိ ရပါဘူး။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ မိန္းမပ်ိဳ ေလွ်ာက္မယ့္ လမ္းတစ္ေလွ်ာက္
ေကာ္ေဇာခင္း ထားပါတယ္။ မဂၤလာ အခ်ိန္ က်ေရာက္တဲ့ အခါ ေသနတ္မ်ား ပစ္ေဖါက္ၿပီး ေဝါဆီကို အခမ္းအနားနဲ႔ ေခၚေဆာင္ လာၾကပါတယ္။ ဒီ့ေနာက္ ေဝါကို ထမ္းၿပီး ဝိုင္ပတ္ ကခုန္ၾကပါတယ္။ မိန္းမပ်ိဳ ကလဲ တီးလံုး စည္းခ်က္ နဲ႔အညီ ကရပါတယ္။ ပိုက္ဆံမ်ားလဲ ႀကဲခ်ပါတယ္။ အခ်ိန္ အေတာ္ၾကာ ကခုန္ၿပီး အခမ္းအနား ၿပီးဆံုးပါတယ္။

ဒီခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ အခမ္းအနားကို လာၾကတဲ့ လူႀကီး လူငယ္ အားလံုးလိုလို ခ်င္းရိုးရာ အဆင္နဲ႔ ယက္လုပ္ထားတဲ့ ဝတ္စံုမ်ားကို ဝတ္ဆင္ လာၾကပါတယ္။ ခ်င္းရိုးရာ ဝတ္စံုေတြက အေရာင္ အေသြး စံုလင္ၿပီး အလြန္ လွပပါတယ္။ လွပတဲ့ ခ်င္းလွပ်ိဳျဖဴ ေတြနဲ႔ ခ်င္းဝတ္စံု ေတြက အလြန္ပဲ လိုက္ဖက္ လွပါတယ္။

ညဖက္မွာေတာ့ ကေလးက တီးဝိုင္းနဲ႔ ေဖ်ာ္ေျဖပါတယ္။ ဒီခ်င္း အမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ ပြဲကို ဟားခါး တစ္ၿမိဳ႕လံုး လူႀကီးလူငယ္မက်န္ ပါဝင္ဆင္ႏြဲ ၾကပါတယ္။ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသား အလံေတြကိုလဲ ဂုဏ္ယူ ဝင့္ၾကြားစြာ လႊင့္ထူ ထားၾကပါတယ္။ အခြင့္ ႀကံဳမယ္ ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ဟားခါး ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ ပြဲဟာ သြားေရာက္ ေလ့လာ သင့္တဲ့ ပြဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Technorati Tag : Chin Hills, Chin State, Myanmar, Burma, Hakha, Chin National Day

Chin National Day (1)

ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ (၁)

၂၀၀၇ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားေန႔ အခမ္း အနားကို ဟားခါးၿမိဳ႕ ဦးဝမၼသူးေမာင္း အားကစားကြင္းမွာ စည္ကား သိုက္ၿမိဳက္စြာ က်င္းပ ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

၁၉၄၈ ေဖေဖၚဝါရီ ၂၀ ရက္ေန႔ ဖလမ္းၿမိဳ႕ ခ်င္းလူထု အစည္း အေဝးက ပေဒသရာဇ္ စနစ္ကို ဆန္႔က်င္ေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ျပည္ေထာင္စုကို ေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ရာက အစျပဳၿပီး ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသား ေန႔ကို နွစ္စဥ္ က်င္းပလာ ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အခု ၂၀၀၇ မွာ (၅၉) နွစ္ ျပည့္ပါၿပီ။

ေဖေဖၚဝါရီ (၁၉) က စၿပီး ဦးဝမၼသူးေမာင္း အားကစား ကြင္းအတြင္း ဌာနဆိုင္ရာ ျပခန္းေတြ၊ ေစ်းဆိုင္ေတြ ဖြင့္လွစ္ ေရာင္းခ် ပါတယ္။ ခ်င္းရိုးရာ နပမ္းပြဲလဲ က်င္းပပါတယ္။ ညဖက္မွာ ရိုးရာ အကနဲ႔ ခ်င္းရိုးရာ ဝတ္စား
ဆင္ယင္မႈ ျပပြဲလဲ ျပဳလုပ္ပါတယ္။

၂၀ ရက္ေန႔ မနက္မွာေတာ့ရိုးရာ အကေတြနဲ႔ ေဖ်ာ္ေျဖၿပီး ဆုရရွိ သူမ်ားကို ဆုခ်ီးျမင့္ပါတယ္။ ဒီ့ေနာက္ ေခါင္ေကာက္ပြဲကို ဆက္လက္ ျပဳလုပ္ပါတယ္။ ေရွးေခတ္ကေတာ့ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္သူ ေစာ္ဘြားက ေတာ္ေကာက္တဲ့ အမ်ိဳး သမီးပ်ိဳကို အခမ္း အနားနဲ႔ သိမ္းပိုက္တဲ့ ပြဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အခုေတာ့ ယခင္ ေစာ္ဘြား အႏြယ္ဝင္ တစ္ဦးက အခမ္းအနား သေဘာ က်င္းပတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္

Technorati Tag : Chin Hills, Chin State, Myanmar, Burma, Hakha, Chin National Day

Falam

Falam is the capital of Falam District, Northern Chin State. There are two districts in Chin State, Falam in the north and Mindat in the south. Falam, Tiddim, Tunzan and Htantalan constitute Falam District.
Before 1965, Falam was the capital of Chin State. However, in 1965 the then Chin State Administration (Chin Uzi) decided to move the capital from Falam to Hakha which is in the center of the state and has potential to expand. Ironically in fact, the Chin State Administration was not moved from Falam, but from Kalay which was in Sagaing State, to Hakha. Although Falam was no longer the capital, it nevertheless retains part of its former glory. There are some two and three storied brick buildings in Falam, and a large and grand Baptist church in the center of the town.
Falam was built on the slope of a mountain range, in multiple steps. The town is quite clean and tidy. Girls from Falam are famous to be the most beautiful in the whole Chin State.
Almost all the people from Falam are Christians, with majority being Baptists. The living standard is quite high too.
Near Falam, you can visit and pay homage to the monastery where famous Buddhist Monk U Ottamathara once lived.

Technorati Tag : Chin Hills, Chin State, Myanmar, Burma, Falam,

Falam

ဖလမ္းၿမိဳ႕

ဖလမ္းဟာ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ဖလမ္းခရိုင္ရဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္မွာ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ဖလမ္းခရိုင္နဲ႔ ေတာင္ပိုင္း မင္းတပ္ခရိုင္ ဆိုၿပီး ခရိုင္နွစ္ခု ရွိပါတယ္။ ဖလမ္း ခရိုင္မွာ ဖလမ္း၊ တီးတိန္၊
တြန္းဇံ နဲ႔ ထန္တလန္ ၿမိဳ႕မ်ား ပါဝင္ပါတယ္။

၁၉၆၅ မတိုင္မီ အထိ ဖလမ္းဟာ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ရဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၁၉၆၅ မွာေတာ့ ဟားခါးကို ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ေျပာင္းေရႊ႕ခဲ့ ၾကပါတယ္။ အရင္ကေတာ့ ဖလမ္္းဟာ အလြန္ စည္ကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အခုေတာ့ ဟားခါးက ပိုၿပီး စည္ကား သြားပါၿပီ။

ဖလမ္းမွာ ၂ ထပ္၊ ၃ ထပ္ တိုက္ေတြ အေတာ္မ်ားမ်ား ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ ထုထည္ ႀကီးႀကီးနဲ႔ အခိုင္အခန္႔ ေဆာက္လုပ္ ထားတာပါ။ အရင္ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့စဥ္က ေဆာက္လုပ္ ခဲ့တာပါ။ အခုေတာ့ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလး ေဟာင္းႏြမ္း ေနပါၿပီ။ ခန္႔ညားမႈ ကေတာ့ က်န္ပါေသးတယ္။

ဖလမ္းၿမိဳ႕ဟာ ေတာင္ေဆာင္းမွာ အထပ္ထပ္၊ အဆင့္ဆင့္ တည္ေဆာက္ ထားတာပါ။ အေတာ္ေလး လွပါတယ္။ ဖလမ္း သူေတြဟာ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္ တစ္ခုလံုးမွာ အလွဆံုးလို႔ ေက်ာ္ၾကားပါတယ္။ သက္မြန္ျမင့္ဟာ ဖလမ္းသူပါ။

ၿမိဳ႕လယ္မွာ ႀကီးမား ခန္႔ျငားတဲ့ ခရစ္ယာန္ ဘုရားရွိခိုး ေက်ာင္းႀကီး ရွိပါတယ္။ ဖလမ္းက အထြက္မွာေတာ့ ေတာင္တန္း သာသနာျပဳ ဆရာေတာ္ ဦးဥတၱမသာရ သီတင္းသံုး ခဲ့ရာ ေက်ာင္းသကၤန္းကို သြားေရာက္ ဖူးေျမာ္ နုိင္ပါတယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕လူဦးေရ အမ်ားစု ကေတာ့ ခရစ္ယာန္ေတြ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

Technorati Tag : Chin Hills, Chin State, Myanmar, Burma, Falam,