Myat Thura

Photo: BooBooToo2 If you ever traveled to Yangon for the first time, you will be amazed by the public buses running the streets of Rangoon. Not only are they old and worn out, they are also overcrowded. And some of them date back to the pre-world world 2 era. Many wooden buses from the colonial period still run the streets of Rangoon. They are old, dirty, crowded and break down easily and frequently. The roof is also quite low so tall passengers have to bend their neck and back when standing. However, those are not the only buses that run the streets of Rangoon. The government has imported larger, newer (comparatively)second hand buses from Japan and Korea in recent years. They are far more larger than the older buses and more comfortable, but most of them are already quite worn out and break down as often. Photo: Alain Badoual One thing you might notice in Yangon public buses is that they are overcrowded most of the time. Passengers were packed into buses like herds of animals. But pe...

ကေလး - တမူး ကားလမ္း ကေလး - တမူး ကားေတြ ကေလး ၿမိဳ႕တြင္း ကားေလးဝင္း ကေန ေန႔စဥ္ ထြက္ပါတယ္။ Van (Town Ace) နဲ႔ မွန္လံု ကားေတြ ေျပးဆြဲပါတယ္။ ကားႀကီးေတြလဲ ေျပးဆြဲေပမယ့္ ကုန္အဓိက တင္တဲ့ အတြက္ လူစီးလို႔ အဆင္ မေျပပါဘူး။ Van ကား ၂၅၀၀ က်ပ္၊ မွန္လံု ၂၀၀၀ က်ပ္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကေလးက ေန႔စဥ္ နံနက္ ၇ နာရီ နဲ႔ ေန႔လယ္ ၂ နာရီ ထြက္ၿပီး၊ တမူးကေန နံနက္ ၉ နာရီနဲ႔ ေန႔လယ္ ၂ နာရီ ထြက္ပါတယ္။ ကေလးက ကားမထြက္မီ မွတ္ပံုတင္ ေတြကို ကားေမာင္းသူထံ အပ္နွံ ရပါတယ္။ ကေလး အထြက္ စစ္ေဆးျခင္း မရွိပါ။ ကားလမ္းမွာ အထူးပင္ ေကာင္းမြန္ပါတယ္။ အိႏၵိယ အကူအညီနဲ႔ ေဖါက္လုပ္ ထားတာလို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ အခ်ိဳ႕ ေနရာေတြမွာ က်င္း၊ ခ်ိဳင္႔ အနည္းငယ္ ရွိသည္မွ အပ ေတာ္ေတာ္ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။ နွစ္လမ္းေမာင္း ျဖစ္ၿပီး လမ္းညႊန္ ဆိုင္ဘုတ္မ်ား ျပည့္စံုစြာ ရွိပါတယ္။ ကေလးက မိုင္ (၆၀) ခန္႔မွာ ခန္းပတ္ ၿမီဳ႕နယ္ခြဲကို ေရာက္ရွိပါတယ္။ ခန္းပတ္မွာ ကားေတြ ခဏ ရပ္နားၿပီး convoy ဖြဲ႕၍ ရဲ၊ တပ္ အေစာင့္ အေရွာက္နဲ႔ သြားရပါတယ္။ ခန္ပတ္မွ တမူး အထိ မိုင္ (၃၀) ခန္႔မွာ အိႏၵိယ နယ္စပ္မ်ဥ္း တေလွ်ာက္ ေဖာက္လုပ္ ထားတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တဖက္နိုင္ငံမွာ မဏိပူရ ခြဲထြက္ေရး သူပုန္ေတြ လႈပ္ရွား ေနတဲ့ အတြက္ အေစာင့္ လိုက...

Buses to Tamu leave every day from the bus terminal in Kalay. Buses leave at 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM everyday. The vans (Town Ace) cost 2,500 kyats a person while the minibuses cost 2,000 kyats. There are big buses too but they mainly carry goods and not very convenient for people to travel. Buses from Tamu leave at 9:00 AM and 2:00 PM everyday. Passengers have to hand over their ID cards to the driver before start of the trip. There is no search on leaving Kalay. The road is very nice except for a few bumps and holes. The road is two lanes, complete with traffic signs. Indian government built the road for the Myanmar government. About 60 miles away from Kalay, we reach Khan Pat , a sub township in Tamu District. The cars were stopped, and at 9:00 AM all the cars are allowed to go in convoy with the police and army security. There are insurgents on Indian side, and the road is just a few kilometers away from the body. However, there is nothing to worry on Myanmar side. There is no search i...

About 10 minutes away from Tamu by bus is Morai, a town from India, and Nan Pha Long Market and village, in Myanmar. It cost only 200 kyats per person for a bus ride. There are many Indians from Morai coming to shop at Nan Pha Long Market. Marchandises on sale include those from China, Thailand, as well as foods and produsts from Myanmar. People from Tamu also come and buy Indian products too. There is no fence between Morai and Myanmar side although there is a border check point. People could pass the border freely without restriction, and people from India could visit as far as Tamu. Burmese citizens are not allowed to visit Morai but, because there is no fence, people from Tamu and Nan Pha Long simply go to Morai without any restriction. However, I was advised not to wander around in Morai as there are insurgents in Manipur. Occasional gun fights do happen in Morai. On Myanmar side, there is only peace. Inhabitants of Tamu usually refrain from talking about the Maniput insurgents as...

နန္႔ဖာလံု ေစ်းနွင့္ မိုေရးၿမိဳ႕ တမူးကေန လိုင္းကား (သို႔) ဆိုင္ကယ္ သံုးဘီး စီးသြားရင္ အိႏၵိယ နိုင္ငံ မိုေရးၿမီဳ႕နဲ႔ ကပ္လ်က္က နန္႔ဖာလံု ေစ်းကို ေရာက္ပါတယ္။ တစ္ေယာက္ ၂၀၀ က်ပ္ က်ပါတယ္။ ၁၀ မိနစ္ ေလာက္ပဲ ၾကာပါတယ္။ နန္႔ဖာလံု ရြာမွာ ရွိလို႔ ေခၚတာပါ။ ျမန္မာ နိုင္ငံသား ကသည္း လူမ်ိဳးေတြ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ ရြာႀကီး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ တစ္ဖက္နိုင္ငံ မိုေရးၿမိဳ႕နဲ႔ ကပ္လ်က္ရွိၿပီး မိုေရး ၿမိဳ႕သူ၊ ၿမိဳ႕သားေတြ ေစ်းလာဝယ္ ေနၾကတာ ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ အိႏၵိယ နိုင္ငံသား အမ်ား အျပား ေစ်းလာ ဝယ္ၾကလို႔ အလြန္ပဲ စည္ကားလွ ပါတယ္။ တမူး ၿမိဳ႕သူ၊ ၿမိဳ႕သားေတြလဲ အိႏၵိယ နိုင္ငံထြက္ ကုန္ပစၥည္း ေတြကို လာဝယ္ ၾကပါတယ္။ ကုန္ပစၥည္း ေတြက စံုလွပါတယ္။ အိႏၵိယ၊ ထိုင္း၊ တ႐ုတ္ ကုန္ပစၥည္း ေတြအျပင္ ျမန္မာ နိုင္ငံထြက္ အစားအေသာက္၊ အခ်ဥ္ထုပ္၊ ယိုစံု၊ ဆပ္ျပာနဲ႔ အျခား လူသံုး ကုန္ပစၥည္း ေတြ ေရာင္းခ် ၾကပါတယ္။ မိုေရးကေန ေစ်းထဲကို လြတ္လပ္စြာ ဝင္ထြက္ သြားလာ နိုင္ၾကပါတယ္။ နန္႔ဖာလံု ရြာနဲ႔ တမူးၿမိဳ႕ အထိ လာေရာက္ လည္ပတ္နို္င္ ၾကပါတယ္။ မိုေရးနဲ႔ ျမန္မာျပည္ ၾကားမွာ ၿခံစည္းရိုး မရွိေတာ့ အတား အဆီး မရွိ ဝင္ထြက္ သြားလာ နို္င္ၾကပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ နိုင္ငံသားေတြ မိုေရး ၿမိဳ႕ထဲကို သြားေရာက္ ...

Tamu is a town in Kabaw Valley. It is situated just a few miles away from India border. Although not as large as Kalay, it is still a large town, with many good houses and buildings. There are many two to three storied buildings in Tamu, and many rich people live in Tamu. Roads are also wide and clean and the buildings look modern too. Many of the inhabitants in Tamu are Chin and Burmese with many rich Gurkha, and some Shan and Kachin too. There are about 4 or 5 guest houses in Tamu. All of them are quite clean and tidy, with good access to restaurants. Food is not expensive in Tamu, and there are a lot of good restaurants and tea shops in Tamu. My favourite is the "Chit Tee" Restaurant in downtown Tamu. You can ask any one "Chit Tee" and they will show you the direction. In the morning you can have a very nice Puri and Tosai there. There are many large and grand Christian Churches in Tamu, and some Hindu temples too. There are buses in the town as well as tri cycle...

တမူးၿမိဳ႕ တမူးၿမိဳ႕ဟာ ကေဘာ္ခ်ိဳင့္ဝွမ္းက ၿမိဳ႕တစ္ၿမိဳ႕ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အိႏၵိယ ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္ အနီး တည္ရွိၿပီး နယ္စပ္နဲ႔ မိုင္အနည္းငယ္ပဲ ကြာေဝးပါတယ္။ တမူးၿမိဳ႕ဟာ အေတာ္အတန္ က်ယ္ဝန္းပါတယ္။ ကေလးေလာက္ မႀကီးေပမယ့္ အရြယ္ အလတ္စား ၿမိဳ႕တစ္ၿမိဳ႕ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕တြင္းလမ္းမ်ား က်ယ္ဝန္းၿပီး သန္႔ရွင္းသပ္ရပ္ ပါတယ္။ အိမ္ႀကီး အိမ္ေကာင္းေတြလဲ အလြန္ေပါပါတယ္။ ေခတ္မွီ ၂ ထပ္၊ ၃ ထပ္ တိုက္ေတြ အမ်ား အျပား ရွိပါတယ္။ သူေဌး သူၾကြယ္ အလြန္ေပါတဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕တစ္ၿမိဳ႕ပါ။ ဗမာ၊ ခ်င္းလူမ်ိဳးေတြ အမ်ားစု ေနထိုင္ၾကၿပီး ေဂၚရခါးေတြလဲ အမ်ား အျပား ေနထိုင္ၾကပါတယ္။ ခ်မ္းသာတဲ့ ေဂၚရခါးေတြ အေတာ္မ်ား ပါတယ္။ ရွမ္း၊ တရုတ္နဲ႔ ကခ်င္ လူမ်ိဳးေတြလဲ ေနထိုင္ ၾကပါတယ္။ တမူးမွာ တည္းခိုခန္း ၄၊ ၅ ခု ရွိပါတယ္။ သန္႔ရွင္း သပ္ရပ္ၿပီး ေစ်းလဲ သင္႔ေတာ္ ပါတယ္။ အစား အေသာက္ ေစ်းလဲ သက္သာပါတယ္။ စားေသာက္ဆိုင္၊ လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆိုင္ေတြ ေပါပါတယ္။ ၿမီဳ႕ထဲက ခ်စ္တီး ထမင္းဆိုင္ လက္ရာ အေတာ္ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။ ခ်စ္တီးဆိုင္ ဆိုရင္ လူတိုင္း သိပါတယ္။ မနက္ေစာေစာ ဆုိရင္ အာလူး ပူရီနဲ႔ တိုရွည္ ေကာင္းေကာင္း ရပါတယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕ေပၚမွာ ခရစ္ယာန္ ဘုရားေက်ာင္းေတြ အႏွံ႔ အျပား ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ ဘုရားေက်ာင္းေတြက ခန္႔ညား ...