The kids were young. They appeared to be managed by another young man on shore. I don’t remember exactly how much they asked for the half-hour ride there and back, it was something like one dollar, but we decided to pay five. We immediately regretted it. On the one hand, spreading the wealth is good, but on the other we were encouraging them to be reliant on (and to rip off) tourists, which can ruin a culture in the long run.

When we handed the kids the money they didn’t really give a look of “Thanks!,” rather they seemed to look at the money and say, “How do we hide this from our manager so he doesn’t take a cut?”

You might remember that kids from Bagan were the ones who served us at a tea shop in Yangon when we were contemplating child labor. So I guess, when I put the two situations in perspective, I’d rather give money to the boat kids who can remain home (even if working with tourists) than to tea shops who have taken kids from their families to live and work in the big city because they have no apparent prospects.

Obviously the better solution would be that the government provide adequate education, but that’s not the case right now.

(Then again, if I wasn’t so obsessed with money then maybe it wouldn’t be a central part of this story. That, itself, is counter-productive, I think.)

People fished. Another boat appeared to be dredging the river, its pump making a tremendous noise that didn’t travel too far in the humid air, but was plenty loud close up.

Throughout the trip I worried about my ankles being exposed to mosquitoes in the bottom of the boat, so we lathered up in bug repellent. Myanmar hasn’t rid itself of malaria and dengue fever, so we were constantly conscious of risky situations. Though it’s easy to look back at the pictures and romanticize the trip, a lot of energy in third-world travel is spent on minimizing risk and paying attention to your body. Am I just a little dehydrated, or is this the start of an illness? Though I’m hungry, is this food safe? Can you catch anything from drinking river water? And so on…

This, to me, is what Yangon felt like – wide and quiet streets, air illuminated by the warm sun while people take their time at curbside teashops.

It was illegal to take pictures of government buildings. Sometimes they were marked, but sometimes they weren’t, so Azure slyly took pictures of these behemoths, most likely forbiddenly.

Typical scene on the backstreets.

We were surprised that the TV in our rooms showed international news (BBC) including stories on how the Myanmar government was illegally detaining Nobel Prize winner and opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi. I wonder how many people inside Myanmar understand English well enough to grasp the newscast.

Downtown mosque.

Hindu shrine with serious guard.

The side of a Hindu temple.

A very recognizable tea shop.

Many restaurants and food stalls cooked at outdoor kitchens like this one. I’m glad we got a shot of this because sometimes, when traveling, something novel might be so ubiquitous that you never take the time to get a shot of it.

I’ve gotten a great sleep every night.

We fall asleep gently and wake slowly as the sun rises. We keep our blinds open so we get as much early light as possible. Early morning is rad, I’d always wanted to be in the habit of waking earlier, but fuck alarm clocks. Now we wake up around 6 or 6:30, without an alarm, totally refreshed. The morning is no longer pinched between sleep and work, it’s now a lazy couple hours that I can read or meditate or talk with Azure or satisfy my internet addiction, ordering too many books on Amazon before I’ve even earned the money to pay for them.

My internet addiction frustrates me, and this is a good way to hobble it. TV, the internet and phones (especially as they’re used now) separate people from presence, almost always unnecessarily, so I’m glad to be rid of them for the night. In fact, I’d dramatically smash my phone with a wine bottle, shirtless in the rain, at night, by candlelight, with long hair, if my clients didn’t need it (the phone) to contact me, but that’s another story.

Do we cheat? Occasionally, but don’t worry, we feel really guilty about it.
What does this have to do with travel? Deprogramming.

What we get from the new rhythm:
- Blog content.
- Better sleep.
- More quiet, focused time.
- Early mornings.
- A sense of superiority.
- A predictable nightly rhythm.

The negatives of not using electricity at night:
- We miss out on media-based cultural narratives (news, Lost, internet memes, the Mariners)… which isn’t itself so much a loss as the fact that these narratives connect people.
- Internet withdrawl.
- We aren’t physically able to stay up late with friends, though they seem to be falling asleep earlier too, because they’re old now.
- Sometimes it’s hard to cook by candlelight.

There were a few kids splashing around just out of frame. This kid just made it into the picture, warped by the corner of the lens. I think, in the larger picture, you can see he’s checking out the lady on the rock, and she’s looking back.

Isn’t it beautiful how kids can turn anything into a toy? This little girl was playing with the bucket. I love how you can see her trail through the water.

There was a community that lived on the other side of the river and they took boats to get home. I WISH we had visited, but we didn’t. It appears that this guy is heading back home. There was a group of kids who ran a little ferry across the river (one of these same small canoes). Az and I paid them to take us up to the pagoda and back.

A lady washing in the river.

This girl is about to step into the river to bathe. I don’t know which they do first – bathe or launder their clothes. On the left you can see the clothes with a bucket and bar soap. I love that the pattern on her longhi (the sarong around her waist) matches the reflection in the water.

You would think this was a spectacular site right? Well, it is, but this is just one of 4,000 pagodas in this small area, and you kinda get used to it.

A little structure on the other side of the river, probably for waiting for the ferry or fishing or something. There are also two people on the shore to the left.

Azure dancing in a field of shit.

Luckily, Azure and I were there to help shovel the chicken shit that fertilized the potato bed. We probably helped them catch up by a full day or two (it was a lot of shit – six inches deep over about 1000 square feet), and once the manure was on the ground they were ready to plant.

Azure also followed up to help cover the accidentally exposed potatoes.

Didier drove the tractor while the three oldest kids planted. The thing they were sitting on would split the row, the kids would drop the potato into a little shaft (all at the same time, so the rows would be neat), then another piece of the equipment would cover the row back up.

Leon covering the potatoes.

Because the manure was mixed with hay, sometimes the machine wasn’t able to push the soil back over the potatoes completely. Leon, one of the twins, followed behind and did quality control by hand.

They were pretty focused on this task. It’s important to do it right – Gabriel said they get 1.5 TONS of potatoes every year.

Riding.

Didier wants to get horses or oxen or something to pull the equipment so they don’t have to rely on oil to farm. The only opposition I have to large families is that there’s already too many people on this planet and our modern lives are already seriously straining the natural systems. But this family of ELEVEN – combined – puts a much smaller strain on the environment than even one person living in the modern fashion.

Alice always managed to find the sunlight.

When all was said & done, it didn’t take them long at all to do the actual planting – well under half a day. It was the manure that took the longest. Suzanne said that if it bothers you to work with manure then you can’t be a successful farmer – it’s the most important link in the cycle.