Burma: 1986: A Party on the Irrawaddy (As Seen Through More Sober Eyes)

My best friend Richard Sterling wrote a story about our whirlwind trip to Burma in 1986 it’s in several of his books and called A Party on the Irrawaddy.

This is my version.

Note: for my story to make sense read Richard’s version first!

Once upon a time……Oops no this is a true story

Richard and were heading down a dark trail towards the riverboat. He had made some lame reason about me seeing better at night so I should go first but I knew what he was thinking. Could be trouble, well that’s fine with me, if the shit hit the fan Richard id be there to back me up. We had been in Burma for three days now which only left us four. Thanks to the xenophobic Ne Win, Burma’s general elect (I think he’s the only one that voted for him but his was the only vote that counted) you could only get a visa for 7 days and you couldn’t get an extension. If you wanted to stay longer you had to fly out of the country get another visa and fly back in. This also could be attributed that only 2 airlines flew in to the country and the cheapest flight was on Burmese one.

Richard was the reason we were here. While we sucking up some cold ones in a bar in Bangkok, he’d heard Burma was finally open for independent travel.  He said we had to go, something about stories he’d read when he was a kid by some Roger Kipling or something like that. Hell, I didn’t care about some dead poet I was in it for the adventure and so far, we had had plenty of that. First off, we had arrived late at night and were given an Official Money Form. Yep, you had to get a stamp on the Form any time you changed money and then stamp any time you made a major purchase such as hotels, train or boat tickets. In the end the money you changed should be close to the money you spent. Yes, you’re wondering about the reason for this, well the official exchange rate is 6 Kyat to 1 dollar but the black-market rate was 28 kyat per dollar. Ne Win wants US dollars. But the locals figured everything on the black- market rate so we figured a way around it. We would go up to the owner of a prospective hotel and say “we would like a room no stamp” some wouldn’t do it so we would just keep looking until we found one. When we went to leave our form wouldn’t look right but…… I had a “Special Plan” for my form and wasn’t going to pay!