Bilu Kyun - Ogre Island

Across the Thanlwin river from Mawlamyine lies Bilu Kyun, a rather large island with about 200,000 residents spread across many small villages. There are no bridges to the island and few cars. We rented bikes one day in mawlamyine and  took them on the ferry ride across the river. This is a very typical scene on the island, long, straight, flat roads with yellow fields on either side.

The ferry ride to the island cost 2 dollars and was very crowded. We thought we were just going to cross the river to the nearest point on the island, a journey of probably 15 minutes. Instead, the ferry took us to the southern end of the island, over an hour away.

The ferry was full of goods being brought to the island. Lots of people were selling fruit and snacks onboard as well.  Everyone has tiny mini stools to sit on too.

When we arrived at the island the scene was crazy as everyone rushed to offload their goods to their friends on the island. None of these people were there for tourist business, but rather just as workers transporting the goods from the mainland.

We met a couple of friendly couples, one from Boulder, CO, and another from Amsterdam. They had a whole itinerary planned for their day(as opposed to our plan of just biking around and seeing what happened) so we decided to follow them around. They were serious go getters so we had to work hard to keep up with them on our very rickety old bikes.

This is rubber. All around the island there are rubber trees and occasionally one finds this scene of the flattened rubber sheets hanging to dry.

According to the lonely planet, each village has its own specialty product that they make. Most tourists going to the island take a tourist trip on a truck that takes you to seven different villages, each one producing different things. One village makes hats, one makes floor mats of coconut husk, and there is even a town that makes rubber bands. The only village we could identify as producing anything specific was these two ladies sitting on their porch making these hats. They were pretty excited when our new friends bought one for a dollar.

The well next to their house. You can see the notches on the board where they stand and pull up the buckets of water.

This is a pretty typical house for the island. The protruding window on the left(I've been living in China too long and I forget what they're called) are the local sign that you have a nice house as every one of the better houses has at least one of these.




I really liked this bridge and tree.

There are lots of carts like this in use all over Burma. Even today, in Hsipaw, I saw a shop selling a spare wagon wheel outside. The people in these places are poor in terms of money, but I don't think their lives are too terrible. They live in beautiful places, have lots of family and friends, and have fairly simple, safe lives. The only people who seem to be really living in poverty are those who move to the cities from the country and live on the streets in makeshift houses. People in the country seem to have pretty nice lives, although they definitely work hard and don't get a lot of education.

Aboard the boat back to Mawlamyine.

Ahh, Sunoco.

random epic travel picture.

A riverside scene on the way back to Mawlamyine.

Some military boats at the Naval Yard.

Sunset on the way back to Mawlamyine. Right about this time, the boat pulled over, after the military boats, and we thought we were just dropping off some locals. However our boat back home, the last boat from the island, actually went to the far south side of Mawlamyine, and we had to ride backs about 4km back all the way through town at dark. This was quite painful since we had just biked through the sun all day on our very rickety old rental bikes. No foreigners are allowed to stay on the island, there are no hotels, so they are very careful to make sure that you get on the final boat of the day!

another view of the well....

sweet bike, bro!

On the boat home with our our new buddy, Jeff from Colorado. They(him and his wife) are traveling from Asia, to New Zealand, and then Patagonia and South America!