Travelling in... Myanmar: Chin State

Getting in to Chin State (officially the poorest part of Myanmar) is notoriously difficult: the relevant permission for a three-day visit can take up to a month process. When you look on the country map, there are no main roads heading there. The other option is to just make a day trip from Mwrauk Ou in Rakhaine up the Lemro river the principal reason being to see the village women with tattooed faces.

Let's not avoid the issue with this: it is a human zoo where the exhibits run part of the show. A lot of people are fascinated by the opportunity to see these women who are the last of their kind, whereas others are indignant at the idea. But amusingly that fact does not prevent a single tourist who acknowledges this out loud from going and taking photos of the women, leaving a cash or medicinal donation, and continuing up the river to lunch. I thought it was a zoo too, but my own tactic was to keep quiet, take some photos, and then borrow the megaphone from the travelling troupe of blind people in the village and sing Andy William’s “I love you Baby” as a means of assimilating through becoming another exhibit.

Technically they could just be coconut vendors

Our guide was the owner of a hotel back in Mwrauk Ou, who gave us a varying number of historical explanations around the tattooing of the ladies. Apparently it was a way for them to escape caste when the Brahmins from the north of Hindustan came to request tax payments. Establishing this exemption included a beautiful girl with a ruby earing that was found in a river whose story I wasn’t able to follow, but in the end they all tattooed their faces so that no one wanted to marry them outside the village and everyone was happy. Then in 1963 the Communists hid in the jungles of Chin State, and they were highly culturally insensitive to the tattooing and put the shamans who did it out of business. Come 2012 the remaining tattooed women congregate in the same place every day to serve hypocritically outraged tourists coconuts and have their photos taken. So everyone is still happy.

Exhibit #3?

Actually, for me the best part of the trip was the journey on the river itself: sufficiently long enough so that you can see how people live along the banks, but not so long as to get boring. The boats are also so narrow that you are required to sit in a single file with a noisy engine behind making a proper conversation impossible (so I got to finish the last 150 pages of my book).

The simple life