The Journey

We got an email from David’s Burmese business partners in late May 2012 to come to Myanmar “with all possible speed.” The Monsoon season was about to begin. We had perhaps three more weeks of sunny weather before the rains would soak the ground, making it impossible to dig until November. More alarming, we learned that two rival British groups had put in applications for digging permits since the appearance of the April 15^th newspaper article, including Mr. Steven Boultbee Brooks, a millionaire Spitfire enthusiast whom David had approached about funding the project in early April. Wargaming was in danger of losing the project before we even began. We decided to go to Myanmar.

I got my Visa on May 29^th and set off on May 30^th, bound for Amsterdam, where I would meet up with David, who was arriving from the UK. There we would board a mid-day KLM flight to Kuala Lumpur, and from there a Malaysian Airlines flight into Yangon, arriving on June 1. After the usual indignities of TSA (US airport security) screening, I boarded one of Delta’s aging 767’s, shoe-horned my 5’9” (175 cm) frame into a centre seat, and hunkered down for a cramped nine hour flight to Amsterdam. Shortly after take-off the baby across the aisle began wailing like a banshee. I had 30 hours of flights and lay-overs to go.

Modern air travel bears little resemblance to the glamour and luxury depicted in the 2011 Pan Am television series (a US period drama show set in the 1960s). No smiling super model stewardess, no five course dinner served on bone china, and no jet-setting celebrities to while away the miles. But whatever the discomforts of modern air travel, they pale in comparison to what travellers endured in centuries past. In the 13^th century, Marco Polo’s 5,600 mile journey through the deserts and steppes of central Asia took more than three years. In the 16^thcentury, Magellan’s scurvy-ridden crew took eight months to reach the islands of SE Asia – where Magellan was promptly killed by the natives. Only one ship out of five, and eighteen of the original 270 crew made it back to Spain three years later. The rest died of starvation, tropical diseases, or bamboo spears.  By the 18^th century, British man o’ wars and Dutch East India vessels could reach Asia in three months. Such vessels were an improvement over the caravels of earlier centuries, but life aboard ship was still punishing. As Dr. Johnson quipped, “a ship is like a jail, but with the chance of drowning.”

By the nineteenth century, Asia was much closer, thanks to the invention of steamships and the telegraph. Had I undertaken the journey then, I would have likely booked passage on a steamship from New York to London, and from London on to India, very possibly on the British India Steam Navigation Company, which also served Rangoon by way of Calcutta. It would have taken about two months to sail there by way of the Cape of Good Hope – but considerably less after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Aside from rough seas at the cape and monsoons in the Indian Ocean, the passage to India and beyond would have been tolerable, if tedious. The petty annoyances and discomforts of modern air travel are at least short-lived. I might be sore, but I wouldn’t starve or drown.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur, stiff and tired, on the morning of June 1^st. In our haste to pack and make travel arrangements, we realized that neither of us had brought gifts to present to the Myanmar Ministers! Gift-giving is a delicate matter in Asia. The gift has to be appropriate, thoughtful, and not so expensive that it might be construed as a bribe. Ideally, it should be something from one’s home country. Fortunately, the gift shop carried bottles of 40-year old Scottish Royal Salute whiskey – just the thing! We bought one and boarded the flight to Yangon. Our adventure was about to begin.