Live.See.Appreciate : Charmed by Mount Victoria and the Tattoo Spells

Mount Victoria, Chin State, Western Myanmar, 2013

I have a mania for indigenous tribes… Besides wanting to document their primitive ways of life, revolving around the earliest creations of humankind, some of which are disappearing due to the fast-paced globalization process, being in their environments is like a fantasy world come true. The trekking adventures to the villages, their eccentric costumes, and superstitious elements embedded in daily life, are a world away actually existing in reality, and I always travel to the far-flung corners of the world to live it.

A few months ago, I got an e-mail from a photographer friend who sent me a beautiful picture of women with faces tattooed in a spider web pattern, labeled ‘Chin Women, Myanmar.’ Feeling an adrenaline rush through my body, I punched ‘chin women tattoo Myanmar’ onto Google and browsed through the results. The Chin tribe is native to the mountainous region of Chin Hills-Arakan Yoma in western Myanmar, some of whose villages surround one of the country’s most beautiful trekking destinations, Mount Victoria. Never had to think twice, I called my trekking buddies up, and had the return tickets ready to leave Bangkok in less than 3 weeks. And what was even cooler was, we would be there during New Year.

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Landing in Mandalay, we took a night train to Bagan where we arranged a Pajero taxi to drive us to Mindat for 100 USD (one way). We actually preferred taking buses to get to Mindat as what cheap travelers usually do. But anyone who could speak English we asked in Bagan said either there was no public transportation to Mindat or buses weren’t regular and we would have to make more than 3 transits. To avoid all the hassles and save time, a taxi was our best choice.

On the next day, our taxi driver collected us from our guesthouse in Bagan at 6am sharp. As the early morning’s cold wind rushed through the windowless Parejo, cutting into our flesh, the driver told us the ride to Mindat, where we would start trekking, was going to take 9 hours despite the town being less than 100 kilometers away. Once the sun rose and we delighted on its warm glow, farms and rice fields bathed in gold dotted with the silhouettes of tall toddy palms started to appear along the road.

Tanaka, the secret of Burmese's beautiful skin, a market in a village somewhere on the way from Bagan to Mindat

A few hours after of dozing and some serious napping, we woke up to the abrupt change of landscape, a desert with sand hills and cacti and savage spiky plants. We crossed dried out rivers several times, passed farmers ploughing with ox carts, small villages, and yellow mustard fields. We climbed mountains which was now thick with pine trees, and were dropped off at Mopi I Guesthouse in Mindat around 3pm (35,000 Kyat per night for 3 persons after a lot of negotiation). The driver left and said our Chin guide would meet us the next day first thing in the morning.

Crossing a dried out river

A yellow mustard field

A lunch stop. Street-side eateries always serve a set menu of refillable dishes for 2,000 Kyat per person (foreign visitor's price)

Burmese Salad

On the way to Mindat

Rice fields during a harvest, near Mindat

In the misty air of 15 degree Celsius, we paced around to keep warm and waited to meet our guide. Nai Kie Chang, shorten as Kie, our guide turned up and we settled to the deal of 4 days trekking on pedestrian trails to Mount Victoria, ending at Kanpetlet town on the other side of the mountain. His fee was 35,000 Kyat per day and we hired 2 motorbikes for 40,000 Kyat to carry our bags and food supplies. The motorbikes would be driven by Kie’s friends on motor roads and would meet us at the villages we stay overnight. Kie's friends turned out to be a 14 and a 17 year old boys. And they preferred taking a few days off for a fun road trip to going to school.

About 11am, we headed south of Mindat and Kie led us off the motor trail at the town’s end into the trail that winded through thick green mountains dotted with villagers’ roofs; some were bright orange or red, while others were thatched. White flower shrubs grew wildly alternating with overhead-tall grass.

A slope with a landslide

We arrived at Lao Pe village, our tonight stay around 2.30pm. The small village had houses all built with thatched roofs, teak structure, and plaited leave walls. Some had animal skulls hanging all over the walls.

Kie explained the ox and bull skulls were from sacrifices in ceremonies and to please spirits to turn bad into good fortunes. He also pointed to the poles used to hang the sacrificed animal’s bodies or heads. Whereas the skulls of deer, wild boars, flying lemurs were the pride of the hunters. I spotted strings of broken egg shells hanged from roofs and he said they were remains of the fortune telling. He asked if we wanted to meet the village’s shaman, and we couldn’t wait to do so.

Eggs used to fortune telling

Animal's sacrificing poles

We followed Kie into one of the village’s bigger huts. Kie introduced us to the probably 70 years old shaman and his wife working in the kitchen. The shaman, noting we wanted him to read our fortunes, prepared his kit. While he said the prayers, his wife stuck bird’s feather into his beanie, signifying we were entering a sacred ritual now. He emptied an egg, burned its shell with the tip of a burned stick, drawing a few black dots in line on it. He said my health and life conditions in general would be good. Then, he asked me if I had doubts or particular questions to ask him. And I asked him when I would find my true love. It was a half serious half joking question that sent my friends into a burst of laughing.

The shaman's wife

The shaman, via Kie’s translation, asked if I could get married like...now. When I said I hadn’t found a groom, he said with a laugh he could be one. Kie explained Chin men can keep marrying women if his present wives can’t give him baby boys. But his wife has given him 2 boys already and she, in her 70s, was still beautiful. So, he had been joking. And then came the non-joking part, the shaman said I was doomed for bad luck in love, but if I sacrificed a chicken, I would find my love in the near future, to which, of course I said no. We thanked and bid goodbye to the shaman and headed to the hut we would sleep in.

In the village, my wish of seeing women with tattoo faces had become true. Only elderly women, mostly dressed in the same style: green tunics, colorful bead necklaces, and sarongs, had tattoos on their faces. There are over 40 sub-groups in Chin tribe and their tattoo designs vary. The Munn group’s pattern is a line of small circles along the neck, straight lines making half moon shape for the cheeks while the Dine just put dots all over the faces. Another group living in Arakan state do spider-net patterns. Lao Pe is a village of Munn group. Kie said lots of Dine could be seen in Mindat, and there was even a granny who played flute with her nose, which is a practice usually done to express satisfaction and gratitude when a woman is asked to be married. However, the granny only performed for visitors now.

On the next morning, we left Lao Pe for That Schwe village, which was the closest settlement to Mount Victoria base camp. A few minutes after leaving the village, we passed the village’s cemetery filled with knee-height stone tables. Kie said they were the tombs and buried underneath were jars of the dead’s ashes. Stopping at Aye village for lunch, we then walked a small trail sided by a cliff on the right and steep slope on the left. There were so many clouds floating above the valley we couldn’t see what was below, and it made it look as if we were walking above the cloud.

A group of villagers we met on the way from Lao Pe to That Schwe

A hunter

At That Schwe, there were less than 20 villager’s huts. The cold and dry wind blew vigorously here and the temperature dropped so low as soon as the sun went down. Food was scarce in the village since the villagers weren’t allowed to cut forest and farm due to the fact that the area was protected within Nat Ma Taung National Park. The villagers lived on simple vegetables like beans and potatoes grown in their backyards. We, running out of food, had to buy eggs and a chicken twice as expensive as the prices we paid in Mindat’s market from a villager who happened to live and work in Thailand for 7 years and could speak Thai. After dinner, we crawled into the -15 degree sleeping bags tugged under 3 layers of blankets, shivered for a while until the exhaustion eventually put us to sleep.

That Schwe Village

At 7 the next morning, we packed lunch to eat at Mount Victoria’s summit, and walked the 9 kilometer motor road to the base camp, taking pedestrian trails most of the time to shorten the distance. The low pine forest was thick with the chirping sound of birds to be heard everywhere. Near the base camp, we started to get dark evergreen forest with large oaks and alpine species typical in the Himalaya further north, including the rhododendron trees. We arrived at the base camp at 11 and continued climbing another 3.5 kilometers towards the summit.

We were now exposed to the panoramic landscapes walking on the trail snaking on the mountain ridge rugged with dry yellow meadow dotted with shrubs of wild flowers. The dark green leaves of bushes and tall trees contrasted with the clear azure sky. Rhododendrons were at bloom with red flowers. On the way, we ran into some of Kie’s acquaintances from Mindat who were also making a journey up to the summit. The boys were in their purple traditional Chin gowns. They were singing, talking, and laughing the whole time. Though we could only communicate via Kie’s translation, we found them very pleasant companions.

In less than 2 hours, we arrived at the summit ground. To one side there was a small pagoda and a simple pavilion where trekkers rested and put up their tents. To the other side, stood the real summit which was a bald hill with a flag pole. We headed onto the hill, threw ourselves onto a patch of dry grass, and sucked oxygen into our lungs big time before we unwrapped our lunch. The cold breeze was a little too strong but the sunlight kept us warm. While we were eating, Kie’s acquaintances started dancing their traditional dance which Kie explained it was a defending dance and usually performed only at funerals. But sure, exceptions can be made!

From the summit, it took us only 1 hour to climb down to the base camp where Kie’s boys waited to give us a ride back to That Schwe. We spent another night at the village, feeling a bit more used to the cold now. On the next morning, Kie borrowed another motorbike from a villager and the 6 of us drove on a dirt then paved road all the way to Kanpetlet town. On the back of Kie’s motorbike moving fast on the road winding down the mountain, I enjoyed the cool breeze rushing across my face, and the view of the road-sided pine forest dotted with luxurious resorts, some looking new and some being constructed.

A colonial period house on the way to Kanpetlet

At about 11am, we arrived in Kanpetlet. Despite being at mid day, the town, took over by the mist, looked gloomy under the cloudy sky. Kie said that was the usual weather for Kanpetlet. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch and as we girls agreed we preferred Mindat to the town, we asked Kie to take us back to Mindat on that same day to spend our New Year’s Eve there.

A Munn tribe lady in Kanpetlet

Kie accommodated our request while announcing his duty as a guide was over and that now he would just treat us like friends. We were happy with that until the boys started drinking beer, chewing on bethel nuts and got pretty drunk we were afraid they wouldn’t be able to drive back to Mindat. However, they got us back to Mindat safe but we, each on the back of the motorbikes, had to tell the boys to slow down every 3 minutes and to focus on the road. Kie’s motorbike broke down close to Mindat and while waiting for the engine to cool down with the hope we could start it again, a house uphill happened to be hosting a funeral and we were cordially invited to join. The small wooden hut was packed with people. To one side of the room, a coffin sat next to the wall. The men were playing traditional music which sounded to us like some loud and un-rhythmatic noises. They took turn getting up and performing the defending dance. Some were quite shy but others were brave, with the help of locally brew alcohol.

Kie, at the funeral

We stayed at the funeral for less than half and hour then headed back to Mopi I Guesthouse on only 2 motorbikes, leaving Kie’s motorbike behind to be picked up on the next morning. On the next day, New Year’s Eve, Kie asked his brother to take us sightseeing Mindat as he and the boys had to go to court for a fighting case they got into with some other teenagers earlier. Kie’s brother took us to a few villages of walkable distance from Mindat and to the granny’s who could play flute with her nose.

A Dine lady with black dots tattooed all over her face

Cherry blossoms, plenty in Mindat and Kanpetlet

A kind lady let us go into her house and take pictures of her craft

Chin's knife bags

After the show, we interviewed the granny about face tattooing, and with the translation, she said she had been told the tattoos were meant to hide Chin women’s beautiful faces and thus not to be taken as wives of a Bagan king some time ago and men of other tribes. She didn’t know if the story of the king of Bagan and men of other tribes wouldn’t marry Chin ladies with tattoos was true but ever since she was a child, all the women in her village had tattoos. She did it because everyone else did it and some people considered facial tattoos more beautiful, especially when paired with traditional costumes, large earrings and necklaces.

The ink was made of smoke of burnt green pine barks mixed with a kind of bean leaves then injected onto the skin using the thorn of canes. The tradition dwindled when the Christian missionaries arrived, and completely banned by the Revolutionary Council from 1962 to 1974. And it never picked up again as Chin women’s faces are covered with thanaka powder now.

After the sightseeing, we got back to our guesthouse and got ready for the night. Kie came to pick us up from the guesthouse and the bar and bon fire hopping lasted until nearly 2 in the morning. When alcohol was in these people’s hands, the shy turned brave and the quiet turned loud. We were also informed one of the guys at one of the bon fires was our bus driver for the ride scheduled on 8.30am on the next morning.

The night is young!

Counting down to 2014, a bit before midnight

2014's New Year's morning, a good bless over a hang over

At 8 o'clock on 2014's January 1st, I got my window seat with my friends next to me while other passengers still uploaded their stuff onto the bus’s roof and started taking empty seats. Kie came to see us off, obviously still hanged over. The driver eventually took his seat at 9am, starting the noisy old engine. We slowly left the station and hit the road. I pulled out my camera and started flicking through the pictures, replaying each moment vividly in my head. I watched Mindat pasting through my window as we headed down the mountain to Pakkoku where we would catch another bus to Kalaw, looking forward to our next adventure in the Town of Pine Trees.

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