Flotilla News 2018

PANDAW
F L O T I L L A N E W S 2 0 1 8
Zawgyi works its way up the Chindwin

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
One of the really enjoyable things about my job
is meeting our passengers on board the
ships. My wife Roser and I base ourselves for
the European winter in Burma and it’s great
fun jumping on our bikes each morning
from the office at Pagan and heading down to
the port to do a quick tour and chat to our guests. That way we find
out what people feel about what we do and how we do it.
In Burma one thing that passengers feel very strongly about
is the horrendous level of plastic pollution. This really is marring
people’s experience in the larger towns and tourist centres, though
off the beaten track, where we like to go, this is less of an issue.
In response to this strong feeling we have tried to reduce
the amount of plastic on board and give all passengers a
complimentary aluminium water bottle that they can refill. This
has proved a great success and though we still offer plastic water
bottles no one wants them. And it’s good to see the crew
volunteering to clean up river banks too. These may be small
gestures in the scheme of things but word gets out and others
follow.
Burma has been much in the news. I do not want to sound
defensive of the country I have been most closely associated with
for over 30 years, but I will say that the country has experienced
the longest running civil wars in the world today. The problems
in the Arakan began in the early 1940s and there have been
horrific incidents of ‘ethnic cleansing’ on both sides for the past
seventy five years. Recent events were part of a long continuous
history, only this time the UN made a report and the media made
a story of it.
Meanwhile life goes on as usual in the Irrawaddy valley
where the majority of the population live and where we operate
our ships. These troubles seem far from people’s minds and many
of our Burmese friends and colleagues are not even aware of them.
Inevitably visitor numbers will decline as a result of this
media attention and livelihoods will suffer. However, as we argued
during the period of devastating sanctions from the late 90s to
early 2010s, we believe that by working in the country we can do
better things. As with the last round of sanctions, it was the
ordinary people who suffered, not the fat cats at the top.
On a more positive note, we are excited to be building the 8th
Pandaw Clinic at last that will act as the headquarters and
diagnostic centre for the outlying village clinics. It is thanks to the
support of our passengers that this has been possible, so thank you
for that.
On our smaller ship expedition cruises over 50% of the
passengers have travelled with us before and some of them several
times. There is quite a ‘Pandaw Community’ out there and in
recognition of past and future loyalty we set up the ‘Pandaw
2

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM
Contents
2 Pandaw Charity Update
4 Pandaw News
8 Family and Friends Charter
10 The Flowers of Yunnan
12 An Eden of Islands
16 Jungle Atlantis
18 Burma’s Black Gold
20 Greeneland meets Vietnam
22 The Old King’s Ghost
24 Remembering Hoa Binh
27 Laos The Final Frontier
28 First on the Mekong
30 Expeditions Overview
Members Club’ last year with a range of privileges, benefits and
special offers. This has been a huge success with a surprisingly
large number of people signing up.
Interestingly we are seeing more and more multigenerational
travel, with grandparents, children and grand children making
family trips. We are also seeing far more private family charters.
My own pet boat, the Kalay Pandaw, has proved a real hit with such
family groups. Our son Toni, now nearly 21, grew up on these
ships and there was never a dull moment whether off on a bike,
playing football with the local kids on the sand banks or
badminton free for alls with the crew.
Another interesting trend we are seeing is a far younger
demographic. River voyages once were strictly the preserve of
retired folk. We are seeing far more people in their 40s and 50s,
whether solo, sharing or travelling with their kids. This makes for
a great social mix on board. I had a recent email from a passenger
just back from Laos who told me that on their small ship there
were ten different nationalities.
Our coastal cruises on the Andaman Explorer got off to a
very shaky start last season. Cruises had to be aborted first as a
result of engineering problems and then because of issues with
government licences. But now the Andaman Explorer is running
well and Roser, Toni and I spent a very happy couple of weeks
exploring the archipelago discovering more and more to see and
do, not just of scenic and marine interest but also culturally.
Our third ship for Laos will complete in late 2018 and this
proves our most popular routing. The Laos Mekong is certainly the
most spectacular and dramatic of the rivers we ply and a
downstream run can prove an exhilarating experience as we surf
over foaming white waters. Going upstream is slower but you get
to see more! Laos is Asia’s best kept secret and lets keep it that way.
Up in North Vietnam, the Red River, with its harsh climate
(very hot or very cold and always very humid), begins with the
excitement of cruising Halong Bay and ends in the foothills of the
Tonkinese Alps. The ship also passes through the drab industrial
suburbs of Hanoi. Passengers comment that they don’t mind this
as it gives a real insight into real Vietnamese life and society.
Indeed, on our Red River expedition there is a total immersion into
Vietnamese culture. When we visited last November and witnessed
the water puppet theatre acted out spontaneously in a village
temple, far from the maddening tourist crowds, that seemed to
encapsulate what Pandaw is all about.
Ask any of our passengers what is so special about Pandaw
and nearly all will say that yes the design of the ships, the comfy
cabins, the good food, are all part of it. But the best part is the level
of service and the warmth and friendliness of our Pandaw crews.
This goes for all our teams in all six countries we work in. I am not
sure why or how this happens, it just seems to be part of the
magic. I hope that you agree.
Paul Strachan
Pandaw Founder
3

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
mountain
Bikes on
all Ships
Ω
All Pandaw ships now
come with Trek mountain
bikes on board, so you can
go off and explore on your
own and keep fit at the
same time. The exception
being the Andaman
Explorer, which has kayaks!
In all six of the countries
we sail through there is no
better way to see the real
country than by biking.
O N T H E R I V E R S O F
B U R M A A N D B E Y O N D
B Y P A U L S T R A C H A N
The Pandaw Story
Ω
In 1995 Paul Strachan invited an unlikely assortment of
eccentrics and adventurers to join him in an untried new
boat that would venture up the Irrawaddy River, the first time
foreign tourists had ventured up the mighty Burmese
thoroughfare since the Second World War.
Against all odds, the trip was a huge success, word
quickly spread and before Strachan knew it he was running a
business in one of the world's least business-friendly
environments. He named it the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company in
honour of the Glasgow-based company that ran Burma's river
transport when the country was an outpost of the British Raj.
The company now trades under the name Pandaw, after the
Clyde-built paddle steamer it restored in Burma.
In turns hilarious, shocking, moving and often highly
provocative, this book celebrates the 20th anniversary of the
revived Irrawaddy Flotilla Company and the 150th
anniversary of the founding of the original Irrawaddy Flotilla.
The Pandaw Story also looks beyond Burma, at projects
in Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Malaysia which met with
many adventures and mixed fortunes. However, despite
many challenges the company grew to be the largest river
cruise fleet in South-East Asia and currently has fourteen
ships in four countries.
This lively, humorous and anecdotal account gives
some insights into the trials and tribulations of doing
business in Burma and in South-East Asia more generally,
introducing many outrageous and some sinister characters
from East and West.
Mixing autobiography, colourful travelogue and part
company history, it is a unique account of one of the most
unlikely but extraordinary successes in today's travel industry.
Paperback & digital ebook available at
4

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM
New Spa
in Burma
larger ships
Ω
Open on our larger
ships on the Mekong and
in Burma, our spas prove a
welcome diversion when
ships are cruising between
the excursions ashore. We
offer foot reflexology, back
and shoulders, oil massage
and in Cambodia the
classic Khmer full body
massage. We also offer
manicures and pedicures
by our experienced
beauticians.
Going Solo
Ω
The demographic of the solo traveller
has changed dramatically over the past
ten years. Pandaw has tailored several of
its expeditions in response to this
growing demand from independent
explorers, offering adventure on the
Irrawaddy, the Chindwin and the
Mekong, within the secure environment
of a small group of like-minded people.
Often penalised by the travel industry
with high single supplements, we prefer
to look after our guests travelling alone
by offering a cabin for single use at no
additional cost on many of our river
routes. We enjoy a loyal following of solo
travellers who have the opportunity to
safely discover the relatively uncharted
territories of South East Asia, while
appreciating the personal attention and
casual ambience on board our small
ships. Please check our website for
current offers.
5

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
Draft beer on ships
cuts out garbage
Ω
We have introduced draft beer on our larger vessels.
Not only do these brews taste better than canned beer
but we no longer have the environmental issue of
disposing of the empty cans. Responsible garbage
disposal in developing countries can be challenging so
we are constantly trying to reduce waste.
In Burma we are offering Yoma, a pleasant light lager
brewed with imported hops and the soft local water. It’s
very crisp and rather welcome on a hot afternoon’s cruising.
In Cambodia the Kingdom Brewery, the largest craft
brewery in South East Asia supplies us with a very pure
pilsner lager and a light IPA, both of which are as good as
anything you will find anywhere.
New Trip Books
to cut paper waste
Ω
This season we published our trip book
Mandalay Pagan Packet. All passengers
plying this popular route will receive a
complimentary copy in their cabin. The book
contains detailed itineraries for those
travelling between the two old Burmese
capitals, whether on the seven, four or two
night routings. There is detailed background
on the history, culture and geography of the
river stops we explore.
The book also contains ship information
and safety protocols. Passenger feedback has
been very positive and there has been an
environmental benefit too as we are no
longer running the laser printers daily
churning out endless itinerary and fact
sheets. Next season we will roll the ‘trip
book’ concept out to the Mekong and Laos.
6

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM
Aluminum Water
Bottles replace plastic
Ω
Pandaw Burma takes delivery of a
container holding 17,000 aluminium water
bottles. These can be refilled at water coolers
placed around the ships and help cut plastic
pollution. All passengers get to take their
bottle home as a souvenir and can continue
to use it as they travel onward thereby further
cutting plastic pollution.
“
Thanks to all the Pandaw crew for their
ongoing effort in cleaning up the river
banks and protecting their
environment and also trying to make
the local villagers aware of the damage
plastic does to the fish and rivers so
hopefully they will start to follow.
7

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
FAMILY
AND FRIENDS
CHARTER
Consider one of our smaller ships for a friends and
family charter, your own Pandaw all to yourselves!
Ω
Work together with our experts to create
your own itinerary and take your own time to
explore the things that interest you, your family
and friends. Work with our chefs and
sommeliers to plan your dining experiences and
wine selection.
All our river ships come with mountain
bikes and there is plenty for younger family
members to do ashore or afloat.
Consider the ten stateroom mega yacht
Andaman Explorer that wends its way around
the lagoons and atolls of the one thousand
island Mergui Archipelago. Explore a unique
marine world by Zodiac, kayak or snorkeling
with your own family and a few close friends.
Or take-off up the Irrawaddy or Chindwin
on the gorgeous five cabin river yacht, the Kalay
Pandaw. Designed and built by Paul Strachan
for his family friends with its enviable owner's
suite, the ultimate in river exploration.
8

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM
Under 18s Travel FREE
Ω
A special opportunity to share an educational family adventure during school holidays. Explore Asia in
the comfort of a Pandaw vessel including daily excursions, cultural performances, movie nights and free
mountain bikes to explore rural villages, temples and countryside.
FIRST CABIN: Two adults pay full price
SECOND CABIN:
One or two children between the ages of 5 and 18 travel for FREE
Check online for current offers and availability
9

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
The Flowers of
YUNNAN
In the land of the plant hunters
When in 2016 Pandaw became the first Western river expedition
operator to break into Southern China, we were following – as befits
our company heritage – in famous Scottish footsteps.
Our Mekong: From Laos to China, the
itinerary allows our passengers to
experience the floral glories of Yunnan, the
Southern Chinese province known as The
Kingdom of Plants, once the hunting
ground of George Forrest, one of the
greatest of all the ‘plant hunters’. It is this opportunity to
enter the horticultural Aladdin’s cave that Forrest first
revealed over a century ago that makes this unique 14-day
expedition unmissable by all serious gardeners.
A highlight of our itinerary is the Xishuangbanna
Tropical Botanical Garden, a vast garden and conservation
centre with over 13,000 plant species. If any of the highland
plants encountered there or on other expeditions along the
route of the the RV Laos Pandaw and the new Sabei Pandaw
seem familiar, that is because of the mass of botanical
trophies that Forrest brought back to Britain in the early
1900s. The specimens that were catalogued by the Royal
Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh were to thrive in his native
soil and proved hugely influential in determining how
Britain gardens were developing for generations afterwards.
It was Forrest’s strenuous, occasionally death-defying
efforts in Yunnan that resulted in many of the varieties of
acer, camellia, daphne, iris, primula and, of course, the
rhododendrons that became the must-have status symbol of
the Edwardian landed gentry.
So who was George Forrest, and what was the
attraction of Yunnan to pioneering plantsman?
This southernmost province of China, like Northern
Burma, Assam, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, lies in the
‘temperate forest zone’, the great high plateau that extends
across much of the bottom half of the Asian landmass.
Crisscrossed by innumerable river systems, cooled by
its high altitude and watered with heavy levels of rainfall,
Yunnan sits in one of the most biodiverse areas in the
world. By virtue of the relative remoteness and isolation of
those high valleys, aeons of plant evolution have resulted in
plant diversification and specialisation which is as extreme
as that found on, say, the Galapagos Islands.
Plant family trees have developed into numerous
wonderful ways, developing elaborate family trees and
subtle variations.
While there may be as much, or more, plant
biodiversity in the Amazonian rainforests or other tropical
habitats, to European gardeners these beauties of the Asian
temperate zone have the obvious advantage of proven
hardiness outside the greenhouse.
Essentially: if they can survive the high altitudes of the
Himalayan foothills, they can survive a hard frost in an
English (and even a Scottish) country garden. Thus for an
ambitious Edwardian plantsman with an eye on supplying
the green-fingered domestic market, Yunnan was Shangri-La.
One of the first people to see the commercial potential
was George Forrest (1873-1932) a humble chemist’s
apprentice from Kilmarnock, who, by a series of random
accidents, was sent to Yunnan in 1904 by an enterprising
nurseryman from Exeter who contacted Edinburgh’s Royal
Botanical Gardens (RBGE). This patron had heard tell of
the extraordinary plant discoveries and seeds brought back
by French missionary priests venturing into Yunnan from
neighbouring Indochina.
The fathers were reluctant to share their discoveries,
at least with with Englishmen, but the RGBE put forward
this young herbarium worker in answer to an appeal for a
young explorer who might bring samples back to Blighty.
Over his life, which was eventually to end on the
Mekong in 1932, after a heart attack, Forrest made repeated
visits to Yunnan, methodically collecting and recovering
samples, building up a team of 20-30 trained ‘native’ plant
hunters.
Yunnan at that time was an exceptionally tough
environment, the scene of horrific violence inflicted by
Tibetan Lamas, then rebelling against Chinese
encroachment. On his first visit, Forrest narrowly escaped
an ambush in which the French priests who were
accompanying him were perseveringly tortured in horribly
imaginative ways. Forrest himself nearly died after various
harrowing adventures, and after going into hiding, was
reported dead back in Edinburgh, causing much to the
distress of his family. When he did emerge, he was
10

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/LAOS
profusely apologetic for losing his carefully-amassed
samples and botanical drawings.
Forrest’s ordeal does not seem to have fazed him,
as he was an exceptionally tough, and by some
accounts, not a particularly attractive character,
despite his Indiana Jones image. He made no attempt
to his frank contempt for the gentlemen plant hunters
of his generation, whom he considered dilettantes,
and he proved adept at keeping them off his Yunnan
“patch” as he returned time and time again over the
decades to collect and catalogue samples.
The gardening author and plantsman Ken Cox
of the celebrated Glendoick Garden Centre near Perth
has researched extensively on the plant hunters of
that generation. Although his own grandfather,
Glendoick’s founder, crossed swords with Forrest,
Cox rates him as ‘in the top five’ of all the great
British explorer-plant hunters of the last three
centuries, the most famous of whom were Scots.
Cox excuses Forrest’s unsympathetic behaviour
on the grounds that he was a professional with a
living to make, not a happy amateur, and anyway,
great explorers tend to be hardy survivors rather than
genial chaps. Where Forrest went Pandaw passengers
can now follow, seeing the same glorious sights but in
comfort, rather than at risk of life and limb.
George Forrest
11

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
AN EDEN OF ISLANDS
The Explorations of Dr Helfer
Felix Potter, author of the myeik Heritage Walking Tour, is a historian currently researching for a
book on the region. In this article Felix describes the dilemmas facing the British East India Company
on acquiring the Tenasserim region of Burma following the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824.
Even before British troops stormed into Tenasserim in
1824, the East India Company planned to give it away.
They already understood what other conquerors had
learned about the province: it is enticing to take, but
expensive to maintain and impossible to defend.
The financial drain of occupation made the matter
urgent. Only two months after arrival, official correspondence confirmed
that "The Governor General in Council adheres to his original opinion
that supposing Tavoy and Mergui could be both held by our troops for the
present & without hazard or inconvenience, the best way of eventually
disposing of them would be to give them over to the Siamese... "At one
point, Brigadier General Campbell was instructed to simply hand over
Tenasserim “to any willing recipient from Bangkok to Phuket", or "to any
Siamese army which may be assembled on that part of the frontier."
Sentiments didn't change in the following years. Lord Bentinck,
Governor-General of India, summed up the opinion in 1829, writing,
"The expenditure far exceeded the income; no prospective benefit was
held out as a counterbalance against present loss." He also feared
rebellions and inevitable collisions with new neighbours. The diversion
of troops even threatened to weaken other parts of the growing empire,
particularly India and Singapore.
The problem was finding someone to take it. Siam was reeling from
decades of war with Burma and new conflicts in Laos and Cambodia.
When the Company offered to exchange Tenasserim and the Mergui
Archipelago for trade rights, Bangkok's divided palace was unable to
respond. Long negotiations with the semi-independent state of Ligor (now
Nakhon Si Thammarat) also went nowhere. The British even considered
returning it to the Burmese, who refused to concede anything to the
enemy for a province they considered rightfully theirs.
Less known but equally influential was the arrival of British
commissioner A.D. Maingy. When he sailed into Mergui on 29
September 1825, he was appalled by what he found. The mainland and
islands had been almost entirely depopulated, with upwards of 90% of
the population having fled, been enslaved by Siamese and Malay raiders,
or killed in a desperate guerrilla war that had waged intermittently for 65
years. "It would be impossible to describe the distress and misery
occasioned by the depredations of the Siamese," he wrote. "Since our
conquest not a village a few miles distant from the Stockade has escaped,
and at least one thousand and six hundred Inhabitants have been carried
away."
When Maingy saw Siamese prisoners in the Mergui jail, he ordered
their chains struck off because they were ostensibly Company allies.
Terrified residents immediately sent all women to hide in the forest while
local men packed up their belongings. The commissioner was disturbed,
and the prisoners were again incarcerated until he could investigate the
situation.
Very soon he concluded that for humanitarian reasons Tenasserim
should not be ceded to either of the old combatants. He pleaded the case
with emphatic reports to Lord Bentinck, and in turn to the colonial
government in Bengal. To walk away meant abandoning people to reprisals
or abduction, Maingy said, and almost certainly a resumption of war.
Reluctantly, officials came to agree. Though its primary purpose
12

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/ANDAMAN
Mergui 1885
Village Selon a l'Isle St Luke
remained the exploitation of conquered territories, the Honourable
Company was no longer equivalent to the very dishonorable organization
of previous centuries. Since coming under supervision of the Crown and
Board of Control in 1784, it had been forced to at least consider the
welfare of its subjects in addition to profits. Its precarious political
position was now tied to its reputation, which was under constant attack
by enemies in Parliament, rival merchants, and a British public that had
always been skeptical of its overseas shenanigans.
Of course, that did not stop the directors from constantly grumbling
about "our expensive and otherwise useless and mischievous occupation
of the Tenasserim coast." The British continued flirting with the idea of
cession, but after 1831 it was not seriously pursued. Even a brief rebellion
in Tavoy did not deter them. The territory simply had to be made to pay
for itself, which they realized must be done through development of its
natural resources. The Company fetish for extensive taxation would never
be sufficient given the poverty of the residents.
Years passed while nothing paid the bills for thousands of troops
and improvements that Mr. Maingy and other commissioners requested.
The promise of pearls never panned out, for example, because few free
divers could descend the ten fathoms necessary to gather wild oysters.
Pearl farmers were brought from Madras, but costs exceeded profits and
the project was abandoned. Expert divers from Malaya were hired in
1928, though only after the council in Penang approved their demand to
pay a "shark charmer" who could use spiritual powers to ward off fishy
threats. The charmer apparently did his job — no injuries were reported
— but this venture also proved unprofitable.
On the mainland the situation was worse. Historically, Mergui had
never been self-sufficient in rice, and the problem was exacerbated by
Siamese raids. Merguians were unwilling to risk their lives and liberty to
work paddies far from town. Mr. Maingy felt compelled to prohibit export
of locally grown rice, because "had its exportation been allowed much
distress would have prevailed at Mergui and among the poorer classes of
this province." He also approved tax forgiveness and land title reforms to
encourage agriculture, but results were meagre and did not produce a
surplus to feed occupying Indian troops who became sick from poor
rations. No teak grew in the southern forests, and deposits of tin and coal
were difficult to access. Worst of all, a cattle epidemic in 1836 wiped out
one-third of the livestock. Plans to develop the province carefully made by
Mr. Maingy had to be abandoned in the aftermath. By then, the
commissioner had retired, his health broken by overwork.
HELFER IN THE ISLANDS
The naturalist was indefatigable. Young, fearless, and driven by intense
curiosity, he next set out to explore the Mergui Archipelago. On 28
November 1837, Helfer departed from Mergui in several open boats and
sailing canoes. His companions were twenty-five local Merguians who
knew the islands mostly from rumours and furtive fishing trips.
It seemed like a journey into Eden. Having been the haunt of pirates
for sixty years, the archipelago was nearly pristine. Nature had reverted
back to its virgin state in the absence of fishing, collecting and settlement.
Only the Moken still lived there. Madame Helfer wrote, "He found the
islands mostly uninhabited, but came sometimes upon remains of
former settlements or temporary abodes of Malay pirates, who, before the
time of British dominion,
made these waters so
dangerous. On the larger
islands he observed
scattered, deserted
camping-places of the
scanty nomad race, the
Seelongs [Moken]. They
are peaceful people
without fixed abodes, who
fly from hostile attacks
into inaccessible
mountains, or try to escape
them in light boats, in
which they glide rapidly
Andaman islander 1892
over the water."
Like all Edens, this
one was tainted. The Moken still in the islands were ones who had
survived attacks of far more dangerous foes than pirates. In a tragedy that
afflicted indigenous people across the earth, foreign pathogens caused
epidemics well before most victims ever saw a foreigner. The 1820s were
particularly deadly in the Mergui Archipelago, with mortality among
some bands of Moken reaching 50% during initial waves of smallpox.
Their elders, Helfer reported, only considered a child to be safe from
disease after the sixth birthday. The doctor himself was unaware how
these epidemics operated, as it was decades before the germ theory of
disease was fully understood.
In everyone's ignorance, Malay pirates remained the greater threat.
Dr. Helfer described his first attempt to visit a band of Moken in the Blunt
Islands, near Lampi : "My arrival at night terrified the defenceless natives,
as they did not know whether I might be friend or foe, and feared an
attack of Malays from the south. The women and children had fled into
the interior, having concealed their small possessions, rice and cockles, in
the thickets. Everything was in the greatest confusion; even the animals
were scared at the unwonted visit, for dogs, cats, and cocks set up a shrill
chorus."
With patience, however, he convinced them that he meant no harm.
Gradually, the people returned to the beach to meet the first European
they had ever seen. Helfer was impressed, writing, "They behaved with
remarkable civility and decorum." One wonders if the nomads said the
same about him, as the Moken's previous experience with outsiders had
been so traumatic. Helfer added, "By all who have to do with them,
(Chinese and Malays) they are provided with toddy in the first instance
and during the subsequent state of stupor, robbed of any valuable they
possess. They gain however so easily what they want, so that they do not
seem to mind much the loss when they come again to their senses."
The Moken were as interested in Helfer as he was in them: "When
they saw me drink coffee, and heard that I drank the black substance
every day, they concluded this to be the great Medicine of the White Man,
and were not satisfied until I gave them a good portion of it." Nearly two
centuries later, we know their demands were entirely justified!
The little flotilla left the Moken to continue its explorations. While
Helfer sought scientific knowledge, his companions hoped to find other
riches. For thousands of years, the Malay peninsula had been fabled as a
13

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
land of treasure. Hindu legends called it Suvarnabhumi — the land of
gold — and the dream would still influence masses of impoverished
Indian labourers who ventured to British Burma during the rice boom of
the early 20th century. Europeans were equally infatuated. Ptolemy called
it Aurea Regio in the 2nd century C.E., and European cartographers
labelled it ‘the Golden Chersonese’ until the 1800s.
Of course the exact location was never given. The gold was said to be
located somewhere between Sumatra and Pegu, a region large enough to
keep fortune-hunters busy for centuries. Helfer listened to the rumours
with amusement: "Since my first arrival at Mergui when it was known
amongst the natives that I came into the country to look at all kinds of
stones, plants and animals, I had at different times visits from Malays,
Shans and Burmese, all of whom spoke of an island in the archipelago,
which contains gold in great abundance. Marvellous stories were added to
it, of neels [shrimp] who guard the treasure, of storms which arise when
anybody dares to take the gold away. It was my intention this time to visit
Cocks Comb Island
this island, touching at others the same time which I had not yet seen.
Where however this island was situated nobody knew in Mergui."
His companions assured him that the treasure was always "beyond
the next island." The doctor didn't mind. He diverted their enthusiasm to
help collect hundreds of specimens of fish, shellfish, birds, mammals,
insects, trees, grasses, and marine organisms. He took geological
samples, observed the collection of edible birds nests, and contacted more
bands of Moken. Eventually, the crew took him to a remote island where
yellow metal glittered in a riverbed. Helfer was not deceived; it was only
fool's gold.
No one was discouraged. After a brief return to Mergui, Helfer and
his crew continued their respective searches. On 27 February 1839, the
Burmese guided him past the Bentinck Island group, which the doctor
described as "weather- beaten rocks full of indentures, steep sides, and
narrowed valleys. Their western side is generally exposed to the violence
of the seas, their eastern side is surrounded by a smooth sea; the whole
scenery altogether moved lake-like."
Gold fever struck again: "The people had again to show me
something particular occurring on one of the outer rocks of Observation
Island, which is considered a talisman amongst the natives. I went in a
small canoe to look at it, and found the crystals from pyrites whose
bronze yellow made them appear to be gold."
With the fever came the usual dangerous consequences: "The surf
beating violently caused a great swell, our canoe was suddenly breached
by a wave, shipped water, and filled instantly. We were about 30 yards
from the shore and swam for it. The surf took hold of me and dashed me
with violence against the rocks, which were covered with [molluscs and
sea snails], and I was all bruised and cut by the knife-like edges and sharp
spines of the shells. I succeeded however to climb up the rock before the
next shock of the surf. Nobody perished, my Burmese people clung to the
canoe, and others came over to our assistance. I was brought into my
boat, out of which I could not move for the next three days. It was
necessary to extract the spines . . . and I had about 50 fragments sticking
in different parts of my body."
After recovery during another brief visit to Mergui, Doctor Helfer
visited King (Katan) Island, "where the French fleet waited in the last wars
against the British stationed on the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, for
the purpose of intercepting the India men trading to China." Older people
in Mergui could still remember these naval vessels and privateers, which
made strategic use of the sheltered bay during the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars (1792 – 1815). Because the northeast monsoon closed
down ports on the east coast of India from October to January each year,
the French were able to dominate the Bay of Bengal months before the
British navy could sail around from Bombay.
"Numerous are the stories of the Frenchmen which the elder
Burmese inhabitants have to tell of them," Helfer wrote, including tales
of a stockade next to "French Watering Creek" on King Island. Helfer
found no trace of their presence there, which of course did not deter his
companions from renewing their search for treasure : "My people, like
hundreds had certainly done before them, rummaged the whole place
over, and would have continued so in the evening, had not the shrill
piercing voice of the tigers in the vicinity driven them back to the sea
shore."
Unlike the island of gold, Mergui's tigers were no fable. Excellent
swimmers, they had populated the entire archipelago and could ambush
people from anywhere. Local people did not possess adequate weapons to
fend them off. Helfer also noted that island tigers were more aggressive
than mainland cats due to a scarcity of large game. "The western side of
King's Island," he wrote, "is said to be the most dangerous in that respect
and several well thriving Durian gardens had been abandoned on account
of tigers." At least the doctor had no further trouble with rhinos, which
also inhabited the archipelago.
As his scientific collections continued, so did his exploration of
legends. Helfer next took the boats to Kisseraing (Kanmaw) Island to
investigate tales of a lost city: "This island though now entirely desolate
of all fixed population is said to have been once very important, crowded
with villages, the greatest part of the soil converted into fields yielding a
superior quality of rice which was exported to the neighbouring countries.
Whether in truth or at what time this was the case, and what was the
reason of the total disappearance of the population, we possess no means
to indicate at the present day. That the island was inhabited is proved by
the numerous remains of Pagodas to be met within different parts of the
island." To this day its archaeological history remains unsurveyed.
More recently the island had been a notorious lair for Malay pirates
who had so terrorized Merguians that people seldom ventured more than
a few miles from town. After British occupation, a few fishermen were
finally returning to Kisseraing to catch "the immense number of fish
which migrate into the inner channels to deposit their spurm there, in
millions." This abundance also attracted large numbers of cetaceans,
giving its eastern side the name, "Whale Bay." Mercifully, the voracious
Yankee whalers who were scouring the seas had yet to reach the Mergui
Archipelago in 1839.
Too soon, signs of the southwest monsoon hastened the end of
Helfer's island adventure. He turned his tiny armada northwards towards
Mergui town. The doctor took a last opportunity to visit Maingy Island,
named for the man who had convinced the East India Company to protect
the long-suffering residents of Tenasserim. Naturally, Merguians had
established a small factory there to produce its most famous product:
"[Maingy Island] is resorted to by fishermen from Mergui to prepare
ngapee, this indispensable condiment to a Burmese in his cooking
ingredients. I found a party of ten men lodged in a miserable shed on this
island occupied with the preparation of this substance. The stench was
dreadful to European olfactory nerves, so that I hastened away from this
pestilential atmosphere as quick as the tide permitted . . ."
One can only imagine Helfer's terrible suffering as he waited for the
tide to allow his escape. The doctor soon had his ironic revenge, however.
He began collecting "zoophytes," small marine creatures that he wished
to examine back in town. Unfortunately, science turned rotten in the heat.
14

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/ANDAMAN
"When taken out of their element," he wrote, "the animals after death
putrify and cause an insufferable stench. The Burmese, though their
olfactory nerves are in other respects not at all delicate, declared that they
could not bear it."
After two days, all his crew was sick and had festering carbuncles on
their legs. The doctor chose sympathy for his companions over dedication
to craft and Company. He cast the creatures overboard. He was not too
disappointed, though, because he had already collected vast amounts of
specimens and data to process in Mergui. The plantation had also
flourished under the care of the baroness, and the couple must have
looked forward to their reunion.
Doctor Helfer's reports are fascinating for their images of the forests
and archipelago in their natural state. But they are also interesting for the
portraits of the young European couple themselves. The doctor was a
product of his education, which in the early 19th century was infused with
racist theories of Caucasian superiority. He was hired by the notorious
East India Company to help
exploit its occupation of a
foreign land. And yet, as he
spent more and more time
among local people, his
curiosity and humanism
steadily began to displace the
racist ideas he had been
taught.
While in official reports
he resorted to dismissing them
as child-like, in his personal
accounts he was filled with
respect and sympathy. He both
risked his life for his Asian
companions and trusted them
with his own.
Madame Helfer likewise
came to admire the people of
Tenasserim. Though she
arrived with the conviction that
they needed Christian
civilisation, she slowly found herself tempering that belief with deep
respect for those around her. While her husband was away in the islands,
the baroness even felt empathy for the thugs — convicted serial
murderers transported from India — in whom she found humanity and
decency deserving of forgiveness.
HELFER IN THE ANDAMANS
Doctor and Madame Helfer were two of a long list of remarkable people
in the story of Tenasserim. That is why his next expedition was so tragic.
After spending the rainy season developing the plantation with his wife,
and after they resolved to stay in Mergui forever, he set off to explore the
Andaman Islands. The islanders were known across the Indian Ocean for
their hostility to outsiders. Sailing directions and tales of shipwrecks
spoke of ferocious attacks by enraged men armed with spears and arrows.
Helfer was cautious but undeterred. On January 29th, 1840, he bravely
went ashore to make contact.
At first, the reputation of the Andaman islanders seemed as fanciful
as the land of gold. They were cheerful and provided wood and water in
exchange for rice and coconuts. Helfer left in high spirits. The last words
in his diary were, "These, then, are the dreaded savages! They are timid
children of Nature, happy when no harm is done to them. With a little
patience it would be easy to make friends with them."
When he returned the next day, he was so confident that he ordered
his crew to leave their weapons behind as a display of trust. Something
went wrong. Different men met the party and lured them away from the
beach. Suddenly, dozens of Andaman islanders emerged from the forest
to attack. The visitors fled in panic to their canoes which overturned in the
surf. They began swimming frantically back to the schooner while a rain
of arrows issued from the angry men on shore. The wounded men
reached the schooner, but not the young doctor from Prague. He took an
arrow in the head and sank beneath the sea, never to be seen again.
Madame Helfer was distraught. She attempted to continue in
Mergui but the spell was broken. The widow soon returned to Europe,
where she remarried and became Countess Pauline Nostitz. Even then
Tenasserim held a fascination for her, as she dreamed of establishing a
German colony on the far side of the world. Her brother, Baron des
Granges, continued to manage thousands of areca and coconut trees on
their land and even braved the tigers to set up a new plantation on King
Island. After six years his health was destroyed, the orchards fell into
disrepair, and authorities in Bengal conveniently forgot about the
promises they had made to the late Doctor Helfer. Interest from the King
of Prussia could not rescue the project either. The Countess was forced to
seek compensation from East India Company directors in London, while
her plantations were once again relinquished to tigers, rhinos, and the
patient Tenasserim jungle.
“
Myeik Heritage Walking Tour book and website
A historical guide to the fascinating town of Myeik in
southern Myanmar. The guide includes a walking tour route
map, color photos, and descriptions of 46 places of
interest. Also included are discussions of Myanmar history
in general, the Mergui Archipelago, and the British colonial
era in which so many of Myeiks' buildings were constructed.
The guide was created from archival research and the help
of local residents.
www.myeik-walking-tour.com
Myeik Heritage
Walking Tour
by Felix Potter
Available on Amazon
Local Fishermen
15

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
Jungle
ATLANTIS
Who built Angkor... and why?
In the fourth of our occasional series on essential books for Pandaw passengers, Colin Donald recommends
Charles Higham's The Civilisation of Angkor, the perfect primer for Cambodia's medieval metropolis.
When Portuguese
missionaries first
encountered the lost
city of Angkor in the
1550s, they presumed
it had to have something to do with the
Romans ("supposed to be the work of Trajan"
said one early history). Naturally they
presumed these astonishing jungle-bound
buildings had nothing to do with the primitive
agrarian Cambodian society they observed
around them.
Ever since then scholars have been
struggling to come to terms with the scale of
the relics of the Khmer empire, a civilisation
that flourished between the 800s and the
1400s, under a succession of ruling dynasties.
Much ingenuity has been expended on
finding plausible explanations for the rise and
fall of this race of architectural/engineering
geniuses. Whole careers have been spent
revealing the religious and political impulses
behind the building of Angkor Wat, Angkor
Thom, Preah Ko, Bantay Srei, and hundreds
of other relics scattered over a 300-mile radius
among the plains, hills and jungles of
Cambodia and Thailand.
It is not essential, of course, that Pandaw
passengers encountering Angkor on our
pioneering Mekong and Tonle Sap expeditions
do their homework on the background to the
civilisation of Angkor, but even getting a basic
grip of the chronology will make their
encounter with these great buildings more
rewarding.
A good place to start is with Charles
Higham's The Civilisation of Angkor (2001), an
authoritative synthesis of the recent
archaeological scholarship on Angkor and the
Khmers. Avoiding the temptation to be
gushingly overawed by these vast buildings
and reservoirs ("barays"), the book calmly
considers current theories — mastery of floodplain
irrigation, agricultural surpluses, etc —
on how such feats of labour were organised.
Prof Higham (b 1939) a British archaeologist
based at Otago University in New Zealand, is
a reliable guide through the centuries and
dynasties of the Khmer empire, thanks to his
intimate knowledge of the epigraphy (stone
tablet-writing) through which the Khmers
transmitted their political and bureaucratic
activities to posterity, not to mention fine
detail of endless land disputes, and chestbeating
boasts about the smiting of enemies,
notably the Chams of Vietnam.
Higham's book shows that, like all
official records, these stone chronicles can be
dull and not wholly trustworthy. Because their
intention is to magnify the god-like qualities
of their commissioners, they only obliquely
flesh out the remarkable human and
managerial qualities of all of these latter-day
pharaohs: Jayaravarman VII, Surayavarman
II, Rajendravarman I, and many others
carefully and comprehensively listed here.
How did these great builder-kings motivated
their workforce? Angkor Wat, the centrepiece,
took 20 years to build, while European
cathedrals (all smaller) took hundreds.
There were slaves in Cambodia, but
Higham asserts this was not exactly a slave
state. Nevertheless it is hard to believe that
terror was not part of the incentive package
for the thousands who laboured away their
lives; quarrying, shifting and assembling
these intricate fantasies in stone, while the
nearby Tonle Sap lake and its flood plain
provided a surplus of fish and rice to
minimise the need for more practical tasks.
16

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/MEKONG
“
Higham is an archaeologist, most concerned with piecing together the chronology of this homegrown civilisation from the
elite records that were carved on stone and the stylistic evidence contained in the buildings themselves. His priority is to list
the various kings in order and what they built, which provides much-needed clarity over speculation on politics or sociology.
Higham dismisses the 20th Century
assumption, transmitted through the French
colonial tradition and scholars like George
Cœdès, which asserted that the Khmer
aesthetic and technique was imposed on
backward Cambodians by the then superior
and more ancient civilisation of India. Recent
archaeology, some of it conducted by the
author, shows a clear line of development
from Cambodia's prehistoric iron age leading
into the Angkor period in the 800s. The
many Indian touches, association of kings
with Indian deities etc, represented the exotic
tastes of the Cambodian elite, he claims, and
not the impositions of domineering
foreigners.
But as the illustrations of relief carvings
here show, Khmer art was not all formal
representations of Hindu cosmology but also
contained a jolly strand of folk art, which
humanises Angkor and provides a brilliant
contrast to the regal-religious pomp.
Alongside a fair amount of smiting of
neighbours and torturing of the vanquished,
temple walls show that life in the Khmer
empire provided plenty of time for leisure;
forest picnics, riverboat frolics, games of
chess and dancing girls. In contrast to the
"frigid smile of power" as Norman Lewis
described the depictions of Angkor's kings,
there is folksy charm and wit in these relief
carvings intended to suggest to posterity that
there was more to life than dragging stones
and digging stupendous rectangular
reservoirs.
This is a book about the builders of
Angkor and what we know about who built
what when. The author has less to say about
the buildings-as-buildings, their symbolic
religious meaning or their powerful mix of
organic shapes and classical symmetry.
Would-be visitors should reach for The
Civilisation of Angkor for a summary of what
we know as fact; which is a lot more than we
used to but with much left to speculate about.
That process will continue. Angkor has
held onto its secrets since its mysterious
abandonment during the 1430s and despite
the great strides
summarised in this
book, will never
entirely give them up.
17

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
BURMA’S BLACK GOLD
The Oil of the Irrawaddy Valley
For more than two centuries oil has been produced from
oilfields in the broad valley of the Irrawaddy River, long
predating the birth of the modern oil industry in 1859
when Edwin L Drake drilled his first successful well at
Titusville, Pennsylvania.
Following the relocation of the seat of government
from Pegu to Upper Burma in 1635, a procession of British soldierdiplomats
made their way up the Irrawaddy River to the court of the
reigning king. Their observations on the oil production en route form a
fascinating record.
Yenangyaung (or Yenan Chaung), where they often stopped off, can
be translated as ‘creek of stinking water' and in fact ‘yenan' became the
Burmese word for ‘oil'. In 1755 George Baker and John North en route to
King Alaungpaya's capital, Shwebo, found "about 200 families who are
chiefly employed in getting Earth-oil out of pitts [sic]".
Forty years later, in 1795-96, Major Michael Symes was leading a
delegation from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava at
Amarapura and gave a more detailed account of the Yenangyaung
riverside export point:
“
"...the celebrated wells of Petroleum which supply the whole
empire (of Ava) and many parts of India, with that useful
product were five miles to the east of this place….The mouth
of the creek was crowded with large boats waiting to receive
a lading of oil, and immense pyramids of earthen jars were
raised in and around the village... The smell of oil was
extremely offensive. We saw several thousand jars filled with
it ranged along the bank. Some of these were continually
breaking, and the contents mingling with the sand..."
Symes described the wellheads as holes about four feet square; he
tested the depth of one well and found it to be ‘thirty-seven fathoms' (68
m). He also described the recovery of the oil using an iron pot fastened to
a rope which passed over a wooden cylinder which revolved on an axis
supported by two upright posts; to raise the pot, two workers hauling on
a rope ran down an inclined slope.
Hiram Cox was the Rangoon Representative of the East India
Company when, less than two years after Symes' visit to Yenangyaung,
he inspected the oilfield in 1797 while on a mission to the Court of Ava at
Amarapura. Cox counted 180 wells in one area and another 340 a short
distance away; these are thought to have been the clusters of wells at
Beme and Twingon respectively (Fig. 1). Topography helped determine
the location of the hand-dug wells: the preferred locations were on small
hilltops or hillsides where a level area could be excavated and where a
slope ran away from the well to enable the workers to run downhill with
their ropes while raising the digging-debris, or later the oil, to the surface.
From the earliest observations of the Yenangyaung oilfield by
foreign travellers to the eventual annexation of Upper Burma by Britain
in the brief 1886 Third Anglo-Burmese War, the rights to produce oil at
Yenangyaung were granted by the rulers of the Kingdom of Ava. Those
rights were held by 24 individuals called ‘twinza'. It was a hereditary
entitlement, and the system was called twinzayo.
A well might take up to two years to dig, obviously depending on its
depth and whether the digging was hard or soft – hard, calcareous layers
were tackled by dropping a very large iron weight from the surface. The
digger was lowered on a rope to the bottom of the well where he used an
iron-tipped pole as his tool, the spoil then being raised to the surface in a
basket on a rope.
Because of the concentration of oily vapours at the bottom, as it
deepened he could remain in the well for no more than about 30 seconds
before being hauled to the surface. That is where the path sloping away
from the well-head was important, enabling two or perhaps more men to
run with the hauling rope to remove the digger from the well as speedily
as possible.
When oil was struck the same dangerous method was used to bring
it to the surface, using iron buckets or lacquer-sealed baskets. The
twinzayo system persisted long into British rule, operating alongside the
drilling rigs of the oil companies.
By 1896 when geologist G.E. Grimes was mapping the oilfields he
noted that the diggers' lot had improved considerably, as they were now
equipped with a ‘diver's helmet' into which fresh air was pumped
manually down a flexible hose from the surface, enabling them to remain
digging for up to an hour, reaching depths of at least 400 ft (122 m), but it
remained a hazardous operation (Fig. 2). The risk of the well walls
collapsing was lessened (but not wholly overcome) by installing wooden
shuttering as digging progressed.
Since 1858 there had been a small refinery at Rangoon, using
Yenangyaung crude as feedstock and exporting products to Europe and
India. By 1871 it was in financial trouble and its assets were bought by a
group of Scottish businessmen who registered a new company in
Edinburgh, the Rangoon Oil Company. Its local agent in Burma was
Finlay Fleming & Co.
The annexation of Upper Burma in the 1886 Third Anglo-Burmese
War meant that the whole country, formerly the Kingdom of Ava, was
now a part of British India administered locally by a Chief Commissioner
in Rangoon. It was a milestone in the evolution of Myanmar's petroleum
industry, ushering in the modern era. In that same year, 1886, David
Cargill, principal shareholder of Rangoon Oil Company, sold it to another
Scottish-registered company founded in the same year, Burmah Oil
Company, which had technical links back home to the West Lothian
shale-oil industry. Cargill thereby acquired an interest and became
Chairman of the new company.
By then another oilfield in the Irrawaddy valley was attracting
attention, Yenangyat with its own crop of hand-dug wells, across the river
from the ancient capital of Pagan (now Bagan). Without wasting any time,
Burmah Oil applied for concessions over Yenangyat and Yenangyaung.
Part of the commercial imperative behind Burmah Oil Company's haste
to obtain concessions was that a number of the twinza's interests in
Yenangyaung had passed by marriage to the former King, and by decree
he had also acquired the right to purchase all of the twinza's own
production; the result had been that the supply of crude oil to the
Rangoon refinery had become erratic and threatened its viability.
Concessions were granted to Burmah Oil Company and in January
1888 drilling operations commenced using an American-style cable-tool
percussion rig. The rights of the twinzas were protected in specified
reserves, and by now they could sell their production to anyone, choosing
in fact to sell it to Finlay Fleming & Co representing Burmah Oil, and so
again an adequate supply of oil was able to be shipped to their Rangoon
refinery.
18

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/BURMA
Fig. 1. Simplified geological map of part of the Irrawaddy valley, showing
locations of the principal oilfields: Yenangyaung, Yenangyat, Chauk and
Minbu. Other small fields are present up- and downstream.
Fig. 2. Twinza well-digging team in the early 20th century, including the
digger wearing a helmet into which air was pumped manually from the
surface. Photograph from Pascoe (1912), "The Oilfields of Burma".
Fig. 3. Yenangyaung oilfield in the 1920s. (Burmah Oil Company photo,
courtesy of BP Archive).
But Burmah Oil's early operations at Yenangyaung went through a
difficult early phase. Security was a problem during the ‘pacification' of
Upper Burma, with bands of dacoit attacking the encampments,
sabotaging equipment and setting fire to the stored oil. Despite frequent
setbacks, the introduction of mechanized well-drilling (first with cable-tool
rigs in 1888 and rotary tools in 1911) allowed hundreds of wells and
eventually over four thousand wells to be drilled on the Yenangyaung field,
and oil production rose to a peak of 15,953 barrels per day in 1918 (Fig. 3).
Meanwhile at Yenangyat, the local people were producing oil from
hand-dug wells. Burmah Oil Company commenced drilling there in 1891
and made their first discovery on the Yenangyat anticline in 1893. By the
end of the 19th century production from the field was averaging 500
barrels per day of a lighter and better quality oil than Yenangyaung.
With new deep wells and even the helmet-equipped well-diggers
contributing to production growth, Burmah Oil's refinery capacity
needed to expand. Its original refinery was at Dunneedaw near Rangoon,
but then a second was built at Syriam, south of Rangoon, which in due
course became the company's main refinery. Later a pipeline from the
oilfields to these refineries was built in 1908.
The first two decades of the 20th Century saw the oil industry in
Burma come of age: Burmah Oil Company had agreed a contract with
the British Admiralty to supply fuel-oil bunkering; rotary drilling had
been introduced in 1911; and geological science was being applied to
field-development and exploration for new fields. Production was coming
from the Yenangyaung, Yenangyat and Singu (Chauk) fields, and was
beginning at Minbu. Total production was about 15,000 barrels per day.
At the outbreak of the Second World War oil production averaged
21,500 barrels per day from 3,800 wells. But the war brought oil
production to a virtual standstill, and many of the wells and
infrastructure were destroyed to deny them to the occupying Japanese.
Reconstruction after the war brought fields back into production
and, notwithstanding the nationalization of Burmah Oil Company in
1963, new fields were discovered in the Irrawaddy valley, and production
climbed to pre-war levels, peaking in the 1980s.
But since then there has been a steady decline as older fields
became depleted, and few large fields were discovered.
In 1998 Burma took its place among the world's gas exporters and
now gas is produced from several offshore gasfields and piped to
domestic consumers and to export markets in China and Thailand, but
gone are the days when Burma’s onshore oil production seemed the way
to future propsperity.
“
Michael F Ridd
Dr Michael F Ridd graduated from University College
London in 1957, and joined BP as a geologist. During his
subsequent career he lived and worked in Libya, Abu Dhabi,
New Zealand, Alaska, Australia, Thailand and Singapore,
ending his period with BP as Chief Geologist for their UK
operations, based in Aberdeen. In 1985 he founded a small
oil company, Croft, with Scottish backing, and built a
portfolio of exploration and production interests including
the North Sea, New Zealand, the US, and Burma. Since
retiring in 1999 Mike Ridd has devoted himself to South East
Asia geology, in particular seeking to unravel the complex
plate-tectonic history of the region, on which he has
published a number of papers and books. He lives in London
and Scotland and is married to Mikiko, a musician.
* This article is based on ‘Historical background to Myanmar's
petroleum industry' by M. F. Ridd and A. Racey, Chapter 4 of
‘Petroleum Geology of Myanmar,' Memoir of the Geological
Society, London, 2015. Other source is: ‘Oil in Burma, the
Extraction of "Earth-Oil" to 1914' by M.V.Longmuir, 2001,
White Lotus, Bangkok.
19

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
GREENELAND
MEETS VIETNAM
The Quiet American
As part of our occasional series on the great reads in Pandaw’s onboard library,
Colin Donald considers the classic novel of the dying days of L’Indochine Francais.
For his fans Graham Greene
was not just a novelist, he
was a literary prophet who
foretold the currents of 20th
century history.
Much of that perception rests on The
Quiet American (1955), Greene’s middleperiod
novel set at the height of the French
Vietnam War. The book has been read as
forewarning that the US’s attempt to
prevent the reunification of Vietnam under
Communist rule would – like the title
character of the book – come to a sticky end.
Temperamentally restless and fond of
conflict, Greene served as a foreign
correspondent for four winters in Vietnam
during the 1946-1954 war, reporting for The
Sunday Times and Le Figaro. He saw up
close France’s agonies of wounded pride
and moral compromise as it struggled in an
inglorious colonial war against an elusive
enemy, the Viet Minh. As related in his
autobiography Ways of Escape (1980)
Greene had good access to the highest
levels of the French command and to Viet
Minh agents, and was later to interview Ho
Chi Minh.
The Quiet American is the only lasting
English-language evocation of the last days
of l’Indochine Francais. It was an ugly
episode, but Greene liked lost causes, and
he finds a certain nobility in the plight of
the French military.
Set in 1952 while the Battle of Hoa
Binh was still raging (see pg 24), the novel
tells the story of a middle-aged and world-
20

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/VIETNAM
weary English reporter called Fowler,
whose 20-year-old Vietnamese girlfriend is
won over by an idealistic and naïve young
CIA officer called Alden Pyle, a rookie in
the ways of the East but with misguided
presumptions about the right path for this
tinderbox country.
This three-way dynamic, soaked in
Greene-esque sexual jealousy and self-pity,
seems be intended to represent the assault
on inscrutable Vietnam, first by a decaying
and self-serving colonial regime, then by a
clumsily idealistic but hypocritical
superpower.
Fans of Greene will be familiar with
the book’s portentous moral equivocating
of which he was the 20th century’s leading
adept. Published as it was at the height of
the Cold War and of McCarthyism, it must
seemed a full-frontal assault on Uncle Sam
by a limey fellow traveller (which to be fair
Greene was).
The contrast of American good motives
and bloody deeds is embodied in the
character of Alden Pyle, the crew-cut
Bostonian with a comic sense of chivalry and
his academic anti-communist ideology.
Through him, the novelist satirises the
chances of building a “Third Force”
alternative to colonialism or communism by
promoting acts of random violence by
unreliable and fractious South Vietnamese
political partners.
The novelist lays out the landscape of
Saigon where most of the action takes place,
and the North, where the hero goes to report,
with a practiced journalist’s eye. There is
vivid local colour, for example a visit to the
bizarre Cao Dai sect in Tay Ninh near Saigon
and the “Walt Disney” temple there. There
are pages seemingly lifted from a war
reporter’s notebook: a slaughter of villagers
at Phat Diem, a terrifying Viet Minh night
attack on a watch tower near Nam Dinh in
the Red River Delta, a bombing raid on Lai
Chau on the Chinese Border, the carnage of
a horrific café bombing in Saigon.
But there isn’t even much information
about the reasons that the war against the
Vietminh was happening, let alone the
reasons why this sensually-described edifice
of Frenchness had been imposed on the
country for the preceding 70 years.
Not then book to read for profound
insights into Vietnamese culture or
nationalist tradition, or even of French rule.
Instead a vivid snapshot of Saigon at the
end of the colonial era, and glimpses of the
war in the North, suffused with the
cynicism and melancholy that Greene fans
will know and love.
It took no great foresight for Greene to
foretell that the French would lose the war
(in any case they had surrendered before the
novel was completed). The impressive piece
of “prophecy” was to show in advance how
the US would blunder in Vietnam in the
pursuit of impossible ideals.
It was Greene’s novel which first
highlighted the improbability of success of
an all-out hearts-and-minds approach,
intended to embed democracy with civics
lectures, hard cash, and napalm.
Has time been good to The Quiet
American? Yes and no. It gives us a vivid
snapshot of Vietnam, a country of which
most English-language readers are fairly
ignorant, at a vital point in its history. Greene
is a hugely professional and terse story teller,
though his profundities and epigrams can
seem pretentious or absurd.
He is certainly adept at appealing to a
certain type of male fantasy, albeit of a
somewhat un-PC variety. Who wouldn’t want
to have their nightly opium pipes prepared
by a soon-to-be-naked 20-year-old Annamite
beauty? To see sunset on the limestone
islands of Halong Bay from a low-flying
French bomber? Or to play dice for
Vermouth and cassis on a tropical evening in
the Continental Hotel with the local Sureté
boss?
With his gruff Hemingway-esque
economy with words as well as his eye for
exotic locations, there’s no great secret about
Greene's appeal to the paunchy, balding
armchair reader in rain-soaked Britain.
The book’s biggest problem is that the
boy scout title character is a composite of
condescending clichés about Americans, for
whose perceived vulgarities Greene seems to
possess unbounded hatred that distorts his
artist’s instincts. Alden Pyle is a wholly
unconvincing as a man, even more so as a
trained CIA agent, so the love triangle at the
book’s core feels equally phoney.
“
But for all its faults as a novel The
Quiet American deserves its place
in Pandaw’s onboard library, not
just because of the fame the
influence of its reportage, but
because its point that wellmotivated
people do terrible
things was so well borne out by
subsequent events in Vietnam.
The intensity and agony of the
decades that followed have given
it a retrospective authority, and
ensured its survival.
21

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
THE OLD
KING'S GHOST
Aprotective box in the British Library houses a dark red
rectangle, about the size of a large takeaway menu,
called a parabaik. These concertina books, made
from mulberry paper, are distinctive to pre-colonial
Burma. Across its twelve folded pages this parabaik
tells a story that has bewitched me for over a decade.
Inside, sketched in delicate watercolour and edged with gold, is a
depiction of a series of events that took place over a century ago, but
whose echoes linger on.
The toppling of the man here depicted on a golden throne, King
Thibaw, Burma’s last monarch, by the British government in November
1885 had a profound impact on Burma. A millennium-old monarchy
was ended, and a fiercely independent kingdom became a colony within
British India. Burma’s politics, economy and society were changed
forever.
Although this seminal event in the shared history of Britain and
Burma was to have profound consequences for the latter, few in Britain
know what happened.
AN ISSUE WITH THE ISSUE
King Thibaw (1859-1916) was an unlikely choice to succeed his father, King
Mindon (1808-1878), who had ruled the kingdom skilfully for a quartercentury.
Mindon, in the fine tradition of Burmese kings, had taken more
than 40 wives and is thought to have fathered more than 100 children.
With so many sons to choose from, and the law of primogeniture
not being a strict convention, on Mindon’s death in 1878 succession was
a tricky question. Thibaw - a scholarly 19-year-old son of a minor queen
– was manoeuvred onto the throne past numerous stronger contenders.
He was seen by powerful figures at court as a potential puppet, a
figurehead for badly-needed reform.
With so many potential sibling rivals, however, Thibaw’s position
was precarious. In 1879, the first year of his reign, the powerful forces
behind him (including his own mother-in-law) set out to make it less so.
They orchestrated a massacre, in which all the royals close in age to
Thibaw were rounded up and killed – scores of princes and princesses
were bludgeoned to death, the corpses allegedly wrapped in velvet and
trampled by elephants.
SPLENDID ISOLATION
For now, Thibaw was secure on his throne. In the British Library
parabaik, he is depicted alongside his two queens (both his half-sisters
by blood) and his eldest daughter watching sporting and devotional
ceremonies in the ornate walled palace of Mandalay. Elephants and
tigers square up, and Burmese polo players are frozen mid-gallop, as
Thibaw looks on shaded by delicate umbrellas.
Outside this scene of peaceful pomp, however, powerful forces
were gathering. In two wars with the British Raj earlier in the century,
Thibaw’s predecessors had ceded half of the kingdom, including the
entire coastline and the country’s most fertile rice-growing regions.
Beyond the walls of his gilded world what was left of Thibaw’s kingdom
was crumbling, and the great European powers were circling. Thibaw
stood between them and a potentially lucrative trade route to China, and
bountiful supplies of teak, oil and gems.
King Thibaw (R) and his two queens — Suphayalat (M), and Suphayagale (L)
22

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/BURMA
The ‘Deposition Parabaik’ (Or. 14963) – credit British Library
DOWNFALL
In the middle of the parabaik, palace life is abruptly interrupted by the
arrival of the ‘Burma Field Force’ in red and khaki, on the 28th
November 1885. This specially assembled invasion force consisting of
British and Indian brigades under orders from the Secretary of State
for India, Lord Randolph Churchill – father of Sir Winston.
The British government had lost patience with Thibaw, and were
concerned that he was falling under the influence of the old enemy,
France. His time was up – “this will be the third and last struggle I hope
with Burmese arrogance”, wrote Colonel Edward Sladen, the
expedition’s Chief Political Officer, in early November 1885 as he
prepared to sail up the Irrawaddy river with his troops. The war lasted a
matter of weeks, and the King quickly surrendered his kingdom in the
face of overwhelming force.
The parabaik shows the King and his family being escorted first to
the South Gardens of the palace, then on November 29th carried by
bullock-cart to a steamer. It would take them into what for the King
would be permanent exile in India. He would die in 1916, diminished
and heartbroken, in his substantial British-built palace in Ratnagiri, a
small fishing-village on the country’s west coast. His body is still
entombed there today.
WE WERE KINGS
I examined the British Library with Thibaw’s great-grandson, U Soe
Win – de-facto heir to Burma’s throne – who has come with me to the
British Library closely studying the last moments of the reign of his
famous great-grandfather.
Ours is an improbable friendship, separated by thousands of miles
and several decades. Three years earlier, fascinated by the events of
November 1885 depicted in the parabaik, I first tracked him down. At
the time he was managing the U-19’s Myanmar football team, as they
made their way to the country’s first World Cup Tournament. This manwho-could-be-king
has lived a quiet, anonymous existence as a civil
servant in Burma’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
At first cautious about sharing his family’s story with outsiders
after decades of life under a military dictatorship, U Soe Win gradually
began to open up. What followed was an extraordinary adventure, taking
us across three continents and several centuries to recover his royal past.
The result was an award-winning documentary – We Were Kings –
funded by the Foundation set up in the name of the late, great
filmmaker Alan Whicker. The film tells the story of U Soe Win’s efforts
to reunite his family, and to bring King Thibaw home at last.
THE MEMORY OF MONARCHY
Two sets of eyes rest on the far left of the parabaik, where Thibaw’s last
moments as king are forever frozen in time.
Thibaw’s exile (or par-daw-mu) is a seminal moment in the
country’s history. It has been commemorated in Myanmar’s literature,
art, theatre, film and music, and is still marked every year by his
descendants with a poignant ceremony.
Dig deeper, and the memory of monarchy is still in the country’s
bones. The military government drew on royal symbolism to legitimise
their position – even building a new capital called Naypyitaw, or ‘Abode
of Kings’. The monastic orders retain echoes of royal ceremony and
language, and young boys dress as little princes before taking the robes
for the first time. The political culture of the country – centralised,
hierarchical, focused on one or two powerful figures – feels monarchic
in flavour. The palace in Mandalay remains a potent symbol of royal
Burma, and is one of modern Myanmar’s most visited sites.
Myanmar today is still grappling with the abrupt dismantling of a
centuries old institution, a traumatic colonial experience, and rapid
decolonisation. Decades of civil war, inter-ethnic conflict, dictatorship
and religious violence are all in some way rooted in the events of
November 29th 1885.
As U Soe Win and I carefully fold up the parabaik, I catch a last
glimpse of Thibaw perched on his throne, and I can’t help but think that
Myanmar is still haunted by this tiny figure, all in white and gold.
“
The Pandaw Trust kindly provided the sponsorship needed
for the British Library to reproduce the parabaik referenced
above in a large exhibition version. This incredible piece of
hidden history was displayed at the world premiere of We
Were Kings at the British Library on 19th September 2017.
The exhibition parabaik travelled back to Mandalay for the
first screening of the film in Myanmar in November 2017.
After the screening, it was left as a gift to King Thibaw’s
descendants and the nation. Grammar Productions is
grateful to the Pandaw Trust for helping us bring this
hidden history to life.
Alex Bescoby is an award-winning filmmaker, whose life has
revolved around Burma for almost a decade. After focusing on modern
Burmese history at Cambridge University, he co-founded independent
production company Grammar Productions.
U Soe Win (R), Alex Bescoby (L) & Max Jones (M) filming ‘We Were Kings’
23

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
REMEMBERING HOA BINH
Heaven and hell in a Vietnamese river town
Pandaw’s highly popular 10-day Halong Bay and Red
River expedition is not specifically designed for the
Vietnam War buff, who will find plenty of specialist
battlefield tours on offer elsewhere.
But as our expedition ends (or begins) in the
delightfully-sited town of Hoa Binh, it’s worth
dwelling on the town’s importance in the epic story of the country’s
30-year struggle for independence. What happened here helped
determine the first of Vietnam’s back-to-back wars of liberation.
Hoa Binh is an ancient market town on a picturesque bend on
the Da [Black] River in the hill country traditionally occupied by the
Muong people. The most prominent ‘sight’ these days – popular
with Pandaw passengers – is the Hoa Binh Dam, South East Asia’s
largest hydroelectric generator. At nearly 2000MW capacity, this
Soviet-designed and financed behemoth generates around 27% of
Vietnam’s electricity. When completed in 1994, it created a reservoir
that submerged 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of land, displacing
nearly 90,000 people.
This icon of socialist modernity, overlooked by a giant statue of Ho
Chi Minh, acquires extra significance from Hoa Binh’s recent history.
From November 1951 to February 1952 it was the scene of one of the
key battles of the First Indochina War, the one between the French
and the Viet Minh, Ho’s resourceful and ruthless guerrilla army.
In those days Hoa Binh was the crossroads through which the
newly victorious Chinese communists supplied arms to their
Vietnamese allies. French control of this strategic spot would deny the
Viet Minh free movement of people and arms to the highland valleys.
It was Hoa Binh that showed the Viet Minh the route to victory,
serving as an overture to the French Gotterdammerung of Dien Bien
Phu (DBP), two years later and 400km deeper into the mountains of
the northwest.
Unlike DBP – a key battle in the history of warfare – Hoa Binh
is largely forgotten outside of Vietnam. It’s probably not even that
well-known amongst the country’s super-youthful population.
In fact, the whole of the 1946-1954 First Indochina War is one
the ‘forgotten wars’ in the aftermath of WWII. France was quick to
draw a veil over “Indochine – La Salle Guerre” [dirty war] which was
largely fought with troops forcefully recruited from France’s other
colonial possessions (two Moroccan companies played a big part at
Hoa Binh). These troops had extra reasons for resenting the
horrendous fighting conditions, and their sacrifice has been largely
forgotten.
24

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/VIETNAM
Left:
General Vo
Nguyen Giap
Middle:
Statue of
Ho Chi Minh
Right:
General de Lattre
de Tassigny
Below:
Hoa Binh dam
For French paratroopers and soldier in the Indochina war
Hoa Binh was meant to be a glorious fightback by the French. The
decision to fight at this remote but strategic crossroads was down to
France’s commanding General, the splendidly named Jean Marie
Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny. This tall, aristocratic personification of
la gloire was a hero of both World Wars, described by historian
Stanley Karnow as “a Gallic General Macarthur”.
Following a string of shock defeats for France in the first phases
of the war, de Lattre symbolised France’s determination to regain
pre-War colonial possessions. Vietnam was the jewel in the crown.
The appointment of such a paragon to this obscure colonial
theatre was also a remarkable compliment to the Viet Minh, whose
own commander Vo Nguyen Giap was a slight, boyish-looking
communist lawyer and history teacher.
De Lattre, whose only son had been killed in action in Vietnam
a few months previously, oversaw a strong fightback against the Viet
Minh in the Red River Delta, where Giap gambled on major attacks
on fortified French positions. But the French general was spared the
defeat of his Hoa Binh initiative, dying of cancer in a Paris hospital
while the fighting still raged.
The Hoa Binh plan was was to establish a strong position in a
remote area and lure the elusive Viet Minh into a pitched battle, in
which the might of French arms would prevail.
The French called the plan ‘Operation Meat Grinder’,
complacently expecting it to deliver a victory in time for domestic
elections. They ‘invaded’ undefended Hoa Binh in overwhelming style,
with paratroopers, ground forces and a naval attack up the Da River.
It was a massive punch, but it hit empty air. The Viet Minh did what a
guerrilla army always does, retreat back into the hills and jungles.
Massively reinforcing the town, they waited for enemy to bleed
himself while in a futile attempt to take their citadel. Pouring their
best troops into Hoa Binh, they stretched themselves thin elsewhere
in northern Vietnam, leaving themselves open to counterattack.
Giap, who was always prepared to sacrifice thousands more
men than any French or American commander, concentrated all
available force on Hoa Binh, where the French had reverted to the
kind of trench warfare that de Lattre would have remembered from
the Western Front. Repeated waves of Vietnamese attacks left a
carpet of Vietnamese bodies over the barbed wire.
The battle’s focus soon shifted to the approach road, Route 6 to
Hanoi which became a killing zone. For 25 miles, the approach road
became a French Calvary, where those attempting to supply the
remote garrison found that they were the meat in the grinder. Even
the Da River became a death trap, as Viet Minh frogmen attacked
military river traffic.
Overawed by the concentrated ferocity of the attack, and
haemorrhaging strength, the French made an ignominious retreat
from Hoa Binh in February 1952, fighting a desperate rear-guard
battle along the route back to Hanoi.
Did the French learn the lesson of ‘the Hell of Hoa Binh’?
Apparently not. Perhaps thinking that American dollars would
build them a stronger garrison next time, they repeated the same
tactic at Dien Ben Phu. But by that time the Viet Minh had learned
that a conscripted army, fighting in unfamiliar conditions against a
determined enemy would eventually crack.
Also Dien Bien Phu, where the French were drawn by Giap’s
tactical assault on the French protectorate of Laos, was far more
remote and far harder for the French to supply. To their horror, they
discovered that the Vietnamese could perform superhuman logistical
feats, pounding the garrison with heavy guns, while tunnelling
towards them from all angles. Defeat was total.
Pandaw passengers will see little in Hoa Binh to recall the birth
pangs of modern Vietnam 65 years ago. In any case, the country
naturally prefers to be appreciated for its extraordinary beauty and
the warmth of its welcome than for the pain inflicted on it by foreign
powers all those years ago.
Nevertheless visitors to today’s tranquil Hoa Binh should be
aware that they walk on hallowed ground.
25

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
LAOS
THE FINAL
FRONTIER
No visitor to the Laotian
capital Vientiane should
leave without visiting Pha
That Luang, the 45 metre
tall golden stupa four miles
from the city centre.
Only half the height
of Rangoon’s early medieval Shwedagon
Pagoda, That Luang is also much younger,
being a modern reconstruction of the heavily
damaged original. That was ordered by King
Saysetthathirath in 1566 to mark the
establishment of Vientiane as the Lao capital,
and was said to contain the breastbone of the
Lord Buddha.
Reconstruction or not, this triple-layered
symbolic mountain, gleaming gold and
surrounded by a battlement of mini-stupas is
a striking and distinctive icon of Laos’s
ancient nationhood and Buddhist piety. It has
been impressing Western travellers for over
370 years.
Pha That Luang stands out all the more
because landlocked Laos (population 6.7m)
lacks a critical mass of relics of its ancient
eminence. With no legacy akin to that of the
brick and stone-crazy kings who ordered
Angkor, Pagan and Ayuttaya, it’s easy to
assume that Laos was always a backwater,
whose mellow agrarian culture never rose
to great heights.
Easy but wrong. This fertile country,
which beats Burma and Cambodia in the
regional prosperity league, always had a rich
material culture. But its ancient palaces and
temples were made of wood and easily razed
over the centuries by the marauding Burmese,
Siamese, Vietnamese and Chinese armies.
Pha That Luang had its symbolic heyday
in the 17th century during in the 55-year reign
of the country’s greatest king Sourigna
Vongsa (r.1638-1695).
In the century after the defeat of the
over-extended Burma-based Toungoo Empire,
Sourigna was the military strongman who
held together the fractious micro-states of
Luang Prabang, Vientiene and Tran Ninh in
what was a golden age of the state of Lan
Xang, the old name for Laos.
He established peace with aggressive
neighbouring empires and turned Laos into a
hotbed of trade and learning, “a Buddhist
arcadia” according to the great South East
Asian historian DGE Hall. Monks and nuns
travelled there for religious study from
throughout South East Asia and literature, art,
music, and court dance flourished. Much of
what we know about Laos’ moment in the sun
is thanks to a Dutch East India company
functionary called Geeraerd Van Wuysthoff,
who left the first record of an expedition up
the Mekong river. He led an expedition up the
river, far more arduous than pampered
Pandaw passengers can imagine, that
climaxed at Pha That Luang in November
1641. This was the backdrop chosen by the
King to receive the first Westerner ever to visit
“the kingdom of the million elephants”.
“Hall writes:
“Sourigna Vongsa’s firm and just
rule gave his kingdom a
reputation for strength which
was sufficient to deter any
would-be aggressor from risking
an attack upon it”.
Van Wuysthoff’s four-month journey
from Phnom Penh to Vientiene from July
1641, one of the most detailed early
explorations of the river, was bad enough to
deter anyone from ever attempting to retrace
his steps. Like the mountains and the jungle,
the Mekong did its part to keep Laos
foreigner-free until the later 19th Century,
as his descriptions of the natural hazards like
the Khemmerat Rapids put paid to any
commercial hopes about the river being
a regional highway.
White faces were no big deal in much of
17th century South East Asia, but they
certainly were in remote Laos, a country
almost unknown in Europe. Van Wuysthoff
was a commercial mission, bearing a letter
from the Governor General of the Dutch East
India Anthony Van Diemen, intended to
secure Laotian supplies of gumlac and bezoin,
natural resins with multiple industrial
applications.
It is almost impossible to imagine in the
current age the extreme strangeness of this
inter-cultural encounter, more akin to an alien
landing than a trade mission. This being the
age of Rembrandt, we can imagine Van
Wuysthoff, and his two Dutch assistants (they
also brought two servants and a barber),
presumably in their Night Watch-style Sunday
best (ruffs, floppy hats and silk cummerbunds),
with Pha That Luang a gleaming backdrop,
kowtowing before the 20-something
generalissimo, Luckily they took notes.
The King arrived mounted on a white
elephant, with three hundred foot soldiers
and a contingency of war elephants with
armed riders and a troupe of musicians.
Following them was another contingent of
200 soldiers, 16 more elephants some
bearing the King’s five wives and their
attendants.
After cordial talks, in which the King
politely ruminated on the prospect of
receiving and reciprocating further missions,
the Dutch were treated to a characteristically
welcoming Lao entertainment, this one
including boxing, wrestling, fencing,
fireworks and dancing.
26

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/LAOS
Before returning to Cambodia in late
December 1641, Van Wuysthoff, a spy as well
as a merchant, amassed useful political
intelligence about the caravan routes to
Siam, about the country’s frosty
international relations, and about its
complex governing system before making
journeying back down the Mekong river.
It was a golden age for music,
architecture, sculpture, painting, gold and
silver work, basket work and weaving, all of
which are appreciated by Pandaw passengers
to this day.
“
His account, says Hall,
“seems to paint a faithful picture
of the prosperity of the kingdom
as well as of the number and
beauty of its pagodas and other
religious buildings.”
Just after van Wuysthoff’s visit, the
Jesuits, who were then all over South East
Asia penetrated this landlocked virgin
territory in the interior, where they were
tolerated by the Buddhist clergy for five
years, during which they failed to convert the
King, and failed to gain a lasting foothold for
the Church.
So what followed from these daring
probes into the mysterious interor? Not
much. With Sourigna Vongsa’s death the
country returned to the factional bloodletting
and regional rivalries that were the norm.
The king’s own son might have made a
difference, but he was executed for seducing
the wife of the chief of the corps of royal
pages. Sourigna Vosa could have intervened
to save his son’s life, but, stickler for law and
order that he was, declined to do so.
That was it in terms of Western
contacts with Laos for the next two hundred
years, until Henri Mouhot, the great French
explorer and ‘discoverer’ of Angkor arrived
in Luang Prabang on bullock cart. His
account of the country was published
posthumously as he died of a fever there in
1861 and is buried near the Nham Khan
river, a short tuk-tuk drive from Luang
Prabang. By that time the French were
eyeing up Laos as a buffer extension of their
Indochinese empire against Britishinfluenced
Siam, eventually turning it into a
‘protectorate’ in 1893.
I asked the Laotian Embassy in London
if there were any known images of Sourigna
Vosa, but apparently none exist, even in the
form of a modern idealised statue. Getting a
glimpse of Laos’ glory days requires a visit to
Pha That Luang and a good imagination.
27

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
First on the
MEKONG
Pandaw's inaugural voyage from Saigon to Angkor, 2002, by Barry Broman
It is no exaggeration to say that the British empire was built
by the sweat of Scotsmen, especially Burma and particularly
the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company of Glasgow (IFC). In its
heyday the IFC had the largest fleet of privately-owned
ships in the world. Alas, the fleet met an ugly end in 1942
when more than 600 vessels were scuttled in the Irrawaddy
and Chindwin rivers to avoid falling into the hands of the Imperial
Japanese Army. When in Rangoon in 1995, I met a young Scotsman,
Paul Strachan, who salvaged the RV Pandaw, an aging IFC ship, then
went on to build a new Scottish-owned river cruise company called
Pandaw.
Over the years I navigated the Irrawaddy, Mekong, Tonle Sap,
Ganges, Rajang (Borneo), and the Chindwin rivers on various
Pandaw small ships, usually as a working photographer and
occasionally lecturing. Travelling on a Pandaw ship is to step back in
time and there is no finer way to enjoy the great rivers of South East
Asia than on the teak deck of a Pandaw ship watching the landscape
pass gently by.
Every trip on a Pandaw is an adventure, albeit in luxury. In
2002 I almost experienced too much adventure when Paul invited
me to accompany him on the RV Mekong Pandaw maiden voyage up
the Mekong river from Saigon in Vietnam to Angkor Wat in
Cambodia. These days I rest easy when on a Pandaw voyage with
Paul as he is a master in fast thinking and problem solving.
We met in Saigon where I booked into the old colonial Majestic
Hotel, having previously stayed here in 1963 when on assignment
for the Associated Press from Bangkok. We set off from the port of
Saigon on the first and only voyage of the RV Mekong Pandaw that
would start from here, passed under the My Tho bridge, crossed the
Great Lake of Cambodia (the Tonle Sap) and returned to Saigon. The
canal was filled with exotic craft and a busy shoreline of Vietnamese
at work and play.
It was a good start to a voyage up the fabled Mekong although
the actual waters of the Mekong lay beyond the My Tho Bridge,
where clearance of the canal was going to be tight. The ship was
constructed to allow the railings to be lowered for this very situation
but they had been painted into position and would not fold down!
Reaching the bridge at full tide, it was clear that we wouldn’t
make it through. Despite the darkness, Paul arranged an impromptu
excursion ashore while we waited for the water level to drop. Paul
and I remained on the bridge with a lascar from the ship with a
measuring tape in hand as the ship pulled into the middle of the
Cho Gao Canal where the bridge was at its highest. Paul maintained
communication by mobile phone with the skipper as he approached
the bridge. It was going to be tight but we succeeded with a clearance
of only ten centimeters. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we
scrambled back on board, later learning that the crew had wagered
against our getting under the bridge. The odds were against our
making it but this was just another day at the office for Paul.
We reached the Mekong and motored up the delta towards
Cambodia, crawled through border control and steamed towards the
provincial town of Kompong Cham. As night fell, Paul decided it
would be necessary to tie up on the bank of a nearby village. One of
the many strengths of a Pandaw ship and crew of lascars, in the
finest tradition of the old IFC, was the ability to put in practically
anywhere. Of course there are no steps up the riverbank so the crew
swiftly dig steps out of the soft soil.
A crowd gathered to witness our unexpected visit. Using a
combination of Cambodian and French, I explained that we wanted
to explore the village before proceeding to Kompong Cham the next
morning; I also discovered it was Bon Om Tauk festival, known in
Thailand as Loy Krathong, when respect is paid to the river spirits
on the evening of full moon of the twelfth lunar month. Parcels
made of banana leaves are filled with offerings such as food,
28

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - PANDAW.COM/MEKONG
“
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY - Barry Broman
I was with the American Embassy when I met Paul in
Burma in ’95. We quickly became friends and I started
photographing his ships after I retired in ’96. As an
ambassador I served 20 years in Cambodia, Thailand, and
Indonesia as well as Paris. In 1963 I met my wife BJ at the
University of Washington where she was studying
Japanese and I was studying Thai and have since
celebrated 48 anniversaries together. She is from Hawaii,
being half Japanese and half Filipina. We have two sons
who work in graphic design and film editing.
incense, and candles, then floated down rivers or canals. Pandaw
passengers were invited to participate in this unexpected colorful
and ancient ritual to the delight of all concerned. Just another day
on a Pandaw river ship.
After Kompong Cham we proceeded to Phnom Penh where
Paul arranged a small cocktail party for passengers on board and
invited several VIP Cambodian guests including a few friends of
mine from the royal family. Entertainment was provided by a
classical Cambodian ballet troupe and Paul arranged a quick cruise
around the confluence of the rivers for his Cambodian guests.
Bidding farewell to Phnom Penh, we cruised up the Tonle Sap
river; rich in local riverine commerce and villages along the banks.
Most villages adhered to Theravada Buddhism but others had
mosques, belonging to the Muslim Cham minority. Many were
damaged or destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the seventies in their
bid to wipe out the Cham.
Finally we arrived at the lake which was very shallow and
featured a number of floating villages of fishermen. The floods here
produce an immense supply of fish, some weighing over 20kg! A
famous local product is fermented fish sauce, pra hok, esteemed by
Cambodians as a national treasure, but a challenging taste for
foreigners to acquire.
Across the lake and through a floating village, we moored near
the provincial town of Siem Reap, by the ruins of the great
Cambodian civilization of Angkor that flourished for hundreds of
years before falling to invading Siamese (Thai) in 1431 CE. Here our
journey ended although I spent a few days photographing around
Angkor Wat. A fresh group of passengers, mostly Japanese, waited to
take the Pandaw down to Saigon.
29

FLOTILLA NEWS - PANDAW.COM
PANDAW CHARITY
to open eighth Medical Clinic in Myanmar
On 12 December 2017 we held the ground breaking
for the new Pandaw central clinic at Pagan.
One monk has
loaned us the land
within the
protection of his
monastery and
work will begin immediately to
construct a two-storey building of
1200 square feet. This will, in
addition to consulting rooms,
contain an x-ray facility, ultrasound
room and a diagnostic lab.
The eight established Pandaw
clinics are all in villages within a
twenty mile radius of the central
clinic and when necessary the
medical team will be able to refer
patients to the central clinic for
further diagnosis. This year saw us
hit our 300,000th patient
treatment since inception in 2010.
All medications are provided
for free. Some of our clinics are
now over run. The Balin clinic
near the Pakokku bridge can now
get several hundred patients in a
day, many arriving the night
before to get in the queue.
The new central clinic will
cost USD50,000 to build and all
these clinics need money to keep
going. Any help you can give us
would be appreciated.
the
Supporting education and healthcare in Burma
PLEASE DONATE, FOR DETAILS SEE WWW.PANDAWCHARITY.COM
34

DISCOvEr mOrE vISIT - WWW.PANDAW.COM/MEMBERS/JOIN
B E C O M E A M E M B E R
Pandaw has launched an innovative new members Club for our past guests
with future travel plans. Loyal Pandaw fans can now enjoy an enticing array
of special privileges and exclusive benefits on future expeditions:
• Complimentary Unlimited House Wine Package on joining
• USD100 discount per person on any pre or post expedition booking
• Featured discounts exclusive to Pandaw Members Club on our website
• USD50 credit per person for personal laundry services on board
Pandaw invites you to join our new Members Club
and enjoy loyalty privileges as a valued previous guest.
Take the incentive and become part of this integral
addition to our Pandaw Community today. With
approximately 47% of our guests returning to
experience our unique service, often several times,
Pandaw would like to reward their support.
Free wine
package
worth up to $220
Join our Members Club to
enjoy your gift of selected
old and new world house
wines on the next expedition
you book with Pandaw.
Free
laundry
service
worth $50
A practical and generous
gift for personal laundry
services on board.
Pre/Post
expedition
discount
worth $100
Exclusive discount on any
extension you book with
your next Pandaw
expedition.
How do I become a member?
Becoming a member is easy. If you book directly, just go to www.pandaw.com and click JOIN NOW button. If you
book through a Travel Agent, then simply register your name and email address after clicking the JOIN NOW button
and Pandaw will issue you a Member ID which your Travel Agent can enter with your passenger information.
The Members Club is a complimentary program offered to all guests who have previously sailed with Pandaw and
applies to all future bookings made from the launch of this program on the 12th of May 2017.
35

Small Ships,
REMOTE RIVERS
BEST RIVER CRUISE
LINE FOR
ADVENTURE
BEST RIVER CRUISE
LINE FOR
SOLO TRAVELLERS
UK & EUROPE
USA & CANADA
AUSTRALIA
REST OF THE WORLD
+44 (0)208 3967320
information@pandaw.com
Toll Free 1 844 3616281
usa@pandaw.com
+61 2 8006 7013
information@pandaw.com
+84 985 417 758
information@pandaw.com
W W W . P A N D A W . C O M