October 20th, 2007 
Sheila Simkin Transferred to the Sittwe jetty for departure by private boat to Mraul U up the Kaladan River. There are different boat options for transport. Approaching the jetty, I saw this huge, rusted out, decrepit boat and thought…”oh my God…don’t tell me that’s our boat.” It wasn’t. It is the Government-owned boat! Our little boat was sitting behind it. There is the Government boat, cargo boats, small private boats and a passenger craft that only sails twice a week. The journey usually takes between 4 to 7 hours depending on how you hit the currents because the Bay of Bengal converges here in the Delta.
The first two hours was quite boring, the water choppy and cold. I had envisioned this river trip as being narrow and scenic. Was I ever wrong! The boat traveled through the wide delta of sea water, too far from shore to see anything and it wasn’t until around 9:30 am that the journey became interesting…bring a book…View image…
The villagers along the shore catch little shrimp and boat traffic was constantly on the look out for nets strung across the river (that is the reason Diethelm doesn’t like to use the faster boats). The most interesting river sight was the bamboo rafts. The bamboo logs are lashed together into one huge, long raft, then floated downstream with pieces sold off to the locals.
A stupa in the distance…View image…river traffic…
and we were there…this is Mrauk U.
I could have sworn the Mrauk U jetty was part of the African Queen movie set and I kept waiting for Humphrey Bogart to appear. This was definitely a remote, untouristed destination. Motoring up to this teeny, tiny, dusty, ramshackle village for a three-night stay, the thought kept running through my mind…”we came so far to see this?”… And don’t even ask me how to pronounce “Mrauk U”…Toe kept repeating it…I kept pronouncing it incorrectly and finally gave up. You drop the “M” and make a vigorous throat-clearing noise to pronounce it correctly.
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