Taking things slow by train makes the journey more rewarding, Tatyana Kildisheva finds.

Traveling to Myanmar felt like going 50 years back in time. Most people fly within the country but my partner John and I chose to move around using the British built railway system and local buses.

Myanmar is an incredible country with amazing, hospitable people who are happy to pose for photos and are always smiley. Most wear traditional clothes and apply thanaka – a yellow paste – on their faces, mostly the cheeks. It looks quite comical initially, but we get used to it. We are frequently approached by giggling youngsters to take photos together – most of them have smartphones.

Myanmar feels like a time machine; everything they use is from the distant past, from handwritten signs, to asphalt roads built by hand. In Mandalay, we witness cargo loading on ships by women carrying boxes stocked up on their heads – up to three meters high.

Train tickets are sold strictly at the station with no computer system and issued by hand. Foreigners pay a higher ticket price – still as cheap at $3 USD for a long journey – and are mostly traveling in ‘upper class’ cars with more comfortable seats.

There’s an immense strength and skill to carrying such weight around.

Yangon’s traffic is as busy as most of Southeast Asia. There’s a ton of betel nuts sold – a local concoction of areca nuts, tobacco and spices on leaves of betel plants that you chew – and the surrounding old buildings are layered with antennas and Buddhist paraphernalia. Enormous Buddhist temples are everywhere with many vendors selling all kinds of statues and such – it’s a little overwhelming.

The people appear to be deeply religious. The majority of the Bamar – Myanmar’s ethnic majority – are Theravada Buddhists. No shoes are allowed in Buddhist temples, not even socks – hence the signs in broken English.

There’s lots of food cooked and sold right on the street, and it’s very cheap and delicious. Visiting tourist sites is expensive for foreigners, though free for locals. Huge markets can be found everywhere, selling plenty of fruit, vegetables and textiles. The contrast between modern advertising and the slow archaic pace of life is striking. Beautiful batiks are sold everywhere, all with gorgeous colours.

We take old colonial trains all over the country – the most epic of the lot is through the mountains where the train zigzags 1,400 meters up and down the mountain. It takes 11 hours for a journey of 140km. Why so long just for a short distance? We do it just for the sake of taking the train – and it’s worth it. We witness huge pigs being loaded on the train, making lots of noise.

Myanmar is an incredible country with amazing, hospitable people.

With good roads absent, locals transport everything on these trains – from grain and vegetables to all kinds of goods, goats, pigs, you name it. While in transit many different vendors come in with various cooked foods. They are clearly not used to seeing westerners on this train. We enjoy their respective manners as they don’t try to solicit our business. Intrigued, we buy all the local tasty fare.

It’s challenging to move around as we take local buses and trains, and sometimes it’s not clear how to find our way but this is the best part of any adventure. Overland travel is a bit tricky but very doable and in the following few days we take different modes of transportation, including a 50-year-old British train: very slow, violently shaking, bouncing and swaying. It feels like an unleashed galloping horse.

We take a boat up the river to the next destination – a big kayak with plastic outdoor chairs in rows of two for 12 people, and the captain. The ride up the muddy river, seeing all the fishermen and villages, takes about three hours.

After reaching a town, we try to catch a bus to the next town, but it’s full. We get the tickets for the evening bus and take a tuk-tuk to see a cave temple. The cave is gentrified, with tiles and not that impressive, but the road leading to the temple is mesmerising, muddy and bumpy with thousands of statues of monks standing along it.

Back to town we go, waiting for the bus – it takes about two and a half hours to reach the next town, where we sleep. We get dropped off at the bus station and in a pitch black night, not a single light pole along the road, are taken by two motorbike taxis – we don’t fit on one with our two backpacks – to the nearest guesthouse. It’s pretty clean, and even has a hot shower, which is a rarity.

The view from our train journey.

We wake up needing to figure out how to get to the next town, where we could pick up the other transport to the famous Golden Rock Buddhist Temple – where a huge golden boulder is balancing on the side of the mountain supported only by a single hair from Buddha himself. After a bit of incomprehensible explanations from the locals, we take a motorbike ‘taxi’ again to the official station, where the pilgrimage to the Golden Rock starts.

There are hundreds of pilgrims around – the pilgrimage of locals to Buddhist sites is unparalleled. People are loaded into the big open trucks, about 50-60 people into each truck. The ride is only $2.50 USD, and it takes about an hour to get up to 1,100 meters where a path to the Golden Rock starts. It’s not for faint-hearted. The drivers speed up and down the narrow hairpin road at a dangerous speed, driving pretty recklessly. Hundreds of local pilgrims at the top slowly walk to the rock, some of them carried by special rickshaws when they cannot walk.

The Golden Rock is pretty impressive, and there is a huge sign that women aren’t allowed to come close – while men are free to go up to it and apply a golden leaf. After seeing the rock there is a stampede to get onto the truck ride down, as scary, with even more people in the truck packed like sardines.

Bago fishermen.

I am sandwiched between my partner John and a grandma who makes a special pack of a green leaf, lime paste and betel nut, and chews it, showing me her red mouth and gums.

The excitement is now over, and we are down the mountain transferring to another local bus, retired from Japan 25 years ago with original Japanese glass chandeliers – very dusty ones – swaying on the ceiling, with working air conditioning and a huge flat-screen TV in the front to gawk at. Before the ride the driver distributes small black plastic bags to the people who are chewing betel nut – so they don’t spit on the floor. Everyone is chewing and spitting – excluding kids and the two tourists.

Trekking from Kalaw Village to Inle Lake in three days is one of the most memorable moments – we enjoy walking through mountains and villages, sleeping in villagers houses, all the while seeing beautiful scenery of farmland and mountains. Women are harvesting chillies with babies on their backs – babies also hold chillies like it’s a toy.

While travelling by train takes longer, the journey is much more rewarding.

The Inle Lake boat ride has a special place in my heart. So much is happening around the lake: starting from floating vegetable farms where most of Myanmar’s tomatoes are grown, fishermen throwing their nets at sunrise, silversmiths workshops with jewellery, longneck tribe women hand weaving and selling their garments, and ending up with magnificent Thousands Stupas Buddhist Temple – a must see.

We planned to travel around Myanmar on a budget. With an exchange rate of 10,000 Myanmar Kyat equalling USD $10, in 28 days we manage to see most of the country including airfares, for around SGD $100 a day. Lots of travel is done by the old British trains that are swaying and bouncing. It takes a very long time to get places – but where else can you experience a train travel from your parents’ childhood?

The seventh annual Volunteer of the Year Awards (VOYA) is in the horizon, and that means sending in your votes on who you think deserves to be commended for their passion, dedication and generosity.

The Volunteer of the Year Awards celebrates our dedicated volunteers who are the lifeblood of the Association. Whether it’s through our sporting groups, monthly tours, interest groups or charitable work, ANZA volunteers are truly the dynamic force of our community. Each and every volunteer has been – and continues to be – an integral and valuable part of the ANZA team.

Close to 200 turned up to the Australian High Commission last May to thank ANZA’s dedicated volunteers, who constantly offer more of their time and effort to the association than was ever expected of them, at the sixth annual Volunteer of the Year Awards. The Australian High Commissioner to Singapore Award went to Sarah Anglade of ANZA Soccer. The New Zealand High Commissioner to Singapore Award was given to Louise Pike of ANZA Netball. The ANZA Action in the Community Award was awarded to Sandra Poh of ANZA Action. The Outstanding Service to ANZA Awards went to Gina Kubal and Halyna English, both from ANZA Soccer. The ANZA Members’ Choice Award went to Marcel De Bruijckere of ANZA Soccer. The President’s Award went to James Mansfield-Page of ANZA Scouts. Have a look at some of the photos of the night here.

ANZA’s Charities Patron Antonia Kidman.

Volunteers can be nominated from any facet of the Association. We want to see representatives from ANZA interest groups and ANZA sports, as well as those who help out behind the scenes in any other capacity. The conditions are as follows:

• Both the nominee and nominator must be current ANZA members.
• Nominations must be received by 5pm on Friday 5 May.
• ANZA members can nominate as many people as they choose, but can nominate the same person only once.
• The volunteering activity must be for ANZA.

So what are you waiting for? Get nominating today!

Click to nominate.

The Seletar area in the north-east is beginning to take flight, Gerard Ward says.

Never have I been out this far north-east of Singapore. This is definitely not a short walk destination. Known as The Oval, this clump of black-and-white bungalows nearby the Seletar Aerospace Park are in the process of being restored as part of a neighbourhood revamp. Once housing Royal Air Force officers before World War II, these houses are now being developed into restaurants and residential units.

Some of these bungalows have already been cleaned up, with brand new paint and electricity installed – most of them didn’t come with electricity. There’s a fair amount of effort being put in to turn Seletar into an attractive neighbourhood. There’s a playground being built with shapes of planes and control towers, and even a nearby park is being built for people to gawk at the private jets and planes on the Seletar Airport strip. By the entrance to your left as you approach The Oval is Wildseed Café. The café is a mixture of a modern coffee shop – with wood tables and shelves selling some take-home goodies – and a florist. At the time of visiting the café and adjacent restaurant The Summerhouse – also owned by the same group who owns Stellar at 1-Altitude – had been open only three weeks, yet a wedding and private event was held mere days before.

Florian Ridder, the Hamburg-born Head Chef of Wildseed and The Summerhouse, explains the arduous process of installing modern amenities to these bungalows. ‘We’re still waiting for the internet to be installed,’ Florian says, highlighting the fact orders need to be taken and delivered by hand. Wildseed is where you can get your sandwiches, cold-pressed juices and smoothies – as well as the café’s homemade jams and chutneys you can buy to take home. The ‘Berry-Gizers’ ($6) is a smoothie made with frozen berries, granola, yoghurt and orange zest – a bit thick to use a straw at first. The latte ($5), made with locally roasted beans from Nomad the Gallant, is velvety, and comes with a tiny, lemony Madeline cake.

The Morocano and curly fries from Wildseed.

Among the list of sandwiches available is the pulled pork series, as well as the braised beef brisket series – the latter catches my eye, and I order The Morocano ($18), a burger on rye bread with eggplant stew, feta cheese, sautéed pak choi, hummus and sesame. The beef is succulent, a bit chewy, and the sandwich becomes a mess – though I do not mind considering I am starving. The super thin curly fries ($5) with ketchup and soy sauce seaweed mayo is less potato chip and more fried potato shavings – something I’ve never had before, though I assume kids would love it more than their calorie-counting parents. Afterwards, I walk across to have a look at The Greenhouse space next door. Not a massive space compared to most wedding venues, the mirrored roof, bespoke lights and revamped bungalow interior gives quite an impressionable feeling in the room. There’s even a table with samples of the outside edible garden – trying to highlight the farm-to-table concept that restaurants in town are beginning to embrace more wherever possible.

Walking outside and towards the next large bungalow, Wheeler’s Estate – the newest venture from the people who brought you Wheeler’s Yard – has its quintessential silver-coloured Airstream mobile caravan sitting on the front yard. Outside is a picnic area, where people can go grab a basket with sandwiches and drinks made by the café and throw a blanket down anywhere on the green grass – or the picnic tables scattered nearby its BBQ shack. An upcoming feature expected around May of this year will be the ability to rent bikes and ride around – either taking a peek at the nearby airstrip to watch planes, or riding all the way over to sister venue Wheeler’s Yard 33 kilometres away via the PCN route.

Peruvian BBQ chicken from Wheeler’s Estate.

Before arriving I heard that the restaurant’s menu included chicken parmigiana ($29), a favourite pub meal among Aussies with its breaded chicken, ham, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese smothered on top. Unfortunately there’s none ready for lunch, so I opt for the Peruvian BBQ chicken ($32) – a spicy red, tender chicken with bones left in, and some crunchy fries.
Chef Jayd Kitt pops out for a chat about the foods he’s hoping to bring to the restaurant, including making sure it’s ‘unpretentious and a bit rustic. ‘We don’t want to alienate a demographic just because of where we are,’ he says. ‘Coming this far out from the CBD, people are looking for a place where they can relax. We think there’s something really special about this place where you can throw down a blanket, have a couple of sandwiches and relax.’

There’s one cafe that has been around longer than any of these newer places. Soek Seng 1954 Bicycle Café has been around for just over a year, but has already become a favourite for cyclists as a fuelling station. The café itself is decked out in all sorts of memorabilia and paintings adorning the walls. While it’s not the easiest place to access – you have to walk into private grounds of MAJ Aviation to get to it – this is the closest you will ever get to drinking a coffee metres away from an airstrip in Singapore.

The view of Seletar Airport from Soek Seng 1954 Bicycle Café.

There is literally a barbed wire fence keeping you from Seletar Airport, and for fans of planes big and small, there’s something special about being so close to them. The menu is a bit of Western and Japanese, with mostly fried foods, so it’s not so much the food as it is enjoying the location. While sipping on a latte ($5) I count the number of windows on the closest planes – from a 40-window plane to a tiny 6-window jet. Seletar isn’t the first space most would associate as ‘trendy’, though surely it will be very soon.

New Zealand actress Marilyn White reveals her process in finding her opposite as Celia in the upcoming show, Calendar Girls.

 How did you first get involved with the Stage Club?
After my first year in Singapore, I needed something that fed my soul and passion for the arts. I saw an audition with the Stage Club and decided I’d go for it. That was two years ago. I landed a role in the production which just so happened to be directed by [director] Susie Penrice-Tyrie whom I now have the privilege of working with again in Calendar Girls.

How long have you been acting for?
When I was a little girl, about five or so, my older sister would make my younger sister and I perform in little productions for our family; I loved performing ever since. My multi-cultural background saw me live in several countries, so the one place I can consistently call home is the stage.

What is the show all about?
Calendar Girls is about a group of women – all very unique and individual, but also similar for their adoration of each other – who are a part of a very conservative women’s organisation. Sadly, cancer steals the life from a beautiful man, the husband of Annie, whom the women decide to commemorate – and also raise funds for cancer – by creating a calendar of the women posing nude while doing everyday things such as sewing or baking. In a conservative English town, you can only imagine how that pans out for them.

Have you all been given the task of putting on Yorkshire accents?
Thankfully, we have not been handed the heavy task of speaking in a Yorkshire accent. Although on saying that, there are quite a few cast members from the UK, so they nearly have it. Sometimes my American accent sounds Irish but I don’t think that counts.

Cast members of Calendar Girls.

Have you ever been involved in a fundraising project as daring as this?
Actually, in a way I have. I participated in two Body Arts competitions in New Zealand which raised funds and awareness for the arts and artists who entered the competition. It was the most nerve-racking thing to parade on stage in front of hundreds of people adorned only in paint and the incredible vision of the artists; but after I did it, a sense of lightness and freedom surged through me. I would do it again – just as I’m sure the real Calendar Girls would create their calendar again.

What do you hope audiences will take away after seeing the show?
Empathy. Each character in the play struggles with something real which anyone in the audience watching can either relate to or understand. Even if it was one audience member who walked away feeling more empathy towards others and their struggles in life, I will be a happy and fulfilled person.

Calendar Girls is playing at the SOTA Studio Theatre from 8-12 March.

The Australian Co-Captain of Super Rugby’s Sunwolves and former player of Queensland Reds talks about the upcoming season.

Last time you were here in Singapore you got to climb up to the top of the National Stadium.
Yeah, I was the first person to climb up there that wasn’t part of the construction staff or staff legally allowed to go up there, which was a bit of a buzz. It was great being in Singapore.
Everything from waveriding to tasting Singapore food and looking around…it was a pretty hectic schedule, but I think it was a good crash course on what Singapore’s all about. Hopefully next time I might get to kick my feet up a little bit.

The sunwolves are based in Japan. Have you travelled a lot before joining the team?
Yeah, I played professional rugby in Brisbane where I grew up, and we obviously travelled a lot. I’ve seen a lot of the world through rugby, and been very privileged and lucky to see so much – from the likes of Dubai, Las Vegas, Argentina to name a few. Obviously we travel a lot to South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and we’re ducking up to Argentina, and we call Singapore home as well for our Super Rugby journey for this year.

After a year with the Sunwolves you’re now co-captain. What’s it like to take on that role?
It’s pretty surreal. I was a bit nervous because I get a yellow card every now and then. [Laughs] That’s not due to me, that’s just other blokes that lead me on to that kind of stuff.
All jokes aside, I was really privileged to say ‘yes’. I feel that they gave me a couple of days to think about it, because it’s a big task, and you never want to be taken away from your rugby. I’m still young, and there’s a lot more experienced and eligible guys to become candidates for captain.
I want the players on my side, but I’m not going to change the person that I am – and not how I play my game and go about my business on and off the field. I think I always use this terminology, but it’s really good to grow as a bloke on and off the field, as well as a player.
I think captaincy matures you a bit, and I’ve always looked up to captains themselves to lead, but we’ve got a good 50 guys and staff that are all going to be working in one squad to get the results.

Do you have any favourite foods or places in Japan that you’ve fallen in love with?
The Italian food [Laughs]. Just everything. The way of life here…coming from Australia, it’s a different kettle of fish over there. I’ve grown up there my whole life, but to come here and just to see how respectful everyone is, and how the general public are willing to help at the drop of a hat.
I don’t really know, there’s just so much I haven’t seen as people who were born and grew up here, but I’m hoping to spend a lot more time here and learn a lot more about Japan.
I’ve been told not to look at eye-level, but to look up. You always look on ground level for restaurants and shops, but it’s what’s above you on the tenth level where all the good stuff is.

The Sunwolves will be playing at the Singapore National Stadium against the Kings on 4 March, the Stormers on 25 March, and the Sharks on 20 May.