Myanmar (Burma) travel today shopping pictures jade ruby plus Yangon map & Irrawadd cruise: Irrawaddy Cruise around Mogok

The River around Mogok, Myanmar's ruby land

The city has a small river port for Irrawaddy cruises to stop, and it needs a adventures drive to reach Mogok. Sometimes this is possible, next times not, they are afraid of foreigner to come in and smuggle. Actually the natives are the real smugglers they know this very well but will never admit to anything embarrassing, they just lie this is more convenient.

During British times all this was quite open accessible, they had one local person who handled the whole and paid taxes, they say. The operations must have been difficult since there was, similar to today, no infrastructure, no real roads, people just walked or used the ox cart. One more problem were the bandits who try to steal the precious stones the people carried from Mogok to the river and further down. There was a real "helter skelter".

Life on the river around Mogok

By the end of the last millennium someone started a helicopter service between the city and Mandalay, they used one of this old Russian MI-18 but didn't survive it was simply to costly.

Sailing on the Ayeyarwady

Life is just going on the old fashion way by rowing and sailing.

This part of Burma is also rich in gold which they wash out from the river, it's not particular much but the stream carries plenty of the yellow metal down from the extensions of the Tibetan Himalayas and for some

reason it settles here.

Considering the precious stones, ruby, sapphire and other plus the gold

makes this area quite a rich one in terms of minerals and metals. Currently (2014) there is some serious gold exploration underway since there are promising spots to dig for much more. The do the same for diamonds although they are not many and big as in south Africa.

Lazy on the stream

Ceramics are produced since hundred of years and shipped downstream, there is another production center near Yangon in Twante where the whole village lives from making pots and bigger vessels which are shipped to many places in south Myanmar.