BEAUTY SPOT OF FAR EAST

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160723, 9 August 1920, Page 5

BEAUTY SPOT OF FAR EAST

Burma is thus described in an article in The Times of May 25th: As a mere playground, the country is worth visiting. The Mergui Archipelago is far finer than the Inland Sea of Japan. There is striking scenery on parts of the Irrawaddy-, but these are more trifling samples compared with the grandeur of the Salwebn, a magnificent canon rift from Ivaren-ni to Tibet.

There are far more beauty spots in half a hundred places in the plains and in the hills, finer than anything in Japan or in India, and infinitely beyond the hackneyed Rhine. There are quaint tribes in far-away spots that are gradually becoming accessible; women with brass collars of copper tubing over a foot high; women with Plantagenet hate hung with tiny dried gourds and seeds and beads and cowries and coins; women with headdresses like those of the Alsatian women, who go out to hoe the fields or fetch water, with ‘jewellery on their arms, logs and in their turbans; women, like those of Chiengmai, which the Burmans called Zimme, who do not think hj necessary to wear anything above' the waist; women, like the Wa, who do not find it necessary to wear anything at all when there are only the neighbours about and the weather is hot". Then there axe the men—the Muhso, who can hit a threepenny bit at twenty paces with their crossbow arrows; Kashins, who used to whip out their swords if you tried to pass them on the left side of the road; Wa. whom it is not wise to go near about March, when heads are ■wanted for the skull avenues. finally, there are the Burmese themselves, men and) women, rainbow-silken clad,’ the most engaging race in the East, and the most easy-going and friendly.