Where in the world is Pyin Oo Lwin?

MANILA, Philippines - I swear it could have been Baguio. Or I may have awakened from a dream and found myself in a place very familiar, with strawberry jam being sold by the roadside and coffee trees shaded by tall pines and trees which looked a little foreign yet familiar.

You would think Baguio, correct? Well, it is 1100 meters or some 3535 feet above sea level and this is Pyin Oo Lwin. Located in the center of Myanmar, the city is home to coffee plantations and vineyards.

After just a 40-minute drive up sloping terrain from downtown Mandalay, the temperature drops and becomes a cool 13 degrees. Locals say it sometimes drops to 3 degrees and we were quite ready for this experience as we took along thick jackets and scarves.

Pyin Oo Lwin was the British hill station during colonial times, similar to how Camp John Hay was the R&R station of the American forces in the past. Foreigners know where to get cool climes and this area was developed to cater to visitors with hotels and many restaurants offering western, local as well as Chinese cuisine. And what else is similar to Baguio? They have the National Defense College in Maymyo, Pyin Oo Lwins’ other name, as we have the Philippine Military Academy in our Baguio. It was like seeing a parallel universe.

But the similarities end there. Here, the national highway leads to China. You can actually drive for about 700-plus kilometers north to get to Yunnan, China. Truckloads of merchandise and other essentials travel to and fro and the highway is very busy. The local markets teem with Chinese and Indian goods, as India is also a neighbor of Myanmar.

But for a bit of history, do you know why many officials then hired not locals, but Nepalese staff? Drivers, guards and bodyguards were recruited from Nepal. They are known to be Buddhists and vegetarians and are believed to have no material attachments, not greedy, making them perfect loyal servants. So up to today you will still see some Nepalese people in Mandalay.

The local cuisine has mixed influences of all the countries I have named – India to the west, Thailand to the east and China to the north. The vegetables, though all locally grown, are cooked in Myanmar style but with spices borrowed from its neighbors. Even a milk dessert served us tasted like a “mestizo” Gulab Jamun – milk balls in a milk curd that is a Nepalese contribution.

The accommodations are aplenty due to many tourists who come for the cool weather, the historical places, lakes and parks  which are all- natural. We stayed in Aureum Palace, bungalows set amidst a vineyard right in front of the governor’s house, now more of a museum than a residence.  Yes, they have wine, influenced by German and Italian vintners who came to teach the locals how to grow the right grape varieties.

What else to do in Pyin Oo Lwin? Visit a coffee farm like the Sithar Coffee Farm by Lake Sithar. It’s just a ten-minute drive from our hotel and the experience during harvest season is unforgettable. It’s 40 acres of Arabica coffee trees planted under Silver Oak shade trees. After a hike around the property you get treated to a nice hand-ground, hand-dripped cup of their single-estate coffee, best taken with homemade cashew cookies.

We were given native baskets which you sling over your shoulder and chest and you just go from one tree to the next, picking only the ripest red coffee fruits or cherries, as they are called at this stage. It is an experience every coffee drinker must try. Once you feel the coffee cherries one by one, and hear them drop in your basket, you will remember not to waste a drop of coffee ever again. It’s not easy to fill a basket with the cherries, which will then be washed and pulped, dried in the sun until it’s ready for roasting. Quite a long journey before it becomes your morning cup of joe.

After the coffee tour, treat yourself to lunch at Pann Taw Win, a café and restaurant owned by the same family who owns Sithar Farm. They serve local food as well as a filling Chinese hotpot which a group of four or five can enjoy. The coffee is the star at this café, of course. Sithar’s blends are served and coffee beans are also for sale. As well as a coffee supermarket for the third wave or regular coffee enthusiast. There are hand grinders, coffee pots, cold brew paraphernalia. I could stay there all day just checking each piece of equipment for coffee. These guys are serious about spreading the coffee craze. Myanmar is now one of the newest “origins” for Asian coffee and the domestic market has assimilated the coffee culture.

“Today’s youth in Myanmar do not go to tea houses anymore,” says Maria, our guide and general manager of Sithar Coffee. So Maria and her boss Tin Tin Win want to make sure they supply the coffee enthusiasts with good coffee and the geekery that every new well-meaning café wants to have. The team is fired up by Thu Zaw and Min Hlaing, the two men who make sure Sithar’s strategy of “crop to cup” is well-executed. Give Pyin Oo Lwin a try. Fly to Mandalay from Bangkok and drive up a steady sloping drive to 3,500 feet above sea level. Maymyo? Pyin Oo Lwin? You will think you’ve been here before.