Hpa-An

The plain around Hpa-An was Mon country long before it was Karen. The Mon kingdom centred on Thaton, north-west of here, was the earliest known civilisation of lower Burma, and the votive tablets and carvings packed into the caves near the town were left by Mon donors over several centuries, some of them dating from the period before Anawrahta of Bagan conquered Thaton in 1057. The limestone hills, riddled with caves and easy to defend, drew hermits and monks throughout that time.

Karen migration into the hills and plains of the southeast continued over centuries, and by the colonial period the Karen were the dominant population here. Britain took Tanintharyi after the First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824 to 1826 and the rest of lower Burma in 1852, and American Baptist missionaries converted a substantial Karen minority to Christianity, opening schools that produced much of the Karen elite. Hpa-An remained a modest river town, trading rice, teak and rubber down the Thanlwin to Moulmein.

After independence the Karen National Union took up arms in 1949, beginning one of the world's longest insurgencies, and the countryside around the town has lived with that conflict ever since. Hpa-An became the capital and largest city of Kayin State and grew as its administrative centre, with universities and a market serving the surrounding townships. From the 1990s it attracted travellers heading between Yangon and the Thai border; since the 2021 coup the southeast has again been one of the main theatres of the war.

Hpa-An is the cultural centre of the Karen, or Kayin, a people made up of related groups including the Sgaw and Pwo, each with its own language. Religion is mixed: most Karen here are Theravada Buddhist, a significant minority are Christian, and older animist practice survives in village ritual. Monasteries, churches and cave shrines all belong to the same landscape, and pilgrimage to the caves and to the summit of Zwegabin is a normal part of religious life.

The Karen New Year, a public holiday falling in December or January, is the main public celebration, marked with processions, woven tunics and skirts in red and white, and the don dance and bamboo dance, in which dancers step between poles clapped together in rhythm.

Weaving is the best-known local craft: hand looms produce the striped and embroidered tunics worn at festivals, and the work is sold in the town's market. Manners follow the wider Burmese pattern — modest dress, quiet voices, elders greeted first, shoes removed at religious sites — and, as elsewhere in the country, political conversation is avoided with strangers. Many families here have relatives working in Thailand or living in camps along the border, and that shapes much of what people discuss among themselves.

About 75,000 people lived in Hpa-An at the 2014 census, with many more in the villages of its township across the plain; it is the largest city in Kayin State. It is a government and market town: the state administration, universities, hospitals and the wholesale trade in rice, rubber, fruit and vegetables from the surrounding countryside all sit here, and the roads through it carry traffic between Yangon, Mawlamyine and the east.

Farming sets the rhythm outside town — paddy fields worked through the monsoon, rubber tapping, betel and fruit gardens — while in town the market opens before dawn, offices and schools run through the morning, and the afternoon heat empties the streets until evening. Motorcycles are the way almost everyone travels, and houses are low, of brick, wood and bamboo, with trees and palms between them.

Labour migration is central to the local economy. Very large numbers of Karen work in Thailand, legally and otherwise, and the money they send home supports whole villages; others have lived for decades in camps on the Thai side of the border. Since 2021 fighting in the countryside has displaced many thousands more, fuel and food prices have risen sharply, and electricity, mobile signal and internet are cut for long periods. Checkpoints and curfews are part of ordinary movement.

Cooking here blends Karen, Mon and Bamar traditions with the produce of a hot, wet plain. Rice is the centre of every meal, served with a curry of fish, pork or chicken cooked in oil with garlic, turmeric and chilli, a clear soup, and a tray of raw and steamed vegetables with ngapi yay, the thin dip of fermented fish or shrimp paste that gives southern food its salty depth. Sour curries and soups flavoured with tamarind or lime are common.

The Thanlwin and the paddy fields supply freshwater fish, which is grilled over charcoal, fried, or fermented and dried for the market. Karen village cooking uses bamboo shoots, jackfruit, banana flower, wild greens and a good deal of chilli, and dishes are often steamed in banana leaf or cooked in a length of green bamboo. Mon influence from downriver shows in sweets made with palm sugar, coconut and rice flour.

Breakfast is mohinga, the fish and rice-noodle soup eaten across the country, or noodles with coconut broth, bought from a stall or a teashop. Teashops serve strong tea with condensed milk and fried snacks from before dawn, and the market sells tropical fruit from the surrounding orchards: durian, mangosteen, rambutan, jackfruit and pomelo in season. Betel is chewed widely here, and stalls selling leaves, lime paste and areca nut stand on most streets.