Left: One of the Orcaella’s 25 spacious cabins. Below: Captain Thein Tun has piloted craft on the Irrawaddy for 40 years. Opposite: River views from the Orcaella’s observation deck.

W“We call this time of day a kyi tan hla chain,” says Soe Kyaw Thu, a bespectacled young man from Bagan with an immaculately tied

longyi and a wide grin. “It means ‘ the perfect time for ugly things.’ ” We’re standing on a darkening riverbank at a bend in the Irrawaddy near Gwechaung village, a dusty hamlet whose sole distinction is its proximity to a ruined 19th-century fort built to ward off British troop ships. The sun, deep-orange and fat, is sinking below a distant line of palm trees on the far shore, casting a mellow, slanting light across the cracked earth at our feet. It’s an undeniably gorgeous time of day, when even the unbeautiful, to paraphrase Soe, takes on a beautiful quality. Or so I suppose. After five days cruising up the Irrawaddy through the bucolic floodplains of central Myanmar, I haven’t seen much that would qualify as ugly.

Our boat, backlit by the setting sun, is the Orcaella. She’s a