Random Brain Bursts

From The Mountains ... To the Ocean Post # 2

Our last day in Bagan, while touring yet another pagoda, we stumbled across a very sweet Burmese man selling sand paintings in a dank room. I noticed his wife and small children huddled together in the shadows of the room. When I went to see what they were doing, I realized that the wife was teaching the 4 yr. old how to speak and write English with homemade flash cards. We sat together for a long while as she showed me what he (his name is Phyo Phyo) can do. Incredibly, he has an English vocabulary of 68 words, all of which he can spell, write and draw perfectly, including "umbrella", "table", etc. I don't know another 4 yr. old who can do this, let alone in a second language -- and this is a child who has had absolutely no advantages other than devoted, incredibly poor parents. They all sit on the bare concrete and earthen floor of a dimly lit back room in the pagoda all day every day while the dad tries to sell his paintings. We have informally adopted the family and they now FB us each night in their broken English. We hope the relationship lasts a very long time.

Our next flight took us to Inle Lake, home to Intha fishermen who do a jaw dropping balancing act while standing at the very tippy end of their shallow dugout canoes. They manage to wrap their lower leg around a long paddle and simultaneously steer and paddle with it while both their hands are occupied throwing and gathering nets, giant baskets and fish. This means that they are standing on one leg while their other three limbs are busy. So much for my tree pose.

We stayed in a stilted bamboo bungalow hanging over the water. Besides the Inthas, the lake is also home to a group of long-necked people (can't remember their Burmese name). The women of the group wear ten pounds of brass coils around their necks, depressing their collarbones. Seeing these women is somewhat like walking through a human zoo. You can't help but gawk at them as you simultaneously contemplate the cruelty of the practice. What if they have to vomit? What happens during childbirth or other extreme situations? It is simply unimaginable and brings to mind Chinese foot binding and other practices women subject themselves to in the name of beauty. Just one more of those times we wished we had a guide with us so we could learn more about them. I googled them when we got back to our hotel, but there wasn't nearly enough info to satisfy my curiosity.

By mow you know that one of my favorite things in life is watching how people make things, so we putt putted on our little boat from floating village to floating village, visiting blacksmiths, boat builders, cheroot rollers, silversmiths and weavers. Watching silver chains or wiggly silver fish being made with the most primitive of tools was mind boggling. As was the blacksmith squatting next to the bellows which he pumps with his foot as he hammers steel into scythes. Most impressive of all were the lotus weavers. These women cut a lotus stem in half and then slowly pull it apart, exposing gossamer silken threads which they then roll onto a slab in front of them, adding more and more until there is a slender thread that can be twisted onto a spinning wheel and from there onto a primitive hand loom. The resulting scarf is expensive ($125 for a scarf - $450 for a shawl) but costs a thousandth of what it should when you consider the labor and skill involved. (That goes for just about anything handmade in Burma, most of which costs next to nothing.)

We also managed to fit in three of the rotating five-day markets, reaching all by fabulous boat trips through narrow canals, passing fishermen and stilted villages along the way. We rented bikes when we could and loved riding through and outside the towns. Our last day at the lake, running out of daylight, we took a boat across the lake and once again jumped on the back of motorbikes and were driven up the hill in the twilight to a forest monastery. A lovely wise-looking monk happened to bump into us in the hallway and after chatting with him for a few minutes, we made arrangements to return for a few days of guided meditation, sure that this was our moment. "When the student is ready, the teacher will come."

Unfortunately, I was already sick with a cold and hacking cough, which Billy got the next day. Sugar cane was being harvested and, surrounded by smoke and dust, we gagged and choked and snorted and sneezed and blew our noses and coughed until blue in the face. We postponed our stay at the monastery and fled up to the mountains, hoping for cleaner air and an overnight trek to minority villages. But we didn't get better, so stayed in the mountains an extra few days, where we canceled the trek but visited a camp for retired logging elephants instead. We washed an elephant in the stream and then rode it bareback (with his mahout) back to the camp. We fed the elephants sweet potatoes and chunks of sugar cane. When I gave one of the them a sweet potato, she dropped it. Surprised by her clumsiness, I gave her another, which she dropped again, this time very slowly and deliberately crushing it under her massive foot, at which point her mahout said to me "This one doesn't like sweet potatoes." I wonder what would have happened if I'd tried to give her one a third time.

In town, we met a Chinese woman who took us to see HER monastery, and convinced us to come back and do a month-long retreat there with her Vietnamese teacher who has lived in America and speaks perfect English. Now we're trying to decide between sweet monk at forest monastery and mountain monk with perfect English. Next year.

Still sick, we flew to the Bay of Bengal for three days of R&R at the beach. It was heaven. Our lungs must have been missing the humid salt air because we almost immediately felt much better. We snorkeled around uninhabited islands, ate grilled crab at beach shacks, napped on the beach and took long moonlit (God's flashlight, said Billy) walks. And occasionally we'd think --- Darn --- we could be getting up at 4:30 A.M. to meditate in the very cold and damp air of the forest monastery, followed by sweeping floors for the rest of the day.

Our last day on the coast, we took a boat ride in a leaky, motorized dugout canoe across open seas to an island whose first introduction to foreigners was in 2012. Our boat driver, anxious to increase his fee and recognizing us as suckers, suggested we next go upriver to see the "Venerable Monk" who had been dead for 39 years but was still perfectly preserved without having been embalmed. So, up the river we went, getting stuck on the sandy bottom over and over because the tide was too low. With the same sense of "Why am I doing this" that I well remembered from the time I attended a cremation in Bali, I walked into the monastery. Almost immediately we noticed a group of Burmese squatting on the tiled floor casually eating lunch next to a raised glass coffin. Inside the coffin was the Venerable Monk, with hair and fingernails still growing. Despite being dead for 39 years he looked reassuringly dry and withered. Not so much the case for the bonus monk in the next glass case. This one had been dead for only two months. Not sure how they know beforehand which ones are special enough not to cremate. This one didn't look like he should be on display.

I'm writing this from our fancy hotel in Bangkok. We leave for home tomorrow. At first we were thrilled to be in a modern city. But after just 24 hours here, we acutely miss the wonderful Burmese.

Random Stuff:

Life Hack: If you dry strips of orange peel in the sun, you can later burn them for mosquito repellant.

Ouch: Burma has no-see-um stinging jellyfish that feel like little pin pricks. Don't swim between the rocks when snorkeling, cause that's where they hang out.

USA: Almost the only Americans we met in Burma were young couples that are living in China and traveling during the Chinese New Year vacation. Once again, Burmese LOVE Americans. "American people number one. Then Germs. Then Canadas."

Did you know: Asian elephants are smarter than African elephants. Asian elephants can be trained to work, but African elephants can't be. Wait --- Noah, I can hear your voice on this one --- maybe the African elephants are the smarter ones.

Bread: If you come to Burma, you're going to crave it.

Soup and Salad: Burma's are the best! From mohinga, their traditional morning soup, to tea leaf salad, you almost can't go wrong -- unless you order anything that's a staple on western menus.

The grass is greener: Like almost all people with gorgeous, hairless, dark skin, the Burmese are obsessed with lightening their skin so they can look like caucasians. EVERYWHERE you look there are huge billboards advertising skin lightening potions. WTF???!!

Anyone want to start a belt factory: Burmese men and women open and retie their longhis (sarongs, sewn into a closed circle, worn as skirts) a jillion times a day.. Wherever you look, you'll see someone undoing their longhi. They undo it, grab a hunk of fabric, pull it all the way out to the side and then bring it back to the middle to secure it by either a knot (males) or a tuck into the waist (females). It's a charming, almost unconscious, movement repeated many, many times a day. and will always be one of my favorite take-away visuals.

Gene Replacement Therapy: We could all use an infusion of the Burmese niceness gene. They are hands down the kindest and friendliest people we have ever met. It's felt almost shocking.

Note the thanaka on their faces.

Oh yeah -- snail white skin is SO much prettier.

Litter is a problem here.

I've never seen so many crows in my life. They are everywhere --- on Buddhas, at the seashore, in the cities.

The poorest of villages. These people lost their homes in a cyclone.

Distributing rice to the villagers in front of the crematorium.

Even the poorest of the children have radiant smiles.

Resting at her market stall.

Me throwing a pot while someone kicks the wheel for me.

Who needs a dryer?

A very poor, temporary village on the bank of the river that will have to move when the rainy season comes and raises the water level. Garbage is everywhere.

A not-so-poor village.

The Irawaddy

Many of the Buddhas here have neon lights radiating behind them. Almost all the buddhas are new. Most of the old ones were looted or destroyed by natural disasters.

These are the "Moustache Brothers"' who do a show in Mandalay protesting gov't policies, for which they were jailed.

These guys asked to pose with me. Maybe they'd never seen an old white lady?

Horses and buggies are still seen in most villages. This is a particularly nice one for tourists.

Trains ans buses are notoriously late. This sign was at the train station. Note the word "guess" after the ETA.

Village train station.

The Chinese now own much of the land, with female workers paid $3.00/day.

One of the world's most beautiful train rides crosses this deep gorge on rusty, narrow trusses.

This girl was squatting at a train stop. She jumped up and handed me a weedy flower right after I took this. She's so beautiful.

Billy handing out oranges to young monks at the 5:30 A.M. morning market.

Our mini-trek.

Burmese writing includes every possible variation of a circle.

Our trekking guide holding up a dead bird by it's legs.

My favorite shot of the trip.

Making hats. It took him about 3 minutes to sew the hand-braided strips above into a hat that sells to tourists for $1.50. He;s halfway done with it in this picture.