On the Road to Mandalay

Here goes. I started this blog so those who asked could follow our 28 day trip to Burma. Please ignore it if it's of no interest --- I'm only sending it to people who asked to see it and others who I thought might want to read it. There is a second part which has all the pictures and I'll send that next.

Pre-trip:
Billy had retired, my store had launched, the house was remodeled, our parents had been tended to, nothing huge was looming and the whole month of February was open for traveling. Southeast Asia would be the destination ( because it's mostly Buddhist, gorgeous, affordable  ... and there are hill tribes!) but we couldn't decide between Laos and Burma.

With one week left before departure, we were becoming increasingly anxious, as we still had no idea where to go.  We were too busy getting ready TO GO  --- to go. We had no plane tickets or reservations. We didn't have time to read or reserve or make decisions about anything (okay -- we might be a bit commitment-adverse). Every day, slack-jawed and exhausted, we would look at each other and say, "We really have to make a decision. We're supposedly going somewhere in a few days."

Finally, we settled on Burma. Four place names have called to me since I was a child: Papua New Guinea, Shanghai,  Rangoon and Mandalay. The last two are in Burma, so that finally decided it.

I think other people might have better ways of making decisions.

 **A note about place names: Burma is now officially Myanmar and Rangoon is Yangon. Since the military junta chose these new names and Aung Sung Suu Ki reputedly doesn't like them (and neither does the U.S.), I will happily keep calling them by the names I've always loved.

In 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was finally freed from 24 years of house arrest and people can now visit Burma in good conscience. The daughter of a famous general who was assassinated when she was two, she studied at Oxford, where she met the love of her life and husband-to-be, Michael Aris, a professor with an expertise on Tibet. They had two sons, and when they were 12 and 14, she returned to Burma for what she thought would be a brief visit to tend to her mother who had had a stroke. While in Burma, the country erupted in pro-democracy riots and she quickly became the insurgents'  symbolic leader. For this, the military junta placed her under house arrest and for the next 24 years she was separated from her husband and children. Aris repeatedly applied for a visa to visit her, which was always denied. They both knew if she were to leave the country, she would never be allowed back in. So she stayed on, even when told that her husband had terminal cancer. He forbade her to come to him, saying her country needed her more. He died without ever seeing her again. This must be the love story that trumps all others. Apparently a movie, "The Lady" was made about their story. I haven't watched it yet.

TRIP:
It took thirty six hours to get here. The first thing we did when we landed in Rangoon was to drive past Aung San Suu Kyi's house. You can't see anything from the road other than high gates, but you do realize with a measure of relief that her lakefront grounds are spacious.

Not surprisingly, neither Rangoon nor Mandalay measured up to the fairytale pictures I'd formed in my head when I was nine. I'd imagined dusty dirt roads, pastel colonial facades, rickshaws and bamboo, bamboo, bamboo. The pace of life would be languid with foreigners lounging on wicker chaises drinking fizzy gin concoctions. Instead, the buildings are mostly concrete dripping with black mold, the furniture lacquered and the pace hectic. These are cities that emerged from colonialism and ran straight into military rule. The country is rich in resources that are being heavily exploited by the Chinese. Burmese people seem mostly very poor, gracious, kind and over-the-top eager to please. We seem invisible to the locals, which is a relief.  But once we establish contact  -- whammo  -- everything changes. If I smile at someone or say "Mingalabar" (good morning) I am consistently rewarded with a joyous flash in return, and am sure that the best part of each of us has just connected.

We started the trip in Rangoon, which we didn't love. The highlight of our stay there was a short ferry trip across the river, supposedly to explore Twante, a pottery village  While waiting for the ferry, two charming, teenage Burmese girls befriended us and offered to be our guides for the day, which we didn't need, but their english was good and their enthusiasm contagious, so we hired them. (Both are the eldest in their fatherless families and the sole income earners.) When we hit the opposite bank of the river, they quickly led us through throngs of disembarking passengers to a group of motorcyclists waiting above in the parking lot. After some intense negotiations, we were told to hop on. Our drivers had helmets. We didn't. But we wished we did as we flew down the narrow roads for the rest of the day, with our drivers going full speed, beep beeping every two seconds as they passed every single vehicle in their way. When Billy and I compared notes at the end of the day, we both said we were sure we'd die, but were paralyzed by a curious inability to speak up and object to anything.

Instead of going directly to Twante, our girls suggested we visit a settlement of people who had been displaced after losing all they had in a severe cyclone.  The villagers now lived in hastily constructed, flimsy shacks surrounded by a cemetery. The girls explained to us that since it is bad luck to live next to a cemetery, the land was available for squatters. Once we got there, the girls suggested we buy a hundred pound bag of rice and distribute it to the needy villagers. Not sure whether or not we were being scammed, we jumped back onto the motorcycles, went zooming back 15 minutes in the direction we had just come from, bought the rice, and returned to the village where, after letting the rice sift through her fingers, the eldest of the waiting villagers told us we had bought very good rice, not the bad kind they were used to eating. Squatting in front of the crematorium, the women of the village carefully divided up the rice into little plastic baggies, the size that we put sandwiches into. The girls then took all the bags and walked through the village, giving families one to three bags each, depending on how many children they had. We were quickly convinced that indeed this wasn't a scam, and ashamed of ourselves (well, it was me really) for even having had such a thought.

Leaving the village, we again flew down the road for at least an hour, arriving at the pottery town,  just when everything was closing. But I did have the chance to sit down and throw a pot, while a young woman kicked the wheel for me. The owner said that although many tourists ask to try the wheel, I was the only one who could actually throw a pot. How little it took to make me swell with pride, taking one last, fond glance at my hideous little vase.

From Rangoon we flew to Mandalay (jetting between two of the four places on my bucket list in one day!)  The best day of our stay there was spent riding rented bikes around the city, passing through monasteries and the jaggery on the way to our riverfront lunch,  narrowly missing being sideswiped by buses, trucks, cars and motorbikes. At the end of the day, after being screamed at by guards at the old royal palace for approaching through the wrong entrance,  we wound our way back to our hotel, feeling lucky not to be imprisoned or left smooshed in the road.

But everything about the trip decidedly changed for the better two days later when we took a ten hour train trip from a colonial hill town to Hsipaw, famous for it's treks to neighboring hill tribes. This train ride is reputed to be one of the world's best, and it didn't disappoint. I'd planned on getting a lot of reading done, but the scenery was too stunning and the train too rocky. My book remained unopened. The highlight of the trip is crossing s 360 foot high, very old, narrow bridge which traverses a deep gorge. Derrick, a lovely Irish ex-general (and anti-terrorism expert) in the seat in front of us ---  told us that the  train would come to a full stop before the bridge so that all vibrations could cease -- thus avoiding harmonic swaying convergence and -- oh please god, no no no  ---  train tipping --- before it would start up again and cross the bridge --- ever so slowly.

(Hsipaw is also known for it's former prince and princess, the latter of who wrote "Twilight Over Burma".  It is the true story of how the two met while they were both students at the Colorado School of Mining. She was from Austria and he was from Burma. They fell in love, married and went to Burma to live. When their boat arrived, thousands came to greet them. Puzzled, the bride turned to her groom and asked why. He replied, "Darling, there is something I haven't told you. I am a prince and these are my people." It's a terrific read and I only wish I had finished it before we left Burma.)

That evening, we joined many of our new train friends at Charlie's Guest House, where we planned our treks for the following day. Hesitantly, I signed us up for the two-day trek. Day one would be a seventeen mile hike up a mountain. Half an hour later I came to my senses (after all, I barely make it up the Sleeping Giant, complaining all the way) and switched to a five mile, mostly level, one-day trek to three Shan villages. It was fabulous, with visits to outlying schoolrooms, fields and huts.

Today was terrific too, traveling all day by steamer on the Irawaddy River to Bagan, a region of 2000 ancient pagodas. Along the way, we stopped for an hour at a timeless rural village, where water buffalo pulled old wooden carts and villagers worked with simple yet ingenious tools that chopped brush into animal feed, thwacked peanuts from branches and braided hay into hats. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE (do I sound like Eloise here?) watching people make things with simple tools. Tomorrow we'll rent motorbikes and wander around these ancient pagoda-packed plains.

It's hard to believe we didn't adore Burma right from the get-go. We just needed to get out of the cities.

Random impressions:

Costumes: Burmese women and men almost all wear longyis --- a piece of fabric draped as a long skirt. The women wear short blouses on top. You rarely, if ever, see a woman wearing shorts or pants or with any part of her upper body exposed other than her arms emerging from short sleeves. The men look equally graceful in their longyis, which differ only in being more sedately colored and secured at the waist by a fat knot of the tied fabric. Everyone wears rubber flip flops. This is a very modest country -- images of cleavage in western movies are whited out. Some of the more affluent teens wear pants or shorts, but don't look nearly as lovely.

Saffron: Monks and nuns of all shapes and sizes and ages are everywhere. The monks are in saffron and the nuns in pinks and saffrons. All have shaved heads, and the youngest are about five years old. They spend much of their day soliciting food and money from shopkeepers.  Lines of very young nuns and monks, and older ones too, snake through markets and down streets in the early mornings, chanting blessings.

Pshew: You are almost never hassled here. I don't know if it's their inexperience with tourists or just their way, but you can walk through most markets and nobody  tries to sell you anything. They barely even glance at you. It's such a relief. The only time we are hassled is by taxi drivers at airports and ports.

So there, red states: Obama is adored in Burma. Totally adored. Every time someone hears we are from the U.S. they tell us how much they love Obama. Two people told us it was because they too have brown skin. Others just like what he does. Others love that he was here and met with Aung San Suu Kyi. We love that they love him too.

Pyin--Oo-- Lwin: This language is impossible for us to read or pronounce. We can't say one single word or place name correctly. Thank God so many people have a smattering of English.

Wanna Be: We love British travelers. In my next life, I'm coming back with a British accent and Asian hair.

Huh?: We seem to be almost the only foreigners traveling independently. EVERYBODY else is on a pre-arranged tour -- some in large groups, others by themselves with a driver and a guide.  We keep wondering what they're all seeing that we're missing. And how did they know not to travel alone?? We didn't get that memo. But even if we had, for better or worse, we probably would have ignored it.

Warning: Don't walk barefoot in any public space in Burma. People are always hacking out huge globs of red betel nut spit on the ground.

Burmese Coppertone: Almost all the women and most of the children and some of the men have thanaka on their faces. It's a white paste made from sandalwood bark and water. From what we understand, it is to keep their skin white and smooth.  Supposedly good for rashes too.

Yuk: Piles of plastic bags, garbage and debris are everywhere, but most distressingly in waterways and on the banks of waterways.  The only clean inhabited areas of the country seem to be the many remote villages that have little access to manufactured goods and still lead subsistence lifestyles. Ironically, to us they seem the most advanced.

Pagodas: There is always one within sight --- and most big pagodas are surrounded by many, many baby pagodas. Multiple brass bells hang from the pointy, tippy tops of all the golden spires, tinkling in the breeze. Despite this, pagodas hold little interest for me, especially the fancy ones. I realize what I love best is watching people make things.

Wrenching: It's hard to reconcile being on vacation in the face of this dire poverty. Nothing more to say about that other than that we feel very, very fortunate and wish we had a magic wand to wave.

My massage: Yesterday, I arranged for a massage at our hotel. At the appointed time I arrived at a room on the second floor with a skinny mattress on the floor and an elderly woman standing next to it. She beckoned me in and told me to lie on my back with all my clothes on, which I did. She then started randomly poking at my feet. Five minutes later there was a knock on the door and a man came in. They chatted with each other loudly for a while. He noisily did something to the second mattress in the room and then left.  Five minutes after he left there was another knock on the door and a second elderly woman came in, with a giant wad of betel nut tucked into her right cheek. Woman Number 2 and Woman Number 1 start talking to each other in an animated fashion. Distractedly,  they both started massaging me -- Woman Number 1 still at my feet and Woman Number 2 painfully jabbing into my armpit with her fingertips.  Then Woman Number 1 gets a cell phone call. She interrupts her conversation with Woman Number 2 and engages in an animated and lengthy phone chat, sometimes remembering to massage me. During the phone call, there was a knock on the door and the same man came back in and spent about ten minutes snappily putting sheets on the other mattress. But all was forgiven when all of a sudden, Woman Number 1 hung up the phone, leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, grabbed the end of my nose and said, "Beautiful, beautiful". At this point, Woman Number 2 joined in, grabbed my chin and said, "Beautiful, beautiful". Then they both rubbed my stomach and said "Good, good. Exercise",  a bit of a shocker since my mucky midriff had never attracted positive comments before this. Then Woman Number 1 pulled up my shirt a little and pulled down my pants a little to peek at my stomach. Then they went on talking to each other, while Woman Number 2 absent-mindedly cracked my neck and my back. Then they abruptly shoved me up into a sitting position and said "All done".  For that 35 minute massage I paid $50. I think I misunderstood and it was supposed to be $15.00, like in all the rest of the country.  It was the worst, but most memorable, massage of my life.
*** Note: I was told in Cambodia that they love pointy noses because theirs are flat. Maybe it's the same thing in Burma. But what was the chin thing about? And the STOMACH???

Gray hair:  Although we're ignored in the cities, Billy and I cause a virtual sensation in villages. People stare at us in amazement.  They ask how old we are. Someone told us that they are surprised we are still walking and traveling because their old people just lie down all day. Hmmm --- I don't think we should take that as a compliment.

Where are they: We've been here two weeks and have  only seen one other American.

Can't upload the pictures. Maybe it's because I have too many. Or more likely because I don't know how.  Will go ahead and post this and upload the pictures when I have a stronger internet connection here, which might mean never.