Sue and I leave for Burma tomorrow, she for the fourth time, I for the third. As we did two years ago, we’re accompanying a group made up of friends, friends of friends, and other interested parties. I will try to post every day…but if I miss a day or two, we probably haven’t been […]
Sue and I leave for Burma tomorrow, she for the fourth time, I for the third. As we did two years ago, we’re accompanying a group made up of friends, friends of friends, and other interested parties. I will try to post every day…but if I miss a day or two, we probably haven’t been eaten by a Tiger. The more likely culprit is a electrical blackout or internet failure, neither of which are uncommon in Burma. Wish us luck!
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
There’s nothing quite like a 25 hour journey to the other side of the world to anesthetize your senses. I can utilize my only true talent — sleeping — but Sue, unfortunately, basically sits there and waits. Or rather sits there and worries.
So we flew NY-Frankfurt-Singapore-Yangon and arrived in one piece.
The flight into Singapore was actually late, but there was another plane two hours later, and had the nice benefit of allowing us to fly with our good friend Mark Hennigh and his fiancée Maureen Dwyer.
We were greeted at the airport in Yangon by our friends Tun Tun Ko, our extraordinary guide, and U Tun Naing, the owner of Time Travel and a friend of the Cetana Foundation for more than 20 years. And as we emerged from baggage claim we found our dear friends Rory and Pravan Westberg.
We were soon back at the Sedona Hotel, our home away from home in Yangon. And around the corner came more of our oldest friends, David and Patti Bradley. As a group formed in the lobby, we introduced ourselves to the other members of our travel group, 15 people from all over the United States.
Sue was beat and went up to the room to rest, but Rory, David, and I went down for a beer–the first drop in what would become a ocean of Myanmar Beer– and were soon joined by Pravan. Lots of fun catching up, and it felt absolutely extraordinary to be in Burma with some of our oldest and closest friends.
The whole group gathered in the lobby at 4 PM and we piled in the bus and headed to Shwedagon pagoda, the holiest and in some ways the most extraordinary place in Burma. There was one wrinkle: we are now in the habit of repeating our friend Lois Young’s admonition to all travelers to Burma, namely that “it will not rain.” Unfortunately, Yangon was on the edge of a large tropical storm, and we had some fairly heavy rain while we were seeing the temple. That did not stop it from being an extraordinary experience, but we didn’t get the extraordinary light that bathes the entire space at twilight.
The video below shows the group walking up the Eastern Stairway, the most auspicious approach to any temple.
The space around the huge golden stupa is, if anything, more remarkable than the stupa itself: throngs of pilgrims, worshipers, and tourists proceed in a stately manner clockwise around the stupa, while being overwhelmed by the sheer number of Buddhas, stupas, shrines, and spaces for ritual observance.
Even if the light wasn’t great, we were still able to observe the ritual lighting of candles by hundreds of monks at sunset.
We then had our first communal meal at a place called Happy Noodle, which offers really delicious noodle bowls from all over the country. Accompanied by our universal remedy for travel shock — Myanmar beer — we had a great evening as we got to know one another… even though everyone was destroyed with jet lag.
Up and at ’em at 5 AM–but after eight hours of sleep. I went down to the extraordinary breakfast buffet –about as long as a football field–and drank too many cappuccinos until the group trickled down.
We had a very full day in front of us, but started late in deference to jet lag.
First stop was the Cetana English Proficiency Center, in some ways the flagship operation for the Cetana Foundation. We emerged from the bus 15 strong and plunged into the insanity of a multi-story market building, with every kind of shop and service on every floor. There were no classes in session, but the center’s director, Nan Ji, spoke to the group about the challenges and rewards of teaching English in Myanmar.
Next stop was Bogyoke Aung San Market, known before independence as Scott’s Market. I took a group right up to the wonderful textile stores run by two families from Chin State, famous for their weaving. On the last trip I had brought back a large wall hanging made by the Naga People, the most primitive people in Myanmar, and I couldn’t resist buying a second one, this time grey on a scarlet ground: really stunning. I then took a smaller group down to buy longyis, the traditional long skirt worn by men and women alike. I scored a very nice dark green number. I wore it back to the bus, drawing a number of amused but friendly comments from passersby–and from a few policemen!
A first round of shopping behind us, we treated ourselves to lunch at The Strand, the epicenter of colonial power in the twentieth century. The place reeks of empire, and is consequently very beautiful, an oasis of peace and privilege as chaos ensues outside.
The place had a special meaning for us and our good friends the Bradleys, since we had celebrated Sue’s birthday here two years ago. It was only a shame that we didn’t have time for a gin rickey in the bar, which is extraordinary.
We then visited the River Gallery, owned by our acquaintance, the expat New Zealander Gill Pattinson. The art is very eclectic, and she has some beautiful lacquer pieces. And she still sells the series of figures carved from antique teak that represent Burmese fashion over the centuries, the “Burmese Sisters.” The women on the trip last time had given Sue a sister as a gift, and I gave her a matching statue on our return back then. They sit proudly on our mantle in Princeton.
Now the fun really began: a tour with an exceptionally well informed young historian who works for the Yangon Heritage Trust, a non-profit that is attempting to save and restore the colonial center of Yangon–the largest collection of colonial architecture in Southeast Asia. They have their work cut out for them: the buildings are not merely decaying, but covered inside and out with thick layers of mold, the result of the very humid climate here. We took a different route (this was our third tour with them), and saw a whole new range of extraordinary colonial buildings before embarking on what amounted to a “religions of the world” tour: we passed or viewed three mosques, a cathedral, a Baptist church, a synagogue, a Chinese temple, and, of course, countless pagodas. The star of the show, though, was Yangon’s street life: sidewalks teeming with tea shops, hawkers, lawyers working out of the backs of pickups, and of course people from every tribe in Myanmar…and there are 135 of them, many with tribal dress. Along the way we paused for a group picture in Independence Square with Yangon’s City Hall in the background.
This is the view down Sule Pagoda Road in downtown, with Sule Pagoda closing off the view at the end of the street.
Immediately after the tour we went to Pandomon Restaurant, a joint that serves traditional Burmese food, for a dinner hosted by the owner of the travel agency with which the foundation has worked for many years. U Tun Naing’s is a story all too common in Burma: until 1962 he was the Burmese Consul in Washington; after the 1962 military coup he was a travel agent. He is a lovely and very generous man, and we’re proud to call him our friend. After the feast, he presented each of our travelers with a longyi. The women’s wraps were lovely, subtle patterns in silk. The men’s less so: a kind of garish tartan plaid. But most of the men’s eventually got worn: on hot days, when the guys are in shorts, they need to cover up to enter temples, and a longyi is just the ticket.
It had been a long day, but a glorious one, and the group was already beginning to bond.
We had a 5:30 AM bus pick up this morning so that we could make our 7:30 AM flight to Mandalay. It sounds more brutal than it was, since everyone was still horribly jet lagged.
We had an hours delay at the airport due to some really thick fog. The departure terminal was new since we were here last, and very fancy. It even had a very ritzy priority pass lounge, and some of our travelers took advantage of it.
Most of our flights this trip are on Yangon Airways, which has perhaps the worst motto in aviation history: “You Are Safe With Us!”
Once in Mandalay, Tun Tun had a very full day planned for us. He is a proud citizen of Mandalay, and always wants to show the best side of his hometown. Mandalay feels small and sleepy after Yangon, with many more dirt streets, and a virtually total absence of high rises. But it is a trading hub of more than a million people, and in many ways the cultural heart of Burma. Mandalay was the last capital of the Burmese kingdom before it fell to the British in 1885, and it is surrounded by a number of former capitals, most of them in ruins.
We drove directly to a wood carving workshop, and although they had some very nice marionettes, including two antique ones, I managed to resist the urge. We then went to a really delicious Thai restaurant, consuming quite a few courses (Tun Tun always orders for us, and we get to taste multiple dishes), and of course copious amounts of Myanmar beer.
Then came one of the highlights of the trip so far. We piled aboard a really rickety old boat, crossing multiple gangplanks, and several other boats, and set out for an hour cruise along the Irrawaddy to the ancient village of Mingun. The boat had a large covered deck with very comfortable wooden lounge chairs along both sides. Sitting in the shade with a breeze in our face watching the world–or rather cows–float by was pretty good duty.
Mingun itself was a royal project in the 18th century: the plan was to build the largest pagoda in Burma and to provide it with the largest bell in the world. The pagoda was never completed: you walk around a massive base guarded by two monumental lions. The ruins of each lion is about 80 yards long and 10 yards high.This is our group walking up the beach from the boat; the stump of the unfinished pagoda is in the background.
And this is the rump of one of the lions, with his tail running down the back; the ruins of the front paw are in the background.
The bell is still in place and still rings, so we took turns striking it three times with a log–the way to share merit in Theravada Buddhism.
We then walked through the little village itself, seeing some of the houses of friends of Tun Tun. We emerged from the village in view of a convent, and, as we watched, a jitney full of young Buddhist nuns rushed down the hill in front of us. With apologies for image quality: no one got a good shot!
Just down the road from the convent was a remarkable temple, unique in Burma: the base is circular, with an ambulatory, and the lower levels depict the water of the seven oceans divided by the seven continents.
On the way home Sue and I made a rather large purchase, a big acrylic painting of Irrawaddy boat people along the shore. Like the voyage out, the return trip was extremely relaxing, and we were delighted to see just about the whole group getting to know each other.
We checked into our hotel, the Sakura Princess, and found that it was a good bit more local than the Sedona in Yangon. Not luxurious but perfectly comfortable. That’s my buddy David Bradley, whom I’ve now known for, gulp, 55 years!
Dinner was at a modern Chinese restaurant, the Golden Duck, and the atmosphere in the group was really nice. The conversation is so lively and so long-lasting that we need to be sure we have enough time for tourism!
Our delayed flight had forced Tun Tun to change around our visit to Mandalay: we tried to pack two days of sightseeing into one! We started the day with one of the most beautiful temples in the country, an 18th century teak structure that was originally an important part of the royal palace and then moved outside the palace grounds and converted to a monastery.
The entire structure was gilded with solid gold while it served as the royal residence; traces of the gilding are still visible on the exterior, while the interior has retained all of its original gilding.
The group posed by gender in front of the monastery’s Buddha: the women expressed their opinion on being excluded from the sacred space in front of the statue.
This is the guys with Tun Tun and his apprentice, Than.
Next stop was a temple known as the world’s largest book. The king decreed in the nineteenth century that the entirety of the dharma (the teachings of the Buddha)–more than 16,000 pages of text–be inscribed on tablets and placed in more than 700 stupas on the grounds of the temple.
With the dharma memorized, we proceeded to the second holiest pilgrimage site in Burma, the Mahamuni Image, a large statue of the Buddha said to be his “living image.” Pilgrims express their veneration for the image by placing thin sheets of gold leaf directly on the statue, which is now said to hold more than 1 1/2 tons of gold in addition to the original statue.
The image shows men on the platform with the Buddha placing gold leaf, while their womenfolks look on. This “tradition” has no foundation in Buddhism, but is simply a (ridiculous) tradition observed at certain sites in Myanmar. We preceded the visit to the temple by visiting one of the workshops that produce gold leaf by hand: young men pound nuggets of gold through successive stages until it becomes gossamer.
Leaving Mandalay behind, we drove to Amarapura, one of the ancient capitals of the Burmese kingdom, and took a brief walk on the U Bein bridge, an iconic structure known throughout Southeast Asia s the world’s longest teak bridge. The remaining images from the Mandalay area are all from previous visits: Amarapura and environs are best seen at twilight, and we visited at noon with its harsh light.
From the bridge, we drove across the Irrawaddy and into the sacred district of Sagaing: a large hill completely covered with temples, monasteries, and Buddhist teaching institutions. The road to the top is very steep and not a little scary, and we piled into two jitneys for the ride up.
At the top sits one of favorite places in this rich and varied country: Soon U Ponya Shin Pagoda. The structure itself is no different than many pagodas, but its position atop the hill gives it a special character.
And, in the twilight, it becomes positively magical.
We have never understood how Tun Tun can time things so perfectly, especially given the vagaries of Burmese road and traffic conditions. But we drove to the airport for our flight to the provincial capital of Northern Shan State, Kyaing Tong, and arrived exactly one hour before the flight.
In the late afternoon we stepped out of the plane and into a different world. Burma is still in many ways a challenging place to travel, but in most of our stops–Yangon, Mandalay, Inle Lake, and Bagan–the tourist infrastructure is pretty impressive. Not so in Kyaing Tong, which sees only those tourists willing to trek deep into the hills to visit tribal villages.
Tun Tun always starts the stay in Kyaing Tong with a visit to “One Tree Hill,” the site of an enormous tree planted on a cross-country journey buy the Burmese king in 1753. We then toured the lake in the center of town–something that makes Kyaing Tong, despite its many rough, rough edges, one of the most charming towns in Burma.
We then introduced our travelers to the charms of the Princess Hotel. As the only show in town above the level of a guesthouse with dubious cleanliness, the Princess is our home away from home, and pretty much the whole group came to love it. The rooms are very simple–think Motel 6 in teak–but clean and pleasant. If you don’t mind the dog fights, the cats in heat, the roosters who think that dawn is at 3 PM, it is a great place.
Our remarkably full day was concluded with a surprisingly good meal at the Chinese joint down the street, the Golden Banyan, where I’ve eaten more meals than I care to count.
After an enormous breakfast — with an English component, eggs and toast, and a Shan component, with Shan noodles or fried rice — Tun Tun picked us up in the bus and we headed north toward a string of tribal villages.
Along the way we passed a couple of road crews, Myanmar style: women carrying huge rocks and loads of sand. God knows where their men were. We also learned a lot about rice cultivation, and stopped to watch a large group of people working in the paddies.
Once we turned onto the side road that led to the villages it was very slow going, with huge potholes and constant wash boarding. At one point we all had to get out of the bus in order to allow the bus to make it across a partially ruined bridge. We passed through a Lahu village and then stopped at a Hakka village, where we encountered a band of women hawking their weaving and bracelet. We made our way on foot up through this fairly prosperous village and came out on the steep dirt road into the mountains. After about 45 minutes we reached our first destination, an En village. As we approached the village, we were besieged by a pack of children, who knew that visitors would often bring presents for them. We had brought more than 50 handknit woolen caps and 50 matchbox cars, and we handed these out to the kids, often at some peril (I had to rescue one of our party who was surrounded by kids and almost pushed over a bank).
This was the most primitive place most of our travelers had ever seen: no running water, no sanitation, no electricity. Unfortunately, the headman (who is also the shaman of the village, which is animist and worships 37 wooden fetishes called Nats) was away in the fields, so we weren’t treated to a tea ceremony as we had been the year before.
We split into two groups at the En village. One group headed up a steep slope toward a Pulao village before descending sharply to the bus; Tun Tun and I ledthe other group through more of the En village before descending more gently.
We took a long detour down a side road on the way home, stopping at a monastic retreat center: monks from throughout the region come to spend a week; each are given a novice to serve them and a senior monk to further their knowledge of Buddhist doctrine. It was a pretty remarkable place, a bustling community that melded the nearby village, the resident monks, and the visitors.
On the way into town w stopped for The most unusual meal of the trip: We had Shan noodle soup in what is otherwise a scooter repair shop. Probably not the most salubrious environment we’ve ever had a meal in, but the noodles were very good!
We then returned to Kyaing Tong late afternoon and, after a little rest, drove to the Kyaing Tong Learning Center, where our friend Cynthia Paul, a former Cetana Scholar, teaches about 500 students a week with the help of a group of assistant teachers, all of whom learned English from her. Their language ability is astonishing! We split into groups and engaged groups of students in conversation. I started with beginners and then went upstairs to the advanced students: a great way to see the progress these kids are making. I think the group was deeply impressed with Cynthia and her school; she is a truly remarkable young woman: charismatic, supremely dedicated, and highly entrepreneurial
We concluded the evening with dinner 9th Cynthia and her teachers; hr mother had cooked really delicious Shan Noodles….for the third time in one day!.
We had the morning free, and most of the group visited the really unusual market at the edge of town. Kyaing Tong is a regional market town, and people from the hill tribes, all in tribal dress, throng the market. David and I went in for a pair of Shan baggy pants: wonderfully comfortable but herhaps not the thing for a night at the opera.
We had an early afternoon flight to the wonderfully named Heho . Yet another bus took us over a rather scary mountain pass…And my lovely wife chose the moment where we had a precipitous drop to the right and no guard rails to mention the truck she had seen on another trip that had gone off the road and landed at the bottom of a ravine. The bus brought us without mishap to the largest town on the lake, Nyaung Shwe, where we boarded boats for the trip to the hotel. Most of our travelers knew that we would be brought to the hotel on a boat. Most of them had also envisioned a rather large conveyance, and not something that looked like this:
Our little flotilla of four boats was led to the hotel by the flagship under the direction of Commodore Tun Tun. The first experience of Inle Lake is really stunning: a vast expanse of water between two mountain ranges, dotted with fishing villages and swarming with fishing boats.
We were soon turning into the lagoon on which Inle Resort sits. One of the oldest resorts on the lake, the hotel enjoys a fully mature, jungle-like vegetation. Our “rooms” are individual teak bungalows sitting on stilts over the lake.
We threw our bags into our rooms and raced back to the landing area, where there are two large decks lakeside; we grabbed a choice table, ordered some drinks, and settled in to watch an absolutely spectacular sunset.
The dining room is as unusual as the rest of the resort: a huge, bi-level space with carved wooden walls and festive streamers far overhead. The menu, like that at most tourist hotels in Myanmar, has both Western and Asian food. Much of the food is quite good, but the highlight is, as in years past, profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and a decadent chocolate sauce. I introduced our group to this indulgence, and it became a menu staple during our stay.
It was surprisingly cold on the lake in the morning, but we persisted in eating breakfast on the broad terrace next to the dining hall. We were in the boats by 9:30, and headed immediately down lake to a village that was hosting the five-day market, a largely tribal affair that shifts its location every day. It is one of the great sights in Myanmar, with a broad mix of handicrafts, produce, fresh fish and meat, and the weirdest household good imaginable. The entry to the market is memorably with literally hundreds of Inle boats jockeying for position along the makeshift docks.
A number of the group took advantage of the offerings and bought clothing and other textiles–lovely embroidered jackets, shirts, pants, and wall hangings. But the really interesting part of the market was the tribal section with its vendors.
From the market, which takes place on terra firma, we steered further south to one of the many villages built on stilts right out in the very shallow lake. Our first stop was at a weaving workshop that produced both silk and lotus fabric. The lotus cloth requires long, painstaking work, but is exceptionally beautiful. Our shoppers were soon at it again, purchasing shawls, scarves, pillow covers for themselves, family, and friends.
We then had lunch at a fascinating NGO, the Inle Lake Heritage Association, which attempts to preserve the culture of the lake tribes while also training young people to serve in the (formerly) growing tourist industry, providing decent jobs for people who otherwise have few opportunities. We had a great lunch, visited their collection of Burmese Cats (they preserve those, too), and hopped back onto the boats for our last stop, a visit to a boat building workshop. The Inle Boats are made of solid teak and sealed with lacquer–they’re extraordinarily beautiful, and extraordinarily inexpensive: about $1300 for a full sized boat!
We were back at the hotel for some well-deserved rest and, of course, some drinks by the water to watch the sunset.
Today’s itinerary took us to just three places, but they are all riveting.
We started the day by visiting the floating gardens of Inle Lake. The “technology” involved is worth explaining.
The villagers drag long strands of sea grass–as long as 50 yards–from the lakeshore to the site they’ve chosen for a garden and then pin it to the bottom with a series of long bamboo poles. They then “harvest” huge quantities of reeds from the lake itself and completely cover the seagrass with the reeds. Then a layer silt–also dredged up by hand from the lakebed–goes on top of that, and a final layer reeds makes the bed for a broad array of vegetables (Inle is famous nationwide for its tomatoes).
A number of the floating villages are actually quite prosperous.
The boatmen took us up and down the “streets” of the village, where we got a look at life lived on the water.
A quick journey to the southwest brought us to yet another pagoda that was a pilgrimage site for all of Burma. Hpaung Daw U Pagoda houses five small gilded images of the Buddha that have been covered with so much gold leaf by worshipers seeking to show their veneration that the statues are no longer recognizable as Buddha images, looking for all the world like five blobs. Every October four of the images are placed on a throne on an elaborate gold barge in the form of a Hintha bird–a kind of stylized duck associated with images of the Buddha and thus sacred–and taken on a ceremonial passage around the lake.
Our arrival at the pagoda was considerably less ceremonious. I had worn shorts and thus needed to cover up wearing my longyi. As I struggled to get it into shape, I was surrounded by a crowd of pilgrims all wanting to help.
After the pagoda we followed one of the boatmen across a rickety bridge and through a maze of walkways deep into the village. Just as we were getting vaguely nervous we emerged at a very nice open restaurant with views directly across the water and back to the pagoda.
The afternoon took us to one of my favorite places in Myanmar, Inthain, a village located far up a stream that feeds the lake. The boat ride takes you through an increasingly narrow passage with a bit of the feel of “Heart of Darkness.” Inthain itself is a fairly dumpy little place, but it is home to an unusual religious complex. The pagoda itself, Nyaung Ohak, is of relatively little architectural interest. But it is surrounded by more than 1000 stupas in various states of repair and disrepair. Walking through this “religious forest” is a memorable experience.
The walk back to the boat follows the course of a 1/2 mile long covered walkway, the ceremonial entry to the pagoda at the top. Or at least that’s the idea. It is now more like a serpentine shopping mall, with vendors packed close on both sides. What better place for our shoppers to take advantage of a few final opportunities at Inle?