Los Angeles 16 hours Boeing 777 to Hong Kong + 3 hours Airbus to Yangon.
The big city Yangon is a labyrinth of vendors, cars, stupas, colonial leftover buildings, and crow-like pigeons. It is the city in “Blade Runner” that hasn’t made it into the future. Bagan is a desert town with simple villages of bamboo huts and dirt roads. It is famous for its concentration of stupas. From a distance, the stupas seemed to have sprouted from under the earth; their silhouettes shaped like Eiffel Towers of various sizes. In the north are the Shan highlands, bordering Yunnan, China, with green hills and colored fields; there is also a scenic train bridge. Shan tea is a must buy for about 1500 kyat ($1.50) a package. Inle Lake is an entire city on water. What’s not to love about a 20- minute speed canoe ride to and fro each way every day under a magnificent changing sky? Unlike Yangon, which sustained the remnants of the British, the City of Mandalay is the place to see Myanmar’s majestic past.
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YANGON |
All of Myanmar manifests a loyal and devoted people by their obsessive and repetitive whims. If there is one stupa or Buddha statue, there would be clusters of the like in the area, and then repeated throughout the country. The country is naturally endowed with rich gems, petroleum, and timbers; it also has the Irrawaddy River, a great waterway for commerce. Such a plentiful country could groom its people toward comfort and prosperity.
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BAGAN |
Clothing not yet come from Gucci here; they are from threads of fibers, including fiber from the lotus stalk. As a tourist I visited home shops hand-making cigars, weaving fabrics, burnishing silver jewelry, and making scissors—the medieval way. In a world where a knife “Made in China” could be bought for 99 cents, why Myanmar still bothers to melt, cast, and pound iron into a simple cutlery should be puzzling to the average tourist.
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MANDALAY |
I saw a truck speeding down the road packed with young ladies, their faces smeared with white sunscreen paste. I could only hope they were on their way to work in factories that pay more than $1 a day. Along the tour route, I saw that work was mostly manual labor with only minimal mechanical or animal aid. The best job was the pretty girl who stood in waiting, although without a chair in sight, to greet at the entrance to the Karaweik Hall. Coolies hulled heavy loads on their shoulders; their only insurance was Buddha. Troops of novice monks and nuns were always seen trotting the streets for alm under the sun that was hot and humid even in November. These children looked especially pure and much alike with their shaven heads. To tell them apart, boys were wrapped in burgundy and girls in pink. They are the future of Myanmar!
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SHAN |
Buddha statues are colored with real gold at $300~$1900 an ounce, and there is no shortage of such statues everywhere in this land. Sources declared that the Maha-Muni Buddha is stacked with 6-inch layers of gold leaf on its 12 feet 7 inches sitting body, and more goes on it every day. Gold has inherent power, even if it were just metallic paint. Walking into the golden world of stupas in Yangon’s Shwedagon courtyard, I was instantly overtaken by a feeling of promise and hope, of glory and glamour—I was “high” on gold. Everywhere there was smoldering smoke from burning incense, devotees crawled and dropped their knees before their choice of statues or stupas. Here is Ground Zero of Myanmar’s preview of a better after-life. Pull our eyes away from the gold, and the land returns to its wear and tear of cracked floors, chipped walls and columns, dulled fixtures, dilapidating surroundings, infestation of fleas and flies.
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INLE |
Buddha statues, the ruling military, and tourists enjoy riches and the best accommodations, but what about the people?! Do people really pray for Nirvana—never to be reborn into another earthly life? What do they really beg for in front of Gold Buddha? In Yangon, I saw a child with not even a pair of cheap flip flops; his bare feet were not layered with gold but thicken with black soot and grime already insensitive to the hot caustic pavement. Ask the people about Nirvana only after they experience a sweeter life, like my stay at the Sule Shangri-La/Trader Hotel, an air conditioned paradise with daily buffet dining.
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COOL PEOPLE IN HOT WEATHER |
