March 27 - April 1
We are ready to go home - physically and emotionally ready. These last two weeks of relative idleness have left us feeling directionless. Home is a new direction. We have a long route - Phuket to Bangkok, 6 hour layover in Bangkok, Bangkok to Seoul (5 hour flight), 9 hour layover in Seoul, 11 hour flight to San Francisco, three night stay in San Francisco, 4 hour flight to O'Hare, and 5 hour drive home. We have an 11 hour time difference, Bangkok to Chicago, and we cross the international date line in the middle of the Pacific. As we predict, jet lag ends up doing a job on us.
The 9 hour layover in Seoul goes much better than we expected due to the extraordinary features of the sparkling Seoul airport. The have lounge chairs for sleeping, free showers, cultural exhibits, and free tours of Seoul. We'd planned to take one of the city tours, but neither of us slept well on the flight, so instead we nap at the airport, take showers and browse around. The airport shops are all high end designer names, so we don't spend much time shopping. There's a Starbucks here, but they don't have decaf! I decide I need an apple, and despite much searching there are no apples at the airport. Other than apples and decaf, however, this airport offers a lot.
We don't sleep much on the flight to San Francisco either, so we are pretty much brain dead and don't see anything except our hotel room in San Francisco. Adam is off in Argentina, so we don't see him. We do, however, connect with Sandy and Dick from Sonoma, who we met on our Laos tour. They are in the city so we get together to swap more travel tales at the Ferry Building (an apt setting).
At O'Hare, we've arranged to Terry McCann's limo service to drive us to Janesville, but the silly goose refuses payment. We have a pleasant dinner at the Leach home with the Leaches and McCann's, and spend the night. By noon we are home, where Tom has already turned on the heat and hot water, so it's a painless arrival. It's April first, and Wisconsin fools us by snowing that night and the next day.
So, would we do it again? You bet, we are already thinking we'll spend most of next winter in South America.
Lessons learned:
1) Don't take such a long tour. Forty days was a lot, and sometimes we felt like we just wanted to relax in one place. Many people we met on the Intrepid tour of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand didn't link the segments together like we did. Instead, they booked individual segments and allowed themselves some free time in between.
2) An overall travel agent is a good idea, based on people we talked to. Agents are problem solvers. For example, one couple found that a foreign flight had been cancelled. They didn't have an effective web connection to rebook, but they had their agent's phone number, and that was all they needed.
3) Guides are well worth the expense. We had wonderful guides. In addition to showing us the sights and explaining it all, it was great to have someone who could answer all our questions. We especially appreciated their openness in responding to our curiosity about Buddhism.
4) Buddhism is what you make it.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Back in Laos and Thailand
March 9 - 27
Back in Laos and Thailand
Vientiane
We fly back to Vientiane for a few more relaxing days. We originally weren't sure where we'd go after Myanmar, but in order to finalize our Myanmar visas we needed to identify when and where we'd go after we left the country. Apparently Myanmar wants to be sure you're actually leaving. I picked Vientiane as our post-Myanmar destination because it's near a Laotian ecolodge I want to visit. Lucky choice, as we enjoyed Vientiane's relative quiet when we were here on our Intrepid tour. This city's colonial history means it offers good Indian restaurants and French pastries, so we're happy. We take a long walk along the Mekong, where we see an entire mile of ongoing Chinese financed construction projects. We stop for coffee at a brand new high-falutin' hotel, where I experience something I've been looking for for months - decaf! We spend 60,241 kip for two coffees - about $7.50. This is another city that will look quite different in ten years. Now, there are plenty of small shops and many goods are still sold at the day market and at the night market. With Chinese investment continuing, it will change. For the residents, change usually means jobs.
Ban Pako Ecolodge
The owner of the Ban Pako ecolodge picks us up in his well worn mini bus, and we head 30 miles northeast of Vientiane for three nights on the Nam Ngum river. This river contributes 10% to the flow of the Mekong. Ban Pako is very isolated and quiet. It's the only place we've been in Southeast Asia where we can clearly hear the birds. We can also hear stump-tailed macaque monkeys calling back and forth, and some kind of deafening loud cicadas. The owner tells us that last year a leopard was hanging around, but departed after he broke into the quail house and devoured most of them. There is some new construction at the lodge, but there is some maintenance needed too, like rebuilding the bridge over the trail, and fishing the sunken canoes out of the river.
We walk in the forest and stir up the butterflies. We take a dip in the river, which cools us down - Ban Pako has no air conditioning and it's hot. We don't really swim though, we hang onto the dock because we're been warned about the current. The current is strong and steady; the dock is in a back eddy and if we let go we'd be pulled upstream instead of shooting downstream. That's somewhat reassuring, but we're not sure where we'd be deposited back into the main current.
We read, play games on our kindles and wait for dinner time. The most exciting thing that happens at Ban Pako is when our cloth lamp shade gets tangled up in the ceiling fan and sprays lightbulb glass around the room. Our host is Swedish, about our age, and he tells us the lodge is built around an archaeological site. He asks if we've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and if we remember the character of Marion Ravenswood, the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, brawling love interest of Indiana Jones. We do, and he tells us that the character is modeled on a real Australian archaeologist, who has done work at Ban Pako. Our host himself looks a bit like Donald Sutherland, but not as well kept.
A pair of young French women arrive on a motorcycle, and we find we've underestimated our dinner server. His English is quite good, and so, it turns out, is his French. As we check out, the owner tells us that tourism all over Southeast Asia is way down, due to the ongoing political unrest in Thailand. Bangkok is the only airport in five countries that can land big jets, so when Bangkok suffers everyone suffers. We ask his opinion of what may happen next, and he says he fears civil war in Thailand, where he previously lived for twenty years. The king is very well respected and has been a stabilizing influence, but he is elderly and in poor health. The crown princess is popular, but a woman can not take the throne. The crown prince is very unpopular and currently married to his third wife. We are told that he slipped a bag containing heroin into his second wife's baggage in hopes of her going to jail, but the plot was foiled when one of his children said "That bag's from daddy".
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Next day, we wake up in our hotel in Vientiane and chat about that day's flight to Thailand, making sure we have the right time in our heads. We confirm the time, and suddenly Doug says "Wait a minute, this is Sunday". We've got the time right, but we're a day early. Better to have realized it in bed than while standing at the airline check-in counter with our bags. So we spend one more day in Vientiane, see some art and take a long hot walk. March in Southeast Asia is very dry and very hot. At least we can get one more meal at our favorite Indian restaurant in Vientiane.
Next day we arrive at the airport and fly to Phuket via Bangkok. Phuket is a touristy island with lots of nice beaches. Too mainstream, so I've booked us into a very nice resort on a quiet island off the coast of Phuket. We're arrive in Phuket too late for the last ferry of the day, however, so I've reserved a room for one night at a hotel in Phuket Town. It's a long cab ride south from the airport to the hotel, but we should be near the dock in order to get to our smaller island in the morning. Not so, we learn in the morning, and I tell Doug I've gotten a bum steer on the hotel location as we learn that we need to take another long cab ride north, back in the direction we came from yesterday. That's the only way to get to the relevant ferry dock.
We get to the dock, where a Macaque monkey is up to some highjinks in the garbage can. A nice Muslim lady in a bright yellow headscarf explains the monkey business to Doug - in Thai. The southern tail of Thailand borders Malaysia, and there's a strong Muslim presence here. In fact, there's some ethnic unrest, unrelated to the ongoing political dispute in Bangkok. Anyway, we take the ferry, but the surprises are not over. I'm startled but not dismayed when the tuk tuk drivers at the arrival dock on the small island aren't familiar with the name of our resort. Surely this will be resolved quickly. One of them agrees to take us after I repeat the name of the resort and point to the general location on the map. We're sharing a tuk tuk with a couple of French guys, and after we drop them off at their resort, the driver asks again where we're going and calls a friend (is this a game show?) regarding it's location. I go into the French guys' resort and ask the reception staff to explain to our driver how to find our resort. Everyone, including Doug, the driver and the reception staff are very diplomatic. I hear questions like "Are you sure of the resort name?", and "Could it be on another island?" I'm sure of both, but it turns out that I'm dead wrong on both counts.
There are two adjacent islands, Koh Yao Yai and Koh Yao Noi. Similar names, right? I thought the name of our resort was Koh Yao Noi Village, so it would of course be on Koh Yao Noi island. However, it turns out the name of the resort is Koh Yao Yai Village, and we are on the wrong island. The only good news is that the island with our resort is only a five minute boat ride away. Perhaps tropical heat has softened my brain; I don't usually make mistakes like this, and such a sequence of them. Before the day is over we are finally checked into our bungalow, and it is spacious and lovely.
Koh Yao Yai Village Resort
The entire resort is spacious and lovely, with a huge infinity pool overlooking the shoreline and the off shore islands. We spend the next three days swimming and reading and napping and eating and drinking cheap whiskey that we bought in Myanmar. We decide we're not cut out to be the idle rich, as we get bored with this agenda.
We take a day trip kayaking in the mangroves. As we've found typical, no one asks if we know how to kayak (we do), we just go, and our guide does not speak English. We're on an estuary river, and there's a considerable current. Our guide takes us so far downstream we think it must be a one way trip and a tuk tuk will be waiting at the end. Not so, we get to the end and turn around and paddle back upstream in the mid day sun. It was hot before we turned around, so there is some sweat spilled on the way back. Not particularly enjoyable, but the exercise is good for us.
We return to our idle agenda, but it's clear we're not idle rich, as we always balk at resort laundry fees. Our deluxe bungalow is the one with my sink-washed laundry hanging all over the deck. Doug is even more efficient, he takes his dirty clothes into the shower with him. Over dinner we ask about the loud birds we've been hearing. Their call sounds like "Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh". We learn that they're actually Asian geckos. In addition to the typical small chirping geckos we're used to, this part of the world also has geckos that are almost a pound in weight and close to two feet long. I'd like to see one, but they are elusive and call mostly at night.
Andaman Bangtao Bay Resort
We are down to our final five days of our three month adventure, and we're spending it on the southwest coast of Thailand, back on Phuket island. We're in a small family resort among some pretty upscale places, though this beach is not full of the high rise hotels on other Phuket beaches. Like Vietnam's beaches, there are quite a few Russians vacationing here too. We see restaurant menus in Thai, English and Russian. It's very hot and sunny, and our thoughts are turning toward spring in Wisconsin. Doug's thinking about the taxes he needs to do, and I'm thinking about the refrigerator - standing unplugged and empty. Makes me hungry just to think about the dearth of food.
We spend our lazy days here swimming and walking on the beach, reading and lounging and finishing our cheap whiskey. We both get sore feet from walking on the beach - the sand is nice but it must be more abrasive than it appears. We spend most of one day walking to the next beach down the coast. It's considerably more upscale. A young tailor comes out of his shop to solicit business. He's experienced at this, his first question is "How long are you staying?' Our answer (until tomorrow) tells him that we're not going to be ordering any tailored clothing, but it's a quiet day so we have a long conversation with him. He is ethnically Nepali, raised in Myanmar, and an economic refugee to Thailand. His English is excellent, he tells us that some Southeast Asians use a type of tongue press to thin their tongues so they can speak English more easily. He says Americans are too casual to order tailored clothing; Europeans are better customers. It's so hot here this time of year that at mid day we only want to be in our air conditioned room. It's not very well air conditioned, however. The doors and windows don't fit tight and the air conditioner runs constantly with minimal impact. Good thing we're being lazy here anyway.
Back in Laos and Thailand
Vientiane
We fly back to Vientiane for a few more relaxing days. We originally weren't sure where we'd go after Myanmar, but in order to finalize our Myanmar visas we needed to identify when and where we'd go after we left the country. Apparently Myanmar wants to be sure you're actually leaving. I picked Vientiane as our post-Myanmar destination because it's near a Laotian ecolodge I want to visit. Lucky choice, as we enjoyed Vientiane's relative quiet when we were here on our Intrepid tour. This city's colonial history means it offers good Indian restaurants and French pastries, so we're happy. We take a long walk along the Mekong, where we see an entire mile of ongoing Chinese financed construction projects. We stop for coffee at a brand new high-falutin' hotel, where I experience something I've been looking for for months - decaf! We spend 60,241 kip for two coffees - about $7.50. This is another city that will look quite different in ten years. Now, there are plenty of small shops and many goods are still sold at the day market and at the night market. With Chinese investment continuing, it will change. For the residents, change usually means jobs.
Ban Pako Ecolodge
The owner of the Ban Pako ecolodge picks us up in his well worn mini bus, and we head 30 miles northeast of Vientiane for three nights on the Nam Ngum river. This river contributes 10% to the flow of the Mekong. Ban Pako is very isolated and quiet. It's the only place we've been in Southeast Asia where we can clearly hear the birds. We can also hear stump-tailed macaque monkeys calling back and forth, and some kind of deafening loud cicadas. The owner tells us that last year a leopard was hanging around, but departed after he broke into the quail house and devoured most of them. There is some new construction at the lodge, but there is some maintenance needed too, like rebuilding the bridge over the trail, and fishing the sunken canoes out of the river.
 |
| Our porch at Ban Pako |
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| Our bungalow overlooking the river, Ban Pako Ecolodge |
We read, play games on our kindles and wait for dinner time. The most exciting thing that happens at Ban Pako is when our cloth lamp shade gets tangled up in the ceiling fan and sprays lightbulb glass around the room. Our host is Swedish, about our age, and he tells us the lodge is built around an archaeological site. He asks if we've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark and if we remember the character of Marion Ravenswood, the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, brawling love interest of Indiana Jones. We do, and he tells us that the character is modeled on a real Australian archaeologist, who has done work at Ban Pako. Our host himself looks a bit like Donald Sutherland, but not as well kept.
A pair of young French women arrive on a motorcycle, and we find we've underestimated our dinner server. His English is quite good, and so, it turns out, is his French. As we check out, the owner tells us that tourism all over Southeast Asia is way down, due to the ongoing political unrest in Thailand. Bangkok is the only airport in five countries that can land big jets, so when Bangkok suffers everyone suffers. We ask his opinion of what may happen next, and he says he fears civil war in Thailand, where he previously lived for twenty years. The king is very well respected and has been a stabilizing influence, but he is elderly and in poor health. The crown princess is popular, but a woman can not take the throne. The crown prince is very unpopular and currently married to his third wife. We are told that he slipped a bag containing heroin into his second wife's baggage in hopes of her going to jail, but the plot was foiled when one of his children said "That bag's from daddy".
 |
| Nam Ngum River at Ban Pako |
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Next day, we wake up in our hotel in Vientiane and chat about that day's flight to Thailand, making sure we have the right time in our heads. We confirm the time, and suddenly Doug says "Wait a minute, this is Sunday". We've got the time right, but we're a day early. Better to have realized it in bed than while standing at the airline check-in counter with our bags. So we spend one more day in Vientiane, see some art and take a long hot walk. March in Southeast Asia is very dry and very hot. At least we can get one more meal at our favorite Indian restaurant in Vientiane.
Next day we arrive at the airport and fly to Phuket via Bangkok. Phuket is a touristy island with lots of nice beaches. Too mainstream, so I've booked us into a very nice resort on a quiet island off the coast of Phuket. We're arrive in Phuket too late for the last ferry of the day, however, so I've reserved a room for one night at a hotel in Phuket Town. It's a long cab ride south from the airport to the hotel, but we should be near the dock in order to get to our smaller island in the morning. Not so, we learn in the morning, and I tell Doug I've gotten a bum steer on the hotel location as we learn that we need to take another long cab ride north, back in the direction we came from yesterday. That's the only way to get to the relevant ferry dock.
We get to the dock, where a Macaque monkey is up to some highjinks in the garbage can. A nice Muslim lady in a bright yellow headscarf explains the monkey business to Doug - in Thai. The southern tail of Thailand borders Malaysia, and there's a strong Muslim presence here. In fact, there's some ethnic unrest, unrelated to the ongoing political dispute in Bangkok. Anyway, we take the ferry, but the surprises are not over. I'm startled but not dismayed when the tuk tuk drivers at the arrival dock on the small island aren't familiar with the name of our resort. Surely this will be resolved quickly. One of them agrees to take us after I repeat the name of the resort and point to the general location on the map. We're sharing a tuk tuk with a couple of French guys, and after we drop them off at their resort, the driver asks again where we're going and calls a friend (is this a game show?) regarding it's location. I go into the French guys' resort and ask the reception staff to explain to our driver how to find our resort. Everyone, including Doug, the driver and the reception staff are very diplomatic. I hear questions like "Are you sure of the resort name?", and "Could it be on another island?" I'm sure of both, but it turns out that I'm dead wrong on both counts.
There are two adjacent islands, Koh Yao Yai and Koh Yao Noi. Similar names, right? I thought the name of our resort was Koh Yao Noi Village, so it would of course be on Koh Yao Noi island. However, it turns out the name of the resort is Koh Yao Yai Village, and we are on the wrong island. The only good news is that the island with our resort is only a five minute boat ride away. Perhaps tropical heat has softened my brain; I don't usually make mistakes like this, and such a sequence of them. Before the day is over we are finally checked into our bungalow, and it is spacious and lovely.
Koh Yao Yai Village Resort
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| Infinity pool overlooking the beach at Koh Yao Yai Village Resort |
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| Our bungalow at Koh Yao Yai Village Resort |
The entire resort is spacious and lovely, with a huge infinity pool overlooking the shoreline and the off shore islands. We spend the next three days swimming and reading and napping and eating and drinking cheap whiskey that we bought in Myanmar. We decide we're not cut out to be the idle rich, as we get bored with this agenda.
We take a day trip kayaking in the mangroves. As we've found typical, no one asks if we know how to kayak (we do), we just go, and our guide does not speak English. We're on an estuary river, and there's a considerable current. Our guide takes us so far downstream we think it must be a one way trip and a tuk tuk will be waiting at the end. Not so, we get to the end and turn around and paddle back upstream in the mid day sun. It was hot before we turned around, so there is some sweat spilled on the way back. Not particularly enjoyable, but the exercise is good for us.
 |
| Kayaking in the mangroves, Koh Yao Yai Island |
We return to our idle agenda, but it's clear we're not idle rich, as we always balk at resort laundry fees. Our deluxe bungalow is the one with my sink-washed laundry hanging all over the deck. Doug is even more efficient, he takes his dirty clothes into the shower with him. Over dinner we ask about the loud birds we've been hearing. Their call sounds like "Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh". We learn that they're actually Asian geckos. In addition to the typical small chirping geckos we're used to, this part of the world also has geckos that are almost a pound in weight and close to two feet long. I'd like to see one, but they are elusive and call mostly at night.
Andaman Bangtao Bay Resort
We are down to our final five days of our three month adventure, and we're spending it on the southwest coast of Thailand, back on Phuket island. We're in a small family resort among some pretty upscale places, though this beach is not full of the high rise hotels on other Phuket beaches. Like Vietnam's beaches, there are quite a few Russians vacationing here too. We see restaurant menus in Thai, English and Russian. It's very hot and sunny, and our thoughts are turning toward spring in Wisconsin. Doug's thinking about the taxes he needs to do, and I'm thinking about the refrigerator - standing unplugged and empty. Makes me hungry just to think about the dearth of food.
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| Andaman Bang Tao Beach Resort, Phuket Island |
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| Bang Tao beach, Phuket Island |
We spend our lazy days here swimming and walking on the beach, reading and lounging and finishing our cheap whiskey. We both get sore feet from walking on the beach - the sand is nice but it must be more abrasive than it appears. We spend most of one day walking to the next beach down the coast. It's considerably more upscale. A young tailor comes out of his shop to solicit business. He's experienced at this, his first question is "How long are you staying?' Our answer (until tomorrow) tells him that we're not going to be ordering any tailored clothing, but it's a quiet day so we have a long conversation with him. He is ethnically Nepali, raised in Myanmar, and an economic refugee to Thailand. His English is excellent, he tells us that some Southeast Asians use a type of tongue press to thin their tongues so they can speak English more easily. He says Americans are too casual to order tailored clothing; Europeans are better customers. It's so hot here this time of year that at mid day we only want to be in our air conditioned room. It's not very well air conditioned, however. The doors and windows don't fit tight and the air conditioner runs constantly with minimal impact. Good thing we're being lazy here anyway.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Myanmar
Feb 27 - March 9
Myanmar
We are in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar (formerly Burma), a place I've always wanted to be. A great novel set in Myanmar is Amy Tan's "Saving Fish from Drowning". The title reflects some of the complexity of this place - a Buddhist fisherman doesn't want to harm the fish, but needs to feed his family. He tells himself that netting the fish is saving them from drowning. I'm immediately struck by the beautiful eyes of the Burmese people. Their eyes are large and dark and expressive. I think I finally know what is meant by "liquid" eyes.
The Burmese ethnic group are about 60% of the population and there are myriads of other ethnic groups, so changing the name from Burma to Myanmar makes sense to me. In some of the remote regions (closed to tourism) there are active ethnic insurgencies against the government. The military government here has been utterly repressive for decades and the country has been isolated from most of the world. But the current military leader saw the economy continuing to sink and has now opened the country to tourism.
The press is more open than before, but it's not a free press. Aung Sun Soo Kyi, leader of the opposition party and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is no longer under house arrest. Everyone we talk to seems to be waiting for the government to change the constitution so she can be elected president in 2015. Her photo, and her father's photo, are everywhere, including on T-shirts and in the temples. Her father led Burma out of British colonization after WWII and was assassinated at age 32. This country has been waiting for a long time.
At the hotel I set my watch a half hour back to correspond to Myanmar time, and we request a 4:30 wake up call so we can catch our flight to Bagan in the morning. The streets are pretty quiet during the night, but the quiet is punctuated about every hour with startlingly loud and happy shouts or startlingly loud music. Perhaps people are still celebrating their new freedoms. Our 4:30 wake up call comes at 3:30, but again at 4:30 too. Our hotel is not inexpensive, as Yangon is growing rapidly and there is a shortage of rooms. But there is no internet in the rooms. And laundry service, so inexpensive everywhere else we've been, is so outrageous here that we end up rinsing out our duds and hanging them all over our room when we reach Mandalay. Many places accept US money, so Doug tries to use the crisp new US bills we saved for Myanmar, knowing they didn't want old currency. It's central bank policy, and they have scrutinizing eyes. A new US ten dollar bill that we think is pristine is rejected due to a pin prick sized black spot that we had to squint to see.
In Yangon, the capital city, I'm struck by how many people are wearing traditional longyis (sarongs), both men and women, and including our guide Thu. He was an English major in college. Thu has been a monk twice, first as a young novitiate and again as a young man when he meditated three hours per day. He tells us that intense meditation let him move his mind outside of his body and perch it on his shoulder. If you feel a pain in your body while meditating, it simply represents the pain that exists in the world. Thu studied Theraveda Buddhism, based on the original teachings of Buddha. People walk around pagodas in a clockwise pattern, so their right side is always closest to the temple.
As we are dazzled by the gold and diamonds in the Shwedagon Pagoda Thu tells us that many donors from around the world pay for constant renovations, including the many smaller pagodas that surround the main pagoda. This earns them merit in this world to help improve their status in their next life. When Doug asks about this, Thu says that if he had wealth he would earn merit by donating to an orphanage, not a temple. We like him. The Shwedagon Pagoda, like so many others, is believed to hold a relic of Buddha. Apparently when Buddha (Siddhartha actually, he wasn't the Buddha yet) cut off his hair there was plenty to go around.
Motorcycles are banned in Yangon, which makes crossing the street less hazardous than in other cities. Our taxi driver says there are two reasons motorcycles are banned - one is public safety, and the second is security. Someone once took a few potshots at one of the military government officials from the back of a motorcycle. The government has moved out of town to a newly built city, but the motorcycle ban remains.
We see a fascinating collection of old trucks, buses and tractors. I ask Doug if one truck with a single wheel in front and no hood is WWII era. He shakes his head: "Older." Many of the vehicles have been repaired with materials at hand. Doug finds a drive belt made from a spliced rope. Our travel agent, based in Hanoi, has booked us on domestic flights to get around - the roads are that bad. The trains run up to 100% behind schedule, and we see one inching along, with every car jerking sideways in it's own chicken dance. Once we get out of the cities, we find that oxcarts are still commonly used for farming.
Bagon
After seeing some of the main sights of Yangon (the Shwedagon Pagoda is a highlight) we fly to Bagan. Bagan is in some ways similar to Angkor Wat, full of temples. But they are not huge centralized structures like those near Angkor, these vary in size and dot the plains of Bagan. People are living next to them and farming around them, there are that many. Our guide Men Men ("Mee Mee") tells us that when the king converted the populace to Buddhism, anyone with political or commercial aspirations showed his devotion to the king by building a Buddhist temple, as large as he could afford. Bagan was a prosperous area with a population approaching a million, so there are LOTS of temples. Men Men takes us in the larger temples (our shoes off of course) and we see ancient murals hidden away from the elements.
It's very dry in Bagan. The rains will start again in April. There are three seasons of four months each - rainy, summer, and winter. We're in winter, it's bone dry and about 80 to 85 degrees F. We take a day trip to Mount Popa, and along the way we see that the road crosses several dry washes. Men Men says when it rains, you take a bus or taxi to the wash, which is now a significant stream, wade across, and get in another vehicle on the other side. There are government projects underway to build bridges and irrigation systems, but they are "long range plans", as the Burmese say. They're not holding their breath for completion. Along the road women are sweeping the sand off the road. They smile and wave when vehicles pass; they are seeking "donations" from the drivers. In the temples it's similar. The steps are covered with people lackadaisically swabbing the steps with bottled water, asking "Donation for cleaning?". Men Men says if we want to support the temple, put the money in a donation box, not in their hands. But it demonstrates the poverty and the need that exists here.
We've seen enough temples for a while, so we take an afternoon to see Mount Popa. Actually, the mount is topped by a temple, but at least we see some new territory along the drive. The temple on Mount Popa is not Buddhist, though there are now several Buddha figures there. It's dedicated to the ancient Nats, the animist spirits that are still very important to the Burmese people. The Nats are depicted in human form, but they have the power to bring good luck or bad luck. Men Men, who is a devout Buddhist, takes a moment at the temple to pray to the Nats. As we are climbing back down from the temple, I see Buddhist monks ascending. I ask Men Men "Would a monk pray to a Nat?" "Of course", he replies. "It's perfectly acceptable for anyone to pray to the Nats, as long as you pray to Buddha first." "Do you pray TO Buddha? Or do you simply pray in front of Buddha?" "You pray to Buddha, he can grant your wishes so it's okay to ask him for specific things". We are learning that Buddhism is like Christianity or any other religion - the answer you get depends on who you ask.
After a few nights we ask Men Men to show us a restaurant that won't be full of other tourists. He complies, Doug and I are the only white faces there. Men Men orders us a traditional dinner and goes on home. The dinner is plentiful, and plenty baffling. The waitress speaks enough English to name each dish as she sets it down, but there are eight dishes, and about eighteen different side dishes of condiments to adorn them with. We tuck in, sometimes knowing what we're eating and sometimes not. It's good, but everything seems to be swimming in grease. We cut the grease with Myanmar beer.
Next day it's ballooning over Bagan. We rise early and get picked up at the hotel at 5:30 am. This is something we've never done before, so we enjoy seeing the field of balloons inflate and start to rise over their baskets. Our captain Christoph (from Belgium) tells us the basics, including the fact that sometimes the baskets tip over on landing, and this is "perfectly natural". We climb in, Christoph turns on more gas, we bump the ground a little and we're off. The winds are variable, we get a good look at the Ayeraywady River and the town, but are a bit far from the bulk of the temples. As we eventually descend, Christoph tells us the winds have picked up a ground level, which he doesn't like. We are getting farther from the designated landing zone. We swing and bump along the ground, and sure enough the basket tips over as we touch ground and we are hanging out sideways. After we've climbed out and the champagne has been popped, Christoph says "You know how I told you it's natural to tip over? Well, that never happened before." Lucky us! We are waiting for the ground crew to find us, but the villagers have already found us. The T-shirts and sand paintings and longyi sellers are there. Chistoph says they generally beat the ground crew.
The Road to Mandalay
In Mandalay we are met by a new local guide, Pyu Pyu. We're amazed at how many English speakers we encounter everywhere in Myanmar. Despite the country's isolation up until 2008, English has been taught in the schools by government mandate. Even our taxi drivers seem well versed in English, sometimes they have less of an accent than our guides. Mandalay is surrounded by small towns full of ancient temples; the kings had a habit of moving their capitals and their people around, so we see a lot more temples. We also visit a monastery that allows visitors to watch the monks line up for their final meal of the day at noon. We take a walk on the world's longest wooden bridge, 1.2 kilometers of teak, no vehicles, no handrails. It was built in the early 1800's to cross the lake.
Then it's night. Pyu Pyu and our driver have dropped us at the hotel in Mandalay and told us where to find a place to eat. We're picking our way along the street. The pavement is awful, there seem to be abandoned construction projects everywhere. Motorcycles are parked on the few places where the sidewalk is intact. There are holes, drop-offs and piles of rubble everywhere. And why is it so dark? I look up - Mandalay, the second largest city in the country, has no streetlights, even where the street is given over to the night market. There are goods spread on the road, and shoppers browsing, but there is still traffic coming. Some of the vehicle headlights spread a little light on the road, but not all of them have headlights. (Correction: our guide later points out later that SOME of the streets in Mandalay have lights.) There are a few stoplights, but not nearly enough. Drivers have somehow figured it out. When a group of them feel they've been waiting at the intersection long enough, they ease out into cross traffic until it gradually stops and gives them their turn to go.
Next day we take a boat ride up the river. There is no dock, just boat after boat parallel to the shore. The innermost boat is tied to stakes on the shore, the second boat is moored parallel to the first boat, etc. We cross on planks from boat to boat before we board our boat, the seventh one. Everyone cooperates. Owner of the inner boats help you across the planks until you get to your boat. We go up river to Mingon to see (what else?) another temple. The ride along the river is breezy and pleasant. It must be about 85 degrees. Doug and I are in shirt sleeves enjoying the breeze. The boatman and our guide are wearing sweaters and jackets. After all, it's winter in Myanmar. Along the river we see lots of vegetable fields and small wooden homes. Pyu Pyu says that when the water is low families take advantage of the fertile riverside to plant dry season crops. When the river rises they pick up their homes and move them.
Factories in Myanmar
We see several "factories" in Myanmar - silk weaving, lacquer-ware making, gold leaf pounding, black-smithing, silver-smithing, marble carving, boat making, cheroot rolling. But when a guide says we're going to see a "factory", I've learned what to expect. It's generally a modestly sized open air building. The employees are sitting around like they would be at home, wearing longyis and sitting on the floor on woven floor mats. Men and women work on different tasks in different areas. Everything we see is hand made. The gold leaf pounding is entirely traditional. Here in Mandalay, all the gold leaf is pounded thin by hand. Three or four strong young men in longyis stand over small pieces of gold pressed between layers of bamboo paper. They rhythmically pound with wooden mallets, over and over and over. They make about $1 per day. (Taxi drivers and boatmen make about $3 per day in Myanmar.) Gold leaf is important at the temples. Many Buddha figures are still being covered over and over again with gold leaf pressed on by the faithful.
We visit an ancient teak monastery. I like the teak monastaries, they're dark inside and it seems cooler than some of the bright marbled and mirrored temples. This one is in a small village, and the monks are teaching school. It's not a monastery school, however, the boys are not monk novitiates and there are girls in the school. It looks and sounds like chaos. The kids are on the floor, on the desks, and hanging out the windows. They are all reciting something they are supposed to be memorizing, but not in harmony with each other. One by one they approach the monk to recite. The monk is sprawled in a chair at the front with a switch in his hand (for the flies or the kids?, or maybe both?). Each kid in turn squats low before the monk, puts his or her hands together in a prayerful position and bows their head to the floor. This is not religion, it's just showing the respect every kid should show a monk. Then they recite.
We learn later that monks have much respect. You are not supposed to put your head above a monk's. If he is sitting on the floor you should sit lower. They do not pay for transportation. Monks simply say where they want to go. In the boats, the monks get the front seat, or the highest seat. On the public bus, you may buy the last first class ticket so you can sit in front. But if a monk gets on, you are supposed to give him your seat and move to the back. You could end up standing in the back, that's just the way it's done. There are also nuns, wearing pink (yes, pink) robes instead of yellow or burgundy. The nuns don't generate as much respect; monks don't cook their own food, but nuns and local women cook for the monks. Monks rise at 4:00 am, pray and meditate, then go out seeking alms. "Alms", are generally people putting rice into their black iron pots. The rest of their food is donated to monasteries or bought using donations to monasteries. The monks eat two meals a day, breakfast and lunch. Monks spend a good deal of time studying the dharmas, Buddha's teachings on how to live and pray. They must learn Pali, a language based on Sanskrit that is not spoken anywhere but in temples.
Lake Inle
Lake Inle is a highlight of our Myanmar tour. The lake is huge and shallow (15 to 20 feet deep). It's surrounded by mountains, and generally cool and breezy, at least in the mornings and evenings. The government has imposed new limits on woodcutting in the mountains, due to erosion silting into the lake. People live in stilt house villages along the shore. Each village has a specialty, i.e. the fishing village, the weaving village, the boatmaking village, the gardening village. The basis of the economy is fishing and gardening in floating gardens. The gardens have to float because the lake levels fluctuate so much with the seasons. The villagers generally start gardens with water hyacinth plants on the bottom layer, because it's so buoyant. They anchor the floating gardens with long poles stuck into the lake bottom. Over the years they add more plants and silt from the lake bottom, then plant their vegetables. They get six crops a year. This has only been happening since 1967, when a local monk preached against fishing.
Lake Inle is the home of the "leg rowers". The fishermen stand in the back of their boats, hold the single oar in one hand, and wrap a leg around the oar to power their stroke. The boats are all made of teak and they're heavy. Using a leg to row gives them one hand free to handle their fishing nets and baskets. Doug and I marvel that life along the lake still seems unchanged despite the areas popularity with tourists. If we come back in ten years we know it will look different.
We see more temples, and it's interesting to ask our new guide Thwin Oo about Buddhism. He's knowledgeable, but I suspect religion is not a huge part of his life. He tells us that some of the practices are cultural, not religious, like the prohibition on women approaching the Buddha figure at some of the holiest temples. But there is so much history - the Buddha that most of us think of (Gautama, or Siddhartha before he achieved Nirvana) is the fourth Buddha in this world. There will be one more. But there have been at least 28 Buddhas because there have been four previous worlds. No Buddhist knows or can remember his previous lives, but good Buddhists know all of the 128 former lives of Gautama. The footprint of Buddha is segmented into symbols depicting each form that he took in his previous lives.
I'm a little upset that our lodge, though scenically poised over the water on stilts, is just off the main body of the lake on a canal. I don't mind the location, just the fact that boats are going past all day long. These hand made teak boats are long and thin, occupied by people, goods going to market, and piles of lake weeds being hauled to supplement the floating gardens. There are some boats being rowed by the leg rowers, but most of the boats are powered by diesel engines adapted from road vehicles. The major adaptation seems to be removing the mufflers, and it's noisy here. After I contact the travel agent and find we can't change our pre-paid resort, Doug says, correctly, that I'll get used to it. Thwin Oo gives me the appropriate Asian response - only on this canal into Lake Inle does it sound like this. I'd have to come halfway around the world to hear this again.
Thwin Oo gets us up early and into the boat for a ride to the local market in a village situated on a canal near the lake. There is a complicated schedule governing which village hosts the market each weekday. This is the most authentic market I've ever seen. Ninety percent of the goods are spread on mats on the grounds. The hill tribes are here to sell their vegetables and handicrafts. Thwin Oo says many of them reach the market at dawn, after walking down from the hills for several hours in the dark, carrying their bundles. The Pao women are dressed in their traditional clothes with red turbans around their heads. They tolerate tourists, but don't let us get in their way. When Thwin Oo stops in the narrow aisle to tell us what we're looking at, they just shoulder by us. When we return through the market area a few hours later, the market is simply gone. They've rolled up their mats and gone home.
After a day and a half relaxing at our lodge (we're on stilts, so we can't go very far), Thwin Oo picks us up in the boat for the last time. We take a taxi to the airport in He Ho. This airport serves the Lake Inle area, so it sees a good amount of use, but we enjoy it's less developed atmosphere. The terminal building is small. The gates to board your flights are three sliding glass doors, right next to each other, through which you walk onto the tarmac. There is one runway. The glass doors are standing open, and the runway is about a hundred and fifty feet from the doors, so we we experience the deafening whoosh of every prop plane that lands and takes off. The loud speaker for flight announcements is exactly that - someone walks to the front of the waiting area with a hand-held loudspeaker. In case you miss your flight announcement due to the din, someone else walks around with a hand held sign with the flight number written on it in magic marker. We have boarding passes, but there is no electronic scanning, so they don't know who is boarding and who is not. Instead, the staff paste colored stickers on the passengers when you check in. If a flight doesn't have the right number of passengers on board, the staff walk around looking for people still seated in the waiting area who are wearing the sticker for that flight. We've already experienced two one-hour flight delays on previous legs of our trip due to "fog in Yangon", which is the national hub. However, Thwin Oo was able to tell us two days prior to our final domestic flight that it would be delayed an hour due to "fog in Yangon", so apparently this is a euphemism for "we don't fly on time".
We return to Yangon, visit the market and a cool contemporary art gallery, and see another temple which has, of course, a hair of the Buddha. We walk around downtown to see the old British colonial buildings and we stop and the historic (Kipling to Mick Jagger) Strand Hotel for a drink in the bar.
Myanmar
We are in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar (formerly Burma), a place I've always wanted to be. A great novel set in Myanmar is Amy Tan's "Saving Fish from Drowning". The title reflects some of the complexity of this place - a Buddhist fisherman doesn't want to harm the fish, but needs to feed his family. He tells himself that netting the fish is saving them from drowning. I'm immediately struck by the beautiful eyes of the Burmese people. Their eyes are large and dark and expressive. I think I finally know what is meant by "liquid" eyes.
The Burmese ethnic group are about 60% of the population and there are myriads of other ethnic groups, so changing the name from Burma to Myanmar makes sense to me. In some of the remote regions (closed to tourism) there are active ethnic insurgencies against the government. The military government here has been utterly repressive for decades and the country has been isolated from most of the world. But the current military leader saw the economy continuing to sink and has now opened the country to tourism.
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| Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon |
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| Reclining Buddha, Yangon |
The press is more open than before, but it's not a free press. Aung Sun Soo Kyi, leader of the opposition party and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is no longer under house arrest. Everyone we talk to seems to be waiting for the government to change the constitution so she can be elected president in 2015. Her photo, and her father's photo, are everywhere, including on T-shirts and in the temples. Her father led Burma out of British colonization after WWII and was assassinated at age 32. This country has been waiting for a long time.
At the hotel I set my watch a half hour back to correspond to Myanmar time, and we request a 4:30 wake up call so we can catch our flight to Bagan in the morning. The streets are pretty quiet during the night, but the quiet is punctuated about every hour with startlingly loud and happy shouts or startlingly loud music. Perhaps people are still celebrating their new freedoms. Our 4:30 wake up call comes at 3:30, but again at 4:30 too. Our hotel is not inexpensive, as Yangon is growing rapidly and there is a shortage of rooms. But there is no internet in the rooms. And laundry service, so inexpensive everywhere else we've been, is so outrageous here that we end up rinsing out our duds and hanging them all over our room when we reach Mandalay. Many places accept US money, so Doug tries to use the crisp new US bills we saved for Myanmar, knowing they didn't want old currency. It's central bank policy, and they have scrutinizing eyes. A new US ten dollar bill that we think is pristine is rejected due to a pin prick sized black spot that we had to squint to see.
In Yangon, the capital city, I'm struck by how many people are wearing traditional longyis (sarongs), both men and women, and including our guide Thu. He was an English major in college. Thu has been a monk twice, first as a young novitiate and again as a young man when he meditated three hours per day. He tells us that intense meditation let him move his mind outside of his body and perch it on his shoulder. If you feel a pain in your body while meditating, it simply represents the pain that exists in the world. Thu studied Theraveda Buddhism, based on the original teachings of Buddha. People walk around pagodas in a clockwise pattern, so their right side is always closest to the temple.
As we are dazzled by the gold and diamonds in the Shwedagon Pagoda Thu tells us that many donors from around the world pay for constant renovations, including the many smaller pagodas that surround the main pagoda. This earns them merit in this world to help improve their status in their next life. When Doug asks about this, Thu says that if he had wealth he would earn merit by donating to an orphanage, not a temple. We like him. The Shwedagon Pagoda, like so many others, is believed to hold a relic of Buddha. Apparently when Buddha (Siddhartha actually, he wasn't the Buddha yet) cut off his hair there was plenty to go around.
Motorcycles are banned in Yangon, which makes crossing the street less hazardous than in other cities. Our taxi driver says there are two reasons motorcycles are banned - one is public safety, and the second is security. Someone once took a few potshots at one of the military government officials from the back of a motorcycle. The government has moved out of town to a newly built city, but the motorcycle ban remains.
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| Refurbished WWII troop transport buses, now used to transport tourists |
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| Truck near the wharf, power transfer via spliced rope |
We see a fascinating collection of old trucks, buses and tractors. I ask Doug if one truck with a single wheel in front and no hood is WWII era. He shakes his head: "Older." Many of the vehicles have been repaired with materials at hand. Doug finds a drive belt made from a spliced rope. Our travel agent, based in Hanoi, has booked us on domestic flights to get around - the roads are that bad. The trains run up to 100% behind schedule, and we see one inching along, with every car jerking sideways in it's own chicken dance. Once we get out of the cities, we find that oxcarts are still commonly used for farming.
Bagon
After seeing some of the main sights of Yangon (the Shwedagon Pagoda is a highlight) we fly to Bagan. Bagan is in some ways similar to Angkor Wat, full of temples. But they are not huge centralized structures like those near Angkor, these vary in size and dot the plains of Bagan. People are living next to them and farming around them, there are that many. Our guide Men Men ("Mee Mee") tells us that when the king converted the populace to Buddhism, anyone with political or commercial aspirations showed his devotion to the king by building a Buddhist temple, as large as he could afford. Bagan was a prosperous area with a population approaching a million, so there are LOTS of temples. Men Men takes us in the larger temples (our shoes off of course) and we see ancient murals hidden away from the elements.
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| Temples of Bagan |
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| Mother and child wearing thanaka, traditional sunscreen made from tree bark |
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| "Long neck" tribal woman, not so common anymore |
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| Boating on the Ayeryawady |
After a few nights we ask Men Men to show us a restaurant that won't be full of other tourists. He complies, Doug and I are the only white faces there. Men Men orders us a traditional dinner and goes on home. The dinner is plentiful, and plenty baffling. The waitress speaks enough English to name each dish as she sets it down, but there are eight dishes, and about eighteen different side dishes of condiments to adorn them with. We tuck in, sometimes knowing what we're eating and sometimes not. It's good, but everything seems to be swimming in grease. We cut the grease with Myanmar beer.
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| Our personal buffet, traditional Myanmar meal |
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| Ballooning over Bagan |
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| Local inspectors viewing our "crash" landing |
In Mandalay we are met by a new local guide, Pyu Pyu. We're amazed at how many English speakers we encounter everywhere in Myanmar. Despite the country's isolation up until 2008, English has been taught in the schools by government mandate. Even our taxi drivers seem well versed in English, sometimes they have less of an accent than our guides. Mandalay is surrounded by small towns full of ancient temples; the kings had a habit of moving their capitals and their people around, so we see a lot more temples. We also visit a monastery that allows visitors to watch the monks line up for their final meal of the day at noon. We take a walk on the world's longest wooden bridge, 1.2 kilometers of teak, no vehicles, no handrails. It was built in the early 1800's to cross the lake.
Then it's night. Pyu Pyu and our driver have dropped us at the hotel in Mandalay and told us where to find a place to eat. We're picking our way along the street. The pavement is awful, there seem to be abandoned construction projects everywhere. Motorcycles are parked on the few places where the sidewalk is intact. There are holes, drop-offs and piles of rubble everywhere. And why is it so dark? I look up - Mandalay, the second largest city in the country, has no streetlights, even where the street is given over to the night market. There are goods spread on the road, and shoppers browsing, but there is still traffic coming. Some of the vehicle headlights spread a little light on the road, but not all of them have headlights. (Correction: our guide later points out later that SOME of the streets in Mandalay have lights.) There are a few stoplights, but not nearly enough. Drivers have somehow figured it out. When a group of them feel they've been waiting at the intersection long enough, they ease out into cross traffic until it gradually stops and gives them their turn to go.
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| World's longest wooden bridge, 1.2 kilometers |
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| Monks lining up for lunch with their alms bowls |
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| Myanmar monk |
Factories in Myanmar
We see several "factories" in Myanmar - silk weaving, lacquer-ware making, gold leaf pounding, black-smithing, silver-smithing, marble carving, boat making, cheroot rolling. But when a guide says we're going to see a "factory", I've learned what to expect. It's generally a modestly sized open air building. The employees are sitting around like they would be at home, wearing longyis and sitting on the floor on woven floor mats. Men and women work on different tasks in different areas. Everything we see is hand made. The gold leaf pounding is entirely traditional. Here in Mandalay, all the gold leaf is pounded thin by hand. Three or four strong young men in longyis stand over small pieces of gold pressed between layers of bamboo paper. They rhythmically pound with wooden mallets, over and over and over. They make about $1 per day. (Taxi drivers and boatmen make about $3 per day in Myanmar.) Gold leaf is important at the temples. Many Buddha figures are still being covered over and over again with gold leaf pressed on by the faithful.
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| On the river with Pyu Pyu, our Mandalay guide |
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| Silk weaving piecework, they can do about 2" per day |
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| Pounding gold leaf, for $1 per day |
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| Teak log transport on the river |
We visit an ancient teak monastery. I like the teak monastaries, they're dark inside and it seems cooler than some of the bright marbled and mirrored temples. This one is in a small village, and the monks are teaching school. It's not a monastery school, however, the boys are not monk novitiates and there are girls in the school. It looks and sounds like chaos. The kids are on the floor, on the desks, and hanging out the windows. They are all reciting something they are supposed to be memorizing, but not in harmony with each other. One by one they approach the monk to recite. The monk is sprawled in a chair at the front with a switch in his hand (for the flies or the kids?, or maybe both?). Each kid in turn squats low before the monk, puts his or her hands together in a prayerful position and bows their head to the floor. This is not religion, it's just showing the respect every kid should show a monk. Then they recite.
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| At school |
We learn later that monks have much respect. You are not supposed to put your head above a monk's. If he is sitting on the floor you should sit lower. They do not pay for transportation. Monks simply say where they want to go. In the boats, the monks get the front seat, or the highest seat. On the public bus, you may buy the last first class ticket so you can sit in front. But if a monk gets on, you are supposed to give him your seat and move to the back. You could end up standing in the back, that's just the way it's done. There are also nuns, wearing pink (yes, pink) robes instead of yellow or burgundy. The nuns don't generate as much respect; monks don't cook their own food, but nuns and local women cook for the monks. Monks rise at 4:00 am, pray and meditate, then go out seeking alms. "Alms", are generally people putting rice into their black iron pots. The rest of their food is donated to monasteries or bought using donations to monasteries. The monks eat two meals a day, breakfast and lunch. Monks spend a good deal of time studying the dharmas, Buddha's teachings on how to live and pray. They must learn Pali, a language based on Sanskrit that is not spoken anywhere but in temples.
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| Nun |
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| Monk getting his head shaved |
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| Village on Lake Inle |
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| Lake Inle |
Lake Inle
Lake Inle is a highlight of our Myanmar tour. The lake is huge and shallow (15 to 20 feet deep). It's surrounded by mountains, and generally cool and breezy, at least in the mornings and evenings. The government has imposed new limits on woodcutting in the mountains, due to erosion silting into the lake. People live in stilt house villages along the shore. Each village has a specialty, i.e. the fishing village, the weaving village, the boatmaking village, the gardening village. The basis of the economy is fishing and gardening in floating gardens. The gardens have to float because the lake levels fluctuate so much with the seasons. The villagers generally start gardens with water hyacinth plants on the bottom layer, because it's so buoyant. They anchor the floating gardens with long poles stuck into the lake bottom. Over the years they add more plants and silt from the lake bottom, then plant their vegetables. They get six crops a year. This has only been happening since 1967, when a local monk preached against fishing.
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| Floating gardens staked to the lake bed |
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| Floating gardens |
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| Leg rower |
Lake Inle is the home of the "leg rowers". The fishermen stand in the back of their boats, hold the single oar in one hand, and wrap a leg around the oar to power their stroke. The boats are all made of teak and they're heavy. Using a leg to row gives them one hand free to handle their fishing nets and baskets. Doug and I marvel that life along the lake still seems unchanged despite the areas popularity with tourists. If we come back in ten years we know it will look different.
We see more temples, and it's interesting to ask our new guide Thwin Oo about Buddhism. He's knowledgeable, but I suspect religion is not a huge part of his life. He tells us that some of the practices are cultural, not religious, like the prohibition on women approaching the Buddha figure at some of the holiest temples. But there is so much history - the Buddha that most of us think of (Gautama, or Siddhartha before he achieved Nirvana) is the fourth Buddha in this world. There will be one more. But there have been at least 28 Buddhas because there have been four previous worlds. No Buddhist knows or can remember his previous lives, but good Buddhists know all of the 128 former lives of Gautama. The footprint of Buddha is segmented into symbols depicting each form that he took in his previous lives.
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| Leg Inle leg rower with fishing basket |
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| Doug & Thwin Oo, our guide |
I'm a little upset that our lodge, though scenically poised over the water on stilts, is just off the main body of the lake on a canal. I don't mind the location, just the fact that boats are going past all day long. These hand made teak boats are long and thin, occupied by people, goods going to market, and piles of lake weeds being hauled to supplement the floating gardens. There are some boats being rowed by the leg rowers, but most of the boats are powered by diesel engines adapted from road vehicles. The major adaptation seems to be removing the mufflers, and it's noisy here. After I contact the travel agent and find we can't change our pre-paid resort, Doug says, correctly, that I'll get used to it. Thwin Oo gives me the appropriate Asian response - only on this canal into Lake Inle does it sound like this. I'd have to come halfway around the world to hear this again.
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| Our room on Lake Inle |
Thwin Oo gets us up early and into the boat for a ride to the local market in a village situated on a canal near the lake. There is a complicated schedule governing which village hosts the market each weekday. This is the most authentic market I've ever seen. Ninety percent of the goods are spread on mats on the grounds. The hill tribes are here to sell their vegetables and handicrafts. Thwin Oo says many of them reach the market at dawn, after walking down from the hills for several hours in the dark, carrying their bundles. The Pao women are dressed in their traditional clothes with red turbans around their heads. They tolerate tourists, but don't let us get in their way. When Thwin Oo stops in the narrow aisle to tell us what we're looking at, they just shoulder by us. When we return through the market area a few hours later, the market is simply gone. They've rolled up their mats and gone home.
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| Market near Lake Inle |
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| Pao tribal women at the market |
After a day and a half relaxing at our lodge (we're on stilts, so we can't go very far), Thwin Oo picks us up in the boat for the last time. We take a taxi to the airport in He Ho. This airport serves the Lake Inle area, so it sees a good amount of use, but we enjoy it's less developed atmosphere. The terminal building is small. The gates to board your flights are three sliding glass doors, right next to each other, through which you walk onto the tarmac. There is one runway. The glass doors are standing open, and the runway is about a hundred and fifty feet from the doors, so we we experience the deafening whoosh of every prop plane that lands and takes off. The loud speaker for flight announcements is exactly that - someone walks to the front of the waiting area with a hand-held loudspeaker. In case you miss your flight announcement due to the din, someone else walks around with a hand held sign with the flight number written on it in magic marker. We have boarding passes, but there is no electronic scanning, so they don't know who is boarding and who is not. Instead, the staff paste colored stickers on the passengers when you check in. If a flight doesn't have the right number of passengers on board, the staff walk around looking for people still seated in the waiting area who are wearing the sticker for that flight. We've already experienced two one-hour flight delays on previous legs of our trip due to "fog in Yangon", which is the national hub. However, Thwin Oo was able to tell us two days prior to our final domestic flight that it would be delayed an hour due to "fog in Yangon", so apparently this is a euphemism for "we don't fly on time".
We return to Yangon, visit the market and a cool contemporary art gallery, and see another temple which has, of course, a hair of the Buddha. We walk around downtown to see the old British colonial buildings and we stop and the historic (Kipling to Mick Jagger) Strand Hotel for a drink in the bar.
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| Buddhas in Bagan |
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| Ancient mural of Buddha |
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| Gardeners near Lake Inle |
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| Ox carts are still used in farming |
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Feb 18 - 26
Chiang Mai
We are back in Thailand, after six weeks of seemingly non-stop touring. We spent our first night in Thailand in the border town of Chiang Khong on the Mekong River. Most of our tour group will take the sleeper train back to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, but our plan is to decompress in Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, in the north among the mountains and along the Ping River. We'll be here 9 days.
Girlie Boys
Since a few others are also leaving the tour at this point, we're having a farewell dinner, and our guide Noi asks if anyone wants to go to the "girlie-boy" show. Girlie-boys are transvestites, many, but not all, surgically altered. They are very open about who they are, and there are a surprising number, on the streets, in shops, etc. The girlie-boy show is fast, very loud, any highly entertaining. The costumes are Vegas showgirl quality, and the singing and dancing are well done. Our "waitress" takes us each by the arm and escorts us to a good table. We order two beers and her eyebrows go up "None for me?" So of course we buy her one. She slips it into her cleavage and insists Doug take a sip in-situ. For me, she puts my glasses on ( I have to wipe off her lipstick next morning) and plants my hands firmly on her very firm breasts.
Next day we trudge around for a while looking for a nice place to stay. We find two, one on the river and one in the old city, so we'll split up our stay here in both places. Both have pools! And balconies! And real shower stalls! And breakfast included! Yes, we are living it up, for about $45/day. We book ahead for a day at the "Elephant Nature Park", which houses rescued elephants. After much thought, and good info from Intrepid Tours, we've opted out of elephant riding and watching elephants "painting". First, elephants are not truly domesticated like dogs or cats that are bred to live with humans. Elephants are captured, and don't breed well in captivity. Secondly, anything that elephants are trained to do, from pulling logs to painting pictures, requires training. Elephants, being so large, are not trained gently. So we will be able to feed them and wash them in the river, but no shows.
In Chiang Mai we visit the cultural center to learn about Lanna (northern Thai) life. Even before western influences it was complicated here. Strong Buddhist beliefs, of course, but many older factors are still here, like rice planting and harvesting ceremonies and animist and Hindu influences. It's HOT, so we sit down for a fruit smoothie, made with yogurt. These are available everywhere in Southeast Asia, and we usually enjoy at least one per day, a great pick-me-up when we need to sit down in the shade. We move on to several of the historic wats (temples) in the old city, then cool off in the hotel pool. Dinner is right across the street in a northern Thai cafe. The fish stuffed with lemongrass is sizzling over charcoal on the street outside the restaurant.
The following days day we see some more wats and museums, but mostly we take it easy. We're still decompressing from the pace of our 40 day tour. At one of the wats three young women wearing university tags ask if they can guide us. We agree, but understand almost nothing due to their accents. Doug asks to see the notes one of them is reading from. She's written it in perfect English, so he offers to read it back to her as it should be pronounced. I get the feeling she's uncomfortable with this, probably because it's not what she's been instructed to do. There is an awful lot of giggling amongst the three of them - they've got a ways to go before becoming successful guides. The languages in SE Asia are so different from ours it's got to be tough; I suspect a lot more Asins are learning English than vice versa due to the tourism industry.
Doug has to spend a lot of time figuring out how to print jpeg attachments at an unfamiliar computer-printer setup at the hotel. These are our visa approval letters for Myanmar, received by email. Then we move to the Riverside Lodge, the second of the two lodging options we've chosen here in Chiang Mai. It's a bit more well worn, but has a lovely, quiet, riverside garden where breakfast is served. Our balcony overlooks the pool and garden.
We're not far from the Waroset market now, which could be dangerous. This is mostly for local shoppers - it's two large three-story buildings selling anything you could possibly need or want, from fresh fish to underwear, but it's a warren and finding things is a challenge. Finding your way out is also a challenge. If you come out on the wrong street it's tough to find your way back. Doug has no stamina, he leaves me before covering the first building. I stay and see it all, but surprise myself with how little I buy.
Elephant Day!
(Reader alert -Skip the next six paragraphs if you're not as enthralled with elephants as I am.)
Today we go to the Elephant Nature Park, about 90 minutes north of Chiang Mai. It's a non-profit founded by a woman from one of the hill tribes. Her grandfather was a shaman who received a young elephant as payment. Her love of elephants began then, and she rescues as many elephants as she can. Thai law views captured elephants the same as farm animals; there are protections only for elephants in the wild. This means she has to purchase any elephant she wants to save from abuse; $100,000 is a typical price. She's opened her rescue center to tourism in order to support her mission.
We learn that Thailand banned logging 25 years ago, but the forests are so depleted that they can't support more elephants than are already in them - captured elephants can not be returned to the wild. Tourism is the only viable option for elephants to earn their keep, and they eat a LOT. So it seems that elephant riding is necessary, but most tourists are naturally looking for the lowest price. Low prices equate to low care. We see a video of traditional methods of "breaking" young elephants and it's awful. There is one government training center that teaches mahouts how to train elephants without cruelty.
Although the African elephant is much larger overall, the cognitive centers are larger in the Asian elephant. Both size and intelligence make them more trainable. Elephant intelligence is comparable to apes and dolphins, and they are one of the few species that are known to grieve and to recognize themselves in a mirror. They are also unique in having four knees and having their teats located just behind their front legs. Elephants live about 80 years. Many of those here at the center are either elderly or somewhat disabled due to their history in the logging industry. That, and the fact that they are well fed and tended here makes them fairly gentle. We are able to feed them, scratch them, and bathe them in the river. This is better than sitting on top of them anyway!
The center brings out big baskets of watermelon and bananas so we can feed the elephants. They use their trunks to sniff the fruit, then wrap the end of their trunk around it and pop it into their mouth. Their trunks feel leathery, but soft and supple. When we later stand beside them and scratch them we feel the tougher hide on their flanks and the sparse but stiff hairs on their backs and sides. Elephants have acute hearing and a well developed sense of smell, but weak vision. They have no color vision. Every so often one of them starts to walk. They're very quiet; a bit disconcerting when an animal this size lumbers up behind you.
The elephants here are not confined. The center pays compensation if they wander into neighboring fields. When the females go into heat they go off into the surrounding forest. The gestation period is 22 months. The youngest elephant is only three months old; her father is probably a wild bull. They call her "naughty baby", and we're about to learn why. We take a walk down to the river, where a family group is eating grass. The elephants here, though mostly unrelated, form family groups just as they would in the wild. The lactating mom is surrounded by nannies who spend more time on child care than mom. We're watching them on the riverbank and can see that naughty baby is feeling frisky. Her mahout tries to grab her by the ear as she comes charging up the bank. But she's got momentum and suddenly Doug is getting a full frontal charge by an elephant that comes up to his waist. He says later that it was no contest; she was going to push him as far as she wanted. Luckily he is not toppled over in the grass. What a day! Doug survives an elephant charge!
Bull elephants are a major problem. The center has three adult males and one immature. Although the center probably would not neuter them in any case, neutering a bull elephant requires internal surgery. The center is building large enclosures for the bulls with massive cement posts, swimming pools and big concrete scratching posts. Meanwhile, they have to be tethered under shade pavilions and approached with great care. We see one that has been here since infancy pick up a rock and hurl it at the mahouts who have just fed him. Needless to say, the bulls are off limits for the visitors.
www.saveelephant.org/
That night we have dinner at a typical open air restaurant. The patrons at the two tables next to us change twice. Of the four couples who dined next to us, three are older Caucasian men with younger Thai women. I remember that at our breakfast cafe the owner (a Canadian expat about our age) said hello to a well dressed Thai woman. He said she was the door-to-door Viagra saleswoman. Later I dream I'm bowling with Ghandi, who has converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. I have a dusty pink bowling ball. Ghandi's is standard black. I ask him about Buddhism - if it's a personal journey to Nirvana, isn't that a bit selfish? I wish I could remember his answer more clearly, but it has something to do with the fact that the only path to Nirvana requires right thoughts and right actions. If you're not good to others and to the earth, you won't be meeting Ghandi in Nirvana.
It's All Happenin' at the Zoo
Next day we hire a songtau (pickup truck converted to a taxi via covered benches in back) to Wat Suthep on top of the hill. It's nice to get out of town, the route takes us through a national park. The wat, like most, is over-the-top overdecorated. On the way back, we have the driver drop us off at the zoo. This is an entirely new concept to me, interactive zoo keeping. Visitors can feed most of the animals by purchasing zoo-keeper-approved vegetables. We feed bananas to the emus. It's intimidating to feed giraffes - we're standing on a raised platform, but they tower over us waiting for someone to hold up a green bean. We feed carrots and potatoes to the dwarf hippo (just drop them right in her mouth and listen to her crunch) and, what's this? Right over there two hippos are gently mating on the pond - not something I expected to see in northern Thailand. We see a large bull elephant in a small low enclosure. Yes, you can feed him cucumbers. I'm sure he has a larger more secure enclosure somewhere, but this easy access makes me think he must be neutered. He soon demonstrates that he is not. It's larger than a big man's arm.
We see an irate macaque monkey having a fierce argument with his reflection in his stainless steel dinner pan. He grimaces and grunts and shakes it up, and repeatedly tries to drown that other macaque in the moat. He finally succeeds, and we wonder how many pans are at the bottom of the moat. Our last wildlife encounter is not planned. We're walking up the hill path when a woman warns us to look out for the cobra. He's not one of the exhibits. We ask if we should continue and she says sure, but be careful. We can't even find him, but another patron points him out. He's sticking his head out of a hole in a tree right about at the level of our heads. He's not too big, and we slink by on the far side of the path. We finish our day with more wildlife - fish for dinner, and then dip our feet in the big tank for the fish-nibbler pedicure.
Chiang Mai
We are back in Thailand, after six weeks of seemingly non-stop touring. We spent our first night in Thailand in the border town of Chiang Khong on the Mekong River. Most of our tour group will take the sleeper train back to Bangkok from Chiang Mai, but our plan is to decompress in Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, in the north among the mountains and along the Ping River. We'll be here 9 days.
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| Chiang Mai, moat around the old city |
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| Buddahs R Us store |
Girlie Boys
Since a few others are also leaving the tour at this point, we're having a farewell dinner, and our guide Noi asks if anyone wants to go to the "girlie-boy" show. Girlie-boys are transvestites, many, but not all, surgically altered. They are very open about who they are, and there are a surprising number, on the streets, in shops, etc. The girlie-boy show is fast, very loud, any highly entertaining. The costumes are Vegas showgirl quality, and the singing and dancing are well done. Our "waitress" takes us each by the arm and escorts us to a good table. We order two beers and her eyebrows go up "None for me?" So of course we buy her one. She slips it into her cleavage and insists Doug take a sip in-situ. For me, she puts my glasses on ( I have to wipe off her lipstick next morning) and plants my hands firmly on her very firm breasts.
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| At the girlie boy show |
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| A girlie boy performing |
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| Doug sips beer from our waitress' cleavage |
Next day we trudge around for a while looking for a nice place to stay. We find two, one on the river and one in the old city, so we'll split up our stay here in both places. Both have pools! And balconies! And real shower stalls! And breakfast included! Yes, we are living it up, for about $45/day. We book ahead for a day at the "Elephant Nature Park", which houses rescued elephants. After much thought, and good info from Intrepid Tours, we've opted out of elephant riding and watching elephants "painting". First, elephants are not truly domesticated like dogs or cats that are bred to live with humans. Elephants are captured, and don't breed well in captivity. Secondly, anything that elephants are trained to do, from pulling logs to painting pictures, requires training. Elephants, being so large, are not trained gently. So we will be able to feed them and wash them in the river, but no shows.
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| Our second hotel in Chiang Mai |
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| Our first hotel in Chiang Mai |
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| Fish for dinner |
In Chiang Mai we visit the cultural center to learn about Lanna (northern Thai) life. Even before western influences it was complicated here. Strong Buddhist beliefs, of course, but many older factors are still here, like rice planting and harvesting ceremonies and animist and Hindu influences. It's HOT, so we sit down for a fruit smoothie, made with yogurt. These are available everywhere in Southeast Asia, and we usually enjoy at least one per day, a great pick-me-up when we need to sit down in the shade. We move on to several of the historic wats (temples) in the old city, then cool off in the hotel pool. Dinner is right across the street in a northern Thai cafe. The fish stuffed with lemongrass is sizzling over charcoal on the street outside the restaurant.
The following days day we see some more wats and museums, but mostly we take it easy. We're still decompressing from the pace of our 40 day tour. At one of the wats three young women wearing university tags ask if they can guide us. We agree, but understand almost nothing due to their accents. Doug asks to see the notes one of them is reading from. She's written it in perfect English, so he offers to read it back to her as it should be pronounced. I get the feeling she's uncomfortable with this, probably because it's not what she's been instructed to do. There is an awful lot of giggling amongst the three of them - they've got a ways to go before becoming successful guides. The languages in SE Asia are so different from ours it's got to be tough; I suspect a lot more Asins are learning English than vice versa due to the tourism industry.
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| Novice monks preparing to chant |
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| Novice tour guides with incomprehensible accents |
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| Customer service at the temple |
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| Teak Temple in Chiang Mai |
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| Temple in Chiang Mai |
We're not far from the Waroset market now, which could be dangerous. This is mostly for local shoppers - it's two large three-story buildings selling anything you could possibly need or want, from fresh fish to underwear, but it's a warren and finding things is a challenge. Finding your way out is also a challenge. If you come out on the wrong street it's tough to find your way back. Doug has no stamina, he leaves me before covering the first building. I stay and see it all, but surprise myself with how little I buy.
Elephant Day!
(Reader alert -Skip the next six paragraphs if you're not as enthralled with elephants as I am.)
Today we go to the Elephant Nature Park, about 90 minutes north of Chiang Mai. It's a non-profit founded by a woman from one of the hill tribes. Her grandfather was a shaman who received a young elephant as payment. Her love of elephants began then, and she rescues as many elephants as she can. Thai law views captured elephants the same as farm animals; there are protections only for elephants in the wild. This means she has to purchase any elephant she wants to save from abuse; $100,000 is a typical price. She's opened her rescue center to tourism in order to support her mission.
We learn that Thailand banned logging 25 years ago, but the forests are so depleted that they can't support more elephants than are already in them - captured elephants can not be returned to the wild. Tourism is the only viable option for elephants to earn their keep, and they eat a LOT. So it seems that elephant riding is necessary, but most tourists are naturally looking for the lowest price. Low prices equate to low care. We see a video of traditional methods of "breaking" young elephants and it's awful. There is one government training center that teaches mahouts how to train elephants without cruelty.
Although the African elephant is much larger overall, the cognitive centers are larger in the Asian elephant. Both size and intelligence make them more trainable. Elephant intelligence is comparable to apes and dolphins, and they are one of the few species that are known to grieve and to recognize themselves in a mirror. They are also unique in having four knees and having their teats located just behind their front legs. Elephants live about 80 years. Many of those here at the center are either elderly or somewhat disabled due to their history in the logging industry. That, and the fact that they are well fed and tended here makes them fairly gentle. We are able to feed them, scratch them, and bathe them in the river. This is better than sitting on top of them anyway!
The center brings out big baskets of watermelon and bananas so we can feed the elephants. They use their trunks to sniff the fruit, then wrap the end of their trunk around it and pop it into their mouth. Their trunks feel leathery, but soft and supple. When we later stand beside them and scratch them we feel the tougher hide on their flanks and the sparse but stiff hairs on their backs and sides. Elephants have acute hearing and a well developed sense of smell, but weak vision. They have no color vision. Every so often one of them starts to walk. They're very quiet; a bit disconcerting when an animal this size lumbers up behind you.
 |
| Young elephant loving up his mahout (who has treats for him) |
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| Washing our elephant |
Bull elephants are a major problem. The center has three adult males and one immature. Although the center probably would not neuter them in any case, neutering a bull elephant requires internal surgery. The center is building large enclosures for the bulls with massive cement posts, swimming pools and big concrete scratching posts. Meanwhile, they have to be tethered under shade pavilions and approached with great care. We see one that has been here since infancy pick up a rock and hurl it at the mahouts who have just fed him. Needless to say, the bulls are off limits for the visitors.
 |
| Naughty Baby in foreground. She charged Doug. |
www.saveelephant.org/
That night we have dinner at a typical open air restaurant. The patrons at the two tables next to us change twice. Of the four couples who dined next to us, three are older Caucasian men with younger Thai women. I remember that at our breakfast cafe the owner (a Canadian expat about our age) said hello to a well dressed Thai woman. He said she was the door-to-door Viagra saleswoman. Later I dream I'm bowling with Ghandi, who has converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. I have a dusty pink bowling ball. Ghandi's is standard black. I ask him about Buddhism - if it's a personal journey to Nirvana, isn't that a bit selfish? I wish I could remember his answer more clearly, but it has something to do with the fact that the only path to Nirvana requires right thoughts and right actions. If you're not good to others and to the earth, you won't be meeting Ghandi in Nirvana.
It's All Happenin' at the Zoo
Next day we hire a songtau (pickup truck converted to a taxi via covered benches in back) to Wat Suthep on top of the hill. It's nice to get out of town, the route takes us through a national park. The wat, like most, is over-the-top overdecorated. On the way back, we have the driver drop us off at the zoo. This is an entirely new concept to me, interactive zoo keeping. Visitors can feed most of the animals by purchasing zoo-keeper-approved vegetables. We feed bananas to the emus. It's intimidating to feed giraffes - we're standing on a raised platform, but they tower over us waiting for someone to hold up a green bean. We feed carrots and potatoes to the dwarf hippo (just drop them right in her mouth and listen to her crunch) and, what's this? Right over there two hippos are gently mating on the pond - not something I expected to see in northern Thailand. We see a large bull elephant in a small low enclosure. Yes, you can feed him cucumbers. I'm sure he has a larger more secure enclosure somewhere, but this easy access makes me think he must be neutered. He soon demonstrates that he is not. It's larger than a big man's arm.
We see an irate macaque monkey having a fierce argument with his reflection in his stainless steel dinner pan. He grimaces and grunts and shakes it up, and repeatedly tries to drown that other macaque in the moat. He finally succeeds, and we wonder how many pans are at the bottom of the moat. Our last wildlife encounter is not planned. We're walking up the hill path when a woman warns us to look out for the cobra. He's not one of the exhibits. We ask if we should continue and she says sure, but be careful. We can't even find him, but another patron points him out. He's sticking his head out of a hole in a tree right about at the level of our heads. He's not too big, and we slink by on the far side of the path. We finish our day with more wildlife - fish for dinner, and then dip our feet in the big tank for the fish-nibbler pedicure.
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| Tuk tuk transportation |
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| Hot chilies anyone? |
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| Banana vendor stall |
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| Laundry day at the monastery |
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