Note: This was written around Feb. 23.
Now we are on the Good Ship Lollipop, actually the RV Pandaw 1947 (when it was built), where we have already spent one night and have another to look forward to. Thanks to Nu Nu’s superb organizational skills, we have had very little time at leisure, and when we do, it is time to sleep. Since I last wrote in this journal, much has happened and it is all beginning to run together. My sequence may not be entirely accurate but my impressions will be.
After we left Pyin U Lwin, we drove back to Mandalay and this time we got a tour of the city. It is more attractive than Yangon, although the trash and litter still line the streets mostly undisturbed. On the way to Mandalay, we stopped at a fruit and veg stand and I am always amazed at the different varieties of edibles one encounters in other countries. Here were hanging very large pods, one to two feet long, and baskets of beans that looked like chestnuts only bigger and flatter. We asked Nu Nu what they were and she said the beans are inside the pods; they are broken open and the nut inside is ground up and rubbed on the stomachs of women of a certain age to ease female troubles. Kind of an Asian Hot Flash remedy, I guess. The dried pods are also used as decorations.
Later we passed the beginnings of what Nu Nu called a “cyber-city”, which we gathered will be a large area for technological commerce that will also house people and will eventually be as large as Yangon. It is good that they are looking ahead and planning for the future, since evidence of that is lacking in much of what we’ve seen.
We had lunch in an excellent Chinese restaurant, even Peking duck was on the menu, and afterwards checked into the Mandalay Hill Resort Hotel for one night. This hotel is old but quite elegant and we were told that they had prepared a barbeque dinner for us by the pool. The room was your basic business Hilton type but the most user friendly so far in terms of light, plugs, hooks, etc. We could see the pool from our window but the “barbeque” was beyond the pool in a lush setting that looked like a cross between a Hawaiian Luau and a Tahitian beach. The barbeque was not what we expected, i.e., ribs and hamburgers, but rather a vast array of Myanmar delicacies whose names I can neither spell nor pronounce but were very tasty and unusual. There were several types of skewers being cooked to order; many different salads with garlic, mint, and ginger; curried chicken, fish and beef; noodle soups and stir-fries; and that’s just what I can remember. All the while, Burmese dancers were dancing traditional dances while musicians played Burmese harps and other stringed instruments.
The afternoon activity was a visit to a teak monastery that is in such a state of disrepair I wanted to cry. It is made of solid teak intricately carved and deserving of the utmost respect by the government to preserve it for future generations, but it will not last the decade if something isn’t done. I expressed this to Nu Nu and she said “After 2010--Maybe.” The year 2010 is when the next elections are due and if they are able to change the government perhaps the new leaders will begin to clean up and to preserve these old treasures, but this is very much up in the air, in fact my impression is that it is very unlikely. In the meantime, every day these tresasures deteriorate more and more.
After the Monastery, we visited another pagoda which is also the site of the “world’s largest and heaviest” book, as it was described by Nu Nu. It is actually a large complex of small pagodas each housing a marble stele, each of which is inscribed with one page of the Buddhist canon. There are 729 of them and their most revered monk was able to memorize the entire set of three volumes. We all have our talents.
We visited a factory where they produce the gold leaf which adorns the more important pagodas. That process is quite interesting. They start with a one-ounce gold nugget which is put through a pasta machine type device, non-electric of course, and flattened over and over until a spool of gold ribbon is produced which is about the consistency of heavy tin foil. The ribbon is then cut into one inch pieces. Four men were sitting on stools and pounding with large mallets the one inch pieces for forty five minutes each (!) to create the tissue paper thin sheets of gold leaf. I bought ten small sheets in the shop. Please give me some ideas for what to do with it. They also had beautiful trays and other decorative objects adorned with 24 carat gold.
After a brief rest we met again to visit the famous Mandalay Hill. For this foray, another interesting form of transport was provided. We had noticed everywhere on the streets that, in addition to regular size city buses, many of the people travel on smaller vehicles that can only be described as “paddy wagons.” Inside there is a bank of seats on either side where people sit knee to knee and generally five or six people are hanging on the outside (barely it seems) and often six or eight people are sitting on the roof as well. The whole effect is one of disorganized chaos. Well, to our delight/dismay as the case may be, we were to travel up the Mandalay Hill in one of these vehicles. I had read in one of my books that there are 1,700+ steps to the top of the hill and was in mortal dread that we were going to be asked to climb them.
Anyway, we took our bus to some point and then we were directed to our own personal “paddy wagon”. It is a bit of a challenge just to get into the thing--you can’t stand up because the roof is about five feet from the floor--but we all made it with Nu Nu hanging off the back and we then proceeded up the hairpin curves of Mandalay Hill, hell bent for election at breakneck speed with the driver barely missing many of the other vehicles/bicyclers/pedestrians careening at an equally breakneck speed down the hill. It was quite fun, Pearl loved it and so did I, though I think one or two of the others were less than enthralled.
But back to the present. I hope I’m not losing the continuity, but as I said earlier, we are now on the RV Pandau 1947, an old riverboat that has been restored. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it to be much--last year we toured Halong Bay in Vietnam in a beautiful Chinese junk, a hard act to follow--but this one was actually lovely. Our stateroom was spacious enough, the bathroom was adequate and the public areas were quite luxurious by Burmese standards. The staff couldn’t have been more accommodating--they even scrub your shoes when you re-board after a dusty sojourn off the boat. It’s so relaxing to watch the sunset from the upper deck feel the hum of the engines as you go to sleep. More about the boat tomorrow.
Now we are on the Good Ship Lollipop, actually the RV Pandaw 1947 (when it was built), where we have already spent one night and have another to look forward to. Thanks to Nu Nu’s superb organizational skills, we have had very little time at leisure, and when we do, it is time to sleep. Since I last wrote in this journal, much has happened and it is all beginning to run together. My sequence may not be entirely accurate but my impressions will be.
After we left Pyin U Lwin, we drove back to Mandalay and this time we got a tour of the city. It is more attractive than Yangon, although the trash and litter still line the streets mostly undisturbed. On the way to Mandalay, we stopped at a fruit and veg stand and I am always amazed at the different varieties of edibles one encounters in other countries. Here were hanging very large pods, one to two feet long, and baskets of beans that looked like chestnuts only bigger and flatter. We asked Nu Nu what they were and she said the beans are inside the pods; they are broken open and the nut inside is ground up and rubbed on the stomachs of women of a certain age to ease female troubles. Kind of an Asian Hot Flash remedy, I guess. The dried pods are also used as decorations.
Later we passed the beginnings of what Nu Nu called a “cyber-city”, which we gathered will be a large area for technological commerce that will also house people and will eventually be as large as Yangon. It is good that they are looking ahead and planning for the future, since evidence of that is lacking in much of what we’ve seen.
We had lunch in an excellent Chinese restaurant, even Peking duck was on the menu, and afterwards checked into the Mandalay Hill Resort Hotel for one night. This hotel is old but quite elegant and we were told that they had prepared a barbeque dinner for us by the pool. The room was your basic business Hilton type but the most user friendly so far in terms of light, plugs, hooks, etc. We could see the pool from our window but the “barbeque” was beyond the pool in a lush setting that looked like a cross between a Hawaiian Luau and a Tahitian beach. The barbeque was not what we expected, i.e., ribs and hamburgers, but rather a vast array of Myanmar delicacies whose names I can neither spell nor pronounce but were very tasty and unusual. There were several types of skewers being cooked to order; many different salads with garlic, mint, and ginger; curried chicken, fish and beef; noodle soups and stir-fries; and that’s just what I can remember. All the while, Burmese dancers were dancing traditional dances while musicians played Burmese harps and other stringed instruments.
The afternoon activity was a visit to a teak monastery that is in such a state of disrepair I wanted to cry. It is made of solid teak intricately carved and deserving of the utmost respect by the government to preserve it for future generations, but it will not last the decade if something isn’t done. I expressed this to Nu Nu and she said “After 2010--Maybe.” The year 2010 is when the next elections are due and if they are able to change the government perhaps the new leaders will begin to clean up and to preserve these old treasures, but this is very much up in the air, in fact my impression is that it is very unlikely. In the meantime, every day these tresasures deteriorate more and more.
After the Monastery, we visited another pagoda which is also the site of the “world’s largest and heaviest” book, as it was described by Nu Nu. It is actually a large complex of small pagodas each housing a marble stele, each of which is inscribed with one page of the Buddhist canon. There are 729 of them and their most revered monk was able to memorize the entire set of three volumes. We all have our talents.
We visited a factory where they produce the gold leaf which adorns the more important pagodas. That process is quite interesting. They start with a one-ounce gold nugget which is put through a pasta machine type device, non-electric of course, and flattened over and over until a spool of gold ribbon is produced which is about the consistency of heavy tin foil. The ribbon is then cut into one inch pieces. Four men were sitting on stools and pounding with large mallets the one inch pieces for forty five minutes each (!) to create the tissue paper thin sheets of gold leaf. I bought ten small sheets in the shop. Please give me some ideas for what to do with it. They also had beautiful trays and other decorative objects adorned with 24 carat gold.
After a brief rest we met again to visit the famous Mandalay Hill. For this foray, another interesting form of transport was provided. We had noticed everywhere on the streets that, in addition to regular size city buses, many of the people travel on smaller vehicles that can only be described as “paddy wagons.” Inside there is a bank of seats on either side where people sit knee to knee and generally five or six people are hanging on the outside (barely it seems) and often six or eight people are sitting on the roof as well. The whole effect is one of disorganized chaos. Well, to our delight/dismay as the case may be, we were to travel up the Mandalay Hill in one of these vehicles. I had read in one of my books that there are 1,700+ steps to the top of the hill and was in mortal dread that we were going to be asked to climb them.
Anyway, we took our bus to some point and then we were directed to our own personal “paddy wagon”. It is a bit of a challenge just to get into the thing--you can’t stand up because the roof is about five feet from the floor--but we all made it with Nu Nu hanging off the back and we then proceeded up the hairpin curves of Mandalay Hill, hell bent for election at breakneck speed with the driver barely missing many of the other vehicles/bicyclers/pedestrians careening at an equally breakneck speed down the hill. It was quite fun, Pearl loved it and so did I, though I think one or two of the others were less than enthralled.
But back to the present. I hope I’m not losing the continuity, but as I said earlier, we are now on the RV Pandau 1947, an old riverboat that has been restored. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it to be much--last year we toured Halong Bay in Vietnam in a beautiful Chinese junk, a hard act to follow--but this one was actually lovely. Our stateroom was spacious enough, the bathroom was adequate and the public areas were quite luxurious by Burmese standards. The staff couldn’t have been more accommodating--they even scrub your shoes when you re-board after a dusty sojourn off the boat. It’s so relaxing to watch the sunset from the upper deck feel the hum of the engines as you go to sleep. More about the boat tomorrow.
1 comment:
Mom:
Your description of the ride on the "paddy wagon" up the Mandalay Hill reminds me of some of my rides in my station wagon as an irresponsible youth! I'm just glad to be alive~!
Love,
David
Post a Comment