A Few Random Pictures

I am trying to post pictures but they are not cooperating very well. Here are a few in random order which hopefully you will remember from the blog entries.



The Reclining Buddha in Yangon. He's bigger than the one in Bangkok according to Nu Nu.


My Nepali Ghurka buddies with elephant in background


Two little cuties at the train station. This is what I mean when I say their smiles are so special.


This is Royal Lake in Yangon. Across you can see the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, I assume it's the most famous one in Myanmar.





Some of the girls at the orphanage we visited.


The fourteen acre grounds of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Note people praying to the Buddha.

Cruising the Irrawaddy on the way to Bagan

On the day that we visited the untouched village where no Westerners had ever set foot, we also visited another larger village that was not quite so innocent but still primitive in its lifestyle and manufacturing facilities. This village, called Yandabo, produced nothing but clay pots and was quite large compared to others we’d seen, about 2,000 people I think. The people weren’t quite so thrilled with our presence as the first group had been, but were pleasant nonetheless and demonstrated the various steps in pot-making, all of them back- breaking labor-intensive chores done with the constant rhythm born of millions of repetitions. One little girl latched on to me from the start and at first she wouldn’t let me take her picture but eventually she acquiesced. Her name was Eh Neh which I’m spelling phonetically, ten years old, and she spoke a little English which she was learning in school. She said she wanted to learn to make the pots because that would prepare her for owning her own shop in the larger village of Yandabo. She was very shy but she had a way of looking at me with such intelligence that I was curious to know what was going on in her mind. Was she thinking that she’d like to go to America? I don’t think she knows enough to think that. Was she thinking who the hell were we to march into her space asking questions and examining everything? I don’t think so because there was no rancor or resentment in her demeanor. She could have been wondering why we looked so funny with our light skin and blond/red/light brown hair, but that’s not likely since she had seen the likes of us before. I don’t know what she was thinking but she walked next to me throughout our visit and when we returned to the boat she was the last one on the beach watching as we pulled out. Tom and I stood and waved from the deck. She waved once and then turned and slowly walked back into the jungle.

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I don’t think I mentioned that the RV Pandaw 1947 was cruising down the muddy Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Bagan, which is the crown jewel of Myanmar, since it is the site of approximately 3,500 pagodas. And these are just the ones that have survived from the golden age of the 16th century when some say there were four million pagodas in the area. While this number is grossly inflated, there were surely many many more then than there are now.

As we cruised closer to Bagan, we began to see the pagodas dotting the shoreline, co-existing with tiny villages of thatched roofed huts on stilts. The stilts keep the huts from washing away when the river floods during the rainy season. The highlight of the cruise was when we watched a flotilla of boats pass by in solemn procession, overflowing with monks and with music blaring from loudspeakers. The lead boat was adorned with flags but the others had no adornment at all. There were some “civilians” but mostly the boats were full of saffron robed monks. After much discussion among the crew, with Nu Nu determined to discover the meaning of the procession, we learned that this was a celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the death of the holy monk who had memorized the entire Buddhist canon of 178 marble steles (or whatever it was) that we had visited a few days before. I took lots of pictures and when I zoomed in on the better ones, I noticed that the monks didn’t look so solemn after all, but seemed to be enjoying themselves, many of them hanging over the sides of the boats, laughing and lounging on the upper decks. Quite the cut-ups, those monks.

A Visit to a Remote Village

Today is Monday, February 25. Earlier we had a truly life-affirming experience. Our boat has room for 32 passengers but we eight plus Nu Nu are the only ones presently on board. So we are able to do some things that a larger group would not be able to do. We visited a village that has never had Western visitors before. Even Nu Nu had never visited this village and I believe it was Ton Naung (sounds like Tonight), the first officer of our ship, who suggested this activity to her. She appeared quite excited when she told us about it, also adding that if we didn’t like it, it wasn’t her fault. Not to worry, we said, we are game for anything.

As our ship approached land, the villagers, children and adults alike, began to emerge from the trees and to shout and wave. It was a red letter day! We disembarked one by one onto a sandy beach and as we came down the wooden gangplank which had been deftly set out complete with rope hand rails, crew members from our ship flanked each of us and practically carried us over the deep sand to solid ground. All the while the children and their parents were staring and crying Mingalaba! Mingalaba! Welcome, hello, nice to see you. They couldn’t stop smiling. And neither could we.

We followed our leader into the village and, like the Red Dao village in SaPa that we visited last year, this one is like out of another century--bamboo houses, lean-tos for storage, skinny cows, ox driven carts, no roads, just paths worn down by years of bare feet, and primitive tools for basic survival. They did have one ingenious device: it reminded me of those “you slice ‘em you dice ‘em” gadgets that they advertise on TV for chopping vegetables. But this larger version had a woman sitting on it who fed corn husks and wheat into a thresher type gizmo which chopped it up and dropped the resultant slivers into a basket. This becomes feed for the animals.

News travels fast and pretty soon we had a large entourage of folks who seemed thrilled by our very presence. The purported purpose of our visit was to donate some supplies to the school--some notebooks, pens and pencils, rulers which we had bought yesterday in Mingun, and some easy English readers. Nu Nu had brought these things with her because there is always some place to donate them. In addition, Pearl and Robert had lugged forty pounds of books from America to donate, an arrangement that Pearl had made in advance, although not necessarily to give to this particular village. As we made our way towards the school, we stopped at almost every house to talk to the people (through Nu Nu or the crew members) and in every case they were welcoming and eager to show us their homes. We stopped at the home of a very old woman smoking an interesting looking thing, bigger and whiter than a cigar. At first she didn’t know what to make of us but after we were explained to her she smiled her toothless smile and seemed to welcome the cameras. First she wanted to remove the supplies she was using to make the smoking contraptions--kind of a Burmese version of tidying up for guests--but no no we gestured, we want to know what it is and we want to take pictures of it, and of you. I was sure she would shy away from the cameras but she didn’t, and as soon as she understood that we wanted to learn about what she was doing, she gave us a willing demonstration. She had corn husks in one basket, and wheat seeds and tobacco in another. She would strip the corn husks to the right size, add a handful of wheat and tobacco and some other unknown herb, roll up the package and tie it with a string. Then you light one end and smoke it. They were about as big or bigger than the largest cigar you’ve ever seen. Nu Nu explained that you don’t smoke the whole thing at once, just take a puff or two, put it out and then puff again later. The house she was operating out of was very modest, but next door there was a quite substantial house (for the neighborhood), and she owned that house too. I asked if she was the elder of the village, but Nu Nu asked and she said no, there is a gentleman there who is almost 100 years old and she is only 85.

As we were leaving to move on toward the school, Nu Nu knelt down in front of the old woman and very discretely pressed a few bills into her hand. She then bowed her head to the ground as a gesture of respect and said some words very lovingly. It was so beautiful and the old woman just smiled and nodded.

We made our way past more houses and through a wheat field and finally arrived at the school. The principal and three teachers were out front to greet us, having been forewarned by the children that some strange people were in their village and were making their way to the school. We learned that the village is very lucky to have teachers at all, let alone an English teacher. Many similar villages are so remote that no teachers will go to teach there.

Inside there were twelve students sitting at three banks of desks with a chalkboard in front of them. The chalkboard had an English lesson on it--fill in the blank: She (had, have, has) an orange for breakfast. In addition to those twelve, all the other younger children who had met us at the beach were now inside the one room classroom, so it was a crowd of at least forty counting all of us and the other adults.

By now we were snapping pictures like mad and the children couldn’t wait to have their pictures taken and then to see themselves on the small screen. It was hard to get the more rambunctious ones to be still for the pictures, and some of the boys would push the others out of the way so they could be in every shot. All in all, we spent about forty minutes inside the school, talking to them--its amazing how much you can communicate without words. During this time, Nu Nu presented the principal with the supplies and each of us were allowed to hand a couple of notebooks and pencils to one particular child and have our picture taken with that child. We took hundreds of pictures of the children and we have vowed to choose the best ones and somehow or other get them delivered to the village.

After the supplies had all been meted out, including Pearl’s books, the children lined up and recited their abc’s and counted to ten in English for us. We clapped and they beamed proudly.

As we made our way back to the boat, a couple of the ladies shyly gestured could they touch my arm. Have at it, says I, and they touched and gently pinched the skin on my arm. They wanted to see if my white skin felt the same as theirs! The others had the same experience. They wanted to know why our skin was white and we explained as best we could through the interpreter. A difficult concept if you have no frame of reference.

I wonder if from here on in, time will be measured by the day the Americans came to their village. Years from now, children will be told, ah yes this was before you were born, that special day when eight Americans came on a special visit and gave us books.

Aboard the RV Pandaw 1947

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.

Out of the City, Into the Mountains

Note: This was written around Feb. 22.

As I write this, I am sitting in Hotel No. 2 in Pyin U Lwin, formerly called Maymyo. There is no internet here, not even a business center, although the hotel is brand new and quite modern, so I will not be able to post until some future point, if ever here in Myanmar.

Yesterday morning we took off quite early from Yangon and flew to Mandalay International Airport. The gentleman who greeted us, and Nu Nu, joked that yes this really was an international airport even though our flight was the only flight at the moment and since the plane was more of a puddle jumper with stops in several cities, only about 30 people got off in Mandalay. It is new and modern, but we were the only people there. When was the last time you were in an airport with only 30 people?

We didn’t stay in Mandalay, but rather drove about 2 ½ hours to our next stop, Pyin U Lwin, a small but bustling town up in the mountains. Along the way we saw water buffalo working in the fields, village after village of bamboo houses, a herd of goats right on the road, and most surprising, poinsettias growing wild. I’ve only ever seen them in pots at Christmas time! About mid-way we stopped, not just for a potty stop, but so that the engine of the bus could be cooled. Although it wasn’t hot, the engine was taxed to its limit by the climb into the mountains and therefore had to be cooled off. To cool off the engine, they raise the hood and put a hose into the engine for ten minutes or so and that does it.

Not to get too graphic, the potty at the rest stop was, uh, rather primitive. Although I have seen worse in my travels, Nu Nu was very worried about whether we ladies could handle it and quite relieved when we all managed without fainting. I’m sure not all of her parties are as worldly as we.

Finally, we arrived in Pyin U Lwin, and much to everyone’s surprise, even Nu Nu’s, it was cold! We were all freezing in our lightweight wear, though I had worn a jacket and socks in anticipation of a freezing airplane, so I was probably best off. Poor Bob had dug a scarf, gloves and earmuffs out of his bag and was wearing all three along with both of his hats: a ball cap and a safari hat. We will from now on call him Monsieur Deux Chapeaux. The hotel is brand new, but the rooms are neither heated nor air conditioned, although there is a small space heater which was not adequate for yesterday’s cold spell. We dropped our things and then took off for a visit to a beautiful garden where we were driven around in a tram with stops at a separate orchid garden and the takin preserve. Last year in Bhutan we saw some takins, the odd looking animal that is kind of a cross between a moose and a cow with two-toed hooves and plaintiff eyes. So now we know they have them in Myanmar as well. In Bhutan, I believe, they are considered sacred, but not here. We fed leaves to one of the takins through the chain link fence and he rubbed his horns against the fence in appreciation.

Further on in the park there was an elephant chained to a tree. I wanted to get a closer look so the tram drove us up to him and we took pictures. There were about seven or eight young men around the elephant, the keepers I assumed, so I proceeded to chat them up and take pictures of each of them individually with the elephant. It turned out they were just guests in the garden like us, not mahouts, and they were in fact Nepali Gurkhas who live in the area. They spoke a little English, not much, but seemed delighted by the attention and loved seeing their pictures on the camera screen. Much smiling and waving when we drove away. The Gurkhas are famous for their fierce defense of the British Raj when the Brits occupied Burma. They all had red or black teeth from their betel nut habit, which is a shame because otherwise they were kind of cute. By then it had warmed up and the weather was beautiful.

Today we took a three hour train ride through the mountains along with hundreds of locals either going to work or to visit relatives or on some other mission. Although we were in the “first class” car, the train was pretty primitive, but it was truly a cultural experience and the most enjoyable so far in terms of getting to know the people. Everyone in our car, the other “high class peoples,“ smiled and bowed to us and offered us food and let us lean over them to take pictures if the view out their window was better. The train would stop every few miles to let someone on or off, no need to wait for a station, and we would lean out the window and take pictures and wave and smile at the folks. When we first boarded the train at Pyin U Lwin, there was about a fifteen minute delay while others got on or off and there was a young girl of about six with her baby brother in a sling over her back outside my window. I caught her eye and she smiled so sweetly, so I gestured is it okay and took her picture. For the next ten minutes I must have taken twenty picture of the two of them. She could make that baby smile just by tweaking his cheek, which she would do over and over and then they would both pose for the camera. Quite the little hams they were! They were so adorable, but I never did see the mother if there was one. I found out later she probably worked at the station and the kids just stand there and wait all day for her to be finished. Each time I took their picture, I would show it to them but they didn’t come too close to the train, just looked and smiled from about eight feet away. As we pulled out they both waved and waved.

By the end of the train ride I think I had finally figured out Myanmar. The folks at ATJ said it was their favorite country, which is what convinced us to come, but so far Tom and I had been scratching our heads and saying what is it that they like so much. Vietnam and China are much more beautiful as far as scenery goes, at least from what we’ve seen so far. Every other city we’ve been to has it all over Yangon which is dirty and dilapidated. The holy sites here are interesting but nothing to compare to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat or the Grand Palace in Bangkok. But now, after today’s train ride, I’ve got it figured out. Here, it is all about the people.

Maybe because they are relatively untouched by tourism, it is more like the Asia of many years ago and thus provides for us Westerners a glimpse into the past. Maybe it is the warm and welcoming attitude and the smiling faces that greet us everywhere we go. Some of it is just the fascination of watching the women carry huge loads of food or water balanced on their heads or twenty men crowded impossibly into small trucks like the old clowns in the phone booth routine.

In any case, the people are definitely different here. We have found the people friendly in every Asian country we’ve been to, but here they take friendliness to a new level. They seem so genuinely happy to see you and even the merchants, though persistent, never cop an attitude if you don’t buy anything.

That night we took a horse drawn carriage for a ride around the small town of Pyin U Lwin, stopping at Candacraig which is an old governor’s house from British days, now a government owned hotel. We were served tea there but there were no discernible guests and once again the beautiful old building is in a state of disrepair. I got some close-ups of the poinsettias though.

The horse drawn carriage was fun. Each holds two people and again we found ourselves fortunate to be on the short side in stature. The “carriage,” a bit like a Cinderella style carriage but rather less pretentious, is miniature to the point where I think larger people would be most uncomfortable. Still, it was a taste of local color and we enjoyed being squired about from the hotel to Candacraig to our restaurant for dinner before going back to the hotel and so to sleep.

Let’s start a new entry.

First Impressions

Note: This was written around Feb. 21. I'm going to post the prose now and do pictures later. I have some amazing pictures.

Airplanes seem to provide the only place where I have the time to work on this chronicle. This is our third day in Myanmar and we are now on our way to Mandalay having spent the last two in Yangon. We spend only about an hour in the air so I probably won’t get very far.

By now we are well acquainted with our travel mates and we have completed the tour of Yangon (formerly Rangoon). Yangon is the capital city of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is all very confusing, especially since Nu Nu has told us that Myanmar is the correct and accepted term, although we had heard that the people preferred Burma. Very little has been said so far about the political situation either. We did have some interesting discussions the other night with a trio of ex-pats though, which I will get to later.

One interesting note on the differences between reality and the party line is the exchange rate. When I made my “cheat sheets” for the currency exchange rates of the various countries we would be visiting, the official rate for the Burmese kyat (pronounced “chat”) was about 6.3 kyat to the dollar. However, the actual rate is more like 1,150 kyat to the dollar! Imagine the poor unenlightened soul who changes his dollars into kyat at a bank where he receives the official rate! Nu Nu changed our dollars for kyat at 1,150 to one. Needless to say, everything is very cheap.

Our group is quiet interesting. Nu Nu, the tour leader, is a petite lady whose English is fluent and idiomatic, but her pronunciations can be challenging. Usually we can figure out what she is saying and if not she patiently rephrases or repeats until we get it.

Bob and Imelda are from Calabas, near San Diego, he a retired judge whose 78th birthday was yesterday and she a Filipina court reporter a bit his junior, but they are very solicitous of each other and seem devoted. They’ve been married just five years and spend a lot of time traveling.

Robert and Pearl are a couple as well, though not married--he lives in Florida and she in LA. They met at a wedding in Florida through mutual friends just two years ago. She is a retired librarian for the San Diego schools and he a retired college professor and former submarine pilot during WWII who has written a book about submarine life and culture. We must get it when we get home. They also travel a lot and have a trip planned to Australia in April right after this one. He is 83 and she probably early 70‘s. He told us a funny thing the second day. He said that when they met they hit it off immediately and after corresponding and dating a while, long distance I assume, she said that if he would travel with her she wouldn’t have to pay the single supplement. Now that’s a proposition if I ever heard one!

Stacy and Kim are both in the marketing department at Asia Transpacific Journeys and apparently are accompanying us either as fact finders for ATJ or simply as a perk of their jobs. We are too polite to ask. They are good friends and colleagues, 30-somethings, whose husbands are holding down their respective forts back in Colorado. They are both avid skiers and live in Colorado and so we have a lot in common through our Colorado connection. I think they have replaced the other couple who were signed up for the trip but canceled.

Then there is us. All in all, we are a congenial group and there is no lack of stimulating conversation. This will only get better as we become more acquainted.

As previously noted, we flew into Yangon Monday night and Nu Nu met us at the airport waving energetically with our name placard while we were still waiting in line to get through the entry point. Driving into town we couldn’t see much since it was dark, but she pointed out sites along the way to the hotel and we were able to see several embassies and the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda ablaze in the night sky before arriving at the hotel.

The next morning we had breakfast in a beautiful tropical garden lush with ferns, waterways and exotic birds before meeting the group at nine. We then began our two day tour of Yangon. After we boarded the bus, Nu Nu gave us some background of Myanmar--the word itself means “quick” and “tough”, like her, she said. There are 135 ethnic groups in Myanmar (see? I’m already trained to say Myanmar and not Burma) and all of them are completely different. As in Bhutan, Buddhism dominates people’s lives and life pretty much revolves around the pagoda. Monks are everywhere on the streets, usually carrying a metal bowl in which they collect food or money to sustain themselves. While they are collecting food (one does NOT call it begging) they are not allowed to wear shoes or to look up at their benefactors. They have 227 rules they must obey and every Burmese man must spend two periods of indeterminate length in the monkhood sometime during his life. Some are young boys and as we saw last year they are as rambunctious as young boys are anywhere.

What to say about Yangon? From what we could see, most of the city is in a state of serious disrepair and it is very dirty with litter everywhere and crumbling pavements that create dust storms when you walk. The potential is there however for it to be a jewel of a city--the grand old buildings scream for attention from a sand blaster or at the very least a little TLC. And yet it is teeming with smiling, happy people going about their business. And extremely busy it is. Traffic is formidable as in other Asian cities, but we didn’t see a single traffic light and of course no discernible road rage. There are 6.5 million people in Yangon though it doesn’t seem that big because there are no high rises and the streets are at most four lanes wide.

Our first stop was to the banks of the Yangon River, bustling with commerce, men loading and unloading huge steel drums filled with oil and sacks of rice and other necessaries onto and off of barges most of which are dilapidated and old. Men were rolling the drums down wooden planks to the barges and you could see by the strain of their muscles how heavy those drums are and what would happen if they lost control and one went “barreling” down the ramp out of control. It would easily kill someone if that happened.

We walked along observing and everyone smiled at us and said Mingalaba--a combination of hello, good day and nice to see you. We stopped to watch a woman rolling betel nut packages like we had seen in Bangkok last year, and a man smiled broadly showing off his blackened betel nut stained teeth. Thus far I haven’t seen a single person smoking a cigarette (in Shanghai practically everybody was smoking), but betel chewing is rampant, the evidence showing in the red or black teeth of many of the smiling faces. This was also true in Bhutan.

Afterwards we went into town and walked around the downtown. There are lots of used book sellers that sell their volumes right on the street and Imelda found an old biography of Imelda Marcos for about two dollars and though it was in Burmese of course, we all urged her to buy it so she did. We walked through the elegant and old Strand Hotel--proof that at least some buildings are maintained so why not more. It is truly appalling how much work this city needs.

After a very nice lunch, we went to the main attraction in Yangon, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, which dominates a fourteen-acre site filled with hundreds of smaller edifices each housing one or many Buddhas. It is filled with tourists, but many of the people there are the faithful sitting back on their knees praying to the Buddha. The Pagoda itself is covered in solid gold plate and you can’t go inside of it because it is solid inside, although it contains a number of relics and holy things from the Buddha himself, which I assume no one will ever be able to get to. We strolled the perimeter of the pagoda until sunset when it glows as if on fire without benefit of artificial light.

The second day in Yangon, we visited the 75 meter long Reclining Buddha. We had seen another version in Bangkok, to me more spectacular, although this one is still very impressive. The “skin“ of this one is pure white, whereas the Bangkok RB is all gold, not just paint but gold leaf I think, and much more opulent looking. The Yangon RB is rather playful looking, almost cartoonish (I mean no disrespect, do not punish me O Holy One). I hope to post a picture of the Yangon RB so you can see what I mean. Although his robe is gold, his skin is pure white, and he has bright red lips, red finger and toe nails and an almost feminine countenance as he relaxes on his side with his head supported by his hand.

Later we visited an orphanage which is partly sponsored by Asia Transpacific Journeys (ATJ) and it was quite an eye opener. We met the principal of the school and then visited with the children who thanked us for a gift that had been given on our behalf by ATJ. It was a stack of books and a large sack of rice. The children, who were lined up neatly in four or five rows, about forty of them and all girls, ranged in age from about 5 to 14. Each class raised its hand when the principal asked for first grade, second grade, etc. They were very sweet and with Nu Nu as interpreter asked several questions about us--where we were from, what our jobs were, etc. Afterwards we saw their dormitory, rows of single beds neatly made each with a small stack of personal belongings at the foot of the bed. We saw their classroom and the food hall where rice and a small bit of fish and fruit is their daily fare. The guilt about the blessings we take for granted becomes very strong at a moment like that.

Later we had an al fresco dinner in the garden of the hotel and the eight of us were joined by Nu Nu and a couple of people from her company, Tour Mandalay, who work in conjunction with ATJ. But the highlight of the dinner was a trio of Americans, Kurt, Kathy, and Brian, who have lived in Yangon for several years and before that in Thailand, training the local people to use water purifiers and thus reduce the staggering amount of water borne disease. A more enthusiastic bunch you will never meet. After a couple of hours over dinner and coffee we understood at least a little of the difficulties they encounter every day, like the fact that the government will not allow them personally to enter the villages to train the people. Instead they must train native born Burmese who in turn go into the villages. The reason for this is so that the government can take the credit for the charitable acts rather than have the people perceive that the Americans are responsible. But they don’t mind because the only thing that is important is that the people become aware and change their habits. As you might imagine, sanitation is beyond sub-standard.

After much discussion I said to Brian, “you are really a hero.” He replied, “No I’m not, I’m here because I love it. The people here give me so much more than I give them.” They are paid through a joint sponsorship between ATJ’s foundation and UNICEF, but from what I gathered from Stacy and Kim (remember they work for ATJ so they know about this project), they live pretty close to the bone so that most of the money can go to the people and into the project. For example, Brian lives in an apartment of about 300 square feet, even though he could live in a larger one. I was so impressed by their selfless attitude but also by the radiance they projected and the belief that they actually could make a difference.

We're Baaaack!

Contrary to what has no doubt been reported on CNN, Fox News, and all three networks, we have not been captured by pygmy savages, forced into hard labor by the military junta, defected to the Incha tribe, nor have we cast off our worldly attachments to join a Buddhist monastery. The reason for our recent incommunicado state is more mundane: no internet--which we suspected but hoped would not be the case. Actually there is internet, but Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail are all banned by the government which meant that not only could we not send messages to family or friends, but even the blog could not be accessed, let alone enriched. According to Kim, there are ways around this--she was able to email her husband--but the learning curve for me was too steep. Even the special program that my buddy in Yangon installed on my computer was useless everywhere but there. I guess the rationale is not only to prevent seditious material from escaping via folks like us, but also to discourage locals from communicating with the outside world.

But now that we are once again on neutral territory, i.e., Bangkok, the truth shall set us free. Bottom line: our thirteen days in Myanmar have been probably the most eye-opening of our lives in many ways, although it has not been a trip for the faint of heart. It has been sometimes difficult, sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes depressing and/or shocking, sometimes beautiful; but always educational in the sense that we, who live lives of convenience, yea luxury, cannot begin to fathom the hardships, the lack of even the most basic facilities, or the resilience of these people. Yes, we read about the poor souls in Africa, Afghanistan, or Darfur, or see their plight on television, but there is nothing like an eye witness look to cement the vision forever in one’s brain.

I’m tempted to scrap the pages I have already written but frankly it would be too much work to re-create them in hindsight, so please understand that what follows, until the present, was written as we went, and without benefit of perspective. I tried to keep up with the blog via Word, but we were so busy all the time that I was usually too tired at night to do anything but go to bed. Such is the rigor of an organized tour--it stops for nobody’s sore feet or aching back.

All in all, Tom and I, as well as our travel mates, loved the tour. Not for the luxury we have been treated to (not much of that), but because we have, however briefly, gotten inside the lives of people who live in a way that can only be described as diametrically opposed to ours.

Here are my impressions.