"On the Road to Mandalay."

“God is good to me. I will forget that. I know I will, but for now, I believe it to be, and I write it down as a reminder that I once believed.”

-Excerpt from my journal while in Mandalay, Myanmar.

I left Bagan for Mandalay on a painful 8 hour bus ride arriving at 4:00 a.m. I began to sleep outside the guest house, but someone did later come out. Mandalay was great. It was not a particularly beautiful city, and the weather was uncomfortably hot and humid. It has some nice sights, but that is not why I enjoyed my time there. The Burmese people really can be great, and I struck up conversations with many of them. Some of the beggars can be forceful, and when they see a foreigner they light up thinking we are obligated to give them something. Trishaw Y moto drivers can be persistent as well, and everyone uses guilt as a sales technique. It is difficult not to feel for the people and you want to give and help everyone, but you can’t. The ones I felt for the most were those who didn’t beg, who tried to work to provide for their families and often made less than those who did beg.

In Mandalay I did meet many people, and had to buy little of my own food. Mandalay has many of the nation’s monks and they can be fantastic. I would be out sightseeing and monks would stop to talk, wanting to practice their English. They invited me out for tea or lunch, or to their monastery for fresh mangoes and cold water and a pleasant conversation in the shade. One monk I met in particular I will remember. His name is Owen. I met him and another monk at Mandalay Hill and talked and dined with them a few hours. Owen invited me to join him the next day to a school he set up in a poor village in the countryside. Owen is a young man in his early twenties and has been a monk already for 14 years. I joined him the next day, along with one of his friends, a middle aged man. We drove all around Mandalay and I saw so much of the city.

We drove all around the city to villages and occasionally they dropped drop me off and had me wait at a tea house so they would not get in trouble by the government for bringing a foreigner with them to certain places. We drove out along the river to where communities of people lived on the banks of the Ayerwaddy. Whole villages looked like people dug a hole in a pile of hay and called it their home. They had no floors other than the dirt and an occasional straw mat for sleeping on. They were merely low lying tents made of grass, unfit for livestock on the poor farms of other villages. Occasionally amongst the small grass tents would be a home that was nothing more than a tattered plastic tarp and a long piece of string to hold it up. Every roach and rat infested guest house I have ever stayed in is a palace in comparison. How can I have really seen all the things I have seen? If you could but jump inside my memories to see it all, for I am too weak in words to tell you.

We picked up a group of Burmese women and girls for part of the day, driving windy and bumpy roads through countryside of changing colors and crossed in to villages where I do not think people have ever seen a foreigner, and some may not have even known foreigners existed. I watched them at work in hot fields, at play on fallen trees that acting as a teeter totter, and in the river bathing and swimming. There was a pastoral simplicity to it all, despite the poverty, and even with all they lacked and all I had, in their faces, many seemed to be happier than I. They knew hunger. They knew work, and filth, and lacking, but they also knew the enjoyment of simple pleasures like a fallen tree. Perhaps it is true what they say; ignorance may be bliss after all.

We also some ancient temples and historic cities outside of Mandalay. It was a grand day, spent with a monk and locals and seeing things I could not possibly have seen on my own. Owen is a great young man, and like many of the monks of Myanmar, he likes to talk about politics and his disdain for the military government. I could tell he honestly wanted to make a change for his country. He opened a school in a remote and small village to give children a chance at an education, and he has formed political activists groups. He told me that if he did not leave Burma within a year he knew he would be arrested for speaking ill against the government. He wanted to study broad and then return to fight for his country and his people, but leaving can be both difficult and dangerous, and returning even more so. I wonder now what happened to my friend, the monk. Did he make his escape? Did he meet his fate of prison chains and labor camps? Is he still alive? I will pray for Owen, my friend, and for the country he wants to change.

I saw most of the sights in Mandalay, at least those not part of the government combo ticket, which no backpacker purchases, not wanting to give added money to the oppressive government. The government jails all those who speak out against them, employs secret police to spy on people at tea shops and public events, engages in deadly battles, rapes, pillages, plunders, and even uses humans as land-mine detectors to walk across fields heavy with land mines the government itself placed. It is a cruel government, and all the western powers have embargoes on Myanmar, so no western restaurant chains or shops or stores are seen anywhere in the city, and any western goods come in from other parts of Asia. Myanmar is a country that should be showered in wealth, with the abundance of resources, rich farmland, natural gas, timber, and an enormous amount of some of the world’s most valuable gems. Instead, it is a country thrown in to poverty, with a powerful and wealthy elite.

I rented a bicycle while in Mandalay and spent days riding all around the city or out beyond the city, around the walls of Mandalay Palace, and climbing the many steps of Mandalay Hill to watch the sun set over the city. I walked across Ubein Bridge, the world’s longest teak bridge, and visited Sagaiing and Mingun, and applied fresh new gold to the countries most sacred Buddha statue at Mahamuni Paya, then had gold rubbed on my hands and forehead and received a blessing from a temple monk.

I also saw The Moustache Brothers. They are two brothers and a cousin performing traditional Burmese comedy and dance. They are most famous because two of the troupe spent five years of hard labor in jail for telling a simple joke about the government, comparing the government to pirates. One was arrested twice more. They are not allowed to perform and locals are not allowed to see them, but because of their popularity amongst foreigners, the government is reluctant to close them down, though the government has demanded they stop. It was not a particularly funny comedy troupe, and only one of the group spoke English well enough to talk. It seemed that one learned English by listening to only punch-lines, slang, and jargon about celebrities and American culture. They dressed up in odd costumes, danced around like monkeys, proudly wore chains to symbolize the convict past, and told corny jokes. It rained hard outside that night, and their theatre was in the garage, and when the rain came, it flooded swiftly in to the theatre, and up above the stage they performed on. They handed out stools for us to put our feet on, as the water had flooded in the room about 6 inches deep. It added to the show, and afterward I waited for the rain to calm enough to take a motorcycle taxi back to the guesthouse.

I liked Mandalay, despite the dirt and grime and everything that it lacked. I loved my time with monks, or my enjoyable nights sipping herbal tea and eating chapatti and tasty treats at street side tea shops. I had such splendid evenings there, and that is where I leave off, to be continued soon.

"Mandalay." ...Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst, Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst; For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be – By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea; On the road to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay, With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay! On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin’-fishes play, An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay! -Rudyard Kipling.