None Shall Know Me

“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.

After the islands I made my way back to Bangkok for another night. I hit up the giant maze of shops at the weekend market and savored mango shakes and mango sticky rice. I still miss those delicious treats. All the cheap mango shakes and smoothies were among my favorite things of Southeast Asia. I took a bus to the airport at night and slept on the cement floor there at the Bangkok airport. I had an early morning flight to Myanmar, formerly Burma, arriving in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, formerly the nation’s capital. The government changed everything in order to cast off their colonial and imperial past. I grabbed a room with an Ozzy guy I met in line at Immigration and began to explore the city and visit the big market. I’ll say more about Yangon later. I left the next day, but returned a few weeks later.

Myanmar was a different place. Not as many tourists come here, and as it is low season as well, I am usually the only foreigner wherever I may go. Many people think Myanmar is off limits and unable to be traveled to. The country does have a harsh government, and much of the country is completely off limits to foreigners. The rest of the country can easily enough be traveled, as long as you don’t work for any form of media. You are frequently asked for your passport and profession, and I was even asked to write down my parents’ names. The people are friendly and often say hello or stop for a brief conversation. The beggars are persistent, annoying, and in large numbers. This is one of the poorer countries in the world, with an exorbitantly wealthy and massively corrupt government run by a military dictator who seemingly thinks himself a Burmese king of a thousand years ago. The power is almost always out in the cities, and it is non-existent in much of the countryside. Restaurants, hotels, and street vendors all run of personal generators, and are often with no power at all. The streets are usually dark at night, as street lamps seldom work and the roads are pot-hole filled and bumpy, making walking at night an ankle-breaking obstacle course in the dark.

Most of the population wear longye, a type of long cloth wrapped around the waist, similar to a sarong, but noticeably different. Many of the women are adorned in “Myanmar Make-up,” a concoction made from tree bark paste and resembling a thin lite toned mud. Some of the men even sport the look, and most wear the longye. It is a deeply Buddhist country, though other religions are present in small numbers. Buddhist temples abound everywhere, but nowhere in the whole of Myanmar are they as numerous as they are in Bagan, perhaps nowhere in the world are temples as numerous as in Bagan.

Bagan was a 12 hour bus ride at night from Yangon, arriving at 4:00 a.m. and then I took a horse cart ride to a guest house to sleep for a few hours before breakfast. Then I hopped in to another horse-drawn cart and spent the day carting around amongst the 4500 temples and pagodas. When your vantage point is high enough, you can look out and see stupa upon stupa rising from the dry and dusty ground, the brush, and the trees. The temples are upside down sugar cones, turned to stone and blessed by the spirits of ancient kings. Though I was usually the only visitor at each of the temples, most had vendors dutifully trying to sell their goods, often by modes of guilt, and the temples were often napping grounds for locals, offering shade and cool breezes that tunneled through the hallways. Other than the temples, it was a lot of walking, a lot of nothing. I spent only a couple days in Bagan. It was hot there, horribly hot, and I spent much of my time sitting on top of the balcony at my guest house drinking half-frozen bottles of water purchased from the one shop I could find that sold cold water. Few things in life seem as enjoyable as truly cold water on a truly hot day, and I drank liter after liter, completely unable to fill myself.

Along with Machu Pichu and Angkor Wat, Bagan is considered to be one of the greatest religious archeology sites in the world, because of the astounding number of temples in such a small space of land.

I am going to skip over a few weeks of the journey and return to it later. Now, I am going to get back to Yangon. My second trip to Yangon was after an 18 hour bus ride, not nearly as painful as some of the other bus rides, and I remember how wonderfully grateful I was thinking it would be my last long distance bus ride in Asia. Traveling is not made for tall people. Traveling in Asia is definitely not made for tall people. The journey to Yangon was inspiringly pretty. We climbed up the tall mountains surrounding the lake region I left from on a very windy and very bumpy dirt road, stopping regularly to pull off to the side or back up to let other vehicles pass on the narrow lane. The mountains were green with rain, and rich with farms and rivers and trees and fields and vistas and views, and at the summit a glorious site of endless ranges and an even more endless sky, azure and calm dawned into view. The two few days I spent in Yangon were mainly for visiting Shwedagon Paya and spending the last of the Kyat, a currency impossible to trade back. There was little in the country I wanted to buy, and I preferred eating cheap.

I was glad I visited Shwedagon, the most sacred and glorious Buddhist temple in the country, and among the most spectacular religious structures in the world, built to house the eight hairs of the Buddha himself. Some say the pagodas are clothed in more gold than lies in all the vaults of England, and the domes of the pagodas are peppered in rubies and diamonds and various gems. I rested and gazed and watched the Burmese people fervent in worship at near every corner. I met a monk who showed me around and explained the rituals and processes and blessings and good luck the temple poured forth. Then I walked alone in the peace of the evening with the threat of rain that always hovered over the city, intermittently striking throughout the day.

I have seen many temples in my life, and by now, few temples hold an appeal for me, but there are a few out there in this great wide world that I will be ever grateful I made the journey to. Shwedagon is such a place, a decadent and costly temple in a land of utter poverty, revered, worshipped, and protected by the loyal and faithful millions of the country.

I know these aren’t such exciting posts, but I am writing rather quickly in an attempt to get caught up. I dislike this feeling of being so far behind. I should either quit entirely and write no more, or be more valiant in my efforts. While it would certainly make more sense to quit, I’ll tarry on a little longer.