havecarryonwilltravel

Every morning a bus load of monks gets dropped off in Bagan where they go seeking donations of food. As we exit our hotel, we see the monks getting out of the bus down the street from us. The monks walk single file along the street and stop, one by one, at the small table across the street that has been laid out with rice and assorted foods. The owners of the hotel had placed the offerings out prior to the monks arriving. The monks rotate where they seek donations each day– first one street then another then another throughout the week. The older monks go first, followed by younger and younger monks with another older monk playing sweep at the back. Some of the last monks do not get anything at this stop as the donators run out of food to give. Hopefully they will fill there bowls at another stop.

Monks receiving donations in Bagan

We say goodbye to Bagan and our guide Zow. It is unusual for us to have so many guides. Previous trips saw us continue with one guide on the whole journey through a country. In Myanmar, we are getting a new guide every time we change locations. Au, in Mandalay, set the bar pretty high, and Zow didn’t quite reach up to that bar. L called him Mr. Factoid. He knew his temple stuff and he got the picture that we didn’t want to follow the exact tourist trail, but he had some oddities that started driving me crazy (I actually wanted to throttle him when we got to the airport!).

We flow through another airport and surface in Heho to Wai Yan, our next guide. He seems quite nice but he is VERY hard to understand as he places the emPHAsis on difFERent sylAbles for his English words.

We drive for about an hour to visit the Pindaya Caves. The cave is 490 ft under the rock, has stalagmites and stalactites and about 8,000 Bhuddas. We wander the maze looking at the various Buddhas.

Buddha Maze

In one part there is a meditation cave that Murray, Wai Yan and I crawl into. Following us is a Burmese family and once they are seated, they ask if they can take our picture. So they take ours and we take theirs!

Along the way to the restaurant we stop at a workshop that makes traditional Shan paper out of mulberry trees and umbrellas out of bamboo. We agree that as Myanmar becomes more “Westernized” and touristy, this type of traditional handicrafts may disappear, which is unfortunate.

Making traditional Shan paper

Every time we stop at one of these artisan’s shops I am amazed at how the work progresses without safety equipment. If the Alberta Health and Safety inspector showed up he would flip. It is not only at the craft shops where this is apparent, the work sites for heavy industrial type work also lack basic safety. Working on marble with power tools and no ear protection, no safety glasses and no steel toes on their sandals. Roasting peanuts under a reverberant steel roof using a tractor engine with no muffler and all of the belts and gears running the machinery completely exposed ready to grab the workers at the first moment of inattentiveness. I’m sure people get hurt but work goes on.

As I type this post, it is pouring rain outside, part of the typhoon that is circling the Bay of Bengal. I am hoping the rain eases up by morning as we are to start our 3 day trek. It may be a muddy and wet experience. Our West Coat Trial luck may have run out!

I lean over and say to Murray, with a slight lump in my throat, “It has taken me almost 20 years of traveling with you to come to this point.” He smiles and nods at me with understanding in his eyes.

Our excursion today is a trip over to Kyun Thiri Island to walk through a farming village and visit a monastery. We four Canadian travelers love this kind of interaction with the local people. We wave and smile and say Min Ga Lar Par (Good Morning) and take pictures of the village people and observe the goings on in their daily lives. They think it kind of funny that we would want to come see where they live. But I explain to our guide if one of them visited me, I would show them my house, where I work, where I shop and introduce them to my family and friends. It would be no different.

Farm House

We have noticed that a smile goes a long way. Just smile at someone, and say Good Morning in their language and you will get a big beaming smile back. Wave at a child and smile and he/she will surely wave and smile back. I think about how as a tourist, we must show respect, good manners, friendliness and loads of smiles as we wander through people’s lives.

As we come to the edge of the village proper, a fellow on a motorbike stops and invites us to a ceremony for the dedication of new monks’ robes at the local monastery. One lady has sewn new robes for all the monks herself. Our guide asks us if we want to go, as this is a totally spontaneous offer. L and I look at one another and say OK.

Monastery

The monks are gathering for lunch as we arrive at the monastery and we are invited into the main hall where they are eating. It is stifling hot inside and as Mur wanders around taking a few photos, I ask an older lady if I can sit beside her. Big smile! Of course. Next thing we know, someone has brought tea and a few munchies out for us. We sit around the tray and drink the offered tea and sample some very small orange sections. Our guide then tells us we have been invited to share lunch with the lay people and would we like to join them. After a bit of discussion, we agree.

Visiting with the ladies

While the food is finished being cooked, we wait in another part of the monastery. I again go sit with some women and children. L joins me and we ooo and ahh over a couple of the children. I ask our guide to ask one older lady how many children she has. She tells me that she has 7 children and 11 grandchildren. I tell her that I am from a small family and that I have 2 children and no grandchildren yet.

Even though we cannot speak the language, we can tell when something is happening. A buzz builds and then we are told that lunch is ready. We are guided back into the main hall where a table has been laid out with lunch. The food is Myanmar food – rice, clear vegetable soup, 3 meat dishes (chicken, pork, beef) 2 vegetable dishes and some sauces. Most of it is very hot. Unfortunately the meat is not quite chewable. We try small amounts and find items that we can eat so as not to offend our hosts.

L tells me later that the one fellow that seems to be in charge hovered around me like a hawk. Not sure why – maybe my grey hair. He seemed to be quite concerned about what I was eating. The sister of the Abbott also stopped by to make sure I was eating enough. I ask the guide to tell her that I am a little person and so do not eat that much. (I thought I was eating lots!)

After we finished lunch, we were guided to another table where they had laid out dessert for us. Various “Twinky” like cakes, orange pieces, condensed milk like icing and other local delicacies. R experiments the most, I eat the oranges. It was at this point that I leaned over to Murray and made comment I opened with.

When I first started traveling with Murray I would never have done what we had just experienced. Even walking through the village would have been a stretch for me. Over the years, I have gotten more comfortable with interacting with local peoples. I enjoyed our experience today and only wish I could have communicated with the ladies and gentlemen more. This experience will remain one of the highlights of this trip.

After lunch, we say Jay Zoo Demari (Thank You), wave Good bye and take our leave. I smile to myself and think about the journey that took 20 years.

Cooking under a farm house

In the 11th century there were over 13,000 temples in the immediate Bagan area. Today, it is much less as many have succumbed to age and decay. Our day of touring these astonishing structures has us visiting only eight of them.

We start our day climbing the steep steps of Shiwegugyi Temple to marvel at the 360 degree view. We climb to the top, stroll around the perimeter and then climb down, stopping at each tier to see the changing view.

View from on high

Murray and I agree that the view of the temples improves as we descend lower. We snap photo after photo attempting to replicate digitally what we see with our eyes. We notice that Myanmar, and especially Bagan, is very photogenic. So many wonderful views and sights from so many different angles.

Bagan Temples

The next couple of temples (phaya, in Myanmar) have frescos painted on the inside walls that date back to the 11^th and 13^th centuries. There has been some work done to restore the frescos and sometimes it is hard to tell what is original and what is newer.

Shezgion Temple

We visit the “golden dome” of Shezgion Temple. L and I agree that if all the white tourists were taken off the site, there would still be many tourists visiting this temple. Burmese people go “on pilgrimage” and travel to the important temples. It is amazing how many Burmese are traveling around Myanmar visiting these sites. We are asked a couple of times by Burmese if they may take our pictures. We oblige happily and in exchange we take photos of them.

By now the temples are starting to blend together. As I write this I cannot conjure up the visual of the next temple I want to write about. That just means we may have seen too many today. So, instead, a story.

The king was very sick. His youngest, and fourth wife, cared for him with much dedication and he eventually got better. The king was so impressed with this wife’s dedication that asked her what she would like. She replied, “I do not want anything for myself, but I worry about my young son. If you would do me a favour and make him your heir so that he becomes king when you pass, I would be at ease.” (Sounds just like a mother, eh?) He said he would see what he could do. He called his five sons together and asked them if they would all agree to a test to see who should be king, and that whatever this test showed, they would abide by. They all agreed. They sat in a circle and the king dropped a white umbrella in the centre of the circle and whoever the umbrella pointed at would be king. Well, the umbrella pointed at the son of the fourth wife, so he became king! When he was king, he built a gorgeous temple and named it HTILOMINLO. HTI means umbrella, LO means a favour and MIN means king.

Htilominlo Temple

L and I go shopping after. We get intrigued by the tauts selling laquerware and ask our guide to take us to a workshop. We learn about how they make laquerware, the whole process taking about 6 months for small pieces and then we go shopping. It is very informative as I have no idea what went into this artform.

Waiting for sunset

We had decided to watch the sunset from a lesser used temple and head there via a horse cart ride through Old Bagan. Our horse cart driver tells me that he is thankful to us as this is his first fare for today (and it is already 4:00). His English is quite good and we chat away while bumping along. We relax on the heights of the temple and watch the sun slowly sink, sometimes peeking out from the clouds.

It is a day of temples in Bagan and a good day it is.

I’m sleeping hard, totally dead to the world. We are about 12 hours out of sync from where we left 4 days ago. We tried to sleep on the airplane on the way over and did get an hour here and there. We arrived in Bangkok at about 10pm and did manage to get some sleep on and off before having to awake and get on a plane the next morn. In Mandalay I force myself to stay awake till 9:30. I do not remember trying to go to sleep and then it is morning. Each day since I sleep very deeply. For some, jet lag is the cause of much consternation but for me it just provides a platform for 3 nights of tremendous repose.  

This morning I whisper to Debbie we are going to tell Ow that we want to visit a maximum of two temples today. He could pick, but only two. The rest of the time we want to wander a village, check out an oxen cart and visit a farmer’s field. So today we meet Ow and he tells us there is only one temple on the agenda. How did he know? First stop, a peanut roasting place. Shake down and sort the peanuts, roast them and package them. I like peanuts so I am totally cool with this stop.

Then to the vermicelli making establishment. I’ll summarize the visit with this; if you want to continue to eat noodles I would not recommend a trip to a noodle factory.

Temple with over 600,000 Buddhas

The low point of the day is the temple. Not only did I not want to see another damn Buddha, this temple had 582,268 of them. That in fact is the number it had when the temple was first built. No one knows for sure how many there are now. Occasionally for one reason or another, a Buddha disappears from the flock; like each time there is an earthquake one or two fall. Then of course there have been some added over the years. No one is willing to do a count so the exact number today remains a mystery.

We are off to a real village, sounds like something of interest, but we have heard such before in other countries and when we arrive we are met by a group in traditional costumes that soon perform traditional celebration dances and then show us to the traditional craft shop and expect us to believe this is what happens in every village in the country. When the car stops to let us out the only folks here to meet us are a gaggle of village kids. Rough and dirty in street clothes just like any little kid would be in back home. The difference for the ones in traditional Myanmar clothing is it is their everyday wear. The other kids are in blue jeans and t-shirts. There are no other tourists around and there is no grand theatre or souvenir shop.  We wander up and down the street talking to ordinary people and observing how they live and work.

One family of farmers makes incense sticks in the off season and are gathered inside making paste and rolling the paste onto a stick with a machine similar to what my grandfather used to roll cigarettes. Another fellow is busy making teak furniture. Not the kind westerners are used to, much rougher and more utilitarian but sturdy and useful. At the kitchen table of another house is an older teen boy working on the ubiquitous laptop doing physics.  Their life seems pleasant enough, the people we meet are happy and none of them look short of what they need. As we prepare to leave we realize another tourist bus has pulled in. So the village is on some part of the T. trail but it is not crowded and I do believe none of what we see is staged.

Cooking Stones

Life seems pretty relaxed here. There are not many people one would call destitute but a good number of people have time to chill. They must put in time at making a living at some point but wherever there are people there are those that are involved in pursuits of personal interest, chatting, fence making, metaphorical coffee, midday soccer games, day dreaming.

Today in two different spots the highway has been flooded. Not deep but still covered in water. The roads are good but not perfect and there are a few holes that are best missed, much like the roads in Edmonton. So, at each flooded spot there are 3 or 4 guys wading back and forth in front of the vehicles guiding them past the potholes by feeling them out and then directing the cars past the danger. They are doing this as a free public service. They are filling some of that chill time with a very valuable public service and at the end of the day they will have some good stories to tell I’m sure.

There are also an inordinate number of celebrations. Whole families and groups of friends are out midday, midweek celebrating one thing or another, a young boy is inducted to be a monk, a wedding, a coming out type party for a young girl. All this when from a westerner’s point of view these folks should be working but these events are important and obviously important enough for large groups to put all else aside and gather.

Ow fills me in on the difference between Myanmar (pronounced; Me an mar) and Burma. Myanmar is the country. Burma and more properly Burmese is the people. The rest of the world seems to have a problem with the country being called Myanmar but that is what the people here call their own country. It is not a name forced upon them, it is THE name.

Today is the last day with Ow. We are going to the jetty to connect with a different guide, Zawmaung, Zaw to us, and a boat to transport us on the  Ayeyarwady River to Bagan and literally 6,000 temples. I sure hope there are a few that are exciting enough to tweak some interest. The ride on the river is peaceful except for the exposed unmufflered engine making an extraordinary amount of noise.

Boating down the river

We arrive in Bagan and it is back to the land of the tourist. The tourist trail in Myanmar is well defined and we will have very little opportunity to duck away and see what has not been already prepped for our arrival. We walk up the river bank and have to run a gauntlet of tauts and we repeat our mantra, Ya day, Ya day, Ya day, over and over until we reach our car. (Ya day is our phonetic spelling of No.)

There is not much time left in the day so it is straight to the hotel. We are all too tired to venture far and even though the hotel restaurant is not very interesting we opt to eat there. By 7:45 we are finished eating and every one of us is nodding at the table. My deep sleep is great but it does not seem to be helping me at the other end. Debbie and I have some chores to do, laundry, the blog, accounting but we do not finish half before we are on the bed and fast asleep. I guess we will have to continue with the theme of the trip and finish tomorrow what we did not get to today.

Man this place is hot. I have traveled to many hot places in the world. We hiked the Samarian Gorge in Crete and it was over 40C and that was hot, but here the numbers are not as high but the 30 C on the scale and the humidity combine to make the heat devastating. When we left Edmonton we checked out the weather channel and it read “feels like 45 C”, we laughed.  I have never been much of a fan of air conditioning, but when we return to the car after even a short outing that cool air is good. I have to think twice about getting out of the car for the next adventure.

Reclining Buddha

Yesterday R mentions that he recounted his exchanged funds and he was short changed $100 US. That is equivalent to about 100,000 Kaht. This morning, R&L need to exchange some more US to Kaht so we head over to the Farmer Currency Exchange again. He walks in and the girl recognizes him right away. She felt very sorry, realizing after we left that she did short change him and then without question hands him the missing funds. We are all amazed and are celebrating human nature as we drive away. A few blocks later, R says to L, “I did it again. We didn’t get enough Kaht this time either. I’m short about 90,000.” Our driver slows, pulls over and then turns around. We drive back to the exchange. As R and Ow walk into the shop, the young ladies are all smiling and laughing and tell them that they realized the mistake right away and the young fellow here made chase on his motorbike but couldn’t catch us, so he had to return to the shop. She handed the remaining funds over to R with many “Sorrys” and a big smile. We once again drove off celebrating the young women and their honesty. If you need to exchange funds in Mandalay, definitely go to Farmer Currency Exchange on 30^th Street between 65^th and 66^th Street.

Field of Buddhas

Now our day can start. As we drive towards our first temple for the day, Ow tells us he stays at his old monastery whenever he is in Mandalay. Ow was a monk between ages 19 and 29 (he is now 45). He asks us if we would like to visit the monastery and his abbot, who is in charge of the monastery. We all enthusiastically say YES!

We arrive at the monastery and meet Mr. Nandumala, or Uncle Abbot as we fondly called him. We sit around a table outside and Uncle Abbot treats us to small bananas, toast with jam and tea. He doesn’t speak English, so Ow translates our questions to him and our answers to his queries. He tells us he is celebrating his 59^th birthday soon and asks us how old we all are. Murray says 60, R says 57, L says 55 and I say 29. Uncle Abbot burst out laughing and everyone had a good guffaw.  We chat about Buddhism, Muslims, India, Canada and running a monastery. He is very friendly, laughs a lot, and holds our gaze very steadily. We all walk away from our meeting with Uncle Abbot in awe and smiling.

Golden Buddha

Once again we see too many temples. They each have something different to offer, but they are blending together. One’s Buddha is 423 ft tall, one has 45 Buddha’s, one has a gold Buddha, one Buddha is reclining and then there are fields of Buddhas.

45 Buddhas

Other than temples, we see sesame plants growing, cotton fields, corn fields and ox carts loaded with bananas. Most Burmese drive vehicles with right hand drive, but the roads are right hand drive just like at home. So for us, this is quite odd, it feels backwards, or sideways. Drivers use their horns to signal that they are passing another vehicle, or to warn cross traffic or pedestrians that they are approaching. Murray says that we are once again in the land of talking horns.

423 ft high Buddha

We spend another day hopping in and out of the vehicle, in and out of the heat.