Mandalay

Upon arrival in Mandalay we made our way to our only prepaid upscale hotel—the Ayeyarwady River View (Irrawaddy) which at $90 a night is usually beyond our budget but when researching and talking to others Mandalay seemed to have the least favourable budget options.

The traffic was very different from Yangon and it was obvious that we were in a working class city with huge loads of items being transported around on trucks, motor cycles—the ban does not go beyond Yangon—bicycles and foot.

We took a taxi to the area where they make gold leaf used primarily in the decorations of the many temples and Buddha—actually we did see an advertisement for Myanmar calling it the “golden land” which would be appropriate with a golden spire visible from any point on our travels.                           Once again we were impressed as we always are in Asia with the incredible amount of labour involved in making anything. They pound the gold with a hammer many times until it is very thin after which they will affix it to the object to be gilded. They were using it on a lot of the lacquer ware to be sold to tourists.

We then wandered back into a market area which was chaotic and colourful. Stores with huge piles of blankets were everywhere—we found the climate delightful, probably 28C in the day and 20C at night but this is winter and the locals are cold. The summers can be 40C here so we are glad that our timing coincided with winter. We found many happy smiling people here and a more relaxed atmosphere than in Yangon.

That night we took the opportunity to go to a puppet show, one of their folk traditions. The puppets are incredible and range from some a metre high with many strings allowing movements in all directions to simple ones. I succumbed to buying a horse and a soldier. We were unable to understand the story as although the audience was all tourists the language was Burmese. We were finding communication difficult as those who do speak English were hard to understand, English sounds are very foreign to them. They are lovely though and will persevere with you until you have some idea of what they are saying—or at least pretend you do as I found myself doing often.

The following morning we had arranged the taxi to come and pick us up at 5 30am to take us to the U Bein teak bridge at Amarapura to be there at dawn. It is over 300 metres long and 200 years old—the longest in the world and is one of the images associated in my mind with Myanmar—a must do!!!

As we arrived a man in a boat approached us and offered to take us out on the water for sunrise, we had heard many tourists go at sunset but we were the only ones on the water in the morning which was lovely to go out at such a peaceful hour. As the sun rose the fishermen were casting their nets and people were walking across the bridge—what an amazing image—one which will stay in my mind forever. The highlight of course is the monks and nuns cross in their robes with their begging bowls.

After he took us back we walked across the bridge to soak in the atmosphere. Only one other European couple was there which once again was magical.

Monks are everywhere in Myanmar and range in age from 8 years old novices who at around 18 will become monks. Nuns are the female equivalent but although they lead the same lifestyle cannot rise as high as the monks in the Buddhist world.

They all lead a strange life, arising early and will go out into the community with begging bowls to beg for and be given food. In a country where rice is the staple dish it will be given often. We had read where the monks are suffering vitamin deficiencies and people have been requested to vary their offerings with more nutritious foods if possible. We also found that in built up areas each area has a day of the week which is theirs to donate to the monks. They will cook the night before to be ready. It is of course considered to be pleasing Buddha to donate and the strongly religious population see it as a duty and privilege to give.

The monks will then take the food back to the monastery where they will eat at around 11am; this is the only time in the day they will partake of food. They will rest after that and then spend the afternoon chanting the various Buddha verses. There are 84,000 chants to memorize and apparently there only about 300 monks in the world who now know them all. The rest aspire to and will practice for many hours. They try to live good lives and I understand that they believe they will be reborn after death to have another opportunity to lead an exemplary life after which they will achieve Nirvana. This was explained to us by a man who had been a monk for 7 years and I may have lost something in the translation. Suffering is accepted and awareness of every step they take is to be contemplated.

They can choose how long they wish to be a monk and even married men with families can become monks for a period of time if their wives agree. The care of their children will then become the responsibility of their families, we came across a number of men selling things the proceeds of which would go to look after their brother’s family. All of this is accepted readily.

It seemed amazing to us that these huge numbers of people will spend their lives totally dependent on the community and are in effect nonproductive members of a society. Even in the temples and monasteries the people doing the cleaning and painting were members of society and the monks only walk around thinking good thoughts!!

As we had seen in Vietnam many women do a lot of the heavy manual labour building and maintaining roads—perhaps the monks could suffer a little more and help!!

As we were walking back to the taxi many stands laden with tourist wares were opening up. We asked one how much for a banana he said that they were the equivalent to $1 each—in this part of the world that is astronomical, reminding us how quickly people learn to take advantage of the unwary tourist.

Our driver now took us to a local village where cotton is spun and woven and is sold either in readymade clothing or by the metre. Ken found a shirt in a large size—he feels like a giant in this world of tiny people. I was unable to find anything I liked in my size—also large—I also feel like a giant but I don’t get the positive feeling he does—girls of 5 feet tall have waists you feel you could span your hands around. The quality and colours of the cottons were amazing and we both bought fabric which hopefully we can have something made in Hong Kong, we will not have time here.

Next was the factory where the heavily sequined and embroidered wall hangings and cushion covers are made—the work which goes into these is again amazing. The same factory manufactured wooden carvings and puppets all of which are very cheap if one takes the labour involved in any of them into account.

We then continued to the inevitable collection of temples and pagoda. The collective term for them is paya and includes temples-they house Buddha and you can enter into them—if large enough there will be 4 Buddha each facing the four points of the compass. A pagoda is usually huge with Buddha in the perimeter with no access to enter. Stupa is the word generally used to describe a Buddhist monument. You remove your shoes for all of them but after we walked on dirty stony grounds around them it is obviously a sign of deference rather than an attempt to keep them clean.

As we climbed the stairs of one we were offered bananas at 20cents each—a much more palatable price. We were also offered various trinkets—could not turn down the incredibly sweet smiley girl who had made bracelets from seeds from a local tree. The look like apple seeds and dozens are strung to make objects, at 3 for $1 it seemed good value—the first one only lasted the first day but her smile was worth the dollar anyway.

We were then taken to a landing where a small boat was waiting to take tourists across where horses and wagons were awaiting to travel the circuit of ancient temples on the other side.

Once across we encountered the first of many young people—from about 14 years old who were incredibly bright and articulate. We were coming across those who mastered many languages. The most common was Italian as it appears that while a lot of the world had embargoed Myanmar the European countries had been coming on major tours for years. They also spoke German, French, Spanish and some even Russian. We could finally understand these young people who were able to laugh and joke in many languages fluently. We asked if they spoke Japanese or Chinese and they immediately changed their attitudes to one of scorn. Apparently the Chinese and Japanese do not buy souvenirs and are not happy tourists. We are finding ourselves a minority as “backpackers” as there are a huge number of tours being run and buses of tourists arrive en masse everywhere.

One would hope that in a couple of generations’ children as bright as these will be formally educated and be able to add to the building of a better nation. They have to pay to go to school and many had either never attended or only attended for a short time. We did come across people who were working to earn money so that one brother could attend what they referred to as University—most of these were going to do a one to two year course in economics and at the end of this would then be responsible to help support the family which had contributed to their education. Family responsibilities are very strong in this society.

Ken negotiated a small bell with one boy which somehow made us accepted by even those we did not buy from. We then got the ticket to go onto the cart to be pulled by a horse on the bumpy paths through the pretty treed area to visit many old and sometimes neglected temples. It was lovely to just bounce around at leisure and enjoy the rural atmosphere. Ox carts used for carrying farm products and teams of oxen plowing added to the peace and romance of the lovely area. Local people smiled as they passed.

After our tour we returned to the river to get the boat across and the young people who had sold us the items happily interacted with those of us as we waited.

We then made our way back to our taxi to Mandalay where we ate dinner in our rooftop restaurant and once again were treated like royalty by the smiling staff.

We would leave early again in the morning to catch the river boat which will take the day to travel to Bagan—the land of temples which rival Ankor Wat in scope.