Burmese Days

The title of this entry is my tribute to George Orwell, who lived in Burma for a while and wrote a book with the same title.  I’ve rediscovered his writings on our voyage with a new appreciation.

With the doctor’s OK we took a flight to Yangon to start our time in Myanmar, formally known as Burma.  We were originally going to stay here for 2 weeks but had to shorten our trip to 9 days because of our unintended longer stay in Bangkok.  In our limited time we decided to visit Myanmar’s ‘Big Four’: Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan, and the Inle Lake area.

Myanmar, nestled between India/Bangladesh on one side and China/Thailand/Laos on the other, is one of those countries that is quite isolated from the international community.  It is ruled, quite brutally in many instances, by a repressive military junta.  Many western countries have enforced full economic sanctions against Myanmar because of this regime, and there is an active debate among travellers on whether to even visit this country since some of your money will inevitably end up in the governments’ dirty hands.  However, everyone we spoke to who had been to Myanmar had nothing but amazing things to say about the land and its people.  Their collective advice was to visit the country but to avoid giving as much money as possible to the government, ie don’t stay in government hotels or take government transport etc.  So Di and I followed their recommendations to go, and our only regret is that we had too little time here.

Yangon is the capital of this large country (about the size of France) and is home to 5 million people.  Yangon’s landmark is the Shwedagon Paya, the most sacred of all Buddhist sites in the country and on the top of every citizen’s pilgrimage list.  At the centre of the grounds was a huge golden domed stupa (picture above), purportedly enshrining some hairs of the Buddha.  The stupa was surrounded by a myriad of other temples and buildings, all filled with different Buddha statues.  Though the site itself from an architectural standpoint was pretty interesting, what made the afternoon we spent here more worthwhile was the people watching.  Unlike the famous Buddhist temples in Bangkok where tourists far outnumber the devout, I counted 7 of us foreigners among the hundreds of local worshippers, monks and nuns.  Though many were praying and chanting, the atmosphere was very casual with families running around and smiling faces more plentiful than solemn ones.  The picture above may make the place look rather ominous with the cloudy weather, but really the mood there was the exact opposite.  When Buddha-statue-overload started to kick in, we headed to the Bogyoke Aung Sang Market to check out Myanmar’s famous jewellery stores and their world renowned jade and ruby collections.  When we arrived it was actually quite intimidating, as there were hundreds of shops and the jewellery section was overwhelming.  We were hoping to learn why Myanmar’s jades and ‘pigeon’s blood’ rubies were so famous but we weren’t willing to listen to the hard sell (which was what this market seemed to be about) so we just walked through and glanced at the gems.  Luckily for my wallet Di didn’t buy.  As an aside companies like Tiffany & Co, Cartier and Bulgari have stopped buying Myanmar’s gems (though their rubies are supposed to be the best in the world) as profits help fund the suppressive military regime.  There are counterpoints by others who say that bans and sanctions only repress economic development which hurts the average Burmese citizen more than the government.

After Yangon we went to Mandalay, Myanmar’s other big city.  When we checked in to our hotel I tried to pay with our US 20 dollar bills.  We were warned by other travellers that there is a pretty strict policy here where you have to pay in USD and the bills have to be in really good condition, ie no stains, tears, or even creases.  This is supposedly because the Myanmar bank only takes good quality bills from locals and if the bank doesn’t want them they’re SOL.  Getting bills rejected is a pretty big problem for travellers because there are no banks in this country for you to take out money and no one accepts credit cards.  Knowing about this beforehand, I actually performed the ridiculous job of ironing all my American money at our guest house in Bangkok the night before we came to Myanmar.  Anyways, the lady at this check in counter was just being ridiculous and she rejected the first four 20s that I gave her.  We were trying to convince her that they were fine but she wasn’t having it.  I got severely frustrated because if people were going to reject all of our bills for the next week then we would have had to leave Myanmar much earlier than we wanted to.  So I looked at Di, shook my head and said “this is soooo stupid”.  All of a sudden the lady’s cold and businesslike demeanour (thankfully she was the only one who was like this during our whole time here) turned defensive and aggressive as she yelled back at me “I NO STUPID”.  Great, she thought I said she was stupid.  For the next 5 minutes Di tried to pacify the situation by trying to explain that I was talking about the Myanmar banks and not about her, much to the amusement of everyone watching in the lobby.  Eventually she accepted 2 of our bills, but she gave us change with a stain (if you could call it that, it was about 2mmx2mm) slightly larger than one of the bills she rejected from me.  I was kinda pissed at this point, so I took my rejected bill to show her how unfair she was being by giving us ‘dirty’ change.  She was also pissed, and just kept saying ‘NO’ and ‘YOU TAKE CHANGE’.  Di eventually calmed me down and took the change as she joked she didn’t want to go back to our room later on to see a snake lying in our bed.  Thankfully for the rest of our trip owners of other hotels happily took our USD.  And you might ask “what about the local currency, is it subjected to the same scrutiny?”  Well since you need local currency (called Kyats) to pay for meals and taxis and stuff, I was able to find out.  A ton of bills here looked like they were first run over by a stampede of elephants on the filthy streets of India before being handled by Freddy Kreuger, who then left Elm Street to give them to Di’s 18 month old niece to scotch-tape back together.  When I was given these as change I tried returning them to the proprietors, but they all said that they would work at other stores and they told me not to worry with a big smile.  To my surprise, these Kyat bills were gladly accepted everywhere.

Anyways, in Mandalay we first went to check out the Mahamuni Paya which houses a Buddha where male worshippers apply gold leaf with lacquer to its surface.   Currently the 4m tall bronze Buddha has a 15 cm thick golden shell comprised of this gold leaf which has been applied over the years.  That stat was amazing to me considering how thin each little square sheet of gold being applied was.  We then went to the ancient cities of Sagaing, Inwa, and Amarapura just outside of Mandalay.  We climbed a hill in Sagaing that was covered in over 500 Buddhist stupas and which offered great views of the Ayeyarwady river.  We took a boat across said river to Inwa where life was quieter and ancient temples were empty and inviting.  Our highlight though was hanging out on the U Bein Bridge in Amarapura.  The foot bridge, at a length of 1.2 kms, is the world’s longest teakwood bridge, requiring over 1000 teak posts to hold it up.  We lingered there for over 2 hours while waiting for the sun to set.  During that time we watched fishermen around us and conversed with monks walking by.  The exercise in patience awarded us with one of the most spectacular sunsets we have ever seen.  Unfortunately we were short on time and had to leave to Bagan the next day, or we would have returned to watch the sunset again. 

When we got back to the hotel that night thankfully the woman I had a disagreement with was off (and our bed was snake-free!).  I’ve learnt my lesson and have decided to never use the emotionally charged word ‘stupid’ in front of someone with a weak command of the English language again.