Moving on from Myanmar

Last Night I dreamed I went back to Mandalay again…Opening line of “Rebecca” by Daphne DuMaurier.

DAY 2 OF MYANMAR:

After a magical day in Baga, we decided to head to Mandalay. Problem: The only way to get there  - without blowing the bulk of one of our precious days here - was to travel at night…. 8 hours in a taxi (with no air conditioning) on some of the worst roads ever.  You really could not sleep as you were afraid you’d suffer severe whiplash if you were not bracing yourself for some of the worst potholes.  We arrived at 3 AM and got a very MODEST hotel (a/k/a a dive with small crawling bugs in the bed and not even hot water).  But we had no real choice.  It was the 5^th hotel we stopped at. No other hotel even had a night manager on duty.  We grabbed a few hours of sleep, took showers and headed out early.  I had high expectations for Mandalay… mainly because the name is so great and exotic. I was disappointed. Mandalay is a noisy, hot, dirty city. 

 The nicest scavenger here was to visit the “largest book in the world” which is a temple where they have etched very page – of 729 pages – of the teachings of Buddha onto a separate stone tablet and enshrined each tablet in its own little white, decorated house.  To read the “pages” you have to move from shrine-structure to shrine-structure. 

We decided to get out of Mandalay as fast as possible to some of the neighboring villages. My two favorites were Amarapura …a village known for its silk items. We visited a silk weaving factory and saw the hand-pedaled looms that have to date back over a hundred years. At the “factory” (which is a loose term for “shed in the backyard”), the only decoration on the wall was a framed photo of The Lady with Hillary Clinton. 

It is from when Clinton visited Myanmar in December and recommended that the travel sanctions be lifted.  Everyone here believes that the new influx of tourism (that is expected from this change in policy) will dramatically improve their fortunes. There is great optimism here. 

We also had to cross this rickety bridge over the lake… a scary wooden structure with more loose and / or rotten boards than good.  I got some kid monks to agree to let me photograph them on the bridge.  I love the crimson color of the monks robes here (deeper and richer than the saffron of Thailand).

We also visited the village of Ava… reachable only by flat-bottom boat across a muddy river. Once you reach the banks of Ava, you travel to the old, walled city by horse and buggy (Thank goodness … because it was 130 degrees out and I was melting. The shade of the buggy was well appreciated). 

At the end of a VERY LONG day we decided to suck it up and travel overnight again… 11 hours this time… to get to Ingle Lake. Unbelievably, the roads were even worse.  But we arrived at 5:30 AM and got straight into a boat so we would see sunrise.  Forget being tired. It was stunning.  The fishermen were out.  They need two hands to throw their nets so they have learned to wrap their legs around the single oar, balance with one foot, paddle with the second foot and fish at the same time. It makes it look like they  are dancing on the lake. 

The villagers live in wood or thatched one-room houses on stilts in the middle of the water – sometimes alone, sometimes laid out like a village with canals and intersections. 

And best of all… we go to see the LongNeck women (a bucket list item for me).  They are weavers by trade  so we got to watch a group of them work. The golden coil weighs about 15-20  lbs.

Observations:

(a)    Burmese picnic.. no sandwiches or hot dogs. Rather the families pack hot meals into metal tins, stack the tins one on top of the other with a holder and handle for easy carrying and bring them along for lunch.  They eat a true “hot” meal sitting on the floor of the temple they are visiting. 

(b)   Everywhere you go there are these clay pots filled with water that have a lid and a metal cup on top. They are filled each day by the government to avoid dehydration.  A great idea but clearly a pot full of diarrhea for us westerners (I am only pretending to drink from one here… that water would probably kill me on the spot) 

(c) The sun is so hot that everyone wears wide-brimmed hats. We now know where all of the Walmart Easter bonnets disappear to after they go on sale.. Burma!! The ones with Easter egg colors - and lots of fake flowers - are particularly popular. 

(d)   We had to try Betel Nut… a disgusting concoction of betel root, coconut, lime, white paste and tobacco rolled into a palm leaf. You pop the whole thing into your mouth and it is gross, gross, gross.  I had a residual  taste of yuck for hours. It also leaves a nasty slime of red-coloring on your teeth 

(e)    Everywhere you look here there is something very old and beautiful… with a monk in close vicinity to make your photo even better.

  

       We are now in Oman having gone through Bangkok and Sri Lanka.  Great stories from both places that I will try and upload tomorrow.   I was – at first – disappointed to be going back to Sri Lanka because we’d been there before. But we made a decision to not repeat any scavenges that we had done before.. And we ended up having a great few days in Ceylon (I love the old name for these countries). However, it was not the smartest move points-wise. The Sri Lanka leg was set up where the only way to win the leg was to go North (there were 350-400 more possible points that you could earn ONLY if you went North) and the North scavenges were closer together and less time-consuming. But we’d done the North the last time.  So we opted for South. Not yet sure how bad of a loss we took this leg – which is a little discouraging as we worked our butts off and and had some amazing adventures – but will find out in a few hours when Bill opens the Oman leg. 

I'l keep you updated. I love the comments... keep them coming.. they make me feel less lonely out here.