Procession

One of the coolest things we did in Myanmar happened on the last night we were there.  While heading down to Chinatown for the night market, we heard music coming from a nearby alley.  We looked down the length of it and saw a stage set up at the far end.  Thinking it may be a concert, we walked in for a closer look.  A short way in, we reached a point past which people were taking off their shoes.  Sacred event space?  Intriguing.  That day was a national holiday, Union Day, so it was probably a public event with Buddhist backing, or vice versa. 

We took off our shoes and walked further in.  The street was covered in woven sitting mats with a central red aisle for walking.  On both sides of the aisle, people were seated in clusters and holding pages covered in Burmese script.  We walked and walked past about four sets of mini screens and loudspeakers, and maybe two hundred sitting folks, until we got close enough to the stage to see what it was.  A big golden throne, in front of a splendid backdrop depicting what seemed like paradise to me.  The throne was empty though. 

We sat down on the mats and took our places among the people.  Soon, a man came over and handed us each a plastic bag with a bottle of water, a juice bottle, and a baked item.  It felt like kindergarten snack time.  People around us were looking at us and smiling.  Some dude walking around with a big looking camera even got us to pause for a photo, maybe for a newspaper.  Then, the music changed.  It went from being instrumental and recorded, to being a live, single voice chanting.  The chant was slow, sounded nasally and female, and was in Pali I think.  People shifted their posture so they were now sitting facing the aisle rather than the stage.  Some had their hands in their laps, looking down, and some were looking up with their hands pressed together at their chest.  We turned to face the aisle as well. 

A bell started ringing, about one chime every ten seconds.  Then we saw from the same direction we had come, a procession.  In front were two men carrying a bell shaped gong between them.  In the back was a man holding a golden parasol.  And in the center of the procession, under the parasol, an old monk.  As the monk walked past, people on both sides of the aisle bent and touched their foreheads to the ground over and over.  When he came by us, it was very difficult not to bow.  The monk finally reached the stage and sat down in the golden throne.  The chanting continued.  It was beautiful and well orchestrated and felt like just the right amount of ceremony to end our visit to the most overtly Buddhist country of all that we had visited. 

We decided to leave before the monk started talking, because that seemed like the least disrespectful course of action.  Picking up our shoes, we took the sidewalk all the way back out of the alley, put our goodie bags on the table at the entrance, and felt grateful for the chance to witness Union Day, Buddhist style.

Busloads and boatloads

We have ridden three night buses now, and that is enough for quite a while.  Two of them played the same DVDs, so we have repeatedly heard Burmese versions of La Isla Bonita, La Bamba, and Gangstas Paradise.  We are now fans of a Burmese sitcom that feels like The Taming of the Shrew.  And we did indeed witness the barf phenomenon, though to a far far lesser extent than any other travel blog narrates. Maybe we didn't pick sketchy enough bus companies. The most memorable ride was from Myawaddy to Yangon.  Advertised as arriving at 5 pm, it actually arrived at 3 am.  My right heel remained numb for part of the next day.  I have never been on a more congested, narrow, beat up, and inefficient road.  Again, since this was a new border, our passports were checked four times.  Huge respect to the local people who never expressed frustration at having to wait for us at these passport checks.  They gave us the best seats in the bus while many others sat in the aisle on plastic chairs for the entire ride.  And the view was great.  Along the mountain pass, cars piled with people and electronics and food bumped along, while nuns stood at the side of the road here and there and shook their begging bowls.  The rattling noise from the bowls must have been rocks.  Myanmar does not have coin currency.

The two other night buses took us to Bagan and Inle Lake.  The former is a field of reconstructed Buddhist temples and the latter a big shallow inland lake with floating gardens, villages, and market.  The word floating does not mean on a boat.  It means they are built on dredged dirt with a snaking series of canals.  Some houses and monasteries are on stilts above the water but most are on "ground."  Lots of tourists focus photos on the local fisherman, who use a unique paddling technique where they snake their leg around the oar - it was fun to watch and would have been more fun to try.  But my favorite part was going to the market, which was clearly not built for anyone of Western height (Josh bashed his head on three separate stall canopies), seeing the people in different "ethnic groups" wearing their chosen patterns, and seeing old ladies paddle around with boatloads of stuff.

As we head out to Malaysia,  I think the thing I will miss most is interacting with people who are not used to tourists.  The thing I will miss least is the haze.  Looking forward to somewhere the horizon is visible…

I heart Rangoon

Today was the first day during this entire trip where I felt like having a beard helped me fit in. Facial hair is scarce in Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, and for that matter much of Myanmar.  However, in one beautiful neighborhood of Yangon, I found my people.  Desi reunion!

Do you know how good it feels to speak the local language?  So far, speaking has been the most frustrating part of Myanmar.  I am pretty good at languages but Burmese is totally giving me a run for my money, with the combination of tones and stress and unvoiced final consonants.  So today, walking along Mahabandoola Road west of Sule Pagoda, in an area the guidebooks called Little India, I decided I would say, "Hindi?" to people before trying to speak Burmese.  After three tries, no luck; everyone stuck with Burmese.  Then, at one clothing stand, the shopkeeper I asked shook his head and said "Urdu."  I almost could not believe it.  I had not been asking people if they spoke Urdu because I figured Pakistan is so far away, across India.  But duh!  Myanmar is close to Bangladesh, and Bangladesh was once called East Pakistan, and thus the Urdu trail spreads farther East than I had realized.  I finally noticed the people here were wearing beards and white caps and kurtas mixed with Burmese longyi.  So I asked the man about his merchandise, and he beamed when he heard my Urdu.  He told me his name was Mohammed Yunus.  He was born in Yangon, though he called it Rangoon, and his whole family lives here.  He said the neighborhood is mostly Muslim, though there are Hindus as well.  It was magic.  This is probably the closest to a homecoming I will get on the trip. 

We sat outside the restaurant next to Mohammad Yunus' stall and ate paratha, idli, and chickpeas while sipping masala chair and lassi.  I almost did not care that I hadn't gotten my Indian visa.  Maybe Rangoon does it better anyway. 

On that note, to anyone at all interested in Indian food, you must check out Burmese cuisine.  Their version of curry feels so fresh.  Small plates, sauces, sliced veggies, stewed meats and every shop's special hinjo soup - we have eaten it for days and no two places' taste the same. 

The Wheel

Whew!  We made it to Myanmar.  We made it on by bus and by foot, across a border that literally just opened to foreigners five months ago.  We are in a little town called Myawaddy.  When we arrived at the border, we were escorted to a "foreigners lounge" and the agent told us the news.  The buses only run onward every other day, and we got in too late that day.  So we would have to wait two days to get a bus out of town.  Luckily, Myawaddy is the most interesting middle of nowhere that we have ever been stuck in.  For example, this:

Almost no one speaks English, and there are no maps, but it feels very welcoming.  Almost everyone had yellow face paint on their cheeks when we arrived, and we assume it was because of Chinese New Year.  Hungry, we walked through an outdoor market until we found the only thing that looked like a restaurant: a table and chairs and pots and some women sewing.  One of them bade us sit.  She poured a dark vegetable broth and rice noodles into bowls for us, slid tamarind and chili our way and cut fish and tomatoes into the bowls with scissors.  She told us the Myanmar words for everything, and kept refilling the noodles and broth.  The food was less tangy than Thai food and had more hints of lentil and  black pepper.  Perhaps because we were hungry, it tasted amazing.  And it was all 1000 kyat.  One dollar.

After dinner, we followed the lights and sounds of music until we entered a place where people were taking off their shoes.  We were at a Buddhist temple, except this night it was also a carnival.  Picture it: golden statues and bouncy castles, ancient bells and wood carvings and a ferris wheel.  Ferris wheel?!  They were looking for people to get on, so of course we did.  I got nervous when four young men in flip flops climbed onto the outside of the ferris wheel and found positions in the framework near the top.  What is going to happen to them when this thing starts, I wondered.  Then I realized they were the reason it was going to start.  There was no motor.  They all shifted their weight at once and the wheel started turning.  Fast.  I held on for dear life as the little Burmese kids across from us giggled.  The young men pounced off the spinning wheel right in the nick of time.  I thought their job was done, but no.  They stood right under the wheel, bent backwards like they were doing the limbo.  And flicking their bodies at each car to keep the momentum going.  The human powered ferris wheel, in a Buddhist temple, on Chinese New Year, in a Myanmar border town.  Absolutely worth it.