Myanmar days
I went to college with two students who changed their names. One changed both his first name and surname, and his whole image – from clothes to hair colour. Of course it's common for celebrities to change their name... Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, Reginald Kenneth Dwight became Elton John, Maurice Joseph Micklewhite became Michael Caine (not a lot of people know that), Lana Del Rey is actually Elizabeth Woolridge Grant.
Countries and cities also change name, usually for political reasons. From Ceylon to Sri Lanka, Persia to Iran, Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Abyssinia to Ethiopia. Burma became Myanmar (pronounced ‘me an ma’) in 1989. The government also changed many of its city’s names, as well as the location of its capital. So Irrawaddy became Aveyawady, Pegu became Bago and Rangoon (which ironically translates as ‘end of strife’) became Yangon. Yangon was the former capital; Myanmar’s capital city has changed about thirty times in the last thousand years. The latest capital, Naypyitaw, is a very new city indeed; construction didn’t start on it until 2002. Which all makes for much confusion.
(I imagined a businessman at the time of the changes having a meeting in the capital only to discover it’s changed location; or a government official, not being told of the changes, going to work on a Monday morning to discover he's in the wrong city; or a tourist asking for a ticket to Rangoon only to be told it doesn’t exist any more. Can you imagine if the capital of the UK suddenly upsticked from London to Bath, or Birmingham?)
Coming out of Yangon airport I was immediately hit with the unmistakable sensation of being back in Asia. It was a nice feeling – the heat, the smells, the bustle, the poverty, the temples. It was 6am and the sun was rising, birds were chirping. It was already hot. My last visit to SE Asia had been... disastrous (see my book Gullible Travels) so I was a tad apprehensive, mainly about the heat and the food, neither of which had agreed with me last time (fifteen years ago).
The traffic and pollution in Yangon was horrendous. H had been working in the country a few weeks; I was driven to her hotel, picked her up, then we were driven to the Golden Rock by a driver plus an “English speaking” guide. This would be our routine for the entire holiday – picked up at airports (there was a lot of internal flights), then chauffeur driven around with a guide (at one point two guides and a driver).
H had organised the entire trip for us. Every inch of the way. The only thing missing, which I’m glad I insisted on, even though it wasn’t on the itinerary and would involve going there as soon as I got off the plane, was the Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo pagoda – one of two dreamlike, mythical images of Myanmar etched in my mind; I’d probably first seen them in National Geographic magazine over twenty years ago – the other being the pagoda at Mingun with the huge crack running down the middle (both pictured, above).
The gravity-defying large golden rock (the pagoda is on top of it), perched on the edge of a cliff and the huge crack in the pagoda caused by an earthquake (symbolising to me the folly of man and the destruction of a kingdom) were impossible, beautiful and surreal images so alien and exotic I never imagined seeing them with my own eyes.
The Kyaiktiyo pagoda, the third most important pilgrimage site in Myanmar, was a beautiful and relaxing place to hang out in. We watched families picnicking and monks praying; in particular we were charmed by the ‘pink nuns’ – girls with shaven heads wearing their pink robes. Everyone seemed happy and relaxed; it was hard to imagine Myanmar being a country cut-off from the west for decades, ruled with an iron fist by a military dictatorship. Though Myanmar was finally opening up to tourism, in other parts of the country systematic genocide was taking place against the stateless Rohingya Muslims, many of whom were fleeing the country into Bangladesh.
I bought some gold leaf and pasted it onto the rock along with other men (women weren’t allowed). It felt quite a profound and spiritual task, being part of a process that thousands had done over hundreds of years. I’d forgotten what it was like to be in a Buddhist country – Buddha statues, temples and stupas were everywhere we went. So it was a surprise the next day stumbling across a small Hindu temple in the countryside next to a small lake. further along in the fields were Monet-style haystacks. We went off-piste and were invited in for tea in a little hut by some rice fields. Everywhere we went – both of us tall and pasty white – people would take photos or ask us to pose for a photo with them. They’d giggle and stare and made us feel like movie stars.
Our favourite meal was in the Bago region where our driver stopped at some roadside stalls of dried fish. We crossed a wooden bridge over a river into a village which obviously didn’t get a lot of tourists – we were stared at wherever we went and invited to lunch in the courtyard where they were preparing for a festival. We were handed plates which were filled with rice and soup. It was delicious and though obviously a poor village, they wouldn’t accept any payment for lunch. Well, we were the entertainment after all: even though conversation was rudimentary, the locals found us fascinating and took more photos of us than we did of them.
Also in the Bago region we visited a village with a small snake monastery – that was fine; a monk had a dream that the snake now in the monastery was the reincarnation of a Burmese spirit (nat). (We were used to seeing such things – the Buddha’s toenail is buried under a pagoda; next to a temple, the shape of a tree root is the Buddha’s big toe.) No, what got me was the village itself. What should have been a pleasant country village (we’d seen plenty) stank, quite literally, of poverty. The village lake was filled with plastic bags and bottles, which children collected for money. There was no running water. Heaps of rubbish (mostly plastic) were everywhere (if I ever won the lottery, I wouldn’t go for yachts or fancy houses, I’d like to think I’d try and sort out shit like this). Religion, huh? All the gold temples, pagodas, stupas and Buddhas we’d seen were immaculate. They all had stacks of offerings: money, flowers, gifts. Yet the surrounding area was invariably poor and filthy. Obviously it’s not just Buddhism. All over the world I’ve seen the same thing.
It was sometimes nice getting away from the big tourist sites; at the Golden Rock there had been hardly any tourists but in Bagan, ancient city of a thousand temples, there were plenty. Yet wandering around the old city felt like being Indiana Jones; we’d stumble across over-grown temples wherever we looked in the dusty and tree-lined plain. Walking is one way to do the 26-square mile area of temples and pagodas; there are also bikes, hot air balloons (too expensive for us), taxis and coaches. At the main temples, children would follow us around, trying to sell us souvenirs and books. Burmese Days? I’ve read it. How about The Glass Palace? I’ve read that too. Okay mister, you buy From the Land of Green Ghosts? Haven’t read it, but don’t want to.
In the evening, hundreds of tourists would climb the temples (an activity now banned) for amazing views over the hazy landscape of temples and trees to catch the magical sunset. Any notion of it actually being a magical or romantic moment was unfortunately ruined by all the tourists (I know, I know, we were also tourists) and a thousand phones and cameras going off at once to capture the event. And sunsets are over-rated (which I’ve mentioned a few times in the past).
Disasters have long plagued Myanmar – earthquakes have destroyed temples; fires have ruined cities, including Mandalay, which I romantically imagined to be wooden shacks and bicycles but has been rebuilt – largely by the huge influx of Chinese – into a bland, modern city. Kipling would turn in his grave. Luckily, there’s other stuff to see around the city: Mandalay Hill and Palace; loads of temples and pagodas, including Kuthodaw (which contains 729 stupas and is regarded as the world’s largest book), the Shwenandaw Monastery (beautiful 19th century wooden building) and the aforementioned Mingun Pahtodawgyi, my mythical incomplete (on purpose) and cracked (by earthquake) monument stupa. We chartered a large boat, just the two of us, to see this, sitting on deckchairs on deck, sipping on Sprites and eating nuts, to travel the 10km along the river from Mandalay. This, perhaps, felt like the biggest extravagance of the trip; other boats the same size contained about thirty tourists.
It was around this time we first encountered The Pest. After seeing him once, we saw him everywhere. There was a daily ceremony at a monastery where loads of young monks would wait in line for breakfast. It was a visual feast with hundreds of crimson robes lined up with their bowls. The Pest was a Japanese tourist dressed like a fisherman or photographer (there’s a fine line – pardon the pun – between the two: geeky body warmer with lots of pockets, combat trousers with lots of pockets, stupid hat... but the Nikon camera costing the GNP of a typical Burmese village gave the game away).
We speculated that he worked for National Geographic. And this is how he got his good shots – by being a pest. He walked in front of everyone. He ordered monks around. He took about a hundred photos a minute. He was everywhere all the time, taking photos and annoying everyone.
We went on to the iconic U Bein Bridge, in time for the iconic sunset, naturally. Over 1km long and built in 1850, the teakwood bridge is believed to be the longest and oldest of its kind in the world. Next there was Inlay Lake, a beautiful, serene expanse of water with fishermen, marshes, floating gardens and houses on stilts. There were two types of fishermen there: one type who actually fish, and the other who pose for tourists for $1 (these are the fishermen one sees in all the guidebooks).
Amazingly, this time in Asia, the heat and food had been fine. The December heat wasn’t overwhelming, and we’d eaten a lot of vegetables and noodles (every day in fact). We'd drunk green tea, Sprites and Cokes, and the occasional latte when we could. In fact, the only time I got a dodgy tummy was, typically, the only day there were no toilets around: we were on a boat all day on the lake. H had bought a small bottle of lethal Mandalay rum the night before (for about 70p) and we drank some with Coke. I warned her against it – I’d had Mekong whisky in Thailand and suffered the consequences, which were severe – but she didn’t listen and didn’t admit the alcohol was the cause of my stomach troubles until the following day – when she’d had some rum again the night before (and I hadn’t). I was fine the next day, H had the upset stomach. We poured the rest of the rum down the sink.
There had been horse and cart rides, boat trips, planes, taxis, gigantic Buddha statues, temples, pagodas, stupas, caves. It was non-stop for over a week. From dawn to dusk. And then there was Ngapali beach, voted the best beach in Asia, for a few days of R&R. It was Christmas after all. We got cocktails and mingled at the bar. No, we didn't actually – one reason being there was hardly anyone around. No, mingle at bar was how we remembered saying 'Hello' in Burmese: min-ga-la-ba.
The beach was beautiful, with golden sand, warm water and huge shells washed up on the shore. We weren’t really beach people, but made an exception this time. It was paradise. The restaurant shacks on the beach served me chunky tuna steaks cooked on the barbie with rice and avocado salad. Washed down with a glass of watermelon juice, the total cost was about $3 (about the same price as a latte, when we could find one). Christmas Day is all about context: out here, we didn't really think about it. The hotels had half-hearted Christmas trees and lights in their lobbies but it wasn't convincing.
I didn’t see any tourists going as far as the working part of the beach, about half a mile away from the hotels, where the local fishermen and women did their thing, but I loved it there, despite stepping on hundreds of discarded fish heads, the best and biggest shells were to be found there, amongst the nets and anchors. The men did the fishing and the women did the sorting and dying of the fish. Presumably the same way they’d had done it 500 years ago.
We returned to Yangon and had a day seeing the sights. I was keen to see any remains of colonial architecture, and there was plenty of it, crumbling away gracefully. Lunch was awful, at this tourist trap of a restaurant with a garden setting. You know what? It was probably okay but I’d had it with our English speaking guides, most of whom couldn't speak English that well at all, and definitely couldn’t answer any questions if they went off-script. We usually tried explaining that we only wanted to eat in local places, not horrible tourist restaurants. The food was usually better, and cheaper, in a local place, and, you know, we did want to see how the locals lived, not be surrounded by other tourists all the time. I was trying to avoid and ignore our guides half the time. They’d drone on about the history of a temple which we would have forget instantly if we could even understand their English.
So, all this time – apart from the beach – we had a guide and a driver, and they were different each place we went. The driver’s were usually fine – they’d just drive. But there was this one driver H really didn’t like the look of. He was a bulky, shaven headed thug, but I didn’t mind him all that much. But H couldn’t stand him, his arrogance. She said he looked ex-military and had a nasty look about him. H found out from our guide that he was indeed ex-military and used to be a sniper in the army. He was the only one who didn’t get a tip from us.
I’m being unfair; some of our guides were very nice, bought us lunch, gave us gifts of green tea (which I bought back but still haven’t used). But things reached a head in the evening when we went to the gold Shwedagon pagoda, Myanmar’s most holy pilgrimage site, which we’d seen in the distance at various times, dominating the skyline. There was a lift up to the pagoda which I’d got in first with a bunch of other people, and H and the guide had to wait for the next one. When I got to the top I saw the sun was about to set and rushed off to photograph the pagoda with the sun setting behind it (I know, I know, when am I ever going to learn about sunsets?). Then I went back to find H and the guide. I couldn’t find them anywhere, and there were hundreds of people milling around.
When I eventually found H, maybe an hour or so later, she was furious. She’d been on her own with the guide, who’d not only been harping on about the pagoda, but also in a state about having lost me. I found him waiting by the entrance, in a panic, saying this had never happened before, he’d been sick with worry. To tell the truth, I’d had enough of the English speaking guides.
Nevertheless, it had been an incredible holiday in a beautiful country, with friendly people and extraordinary sights. Yes, the poverty jars. Yes, knowing there’s a genocide happening upcountry as we laze on a beach jars. At least H, who had been working there, was trying to make a difference. She said it was the first country she’d worked in where she could also have a holiday. On the internal flights we read the newspaper New Light of Myanmar (published by the Orwellian Ministry of Information), who singled out the UK’s Guardian for spreading false news about the military’s persecution of Rohingya Muslims. Freedom of the press is non-existent, with two Reuters journalists currently clocking up 100 days in jail for reporting on the genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi has faced widespread criticism for not speaking out over the crisis.
In the last few days, Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw has resigned, apparently due to ill health. Former general and Vice-President Myint Swe takes over until a new president is chosen (Aung San Suu Kyi, who had a loyal ally in Htin Kyaw, is exempt from taking the position, due to having children with an English husband, a clause in the constitution seemingly introduced with her in mind). The future doesn’t look great for Myanmar.
We took separate flights home (H’s had been organised by the company she worked for). I stopped off at Doha airport, in Qatar, with branches of Harrods and WH Smith everywhere; it could be anywhere except for the chic sheiks in their flowing white robes – how do they keep their whites white? Prayer rooms, quiet rooms and smoking rooms reminiscent of a smoky English pub circa. 1994. The men wear white; the women black. A video and a Daily Mail article inform me it’s the most luxurious, expensive airport in the world but all I saw was a giant sculpture of a teddy bear – apparently art.
Flickr photos here.
– December 2016