Are you ready to go to Burma?

Mingalaba, (Hello in Burmese)

My wife Vicky and I went to Burma, or Myanmar as they now call it, in mid-October to early November, 2014.  Life was very busy for us both before and after this trip. We had twin grandsons that were born on August 1st and another grandson born on November 5th, two days after we returned home. Add to that that we both have multiple jobs plus meetings and catching up with our garden and house and we were working hard just to stay even.  But we lead a joyous life and are pleased with all of it.

Meanwhile, Burma was a very interesting country to visit.  It was under a Military rule from 1962 to 2011 and the military closed the borders pretty much from 1962 until around 2006, when they started opening up portions of the country to visitors.  2006 is when Vicky and I first visited Burma.  We were on a trip to Thailand and we were in the Golden Triangle when we crossed the border for a day into Myanmar.  It was so interesting to me that I’ve been planning on going back since then – and we finally made it.

Burma is the 25th most populous country in the world with close to 60 million people.  It’s also the 40th largest country in the world by size.  But Burma has very poor infrastructure and poor education and only about 25% of the people in the country have electricity.  So it was very interesting to see such things as roads and road-building and shops that might normally have all electrical machines operate with pedal power.  It was somewhat of an interesting step back in time.

To whet your appetite for this trip, I’ve included a few photos, which I will explain.

1.      The biggest disappointment on this trip happened before we left home.  Our sister-in-law, Nora Garrod, Vicky's brother Pete’s wife knew that we wanted to take this trip, as did she and Pete.  So the company we travel with, OAT, had a sale on this trip while we were in Australia in February 2014 on the Australia OAT trip.  Nora went ahead and booked and paid for the Burma trip, to get the discount.  But when it came time to take this trip, Nora’s mom had some medical issues and Nora felt she needed to be with her mom.  So Nora missed the trip.  Pete, Vicky, and I carried on, but we missed Nora greatly.  The first photo was our first breakfast in Burma.  I went through the breakfast buffet line, got back to our table, and noticed Vicky’s plate.  I took the first photo, after which the following conversation took place.

Bill: “You’re having chocolate cake for breakfast?”

Vicky: “No, I’m not”.

Bill:  “But there’s a piece of chocolate cake on your plate”.

Vicky:  “I know but that’s just there in honor of Nora”.

Bill:  “So, you’re not actually going to eat the cake, you just took it to honor Nora?”

Vicky:  “I didn’t say that”.

Bill:  “So you are going to eat the cake”

Vicky:  “I didn’t say that either; I’m just honoring Nora”.

Bill:  “So when you are finished with your breakfast, will the cake still be there on your plate?”

Vicky:  “No”.

Bill:  “I understand”.

Now, during this entire conversation, Pete just sat there, like the wise-old owl that he is, and sipped his coffee and never uttered a word.

2.       So, how did the three of us do without Nora?  The second photo should tell you all you need to know.  Clearly Pete, Vicky and I never had any chaperoning….without Nora.  (This photo is on the Plains of Bagan)

3.      The third photo is also on the Plains of Bagan, but this time we were right next to a pagoda, during a horse-cart tour.  Vicky wasn’t driving here, but she did later on.

4.      The fourth photo is in Inle Lake.  This is one of the local fisherman.  We watched him and others and it was rather interesting fishing, the likes of which I had never seen before.

5.      The last photo is also on Inle Lake.  We were meeting with some women from the Karen people or as our guide called them, the Padaung Hill Tribe.

I hope you are looking forward to the trip.  

Mingalabar – which is Burmese for “Auspiciousness to you!”  (and multiple other interpretations)

Yangon

Yangon was the first stop for us in Burma.  Yangon was called Rangoon by the British.  My guess is that they named and spelled it like they thought they heard it from the locals.  At any rate, the military government changed the name back to its old name: Yangon.  Our guide pronounced the name “Yang-Go”.  Many names in Burma got interchanged on a regular basis so it was hard to keep things straight.  Between name changes, accents, and all, you should double check on anything I tell you that can be fact checked.

Yangon is Burma’s largest city with a population of about 4.5 million people.  The only other city in Burma with over a million people is Mandalay with about 1.2 million people.  Yangon is also the former capital of Burma.  It is also the primary commercial center for the country.  The city of Yangon was originally called Dagon when established by the Mon people centuries before.  The greater city area covers about 230 square miles, so it’s really a big place.  Yangon represents about 20% of the country’s economy.

The city itself has many old British buildings and lots of leafy boulevards.  Most of the city has electricity and paved roads.  The traffic was horrendous or about as bad as anywhere that we have visited.  When our guide took us for a 20 to 30 minute drive in Yangon, our bus driver would turn off the bus two or three times during the trip, due to traffic not moving at all.  It was that bad.  But Yangon is still a big city with decent infrastructure.  But when we went beyond Yangon to the outlying areas, they were deeply impoverished.

Burma’s Human Development Index rates 150th out of 187 countries in the world.  The wealth in Burma is largely controlled by the military government and their friends, from what we could learn.  Even within Yangon, it didn’t take long to discover the discrepancies.  I will try and demonstrate that with the photos in this email.

We stayed at the Sedona Yangon Hotel.  It was a very nice place and right across the street from Inya Lake.  Shortly after checking into our hotel, Vicky and I decided to go walking around on our own, just to see what we could see.  Before we went walking, we had lunch in the hotel’s lounge.  You can get a sense of our hotel in the first photo where you see Pete and Vicky enjoying lunch.

The next four photos are from our walk right around the back side of the block from our hotel.  If you look at the second photo, our hotel is just to the right of the photo and on the same piece of ground that you see in the photo.  What you see are basically homeless people living in homemade shelters which mostly consisted of sticks and tarps.  You can see some on the left side but they extended all around this empty lot.  They were living in the dirt and garbage, but they did get to enjoy some very nice trees.

The next three photos are in the next block from our hotel.  I don’t know what level of society these folks are but they can’t be living very high on the food chain.  And again, the British left lots of nicely planted tree-lined streets.

Old Rangoon

This drive and hike was in what our guide called the main city center area.  This area was the main area of town under the British when Yangon was known as Rangoon.  We covered way too much for me to put it all in one or two postings so I’m just going to try and point out a few things for you.

You can see an example of the British influence in the first photo.  We saw many buildings both old and much older that clearly noted the influence and the time that the British were in Burma.  Many of their buildings are still standing and functioning and really stand out in Yangon. 

The housing in the second photo is much more typical of housing in this area.  You might also notice that Vicky blended right in with the locals, sporting an umbrella to ward off the sun and heat.  Another thing to notice is that we were walking in the street.  That was because the sidewalks are normally all covered up with vendors stands, motorcycles, or something.  So we had to walk in the streets most of the time and keep a wary eye for vehicular traffic.  People were good drivers and pretty much always gave the right away if it was safer to do so, but we had to be careful nonetheless.

The third photo is also very typical of the city center area.  It’s easier to see in this photo that there is nowhere else to walk except in the street.  And yes, cars and trucks do drive down this street – and almost all others as well.

I like the contrast in the fourth photo of the street we see and the building across the street in the back of the photo.  The vehicle traffic on this street had their work cut out for them.  Most of the cars you see are parked but there is a lane for traffic.  Drivers just have to weave their way through all the obstacles – and they do.

The last photo was a bit farther from the city center area so it was a bit less crowded.  You can also see why I said that Vicky fit in with the locals by using her umbrella.  A large percentage of people used umbrellas under the afternoon sun.  Most of our time in Yangon, the temperature was around 90 degrees with high humidity.

More Yangon

We are still in the old city center area for most of these photos.  These will give you more of a micro view of Yangon.  The big views are interesting but the real sense of the country is the little things that are happening along the streets.  These are some of the things you don’t see in the street view photos.  Yangon is a big city but walking through this city center area, you get a sense of their daily life being very different from our own big city experiences.

1.      Here is a woman selling fried crickets and grasshoppers: You have your small crickets, your medium size crickets and your large grasshoppers.  We purchased some large ‘hoppers.  They told us we were very lucky to be visiting Burma during cricket/hopper season… 

The hoppers were okay here though I think the hoppers we had in Thailand were seasoned better.

2.      Right on a prime corner in old Rangoon and what did we find….but a Baptist Church.

3.      Vicky and Pete are shopping in the Bogyoke Aung San Market which is primarily a fabric market.  Both Vicky and Pete managed to find items to purchase.

4.      This was a lunch and historical stop.  We ate lunch at the House of Memories Bar and Restaurant.  This house, now a restaurant, was the secret headquarters of General Aung Sung during World War II, and at other times.  It has been preserved along with many old photos with world figures.  Aung Sung was supposedly working for the Japanese but in reality, the Burmese were trying to defeat the Japanese during WWII to get their country back.  The old photo on the top and just to the right of Vicky is Aung Sung’s family.  The little girl in the bottom of the photo is Aung Sung Suu Kyi, who was an outspoken critic of the Burma military government and spent twenty years in prison and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.  We visited her house while we were in Yangon, though we only got as far as the outside gate of the house.

5.      The streets were extremely crowded in Yangon.  They have trucks, busses, cars, motorcycles, and all other vehicles, but my favorite was the sidecar bicycles.  You can see a bicycle with a two-seat sidecar in the last photo.  That really appealed to me.

Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda is also called the Golden Pagoda or the Great Dagon Pagoda.  It’s an icon of Yangon and of Burma.  It is supposed to be something over 2000 years old.  The main pagoda is 326 feet tall and the pagoda is built on a hill so it dominates the Yangon skyline.  At least it has dominated the skyline for centuries and will until Yangon gets some more of the high-rise buildings up that are currently under construction.  Mind you, when they say it is over 2000 years old, that means the original pagoda was built back then.  This pagoda has seen periods of disrepair and restoration and has been through many earthquakes, most notably the big earthquake of 1768.  Shwedagon Pagoda is also a primary visitation place for such dignitaries or heads of state such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  In contrast to visiting dignitaries, this was also the site of many student protests against the military government in recent years.  So it sort of has the status of a Tiananmen Square in Beijing or a Red Square in Moscow.   

Shwedagon Pagoda is more than just a pagoda, it is a pagoda complex that covers over twelve acres.  In many ways, photos can’t do it justice.  That’s because photos can’t give you the senses of sound and smell.  The pagoda experience includes the chanting of monks, the loud music, the smell of incense and other pungent odors, the hum of tourists and visitors, and so forth.  None of these things come across in these photos.  But when we were there, it was a hotbed of noises, smells, and activity. 

One more thing is that this pagoda undergoes a restoration every 8 to 10 years and it was undergoing one when we were here.  So the main pagoda and many of the other pagodas were draped with bamboo and sometimes tarps.  So we were a bit unlucky with our timing. 

1.      You can see the Shwedagon Pagoda dominating the first photo, despite its bamboo and tarp coverings on the lower portion.  The pagoda is gold-covered and gem-studded so it’s too bad we didn’t see it in all its glory but it was still quite a site.  You can see that it has the company of lots of other pagodas and shrines of greater and lesser size.  Vicky is in the middle of the first photo and Pete is off to the right side.  The flooring was marble so it was nice on the bare feet.

2.      Again, you can see that the other pagodas and shrines populate most of the twelve acres of the complex.

3.      The complex also has many temples such as the one in the third photo.  Some temples in the center area of the complex had large crowds of people inside them.

4.      There are planetary posts around the Shwedagon Pagoda for each day of the week.  Each day is represented by an animal, has Buddha statues and a guardian angel at the back.  The custom is to find the day of the week that you were born and to go to that post and pour water over the Buddha’s and the animal.  I was born on a Sunday, as you can see in the fourth photo – and I was praying that I wouldn’t slip on the water spilled about on the marble floor.

5.      I just couldn’t pass up taking the last photo: a monk taking a selfie.

More Shwedagon Pagoda

These are some more photos of Shwedagon Pagoda.  It seems to me that since it’s the icon of Yangon and Burma, it deserves a few more photos.

1.      As we got farther away from the main pagoda, the complex got less crowded but the temples, pagodas and shrines were just as interesting.

2.      This is Vicky in the second photo at the Saturday Corner, which I thought was a little more interesting than my Sunday Corner.

3.      Off the beaten path, I saw this very nice temple with a jade center structure and a lone woman worshiping with clothing that matched the jade temple.

4.      Another temple with many Buddha statues and neon attractant lights behind each of the main Buddha’s heads.  The two sitting monks looked a bit uncertain.

5.      And finally a temple that was quite nice with a beautiful wood floor, gold and jeweled posts, lots of large and prominent Buddha statues – and one lone temple cat.

Ferry Across Yangon River

After a day of touring Yangon in 90 plus degree weather and high humidity, and getting back to our hotel at 3:20 in the afternoon, our guide asked if anyone wanted to go with him to Dala, ‘a slum’ as he described it, across the Yangon River from downtown Yangon.  He said he was leaving in ten minutes.  Vicky and I made the quick decision and were back in the hotel lobby in ten minutes.  There was only one other woman who joined us, so it was a group of three plus our guide.

We took a cab ride from our hotel to the Pansodan Ferry Terminal.  Once we exited the cab, we didn’t see another white or Anglo person for over three hours.  This was a very local, suburban or rural Yangon area trip.  Some 30,000 people a day use the ferry to cross the river but many more than that use small boats.  The ferry cost a dollar.  Just boarding the ferry, the ten minute ride across the river, and departing the ferry on the other side was quite an experience all by itself.

1.      You can see part of the ferry terminal in the first photo.  We were just arriving (Vicky is on the left) and at that point, it was not very crowded.  But by the time the ferry approached the river bank, it was wall-to-wall, body-to-body, like we were making press-board people.

2.      Once aboard the ferry, we took seats and there was plenty of room to spare.  It didn’t seem very crowded at all.  Plus, food vendors and other vendors came around selling items right to your seat, such as watermelon.

3.      The young lady in the third photo was selling hard boiled quail eggs.  We purchased a dozen and they were quite good.

4.      The fourth photo is looking back at Yangon.  You can see that it is quite a big, bustling, and busy place.

5.      The last photo was looking down the Yangon River.  There were dozens of ships and many dozens of small boats of all sizes and shapes out in the river.

Yangon Suburbs

Once we made it across the Yangon River, there was a mad rush to exit the ferry.  The area around the ferry terminal was a madhouse with people going in both directions and all sorts of activities going on.  It was really hard to take it all in, particularly since locals and vendors were constantly vying for our attention to buy something, take a ride, or anything else you can think of.  These photos will take us through our initial exit from the ferry building.

1.      This is just one of the food vendors around the ferry building.  Vendors sold hot food, cold food, drinks, smokes, fruits, juices, and everything else.  Each vendor only took up a small space so there were lots of vendors.

2.      You can see a ball-rolling gambling game played in the dirt in the second photo.  You had to roll threes balls at once and get them into the small holes and each hole counted for a different number of points.  Winning was sort of like a Craps game in that certain numbers of points won and amounts over or under those numbers of points lost.  The game seemed to have mild interest as you can see in the second photo.

3.      Then Vicky stepped up to play and the crowd swelled as you can see.  Vicky is trying to impart some right spin on her roll.  I’m not sure how many points she rolled but I know she lost her money. 

4.      Once we got past the vendors and games around the ferry building, we came to a parking area.  This is just a small part of it in this photo.  This section was mostly motorcycles, but other areas had busses, vans, and sidecar bicycles.

5.      The last photo is going to take extensive explanation.  Our guide said we could rent a chauffeur-driven bicycle with a sidecar for about $5,000 Kwat ($5 US) for 90 minutes.  Being the shrewd businessman that I am, I bargained with a fellow and got it down to $3.  I’m sure that you can see the genius of my deal.  I figured I would put Vicky in my sidecar and then I would be saving $7,000 Kwat ($7 US) – since she would no longer need to rent her own.  Before we agreed on the deal, the fellow wanted to see me take it for a spin to see how I did.  I was in total agreement because I wasn’t sure that my legs would fit under the handlebars and allow me to pedal it.  The vendor and his partners caught up to me after about 60 yards of riding.  By that time, I had nearly run over a dozen people including several small children.  I kept ringing the bell but there were some awfully close misses.  Once they caught me, they rapidly and loudly explained something to me, only I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying.  Eventually, I understood that they were showing me the brake lever.  At that point, and knowing that my knees fit the bike just fine, I figured that I was good to go.  Only by then, Vicky had climbed out of the sidecar and refused to go anywhere with me driving.  Personally, I think she should have given me another chance.  But at that point, my big savings had dwindled from $7 down to $2, so I decided to go ahead and rent a bike with a chauffeur for each of us.  (though I know I could have done it)

Our Sidecar Ride to Dala

Dala is a township across the river from Yangon on the southern bank of the Yangon River.  The number of people living there was difficult to ascertain.  We heard numbers that varied from 500 to 150,000.  At any rate, there are many communities across the river from Yangon.  The people in these communities mostly work in Yangon.  Most of the time, they make $5 US a day for eight hours work.  They commute into Yangon every day by vehicle and boat and commute back every night.  That aspect is not very different from our own situation in the U.S.

Our chauffeur-driven sidecar bicycle ride was really fun and interesting.  We shared the main road with cars, trucks, motorcycles, and all other wheeled vehicles.  Once we veered off the main road and into the ‘neighborhoods’, we shared the road with mostly motorcycles, bicycles, people, dogs, so on.  The roads through the subdivision were concrete and quite nice.  They were crowded at times but nothing that alarmed us at all.  When kids saw us coming, they would run to the road and line up to “high-five” us as we rode past them.  They clearly have some knowledge of western culture.  For myself, I really enjoyed the trip.  The sidecar was mostly comfortable but a little bit of a tight fit and of course, the ride was somewhat bumpy for various reasons.

In these photos, I will mostly concentrate on the sidecar ride aspect of our trip to the Dala Township.  These photos are not very good as I took them while moving along quite speedily and sometimes taking photos over my head looking backwards etc.

1.      In the first photo, you can see Vicky being passed by a van.  We were out on the main road with all types of vehicles.  The blue-roofed building behind her is the new Ferry Terminal.

2.      The second photo is just as we veered off the main road and into the neighborhood.  It was a challenge cutting into oncoming traffic.  At that point, I suspect that Vicky was glad I wasn’t driving.

3.      In the neighborhood, the obstacles could mount up with other vehicles, dogs, people carrying water or food, pedestrians, but only rarely a vehicle.

4.      Vicky is chatting up her driver during our ride.  She was probably explaining how I almost crushed a few people by not knowing where the brakes were.

5.      The last photo doesn’t look too bad for Vicky but I was right in front of the taxi taking the photo – and considering that it might be my last shot….

Dala Township

Our guide called Dala a Slum.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  But you can see a few representative photos attached.  As we rode along in our bicycle sidecars, it was very pleasant.  The temperature seemed a bit cooler as there was standing water all around the area.  We didn’t experience any mosquitoes, which surprised me with all the standing water.  Everything was quite green and there were lots of trees.  The air had a bit of a pungent odor but we passed people cooking food all along the roads, and the smells were not unpleasant.  We stopped many times along the road to see things or to talk to people or to see what they were cooking or what they were carrying.  I really enjoyed myself.  Towards the end of our trip, I told our guide that we lived in the country, at the end of a dirt driveway, and that this area appealed to me much more than most of what we saw in Yangon.  I told him not to take it wrong, but I asked why he felt like this was a slum.  He smiled slightly at me.  He said that right now, it was at the tail end of the rainy season.  He said everything was green right now and they had plenty of water and plants were growing well and so on.  He said that in the summer, it would be a very different story.  He said that Dala has no water system, no sewer system, and no electricity – and that’s why it’s a slum.

These are just a few of my photos taken to try and give you a general glimpse of Dala.  Some were taken from my moving bicycle sidecar, so they aren’t very good photographs, but they should give you a picture of the place.

1.      You can see the concrete road, the houses behind the road, lots of trees and green foliage, and a few food sellers right along the road.

2.      This shows some typical housing and some of the variation.  The houses on the right are very simple and basic while the blue one on the left was quite a bit nicer.  The walkways to the houses are because there is standing water underneath them.

3.      This is another typical house but you can better see the standing water.  Many houses, like this one, are made mostly of locally gathered materials like tree limbs and bamboo and palm fronds.

4.      This photo is this local area’s “fresh water pond”.  The community elects a manager who is in charge of the pond.  The pond is fenced and locked.  It is only opened for one or two hours a day at which time everyone must scoop and carry home all their fresh water.

5.      The last photo was taken from the pond looking back towards the community.  You can see a long line of people carrying water on the road on the left.  Those houses are about 200 yards away and are the nearest houses to the pond.  Many people in this community live 500 yards or more away from the pond.  They all carry water home from the pond with a stick and two five-gallon buckets on either end of the stick every single day to be able to have fresh water.

If you are interested, I found a youtube video of someone making a very similar trip to us.  The video address is below but I think you will have to cut and paste it.  OR Google: ‘Dala Burma’ and you can find it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVIZ1nUQmxA

Burma: Land of the Pagodas

Burma is sometimes called the Land of the Pagodas or the Land of the Golden Pagodas.  Our guide said that the Burmese call everything built to honor Buddha a pagoda.  That includes both temples and stupas.  Temples are structures that you can enter or walk inside.  Stupas cannot be entered.  But the Burmese call both pagodas.  For Burmese, the building and the donation of a pagoda for the propagation of Buddhist faith manifests the devotion demonstrated by Myanmar Buddhists.  Pagodas can be any size.  Most of the pagodas in the Bagan area were, according to our guide, built by local families.  Most often, they were built right on the family’s farm.  Sometimes, the same family, if prosperous, would build several pagodas. 

The Bagan Dynasty was very prosperous.  The Bagan Golden Age was from around 1044 to 1287 with 1287 being the year when the Mongols overtook them.  The estimates of the number of pagodas in the Bagan area vary by wide margins.  There is some historical evidence that some 4,446 pagodas were built in a sixteen square mile area around Old Bagan.  Some estimates put the number of pagodas in a forty square mile area at around 10,000 pagodas.  The number generally considered appropriate today for pagodas still standing is some number a little over 2,000 pagodas.  Many of the old pagodas are being restored and some new ones are being built, so the number will always vary over time, and it can’t be easy to count them all.

This post’s photos will just give a glimpse of the pagoda situation in Bagan.

The first photo is one that I took on our flight into Bagan airport.  It’s not a great photo but you can get an idea of the number and variation of the pagodas in Bagan. 

The last four photos will give you some sense of the Plains of Bagan.  These ‘plains’ are not like what we think of as a plains in the sense of being wide open, though they might have been at one time. Today, large trees grow over much of the plains of Bagan.  You will also notice a great deal of variation in the pagodas.  The variation comes from different factors.  First, one builder might have had more money and made a much larger and more extravagant pagoda.  Plus, the architectural styles changed over the years.  The architecture developed and a historian can tell the early from the middle from the late periods just by the shapes of the pagodas.  This area is primarily an agriculture area.  Farms surround the pagodas on all sides most of the time.  In the last photo, you can see a farmer with a herd of goats.  You can also see many palm trees in the upper portion of the last photo and these are all being farmed.   

I will be posting many more pagoda photos but I’ll try and break them up.  About a week into our trip, I said I had about had my fill of temples and couldn’t remember one from another.  Pete said he felt that way by the second day.  But pagodas are a big part of Myanmar’s culture and history and their present day, so you will be seeing many more of them.

Shwe Sandaw Pagoda

Shwe Sandaw Pagoda – or Shwesandaw Pagoda – was the first pagoda that we stopped to visit.  The last four photos of the prior posting were taken from atop this pagoda.  The Shwe Sandaw Pagoda was built in 1057 by King Anawrahta.  It has five terraces and it’s about 100 steps to get to the top terrace.  It’s also quite a steep climb to the top terrace.  This is a four sided pagoda with stairways on all four sides.  Each side also had Buddha image houses and originally had hard-stone, single-stone Buddha images.  The top terrace has a bell-shaped stupa with, at one time, a bejeweled umbrella on top.

We spent about 40 minutes on this pagoda and really enjoyed every minute.  Upon exiting, Vicky decided that we needed to walk around the pagoda clockwise, doing one lap on all five terraces.  I’m too old and too smart to argue so we did five circuits around the pagoda’s terraces.

1.      This first photo is not very good but I want to recognize that I took it from one corner.  The left and the right edge of each side of the pagoda in the photo is only the mid-point of each side.

2.      This shows you the mid-point of one side of the pagoda and the stairway that we climbed up to the top terrace.  And yes, those steps are really high and really steep.

3.      I don’t remember if this third photo is the top of the fourth or fifth terrace but you get the idea of how high up we were, and yes, we were barefoot to be on the pagoda, per their guidelines.

4.      This is the stupa on top of the fifth terrace.  The top umbrella is no longer bejeweled from what I could see of it.

5.      I’m not sure what circuit we are on in the last photo but I do want to point out one temple.  The big white temple on the horizon above and just left of Vicky is the Ananda Temple which we will visit soon.

Local Vegetable Market

We went to a local vegetable market in Old Bagan.  Visits to local markets are always some of my favorite parts of any trip. You can see a general photo in the first picture.  They had very nice looking produce and everything was very fresh.  That makes sense as most of Myanmar is farming country and something like 75% of the people work in agriculture.  In the first photo you can see some nice tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and some nice crushed and powdered chilies in the pans in the center of the photo.

Several people have asked me what the women are wearing on their faces in my photos.  It’s Tanaka, or Thanakha.  It comes from a slow-growing perennial tree in central Myanmar.  The tree must be something like 35 years old to yield premium Tanaka.  Pulp of the tree is ground against a flat stone and pulverized into a light yellow paste with a mild fragrance.  You can see limbs of the Tanaka tree in the second photo and you can see a woman grinding a limb against a flat stone.  She then put the paste on Vicky’s face as you can see in the third photo.  Burmese women have been using Tanaka like this for over 2000 years.  It is a cosmetic, a cleansing agent, and a sun protector.  Women sometimes put it on when they go to bed to cleanse their skin.  Most women in Burma wear Tanaka.  Most young kids, including the boys, also wear Tanaka. 

You can see Vicky again wearing her Tanaka in the fourth photo.  But I put the fourth photo in to show the woman wearing a bunch of bananas on her head, just to the left of Vicky.  I told Vicky that I was drawing the line and would not buy her a bunch of bananas to wear on her head.  Vicky told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that the woman was only using her head to carry the bananas around.  But if you can notice, the bananas have a purple bow on the back of them so I think I was correct – and the bananas don’t look too bad on her….  I would also be a fan of edible headwear, so this woman has that going for her as well.

You can see lots of dried fish in the last photo.  There are always items other than vegetables in markets and in Burma, most places had fish, but more fresh fish than dried fish.  We also saw food being prepared and sold in this market as well as such things as varied as pottery.

Ananda Phaya

Ananda Pahto Temple was built between the years 1090 and 1105.  It was built in the reign of King Kyanzittha.  The style is a Mon (an indigenous people) architectural style during the transition from the early to the middle architectural styles of Bagan pagoda building.  This temple is a perfectly symmetrical Greek cross structure, though you can only tell it’s a cross structure when viewing it from above.  It’s really a large temple with the main central square area being 175 feet on each side.  The central tower with its gilded top is 167 feet high.  The temple is surrounded by an enclosed wall as this is also a monastery and the monastery section also has additional buildings.  Each of the four sides of the temple has a large gold teak wood Buddha that stands over 31 feet high.  Each of these four Buddha’s represents a previous Buddha that has reached nirvana.

1.      The first photo was taken from the courtyard but within the outer wall.  You can see the main temple with the central tower while the section on the left is one of the arms of the cross.

2.      A common and frequent event in a temple is to purchase and place some gold leaf on a Buddha statue.  You can see Pete putting some gold leaf on a Buddha in the second photo.  It seemed odd to us to be in such a poor country and to see so many people purchasing and putting gold leaf on Buddha statues, but that’s their culture.

3.      You are looking at the Kassapa Buddha in the third photo which is a previous Buddha that reached nirvana.  The third photo was taken standing near the statue.  The only people that were normally as near to the statue as we were to take this photo were the monks and the wealthy and powerful rulers of the society.  The Buddha is looking rather serious if you look at the face and mouth.  The wealthy people are supposed to be serious about their duties and to take care of the masses of people.

4.      This is the same Buddha as in the prior photo, but this photo was taken from about thirty yards back from the prior photo.  Back here is where the common people stood and as you can see, Buddha is smiling at these people.

5.      I just put the last photo in to give you a sense of size of this temple from the inside.  You can look a long ways down this hallway and there were lots of long hallways inside this temple.

Bagan Dining

Our hotels and dining in Burma were very nice, but it was evident that they don’t yet have the infrastructure that most other countries have acquired.  Other than in Yangon and Mandalay, I don’t believe that we ate a single meal inside an enclosed building.  Most of the time, we ate in the great outdoors but many times, we had a roof over our heads but no walls.  I would say that the primary reason was no electricity or a shortage of electricity and hence, no air conditioning.  As I’ve said, it was hot and humid, so one might expect a nice restaurant to have air conditioning, but that’s not the case right now in most of Burma. 

The food was quite good in Burma.  My only complaint was that they served us twice as much food as we needed.  I asked our guide and other locals about this and from what they told me, the Burmese serve a lot of food.  Of course, it’s mainly an agricultural country, so they have plenty of food.  Their food is similar to other southeast Asia countries.  The intermixing of cultures with Thailand, China, India and others is very evident in their food.

1.      We ate lunch on this day on a bluff overlooking the Irrawaddy River.  They said we would have been closer to the river but it was the end of the rainy season, so the dining was set on the high ground.  This is not a very good photo, particularly of the river, but you can see that we were out in the open but underneath some trees which provided us some wonderful shade.  This meal included spring rolls with sauces, tom yum soup, a peas and carrots dish, stir fried morning glory, and a pineapple pancake for dessert.  The next two photos are the other two dishes that we were served at this meal.

2.      This was a local fresh fish dish with lemongrass, lime and fresh vegetables and it was excellent.  I’m not sure what kind of fish but it tasted great.

3.      This is a cashew chicken dish, also really good and really fresh.

4.      This dinner might look like we were inside a building but we weren’t.  We only had a roof over our heads and it was nighttime.  This meal was either tomato or potato soup (our choice), garlic bread, BBQ beef and pork kabobs, French fries, vegetables and fruit.

5.      This was breakfast at our hotel in Bagan.  Again, we just had a roof over our heads.  Pete, by the way, is not on a diet.  Pete was the early bird this trip but even if he had finished his breakfast by the time we arrived (as he had on this morning), he still managed to nurse his coffee along until we had finished our breakfast.

Bagan Hotel

Our hotel in Bagan was right next to the Old Bagan Tharabar city gate.  In fact, the hotel was called The Hotel@Tharabar Gate.  It was quite a nice place with mostly open facilities.  The registration area, seating areas, and restaurant areas were all under roofs but had no walls.  Of course, they had no air conditioning but that was normal in most areas we visited.  The grounds were nicely landscaped and planted though many of the plantings looked like they might be growing there naturally.  At any rate, we weren’t suffering…

1.      As we arrived at our hotel, this teak wood elephant was standing out front.

2.      This is the registration area just off the driveway.  There was always plenty of staff around if we needed anything.

3.      We never found the time to go for a swim but we did have drinks and snacks in the pool area as the bar was just to the right of this photo.

4.      This was the entrance to our bungalow.  We had a very large room with a very large bathroom and sufficient amenities.

5.      I’ve been to some top-notch hotels, but this place put some emphasis on the ‘welcome’ as you can see in the last photo.

Pagodas by Bus

We traveled around Bagan mostly by bus.  Sometimes the trip was to view pagodas but other times it was to make various other stops.  These pagoda photos were taken when on our bus tours.  I’ll tell a little bit about each pagoda.

1.      This is the Thatbyinnyu Temple, though we saw the name under various other spellings.  It’s the tallest ancient structure in Bagan.  The height varies from some 200 feet high to some 217 feet high, depending on your source.  This temple was built by King Alaungsithu.  It is located just inside the southeast corner of the old city wall, which puts it about in the center of Bagan.

2.      This second temple is probably not a temple of note but I was impressed with the stairway up the center because it reminded me of the Mayan pyramids in Central America.

3.      I included the third pagoda just because it was rather unusual.  We did see some others like it but not very many.

4.      Bagan is a farming area, as is most of Burma.  We did see some tractors but most of the time we saw oxen ploughing the fields as you can see in the fourth photo.

5.      I took the last photo when we stopped here on our way back from dinner one night.  This is the Htilo Minlo Temple, also called the White Umbrella Temple.  There is a long story about the king who built it and how he got to be the king, which involved a white umbrella.  King Nantaungmya built it in 1218.  This temple was built entirely of bricks and cement with no iron or wood buttresses.  It’s a cave pagoda noted for fine plaster carvings and glazed sandstone decorations.  It looked pretty good at night as well. 

Soybean Paste Factory

Our visit to a soybean paste factory was a first for me.  It turned out to be a very interesting tour.  The factory employs 65 – 70 people and most people earn US $5 a day for eight hours of work.  They make miso paste and black curry powder.  They start with a variety of soybeans that has a very small seed.  They had bags of seeds stacked most of the way to the ceiling with cats sleeping about the area.  Nothing is wasted and the workers seem to be very efficient.  I’ll tell more by going through the photos.

1.      I knew we were going to a soybean paste factory, so I was surprised that our bus was driving through what seemed to me to be a normal housing neighborhood.  I was also surprised to stop in front of this house, which turned out to be the factory.  Just inside the door was where the sacks of soybeans were stored. 

2.      Moving on to the back of the operation they had a stack of firewood that was very impressive.  It was half the size of the house.  Most of the wood was Eucalyptus.  They use that wood mostly to boil the soybeans for two hours.  You can see the boiling in this photo.

3.      To the right of the boiling pots, they have the cooking pots.  After boiling the soybeans for two hours, they then cook the soybeans for three hours.  For the cooking pots, they used mostly peanut shells for the fire's fuel.  You can see Vicky pulling off some cooked soybeans in the third photo. If Vicky had just been able to make a couple of more scoops, she would have earned a penny at the going rate of pay.

4.      When the soybean liquid gets boiled down sufficiently, it becomes a paste which then takes two weeks or more to cool down.  The paste sits in big pots cooling and then gets processed right out of the same big pots.  You can see one of the bean paste pots and some women processing the paste into the packets to be sold.  The women worked in teams, seemed to be extremely efficient, and managed to chat while they worked.

5.      The paste packets then went to the teams in the last photo for packaging.  This final product was then boxed to be sold.

Palm Tree Plantation

Our next stop was a Palm Tree Plantation.  Our guide actually called it a Palm Tree Forest, rather than a plantation.  In some ways, that seems more correct.  By that I mean that to me, a plantation would infer some uniformity such as the trees would be planted in rows.  But that was not the case here.  The palm trees were just all in the same area, but looked like they had just sprouted in their locations.  Nothing looked organized about the trees locations.  But so much for western agricultural practices.  I’ll tell about the palm tree farm as I go through the photos.

1.      The first photo will explain how the trees looked to me, as in not in rows.  Focus on the palm tree in the middle of the photo.  The farm owner is climbing the tree to demonstrate his trade and technique.  You can also see that there are lots of other trees (nonproductive) and shrubs growing in the area.

2.      The farmer is at the top of the palm tree in the second photo.  The process seemed most similar to me, by comparison, to harvesting maple syrup.  The guy cuts a new branch sprouting near the top of the tree and then hangs a pot underneath the cut branch.  He goes back up the next day and brings down the pots filled with fresh palm juice and puts up some new pots.

3.      After the farmer’s demonstration, he asked if any of us wanted to try it out.  I took the challenge.  I did pretty well climbing up, getting over half way, before I ran into a problem.  The ladder was right against the tree with zero room for my feet to go into the ladder.  The farmer had put his feet sideways and kept going.  But my feet were too big to fit between the ladder’s edges and my toes were not strong enough to support me, so I headed back down as you can see me doing in the third photo.

4.      In the fourth photo, you can see two pots in the middle of the photo.  The lower pot with the greenish liquid is the fresh palm juice.  It was cool and very sweet and very good, but I don’t recommend drinking too much of it.  The other pot was more of a yellow liquid.  That was the same juice, only it had gotten warm and fermented.  It was also very good and didn’t have too much kick to it.  They also make sugar from condensing the juice.  We tried the sugar and liked it as well.

5.      The last photo is some honeycomb that the farmer cut down from some trees on his farm.  In the top of the last photo, you can see some of the palm sugar.

Pagodas by Foot

We had a free afternoon one day in Bagan and Vicky and I decided to go exploring pagodas on our own.  We decided to go on foot so we could really get off the beaten path.  From the bus, plane, and top of some pagodas, we had seen lots of pagodas out in farm fields without any roads leading to them and we decided we wanted to go out into the scruff and see what we could find on our own.

1.      We were barely off the road when we came upon the first pagoda.  I thought it was very unusual.  Temples have entrances and you can go inside a temple.  Stupas do not have entrances but are solid and you can’t go into a stupa.  Pagodas cover both of these.  This pagoda looked like a very small stupa when we approached it.  But as we walked around it, you can see that it’s really a temple since it has access, despite its small size.  So this was very unusual based on what we saw.  But again, most of these pagodas in Bagan were built by local families.  So they could build a pagoda any way they wanted.  Obviously, this family wanted a temple but had limited resources.

2.      In the second photo, we are standing at the edge of a field of corn.  We were already past the last road and it was all cross-country hiking from there.  We kept thinking that some farmer might appear and yell at us for invading his field but we didn’t see anyone out in this area.  What we did see was dozens of pagodas as you can see some in the photo.

3.      Different sources put the number of pagodas in Bagan at the area’s zenith of pagodas at somewhere from 4,600 to 10,000.  But today, most sources put the number of pagodas in Bagan as just over 2,000.  What happened to the rest of them.  That’s why I included the third photo.  We came across a number of old pagodas that only had a little of their base still existing.  We were told that some of these have been rebuilt and more will be rebuilt.  Of course, there is also controversy over the rebuilding.  Most of the rebuilding is being done with “new” bricks that are different dimensions from the original bricks.  Our guide pointed this out to us on a few pagodas and once you see the difference, it is obvious which are the old bricks and which are the new bricks.

4.      We stopped for a break at this pagoda.  Again, we had long ago left the last road.  The area looked well cared for but we never saw any people on our off road hike.  Just in this photo, there are probably parts of fifteen pagodas, and that’s just in one direction.

5.      I included the last photo just to show that we did see quite a bit of variation in the pagodas.  We didn’t see any others like this one but we saw others that were just as unique.