From Burma to Myanmar

by Lydia Laube

  It was very hot walking, but the breeze off the water and the trees helped. The traffic along the road beside the river was mostly motorbike and tuk tuk. People sitting on the wall under the trees said ‘Mingala ba’ to me as I passed. Halfway to the bridge I saw the riverboat landing. Several large ferries were moored there and out in midstream a barge was being towed upriver. I had hoped to find a boat from here to the north but it was the wrong time of the year. Bigger boats that took passengers only ran north when the water level was higher.

  I reached the bridge, a huge long affair on which a car looked the size of a pea. I went into the Southern Star restaurant, which overhung the water. From my seat I could see across to the other side of the river where a small village hugged the shore behind which green hills rose, dotted with a pagoda or two shining golden amongst the greenery. The Southern Star restaurant had a good view of the bridge and river but it seemed to cater mainly to men drinking beer for lunch. No other liquid refreshment could be obtained apart from water. I ordered hot and sour chicken, which almost took my breath away. But the chilli would do me good, I reasoned, so pushed it down.

  Returning, I hoped a tuk tuk would accost me, but I ended up walking all the way back to the hotel where I collapsed on the bed and watched Al Jazeera, catching up with the news until it was time for the night market, held in the small street next to the Lucky Dragon. It was a fizz-out as a general night market, but there was lots of food. I bought edible objects on sticks—the only ones I recognised were prawns and they were delicious.

  In the morning I fed the little birds outside my room with some of the unidentifiable sticks of food I had bought at the bus stop a few days earlier. I had soaked them for an hour but they were still rock hard, so I stomped them on the ground. The birds sounded and looked like sparrows, but were half the size of the ones I was used to. Two of them were building a nest under the eaves of the bungalow opposite mine. They pulled dry half-metre long strings from the palm fronds of the small trees in the manicured garden between the bungalows.

  Then they flew away with the strings streaming out behind them like banners, and ducked in under the building’s eaves with their cargo. Large carp and goldfish flashed about in pools that intersected the gardens where a gardener clipped the grass with scissors. I also fed the sparrows the crusts off the awful bread I got at breakfast. The bread was the same I found all over the country—dreadful sweet stuff.

  Again I found no transport in the street, so I gave up and walked to Pyay’s Shwesandaw Paya in the central area of the town. It was still early enough to be alms gathering (or begging) time and monks and nuns were out in force. A line of nuns, pretty with their pink robes and dark pink wax paper umbrellas, walked barefoot along in front of me. Some were very tiny girls who looked as young as six or seven.

  In a commanding position at an intersection in the centre of town is a large golden statue of Aung San, revered former leader, martyred hero and father of Aung San Sui Shi, seated on a horse.

  The streets of the town were wide but roughly surfaced. The shops were mostly small and simple, except for the banks, which were grand. I passed the Smile Motel, but it didn’t look like it had much to smile about.

  I had been walking over the six-foot wide duckboards along the footpaths without realising what they covered. They were gappy and uneven, but until I came to a place where a section was broken and I could see underneath it, I had no idea that flowing along them was a deep stream of sewerage decorated with rubbish. On one side, rows of dilapidated pipes were wired haphazardly to the edges. This was the water supply. It looked worrying. In other places the sewer was covered by concrete slabs that had gaps big enough to fall through.

  At the Paya I had to climb up several hundred steps of an enclosed walkway lined on both sides by small stalls selling religious artefacts and souvenirs. This is one of the country’s major religious pilgrimage sites. The steps were tiled, smooth and slippery, very narrow and steep. I didn’t do so badly getting up although it was awfully hot and airless. My legs had had a good training on the Buxstar’s stairs—eighty four up and down at least five times a day. But at the top I discovered that on one side was a large tower that housed a lift. Bugger. I had left my shoes at the base of the steps and it would mean sloshing along in the mud of the street to get back there if I took the lift down. I thought about it, but didn’t do it.

  The Shwesandaw Paya was possibly built around the 5th or 6th centuries AD and is said to house a tooth and four hairs of the Buddha. An impressive height, the top of its stupa is three feet taller than that of the Swedagon’s in Yangon. When I made it to the top of the stairs I walked around the base of the stupa, eyeballed most of the way by a giant seated Buddha statue, the Sehtatgyi Paya (Big Ten Storey) that resides on the hillside opposite.

  Coming back down the Pyas steps was scary. I had nothing to hold onto and I could see the drop below me, along with the possibility of a broken neck. I edged down one at a time, putting both feet on each narrow step. After a while a young woman came and walked behind me, ready to collect me if I fell.

  Back on terra firma again much to my relief, I accosted a tuk tuk driver sitting by the roadside. They didn’t chase after tourists here. I suppose because we were a rare animal in these parts; I was stared at everywhere I went as an oddity, but not unkindly. I saw no other Western foreigners in Pyay, but I did meet some Thai women tourists in the hotel foyer.

  The driver of this glorified motorbike that I had commandeered agreed to take me to see a site that was ten or so kilometres away. We took off, the engine struggling valiantly—it was a lot to ask of a small motorbike engine. But first we went to collect ‘my brother’, who came too. Was I not to be trusted alone with this young man? The term ‘my brother’ can cover any degree of relationship up to and including friend. Whatever he was, the two of them looked after me well. They hauled me in and out of the back of the tuk tuk when the going got too hard for me. Mind you, they never touched the nun we picked up, only her baggage. My purity was so far in doubt it didn’t matter. They grabbed me one either side and heaved me about like a sack of potatoes.

  We rode out on the appalling road of yesterday, past the train station turnoff and into the countryside on dirt roads, crashing and banging. After three hours of this I gave up worrying about my bones and joints. Now my concern was for the damage I was doing to my internal organs.

  As we turned off onto the dirt road we were hailed by the little old nun. She wore pink robes and had a large bundle on her head. We backed up and she climbed in over the high tailgate a whole lot more nimbly than I could.

  Passing two oxen drawing a wooden cart, we went further down the road to drop our nun at her monastery, or is it convent, a few decrepit stone buildings without the benefit of doors or windows. I wondered at the privations there. It had an elaborate, garishly decorated entrance gate though. A bit further on was the entrance to the site I had come to see, the ruins of the once enormous ancient Pyu city, Thayekhittaya, which had ruled this area from the 5th to 9th century AD.

  Here the government fleeced me of ten dollars hard cash. This fee included an obligatory visit to the museum, which was a total flop—pitch dark and containing a lot of boring old bits of stone.

  The route around the city was a dreadful fifteen-kilometre jolting track that took forever in the tuk tuk. There wasn’t a lot to see—a city entrance gate, a bit of wall and a couple of red brick pagodas, nothing fancy. Every now and then I was pulled out to go off and look at an item of interest. I liked the pagoda that was a cave, inside which Buddha images hid in secretive alcoves and the big cylinder-shaped pagoda that is said to be the oldest of its kind in Burma.

  An ox cart plodded past us on the terrible track. They were making better time than we were. The cart was loaded with great stacks of the leaves that are used to make roofing thatch. My two escorts chewed betel, perhaps I should have too. It is supposed to make tribulations such as this jolting journey easier to bear. I thought they were n
ice boys until I discovered that one was forty-seven. It should be illegal to look so young. It’s downright criminal.

  I returned to the Lucky Dragon beaten into submission, a wreck—dirty and with hair everywhere. But still I arranged to go on another jaunt with these two and their tuk tuk the next day. Masochist that I am.

  Cleaned up and out on the street again, I found another restaurant overlooking the river close by the hotel on the other side of the road. After recovering from the shock my appearance in their doorway gave them, the management dredged up an English menu. It was very old and in tatters, pages torn in half and all the edges frayed. It offered a couple of odd choices, Fried Sparrow or Fried Insect.

  I fancied prawns but got sweet and sour chicken instead. I had not suffered any ill effects from the prawn skewers I had eaten the night before from the street stall, but they had been fried in front of me for long enough to be sterilised. Once again there was no tea or coffee or any other drink but beer. As I ate I watched a small canoe with a square red sail and a large riverboat go by.

  After lunch I collapsed on my bed. It was very hot. The rainy season was not well under way yet and this central area of Burma does not get the rainfall of the south that relieves the heat somewhat.

  At breakfast the next day, instead of the usual stone cold eggs and hot coffee I was given hot eggs and cold coffee.

  Although we had agreed to set off at ten o’clock, my friends were at the gate with their tuk tuk waiting for me at half past nine, so I had to go. The market we had arranged to visit was closed as it was Sunday, but there were still lots of sellers with their wares on the roadsides around the edges of the market. Moving slowly up the narrow street, the driver beeped his horn repeatedly to get a dog out of the way. The dog finally moved slowly just a little to the side, then turned and gave us a most aggrieved look. How dare we!

  I told the boys I wanted to buy a pillow for my night on the train. I wasn’t sure of a sleeper and a sit-up was likely. So they took me to a shop where they and the entire staff escorted me upstairs. The pillow cost two dollars fifty and was wrapped in plastic. My progress through this shop and up and down the stairs was conducted like a royal tour.

  We set off to travel sixteen kilometres south along the Yangon Road to the Shwemyetman Paya—Pagoda of the Golden Spectacles. The green of the countryside was stunning to someone like me from the ‘bare brown land’. No dirt at all showed here. The grass grew from the edge of the road, then after a couple of feet it was accompanied by bushes, then later trees, some of them enormous and old. At one place a rice crop was being harvested and several workers in coolie hats were cutting, bagging and loading the hay onto an ox cart beside the road. The road traffic consisted of a great many bikes, motorbikes and the odd cart. Once off the main road the path was dirt but it was not as bad as the one to the train station.

  The first pagoda we arrived at had eighty stone Buddha images seated in alcoves in a square, twenty to each side. They were all dressed in gold cloth and had offerings in the bowls before them. An old monk with some English pointed out to me with some pride that they all had their eyes closed except one, but what this signified evaded me. I padded around the site barefoot, now and then on sharp stones that hurt even my tough feet. Behind the shrine there were large aviaries of birds, some were pretty parrots and a couple of the smaller ones looked like budgerigars. And there were several large pens containing dozens of big white and brown rabbits. They don’t eat them here so I wondered why they kept rabbits. One resident cat and dog also wandered around.

  We moved on to the Spectacles Pagoda. Inside this big pagoda sat a large white-faced Buddha wearing an enormous pair of gold-rimmed specs. And on one side of the gigantic statue was a substantial glass case half full of spectacles. Supposedly put there by cured supplicants, most looked new and unused to me. But, sceptic though I am, I still made an offering here—my eyes aren’t what they used to be.

  Back at the hotel I rested for the remainder of the day. I had paid for a late checkout at six. I was preparing for my train ride, expecting the worst—that I would have to sit up all night.

  13 Madonna and me

  At six I checked out and sat in the hotel’s hot foyer on its uncomfortable carved wooden furniture. A little breeze off the river wafted in the open windows and after a while a fan was brought for me. Then, half an hour before I left, it finally occurred to someone to turn on the air-conditioner.

  The taxi the receptionist had managed to find arrived. I’d had enough of tuk tuks for the time being. It had rained earlier and the track to the station was difficult even for the taxi. Large pools of water lay like lakes in its ruts and deep holes.

  The station was a cement-floored, open-sided stone building covered by a roof, with a small stifling hot office on one side. A few people sat outside on plastic chairs. A station employee wearing only a sarong knotted around his waist came to talk to me. He asked if I was not afraid on my own and offered to come to Bagan with me if I liked. I declined with as much grace as I could. I selected a plastic chair and sat down to wait.

  The train was due at ten or thereabouts. At half-past nine the station master appeared. I was surprised to see that he was wearing a smart dark-blue uniform and was smaller than I am. He had walnut-coloured skin, a lovely thick mop of wavy brown hair and the delicately sculptured face of a beautiful ten year old. He summoned me in to the office and laboriously wrote seven copies of my ticket—and gave me the good news that he had been able to get me a sleeper.

  I moved to sit out beside the train tracks with the few passengers who had arrived by now. It was a little cooler there. The area outside the office was only a little less stifling than inside it. At a few minutes after eleven, which was pretty good—it’s often much more—the train came into sight. The station master hurried up to wheel my bag down the train to the sleeper car. He banged, shouting loudly, several times on the window of the first compartment until the person who could be seen sleeping in there roused and opened the door. It was the train conductor.

  The train took off as soon as I had been escorted into my sleeper. It only stops for a few minutes at Pyay. Then, the conductor having been ousted from my bed, I was alone to examine the compartment. And what a surprise it was. I had never seen a sleeper like it before. There were four berths, two upper and two lower, the bottom two as big as proper beds. And hallelujah! There was a private toilet. A door led into the next carriage, but it was locked, so there was no access to the rest of the train. More doors either side of the compartment opened onto the station platform (if we were at a station) or out into the open air! Once inside, the door to the platform was the only way out, but there were levers to pull for help in an emergency.

  Before he left the conductor had tried to wrestle the seats down into beds, but not all would comply. I only needed one bed so I chose the one he had been using. It was on the side of the carriage, so that when I lay down my body was alongside an open window. That was the air-conditioning. There was a cupboard with a metal table top between the beds that was beat-up and battered like the rest of the compartment.

  Despite the misgivings I’d had about this train and the negative reports I’d heard of it, it was the best train sleeper I have ever had. I lay with the open window level with my face, the breeze cooling me, and watched the stars in the velvet-dark night sky until I fell asleep. Lovely.

  At first the train shook and swayed alarmingly and thoughts of derailment occurred to me, especially as the sleeper carriage was the last on the train and we were like the wagging tail of a dog. After a while, though, the movement settled down and the carriage only did the wagging bit now and then. By morning there was just the clicketty-clack of a regular train.

  In my isolation I saw no one else on the train until it arrived at Bagan. But I saw lots of people at stations. Even in the small hours of the morning the stations we passed through were alive with people, bustle and noise. I woke now and then to hang out of the window and watch.

&nbs
p; Dawn came and the air was still cool. I had needed my cardigan and the blanket provided. Now that we had travelled further north, the country was different. It had changed from green paddy fields wall to wall to sparse greenery with fewer trees and patches of brown dirt—not a sight you see further south. There were small plots of corn, farmers ploughing fallow land with two oxen, and herds of cows and goats and an occasional pig or horse.

  The train arrived in Bagan station a little after eleven the next morning, exactly a twelve-hour trip and only three hours late. I took a waiting taxi to New Bagan where I had reserved a room at the Kumundra Hotel. The taxi was a dilapidated, window-less pick-up truck that blew me along in a hot wind. On the way we were stopped at a checkpoint and I had to pay fifteen dollars to the opportunistic government to enter this zone.

  The uniqueness of Bagan is that an enormous amount of temples and religious buildings were constructed here. The area is said to have been inhabited for over two thousand years, but the main fervour of temple building began in earnest in 1057 AD and continued for the next two and a half centuries. By 1200 AD there were reported to be over four thousand. Marco Polo wrote about his visit to Bagan in 1298, enthusing over the amount of gold he saw in the temples. The reason for the town’s later decline and abandonment is not clear, but invasion by Kublai Khan’s Mongol forces did occur in 1274. A great many temples still remain though—a late survey found more than 2200.

  At the Kumundra Hotel the accommodation consisted of bungalows lining either side of a central lawn dotted with trees. The extensive grounds were decorated with dozens of randomly placed large glazed jars, with smaller ones resting in tree forks or at their bases. I fell onto the bed in my comfortable room and slept soundly for two hours. My windows looked out toward the swimming pool, but it did not invite me. It was not shaded and outside it was blazing hot, dry and dusty and around 40°C.