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Traveling through Myanmar, the country better known as Burma By Edda Ehrke February 18, 2007 Edda Ehrke is traveling around southeast Asia. In this installment she visits Myanmar. The Myanmar government violates basic human rights such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech (all forms of media are censored). Their political prisoners, in addition to not having access to a fair trial or basic health care, are often tortured and their families pressured. The government continues to use forced labor (including women & children) to build its highways and public buildings. The government is responsible for the extreme poverty and suffering of its own people. Despite being one of the richest countries in SE Asia in resources (oil, teak, gems), Myanmar has the poorest people. Their economic growth is at 21% (China's is 11% for comparison) - but this "prosperity" is not see by the vast majority. Inversely, with inflation at 50% per year, the people are getting poorer and poorer. The situation is heartbreaking.
As our plane circled over Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon), we could see that this was the land of golden pagodas. The Burmese remain devote Buddhists, following a strain of Theravada Buddhism that has been virtually unchanged since it was first brought to Myanmar from India (about 300 BC). We have never seen so many Buddhist payas (or stupas) in our travels! By far the most magnificent was the crown jewel of Yangon - the Shwedagon Paya. The atmosphere surrounding this immense monument really becomes magical at nightfall, when hundreds of Burmese come to pray and light thousand of candles at the base of the golden stupa. The rest of Myanmar's capital city quite paled in comparison - polluted beyond belief, with open gutters and urban decay that revile the streets of Delhi. The once-magnificent colonial buildings, reminders of its former glory, are in a state of decomposition. These were our first glimpses of the utter neglect of the public spaces and society. Continuing east from Yangon, we took a couple of days to explore the towns of Bago and Kyaiktiyo. Bago was once a royal capital and important trading center, but is now known for its numerous and huge reclining Buddhas. One morning, we rose early to walk with over 500 monks as they went asking for alms. We also visited a small temple to get blessed by an enormous hundred-year-old boa constrictor that is believed to possess extraordinary powers. We finished with a visit to a cheroot "factory", where women (and several children) hand-roll Burmese cigars with extreme dexterity. Each woman rolls about 1000 cheroots per day, earning a daily wage of less than $1.
Then we had a somewhat harrowing mini-adventure trying to venture south to a town called Pahan. Basically, this involved us stubbornly refusing a ride on a pickup (because we thought they had quadrupled the going rate), waiting 10 hours for a bus that never came, deciding to ditch Pahan and head north, and getting a ride on a truck smuggling contraband. No we are not joking. This IS Myanmar after all. After this exciting experience, we decided to splurge for a "deluxe" air-con bus for our overnight journey to the town of Kalaw, in Shan state. This ride turned out into something of a mild nightmare, as our "deluxe" bus was not so deluxe - in fact it started smoking within an hour of our journey and the air-con got shut off as the engine began to overheat. Sweat began to poor down Frederic's sad face, which didn't brighten as his diarrhea began in the middle of the night (you should've seen him stopping the bus in a panic and crouched down in a ditch). And the road... we were on the trans-Myanmar highway and it was little more than a pothole-filled dirt road. We have never been so rocked around in our life - it was beyond belief. Needless to say, we didn't get a lot of sleep that night!
Amongst our many interactions with the villagers we met, one of our most memorable was an elderly monk who was friends with our guide. This man had a wonderful presence and was fluent in four local dialects, in addition to Burmese and Pali (the official language of Buddhist scripture). He read to us from old religious scrolls and blessed us for a safe journey. We visited several local schools and handed out some writing supplies we had brought as gifts. With the exception of schools that have been built by NGOs, the schools were in pitiful condition with walls literally crumbling down. The government provides inadequate funds to rural schools and villagers are left to provide the salary for teachers (about $25 per month). The children are pretty cheerful though - it was entertaining to hear how they yell out their lessons at the top of their lungs! At one school Frederic gave a demo on the mechanics of our water filter, as both teachers and children looked on with open-mouthed awe. We spent one night in a village, sleeping on the floor in a bamboo hut, and one night in an old monastery. The head abbot was away the night that we visited the monastery, and boy-oh-boy, how the young novices did celebrate! We had such fun observing the unabashed joy that this bit of freedom created in the young monks. One little one danced around his broom as he swept, Frederic caught a group of novices at an early morning "gambling" session, and their pre-dawn prayers were preformed several hours late.
During our trek, we had a lot of opportunity to speak about Burmese politics with our guide, a highly intelligent and gentle-mannered man of 64. "Joseph" told us the sad story of how he and countless others have suffered under a half century of military rule. Out of fear, "Joseph" did not go to university because of the crackdown and killings of university students in the '60s. During the '80s the government decided to "modernize" the country, and he was forced to sell his ancestral home, a traditional teak house, for almost nothing and move to the outskirts of his town, going into debt to build a new "modern" house. Many Burmese were hard hit in during this time when the government decided, literally overnight, to make certain currency notes obsolete (because the numbers were considered "unlucky"). For many Burmese, their life savings became obsolete, and many women and children fled to Thailand to work in the sex industry in order to survive. The stories continue. Our talks with "Joseph" were very moving, his pain and anger at what the government has done to his country and people so heartfelt. He told us that he and many people were willing to die for democracy, this with tears in his eyes. He said that he wished the USA had chosen to liberate Myanmar instead of Iraq. We didn't have the heart to tell him that the US government was not exactly the "freedom fighters" that he and many Burmese imagined. Needless to say, we were left in a somber mood at the trek's conclusion - a lot to think about. On the third day we arrived in Inle Lake, which locals call "a sea between mountains". The lake is indeed vast, and supports countless villages that etch out a rich existence from its depths. The houses, pagodas, and monasteries are built on stilts, and dugout canoes are the mode of transport - life surrounded by water. Apart from fish, villagers subsist on aquaculture - tomatoes and squash grown on small islands of hyacinth and fertilized with weeds dredged from the lake. Due to the lake's great tourist appeal, many villagers have also set up a variety of cottage industries - silk weaving, silver making, metal forgery, etc. Lake Inle is especially picturesque in the early morning, as the mountains rise out of the mist and the sunshine illuminates the locals as they serenely paddle across the glassy lake, going about their day. An 11-hour ride in a mini-bus, squeezed into a seat a foot wide, surrounded by cargo and 40 merry villagers, we made the memorable journey from Inle Lake to Bagan, in central Myanmar. For a period of about 200 years (until the end of the 13th century), Bagan was the richest and most powerful kingdom in Burma. During this time, over 4400 temples were constructed, over half of which still remain. A true architectural marvel, the plethora of temples that dot the vast plain is impressive and makes for an awesome atmosphere. We explored the area both by bicycle and horse carriage. Our carriage driver was a riot, he called the horse "Madonna" and chuckled and winked with Frederic about women and the advantages of staying single!
Our last few days, spent in the chaotic, polluted, interesting city of Mandalay, were pretty uneventful in comparison. We visited three ancient royal cities outside the city, to see a wonderful assortment of centuries-old monasteries and pagodas. Watching the sun set from U Bein Bridge was magic. This 400-year old teak bridge crosses a lake, connecting two villages. Watching the red-robed monks and villagers walk across the bridge in the golden light of sunset was sublime. We also spent an evening watching traditional Burmese puppet theatre, an ancient and dying art form. Historically puppetry was performed during all-night “pwe” festivals, and is believed to have been the origin of traditional Burmese dance.
Further reading
Ecotourism is hot. Travel companies everywhere are slapping eco-friendly labels on their tours and hotels to attract green-minded visitors. Alas some "ecotourism" is not really good for the environment or local people. That three-week round-the-world eco-tour via private jet for just $42,950 will generate a lot of greenhouse gases as you're flying between plush lodges that import food and staff from other places. Likewise those wood carvings purchased in tourist centers may come not from indigenous artisans but a factory turning endangered rainforest hardwoods into throwaway tourist items. Heavy anchors dropped on reefs are good neither for the coral reef ecosystem nor the sustainability of the local tourism industry. So what's a true "ecotourist" to do? Is it really possible to travel without trampling culture and tradition and further soiling the environment? Comments Your very readable and informative article on Myanmar (Burma) - 18 February 2007. You were right to stress the importance of thinking carefully before visiting Burma. Three minor points on your article:
I work closely with the UK organisation "Voices for Burma" and am doing my best to persuade travel operators to carry some sober, responsible background on Burma and its problems on their websites to balance their usual sales pitch about what a wonderful country Burma is and how friendly the people are - all true, but it is only half the story. Kind Regards, Derek Tonkin [retired British diplomat] Comments? News options News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo! Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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