Mandalay - The First Sights

A magical morning as we sail into Mandalay. We sail under two iron bridges with hills on either side, full of golden stuppas that glisten in the early morning sun.


Small fishing boats with one solid bright coloured sail, emerge slowly out of the mists and smoke that rise off the land and drift across the wide river. Ships carrying huge piles of rice chug along the river and are laden to the point where it seems that they would sink if you loaded one more sack on board. The ships are as old and dilapidated as the buses from the 1940’s, and their crews aren’t much better. They are all in dirty white T shirts and ragged longyis, and they wave as we go by.


It is exactly as we imagined it as kids in school, reading Rudyard Kipling and learning about the glory days of the British Empire.

Once ashore we are met by our new guide, Min, a woman of about 40 suffering from a severe case of flu. It seems that half the country is in the grips of flu.. A Boy named Sue had it, but not badly, his driver had it, the two other passengers on the ship had it, two of the crew had it, and it is obvious that many people we see have it. But no one has seemed as sick as Min, who we are sure will not make it through the day. She is dressed for winter, with a rather strange hand knitted pink wool hat pulled down to her eyebrows, and a matching scarf wrapped twice round her neck and mouth. She has a huge padded coat which she holds tightly around her body, boots and a pair of gloves. The only part of her body exposed to the elements is her eyes. Where she found this clothing is a mystery, Mandalay is always hot and we never saw a shop selling anything like these clothes. She had to blow her nose constantly, which unfortunately she did directly into her hand, and then wiped her hand with a piece of toilet paper. This was not appealing.

Both she and her husband are tour guides, and have two children. Because of the lack of tourists they were in dire straits and she has to work, no matter how sick she feels. She is only able to talk in a whisper because of her sore throat, and has to stop often to cough. We are reluctant to deprive her of the little income we are bringing her, so we control our impulse to tell her to go home.

Bagan and Unesco

After the earthquake, Unesco came to Bagan in 1977 to lead the renovation. They stayed for 7 years until they had a falling out with the Generals. The Generals wanted to build new buildings to replace the old, while Unesco insisted that the old ones should be reconstructed. When the Generals went ahead with building new ones anyway, Unesco left. They have never been invited to return, the area is therefore not designated as a World Heritage site, and Mynamar gets no monetary help with the upkeep of this wonderful site. Now the Generals are building new stuppas everywhere. They find a footprint of an old stuppas or temple and build a new one on it, with no thought as to how the original looked. They just copy another one nearby. They use bricks and then put a concrete Buddha inside. These new stuppas stand glaringly apart from the old buildings, and no one pays them any attention.

Two hundred and twenty seven of the buildings have or had wall paintings inside. The vast majority have been lost, mainly due to erosion and to the effects of sunlight. But some buildings, which are darker inside, still have varying amounts of these paintings visible. We visit three of them that were restored by Unesco before they left, and are breathtaking. One is called the Cave because it so dark inside. It has many small chambers designed for novice monks to meditate in. All the walls and ceilings are hand painted and date back to the 13th century. Much of it has been lost, but there is still much to see and it is truly fascinating. We stay in the Cave for a long time studying the paintings, which were done by amateur painters, and represent their lives in the 13th century.

Bagan

The best way to absorb the splendors and scale of Bagan is to see it all spread out beneath you. The easiest way to do this is to climb one of the taller Temples where you get a 360 - degree view of the plain and can see all four thousand of the stuppas and temples radiating out for miles.


The plain is full of trees and shrubs with the red brick stuppas and temples rising up out of the vegetation. There are groups of smaller ones clustered together, while the larger ones tend to stand on their own.


It is a fantastic sight and one that the Government feels you should pay for. Many of the taller temples used to have staircases leading to the top where you could enjoy the view. In 2005 the Generals closed the staircases in eleven different buildings that the tourists used to climb, and built a watchtower that they now charge $10 for you to use. The watchtower is a truly ugly building designed with no thought of blending into the surroundings. It was built despite the United Nations asking the Generals on three different occasions not to build it. However, the tour guides are so furious with the Generals that they refuse to take tourists to it. Instead, they have scoured the thousands of temples and stuppas for other vantage points, and have found several. It is to one of these that we are taken to watch the sunset and see the fantastic views.


The Generals also built an Archaeological Museum in the middle of the plain, which is another ugly building. They filled it with treasures from the temples and Stuppas and charge the public $5 to enter. Again the guide refuse to take us there, instead taking us to the many temples that still have treasures inside, so that we can view them in situ and without paying the Government anything.

Bagan and Our Guide

Our guide in Bagan immediately reminds us of Lawrence, but without the star quality. He is twenty two, tall and lean with a terrible complexion and very trendy black framed glasses. Like many of the young Myanmar men his shiny black hair has dyed brown highlights. He has on a baby blue sweater over a white shirt and dark longyi, which he wears slung very low over his hips. He carries a mobile phone in his hand, and hanging from it is a small, terminally cute, white and pink teddy bear with a heart emblazoned on its chest. The overall effect leads one to question his sexuality. When he walks, the question is answered by a delicate swaying of the hips. He flashes a 200 megawatt smile that transforms his acne scared face into a very attractive one. What he has been unable to do with his complexion, he has made up for with many trips to the dentist. His teeth sparkle and gleam in the sunlight. He introduces himself by his Myanmar name, which is, he acknowledges, too difficult for foreigners to pronounce, so he suggests we call him Soe. Well that gets us off to a good start, and from this point on we refer to him as a Boy named Sue. He is charming and far easier company than Lawrence, plus he is an intelligent and knowledgeable guide.


We spend the next two days touring Bagan. Until today, we have been unsure about how well Mynamar compares to our previous trip to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Today, Myanmar comes into its own. Bagan is breathtaking; a large plain of around 42 square kilometers on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, that is home to a few small villages and over 4000 temples and stuppas. Most of them were built between the 11th and 13th centuries, although the earliest date back to the 3rd century, and we see several from the 9th century.


It all came to an end with the Mongolian Invasion in 1287. Fortunately the Mongols were also Buddhists and left the Pagodas intact. At one point there were 5000 of them, but the ravages of time reduced that number considerably. Then a huge earthquake in 1975 damaged many more. Now there are around 4,000 but many are just piles of rubble. There are maybe 2,000 that are worth a visit. We only have two days, and manage to see about 15!

Touring Yangon

Paris takes us to Shwedagon Temple , Myanmar ’s most famous temple with its many surrounding stuppas.


It has become even more famous over the last couple of months, as the gathering point for the monks during the recent uprising, the start of most of their marches, and the scene of many arrests. It is somewhat over the top, to say the least, and even overshadows Paris, with its many gold Stuppas and the enormous gold temple, topped with a 76 carat diamond and many precious stones. It can be seen from almost everywhere in the city.


It is obvious why it is the focal point for the Burmese, and why the Myanmar people are so proud of it. But could the money have been put to better use? It is a pointed question that probably cannot be answered.

“Where are all the monks?” is another pointed question that we do ask Paris. We have spent two hours wandering around this magnificent temple and can count on both hands the number of monks we have seen? “They have all been sent back to their home villages” he tells us.

In fact, Yangon is no longer the capital. The government has built a new capital hundreds of miles to the north, in the middle of the jungle, cut off from the rest of the nation. All personnel and offices have been moved. The existing government buildings in Yangon have simply been shuttered and surrounded by barbed wire.

Everyone we speak to is horrified at this move and the costs involved.

Similarly the University Campus in the heart of the City of Yangon, set in the middle of wonderful grounds and spreading across many acres, has been closed and surrounded by barbed wire. A brand new concrete jungle of a campus has been built outside the city, an hour’s bus journey for most of the students. Paris explains that the Government announced that they wanted to enlarge the University and that this Campus was no longer viable. But he also readily admits that it would appear that the regime wanted to make sure that the students could be monitored more easily and kept well away from the City centre.

When we say to Paris that it is a terrible waste to see these buildings all empty, and suggest that they could be turned into apartments for the people, he explains that this would cost a lot of money that the government doesn’t have. Unclear on the concept only goes so far, until you are forced to say “DUH!”.

The city will have a hard time reinventing itself after the loss of the Government Buildings and the University. Interestingly, to date none of the embassies is willing to move to the new capital, despite repeated requests from the regime.

All of this, Paris feels free to discuss with us fairly openly, albeit in English which few people around us will understand. But it is a different matter when it comes to the American Embassy. We are forewarned that we are approaching it and under no circumstances are we to take photos. We get no closer to it than the nearest corner where we are told to take a furtive look and then leave. This seems particularly strange for an American tourist, but Paris clearly wants to stay well away from the Embassy.