Burma Journal: On The Road To Mandalay, Part III

By Richard W. Wise, G.G.

©2006

"Oh the road to Mandalay where the flying-fishes play, An the dawn comes up like thuner outer China 'crost the bay" Rudyard Kipling

Day Three:

It is the beginning of the summer season. The days are hot but the nights turn cool in the hours past midnight. I fall asleep early and wake up in the predawn darkness. I am sitting on my verandah typing away, enjoying the cool morning breeze blowing off the river. My little cottage overlooks the Irrawady. An early rising cock crows nearby. Ghostly lights far off on the opposite bank of the river flicker through the mist and the thumping sound of a one lung diesel powered fishing boat echoes off the river.

Today we go to Mandalay. There is no hurry and we leave late morning. I take a swim while Lwin locates more fuel then we are off. My guide is in top form. Houses, cars, buses, bicycles and trishaws whiz by like the chase scene in a silent movie. Charlie Chaplin on wheels! Here and there we stop, I shoot a few frames and off we go. Actually Lwin is quite willing to stop but it is often difficult to see an interesting shot as it is usually behind us by the time I make a decision to shoot it. Just the same I am seeing the real Burma.

Five hundred thirty miles in three days! Traveling six hours a day that means our average speed works out to just twenty-nine miles per hour. To me it feels like doing eighty in a fifty mile per hour zone. The average speed of automobile travel in the U. S. is perhaps forty five miles per hour. The average here in Burma is closer to fifteen. In a world that moves at one third the speed I am used to, doing thirty seems like flying. Still, six hours spent jouncing along old dirt roads, sometimes with sand just clearing the hubcaps in an automobile with fourteen-year-old springs, takes its toll. We revisit the idea leaving the car in Mandalay and taking the Sunday night flight back to Rangoon. This is an idea whose time has definitely come.

The sky is dark blue and cloudless. Not a hint of rain in the air. The landscape continues to be arid. We pass a series of irrigated fields. They are growing tobacco. The peasants use bullocks to plow up the dark mud. In one field the tobacco leaves are spread out drying in the tropical sun. The road alternates between tarmac and long stretches of dirt road. “This is the good road” Lwin tells me. Good?, I’d hate to see the bad but just then we reach it. The road will lead us to the main artery that runs between Rangoon and Mandalay. Finally we reach it. It is indeed nicely paved and would you believe, four lanes. Traffic is sparse. “This is more like it”, says Lwin, “now we can do one hundred forty km.” We pass an American style toll both with about eight lanes, a gate and a little metal booth at each one but the toll booths are empty, the little booths sit lonely in the sun. No doubt built with foreign aid. We just maneuver around it and continue on our way.

Life Along the side of the highway is little different from that along the secondary roads we have been traveling . No mega gas stations, no fast food malls. The closer we get to larger population centers the more trucks and motorbikes we see. Along the country roads, the people were almost always on bicycles and trishaws. Goods and people move by human muscle power.

We arrive in Mandalay at about One o’clock. Mandalay is a large city with broad streets and avenues. The streets are well kept and have names like "66^th".

We stop at Lwin’s favorite restaurant. I know the drill: pick and pick out my dishes at a glass walled counter. They are brought to our table along with a steaming mound of fluffy white rice. We order fresh squeezed lemonade from a stall just outside. I decide on mutton balls, Lwin orders fish. Each is served with several dishes of condiments, tomato, chili, bean dip and a plate of raw vegetables. I pick up a long green pealed vegtable that . looks like a kind of squash and tastes like it too. Lwin offers me a slice of peeled green mango; the taste is very much like lemon.

Mango is a favorite of mine. The rich creamy fruit was just coming into season in Thailand when I arrived. I enjoyed several during my stay in Bangkok. Unfortunately mango is out of season in Burma.

Soup is always part of the meal. It bubbles away in a huge iron cauldron. I am not sure what the soup base is but kale is a major ingrediant.

Cheap nourishing soups are a staple in Asia. Bowls of hot, tasty soup can be purchased at tiny wooden wagons in Thailand, Soba houses in Japan, and funky open fronted restaurants in rural Burmese towns. The smell of boiling stock fills the air on early morning walks along the klongs and back alleys of Bangkok. A version of it has been on our table at each meal. It is hot and tangy and is slurped along as part of the main meal. If you can’t afford anything else you can always live on soup.

Tomorrow, Lwin promises, several of his miner friends will make the trip down from Mogok to show us stones. Stay tuned...

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Burma Journal; On The Road To Mandalay, Part II

By Richard W. Wise, G.G.

©2006

Day Two:

After a good night’s sleep we are up and on the road early. The morning is cool, the air sweet like early New England summer, the heat doesn’t become oppressive until about noon. Until then we tool along with our windows rolled down, saving our air conditioning and fuel. I am feeling good and ready to take photographs so we stop several times along the road.

In one small town, Lwin pulls over. There is a wedding in progress and he stops for me to take few shots. I am immediately accosted by one of the guests who insists that I come in and take a picture of the bride and groom. The music stops, I am shown a seat. Tea, cakes and a pack of cigarettes appear on the table before me. I am embarrassed, upstaging the young couple on this their most important day. They seem bemused and not at all pleased. They are young, perhaps fourteen, and sit solemnly on a small raised stage in the front of the hall, he in a white suit, she in a wedding dress. So I smile, take a few photographs, bob my head up and down, mouth inanities, thank the guests and back the hell out of there.

The landscape becomes increasingly arid as we move along the second leg of our journey. The tarmac ends and we are on a narrow sandy dirt road. It looks like drought.

The fields are dusty and flat and the clipped dry grass rolls out toward the horizon in all directions. The trees are devoid of leaves with knarled brown fingers clutching at the sky. Even the peasants working their fields have changed their color from dark copper to light mocha brown. They are preparing their fields but planting must wait for the rainy season that is nearly six months away. We stop for lunch in a restaurant in a small rural town called Kwajo.

Our second night finds us camped out in a small hotel on the banks of the Irrawady River. It’s called the Bagan Thande. Fifty-two bucks a night payable in U. S. Dollars of course. Lwin gets off much cheaper paying about fifteen dollars in the local currency. Foreigners in Burma are officially required to pay for hotels and so forth in dollars and, due to the embargo, no credit cards are accepted.

Much of our second day’s travel his been within site of the river. We can see mist shrouded mountains lining the far bank. The golden dome of a pagoda sparkles in the afternoon sun. Barges and small freighters ply their trade along the river. We have our dinner and breakfast in a garden setting along the riverbank with the welcoming limbs of a giant Acacia spread in a canopy above us.

On the way into Bagan we visit our first Pagoda. This one, built in 1183 is, like most, a square layered wedding cake built of red brick with plastered interior walls. The bricks are artfully joined, a testament to the craftsmen who built them. The temple has several giant Buddha statues. The vaulted passages that run the circumference are long and dark and the walls are frescoed with paintings of dragons, mythical monsters and devotees in attitudes of meditation. Arched windows have been placed at all points of the compass but they do little to mitigate the baking heat of the late afternoon. To my guide’s disgust, many of the frescoes have been inexpertly restored. This is the work of the generals “who are not educated men” and insist upon reconstructing much of the ruins which Lwin rightly believes should be left alone.

There are hundreds of these old temples scattered about the parched landscape, each with its reddish brown phallic tower thrusting up into the sky. Each king sought to out due his predecessors and at the same time purchase himself merit in the next life by building the biggest and best. There are so many, they form a skyline. When I look at these monuments I do not see devotion or piety, rather these seem to me to be monuments to the inflated egos of the monarchs who had them built and to the toil and sweat of those forced to labor in their construction. Perhaps I am wrong. Could be that these ancient craftsmen were grateful for the employment or they were pious men who believed they were building up their own karmic merit to ease their way into the next life; however, I am told much of the construction was done with forced labor. I can see the workers bent over stripped to the waist, the dripping sweat cutting stripes along backs and chests stained red by the red clay dust, placing brick after brick; day upon weary day and to what purpose? We visit four more pagodas, each little different from the last. Just another pile of bricks! The architecture of each pagoda seems tiresomely similar, but then I find much of Asian art, particularly Buddhist art, repetitious and devoid of individuality. I am thinking of a verse from the Upanishads:

“He who sees diversity goes from death to death.”

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Burma Journal: On The Road to Mandalay

Burma Journal; The Road To Mandalay

© 2006
by Richard W. Wise

Day one:

I take the night plane from Bangkok and arrive in Yangon on Tuesday, March 1^st. My old friend Lwin (pronounced Lu-win) my guide during my last trip met me at the airport. Lwin is a dark haired, middle aged fellow dressed in the traditional Burmese Longji, a tight wrap around skirt. An ethnic Shan, Lwin grew up in Mogok, a member of the tribe that has controlled the gem mining districts for centuries.

I Checked into an old hotel in the old part of downtown Rangoon. (I am having trouble using the new terminology, Burma will always be Burma and I prefer Rangoon to the newly minted “Yangon.”) The hotel is an old one with its dusty corridors, polished teak floors, squeaking ceiling fan and wide shutters it thrusts me back into my daydreams of old Burma.

My plan for a second visit to the ruby mining town of Mogok in the famous Valley of the Serpents has been derailed. The valley has, once again, been closed to westerners. The army has screwed the lid down tight. Lwin’s old friend the general, from whom we got a pass last time, has been put in jail. Oh well, I only traveled twenty-five thousand miles to get here. Lwin has an alternate plan. He suggests that we travel to Mandalay by car. Mandalay is only about six hours from Mogok. Lwin will contact the miners who will meet us in Mandalay. Meanwhile I’ll get to tour the country.

We will take it easy and do the trip in three stages... The first day we will drive two hundred miles upcountry and stop in a small town at a hotel that Lwin knows well. The second stage, another five or six hours by car, will bring us to the ancient temple city of Pagan (Bagan). We will visit and photograph a few of the major pagodas, stay overnight, and travel the short leg to Mandalay the next morning. The more I chew over this suggestion the better I like it. It’s a chance to see the countryside. After a hectic week in Bangkok I can use a break.

The next morning promptly at nine, (Lwin) and his friend John, (a thin dark skinned missionary educated Burmese of about fifty with an excellent command of English) show up and we plan our itinerary. The only thing I don’t like is the return, four hundred miles from Mandalay to Rangoon. in one shot. Lwin proposes an alternative. One way by air!, that sounds better; ok, deal!

We spend the morning visiting Rangoon dealers who have ruby and sapphire to sell. Prices, as my Bangkok contacts predicted, are very high, as high or higher than in Bangkok. Only see one stone I like, a 1.74 carat cushion shaped Burma ruby from the new mine at Namya. The color is not quite right so I pass without making an offer. I bought three exceptional heated rubies from the Mong Hsu mine in Bangkok. One oval started off at 1.88 carats. The stone showed exceptional “pigeon blood” color but required a slight shaving of the pavilion, a small sacrifice of weight to sharpen the crystal and bring out the saturation it finished at 1.74 carats. Mong Hsu stones are often a purer red hue than old mine stones; the usual secondary hue is purple. Mogok rubies tend toward the pink. Another, a 1.36 carat round (pictured) was a real find. I found another, a 3.60 carat oval paradigm, one of the finest rubies I have ever seen. Perfection is expensive but I had to buy it.

Natural color or burned (heat treated), rubies of fine color are extremely scarce, almost as rare as untreated. I must have closely examined over a hundred burned stones. In the ruby trading capital of the world, I saw almost nothing of fine color. One more stop and we see a few more rubies and a large sapphire. The sapphire color is good the lovely purplish blue “peacock” hue that Burma is famous for but unfortunately the stone is overcolor, too dark in tone.

I return to the hotel for checkout. First stop a small local restaurant that Lwin favors. The restaurant located on a side street It has an front wall open to the street. It’s a little lacking in ambience, with plain well-scared wooden tables, serviceable chairs and no tourists, a restaurant in a garage. We amble up to the front counter that is set up sort of delicatessen style. With Lwin’s guidance I pick out my dishes. The place is bustling, people dressed in the traditional Longji with a western shirt or top, eating talking and generally having a good time.

Burmese cooking features a broad palette of herbs and spices. We try mint leaves, chili, lemon, and a saffron flavored curry all served over rice. Burmese food pleasantly hot but Lwin cautions, beware of the cute little green chilies, they can change your life.

Fuel, gasoline and diesel is rationed in Burma. You are allowed two gallons per day. Lwin has a coupon book. Although his 1990 Toyota Corolla is diesel, this trip will require a good deal more than two gallons of fuel Per day. The two gallons are very cheap, 160 kyat. (900 kyat = $1.00 on the black market, the official rate is 500). For additional fuel you must pay the black-market price, about two fifty US per gallon at the unofficial exchange rate. Luckily you do not have to go down a dark alley or know the secret handshake; you just pay the additional money and receive your fuel at the same government controlled gas station where you purchased your legal ration.

Well, its 2;00 PM., fed and fueled, off we go on the first leg of our trip along the road to Mandalay. Once we clear Rangoon‘s noisy environs, we find ourselves on a blacktopped one and a half lane country road with traffic moving in both directions. The day is hot and the road dusty. The ride through the countryside is not disappointing. This road, clearly a main artery, provides a running panorama of life in rural Burma. Did I say rural Burma? All of Burma outside the few cities is rural. Burma is a nation of farmers.

Driving the road requires a bit of etiquette. Compact cars going in opposite directions can pass each other, barely. But if you meet a lorry there is a delicate two-step that usually finds the smaller vehicle giving the most ground. Luckily outside the city, most of the traffic is made up of bicycles, trishaws and bullock carts.

The trishaw is a unique and interesting vehicle. It is basically a bicycle with a one-wheeled sidecar. It is the Burmese peasant’s answer to the family automobile. With a little planning it’ can carry five. Two in the sidecar, (wife facing front, mother-in-law facing rear); one child on the rear fender and another on the front handlebars. If you are a farmer, the bullock cart may be your vehicle of choice. Two yoked bullocks power this handmade wooden beauty. A bit slow off the line, it sports a five-foot wheelbase and can easily carry a large family and the family groceries. It’s a multi-purpose vehicle, sort of a third world SUV. When not in use carrying passengers it is perfect for off-road use (harvesting crops). It is easily navigable through all but the deepest rice paddies.

Lwin is the type of driver whose driving style would reduce a New York cabbie to fear and trembling. His technique is simple: If its smaller just keep punching the horn until it moves to the side of the road. If the vehicle is bigger than you are; keep on keeping on until the very last minute. The other guy will probably give a little and if that’s not enough its up and over the shoulder. Watch that bullock cart! He has a manual shift, four on the floor, but mostly uses two just two…fast and stop. At the end of the journey I can recall only one instance when we were passed (a large bus on a dirt road). The rest of the time it was us passing them. The man is the Burmese version of a grand prix racer. I am sure we passed half the motorized vehicles in Burma.

Along many sections of the road huge ancient Acacia trees, dating from the days of the British Raj, form a canopy shading the road.. Rice appears to be the dominant crop and we pass field after field with rows upon row of tender green shoots.

Six hours later we pull up at a bungalow hotel in the small town of Brome about two hundred miles south of Bagan. The hote

l is situated on a small lake and we eat our dinner al fresco on a covered deck overlooking the water. The food is good; I have a chicken stir fry dish laced with cashews. The night is hot and sultry, the food delicately flavored. Burmese music blasts from a loudspeaker somewhere in the distance.
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