Simon's Travels: S.E. Asia, Part Three─Myanmar

We ate again at an outdoor restaurant on the Mekong and were rewarded with a spectacular sunset, but the "red sky at night" ditty did not work for us.

In the morning we were supposed to fly to Mandalay but, since we did not have visas, Lao Air would fly us only to Bangkok, where, we were told, a visa for Myanmar might take up to five days. The guide books all state that Myanmar visas have to be arranged before arrival, but other countries in S.E. Asia also claim to require advanced purchase but allow travelers to buy short-term tourist visas at the border. I assumed Myanmar would as well, and if not, our Cambodian travel agent would have told us. I was wrong on both counts. We got a hotel in Bangkok and I called the emergency number listed on our itinerary and told the person who answered of our plight. He said he would check and call me back. He called back in about 20 minutes and said he had called several offices, but it was Sunday afternoon and no one answered. He would try again first thing Monday. Deb and I discussed what we should do. If Myanmar were impossible, we could fly back to Luang Prabang or Siem Reap. Fortunately, in my original scheduling, I had built in several extra days to allow for slippage and to give us more time in Bangkok so it was not panic time. Yet.

We sat in the hotel bar trying to decide what to do with our evening. The barmaid suggested we take in the fair at Lumpini Park that she had wanted to go to but had to work instead. It was the last day of a five-day national Thailand Tourism Fair that offered "a showcase of the kingdom's glorious centuries-old culture." We grabbed a tuk-tuk and at the park found craft and food booths, stages with music and a variety of performances,

large balloon and paper figures, and a throng of fair-goers.

Monday morning, we received a call from our travel agent who said, and I had him repeat it three times before I understood through his accent, that he was putting his "dream team" to work on the problem. Twenty minutes later, the team (two individuals) showed up, took our passports and US$250 and said they would return in the afternoon. We decided to do what we would have done if we had found ourselves with an extra day at the end of our trip: hunt antiques.

We found "Paul's Antiques" (www.paulsantiques.com), owned by a woman from Chicago married to a Thai lawyer, and our favorite souvenir from the trip: a bronze elephant bell, cast with a bas-relief of Airavata, the three headed white elephant who carried Indra, mounted in a bentwood frame.

And that evening, the dream team showed up with our passports sporting new Myanmar visas and rescheduled airline tickets, hotels, and guides. We were on our way. Again.

Mandalay is a modern city (established 1857) of about 1.25 million, half of whom─it seems─are on motor bikes or scooters zipping around and by the cars and trucks on the streets. Perhaps the most outstanding sight was the Buddha, about 12 foot tall, within the Mahamuni Pagoda, adorned with so much gold that its body is a mass of golden blobs, each built up of the thinnest pieces of gold leaf applied over years by devotees.

Another interesting sight: the Shwenandaw Kyaung monastery,

made entirely of teak, with intricate carvings and teak columns supporting the roof.

Mandalay city was established near Mandalay Hill to fulfill a legend of Buddhism, which states that Buddha himself predicted that a great city would arise there. A covered walkway leads to the top; believers gain merit by walking the 1,729 steps. There's a road too: we drove.

The next day I was laid up with a bacterial infection from, we think, the highend sushi restaurant we ate at in Bangkok. Fortunately, Deb's doctor in Philomath had provided us with an antidote for just such an event. While I recovered, Deb headed across the Ayeyarwaddy river to explore by horse cart.

The next morning, a 35-minute flight took us to one of the most unusual destinations of our trip, or perhaps of any of our trips: Bagan. According to Burmese legend, Bagan was founded in the second century CE but modern thought holds that it was founded in the 9^th century. During the next 250-odd years, Bagan's rich and powerful had constructed some thousand stupas, 10,000 small temples, and 3000 monasteries. Unfortunately, the area is an active earthquake zone: between 1904 and 1975 alone, some 400 quakes were recorded; only 2229 temples and pagodas remain.

Everywhere we drove, however, monuments loomed, some in ruin, others standing or restored.

The three above are among the earliest, the middle one still partly covered with original stucco.

We visited some of the most notable but there were so many,

keeping them straight was impossible.

We walked within some,

looked at Buddhas, bas-reliefs, tiles, and painted walls,

climbed others, took photos.

Finally, Deb said, if she never saw another Buddha, it would be too soon. I sympathized. We hired a boat and headed for a farming community across the river.

The people there move themselves and their animals to higher ground during flooding, but permanent structures were built on stilts.

The few roads were narrow and not paved.

We looked for the school, but it was Saturday─no classes. We found the principal, however, tutoring students, who were happy to take the candy we brought.

The principal walked us to the school to show it and we made a small donation to help with expenses. She thanked us and wrote the amount in a book and had me sign it and said the school board would decide how to use it.

We found a farmer cutting silage with an ingenious foot-driven slicer. He very nicely let me help. I'm afraid I just provided him with a little comic relief for the day.

Back in Bagan, we stopped at a shop where they made and sold lacquer ware and gave us a tour of the works and explained the elaborate months-long hand process of making real lacquer ware.

Deb found a box she could not resist.

That evening, we flew to Yangon. An interesting aspect of dictatorship is its ability to make changes by decree: Within Yangon, it is illegal to drive trishaws, bicycles, and motorcycles, and since 2004, car horns have been banned, so traffic is considerably more orderly than in other Asian cities.

We spent time at Shwedagon Pagoda, probably the most famous icon of Yangon, if not Burma,

but most of it was covered in bamboo mats and scaffolding

so workers could refurbish the gold leaf.

Our view was different than shown in the brochures.

The finial contains a 72 carat diamond,

which, according to Yangonians, is first thing in the country to catch the morning sun and the last to see the sun in the evening.

Among the many Buddhas and artifacts in the pagoda complex were two large bells. King Tharrawaddy of the Konbaung Dynasty donated this one in 1841. The Pali name of the bell is Maha Tissada Gandha which means "Great Three-toned Sweet Sound." Deb rang it. So did President Barack Obama and John Kerry.

We flew to Bangkok and spent a day antiquing, then flew Air China some 5 hours to Beijing on what would have been a long slog home but Air China changed our Beijing-San Francisco flight to a day later, so we arranged to visit the Great Wall. From Beijing, it's a two-hour drive to the bottom of the Mutianyu tourist complex (constructed to handle thousands at a time), then a bus ride to the bottom of the gondolas that take visitors to a point where they can climb to the Wall.

We found that other famous people had visited the Wall before us.

The "In" guides warn travelers to avoid sections of the Wall near Beijing because of the throngs, but the temperature was about 28°F, chilly for us but bitter for most: the entire complex was deserted except for a few bundled up hawkers and stragglers like us. We examined Watchtower 14, built in 1404.