Myanmar, a country whose beauty is caught in the past.

[May, 2001] I was filled with apprehension over my trip to Myanmar especially after the car I took to the airport in Bangkok for the flight to Yangon was rear-ended by a bus, jarring my head and completely ruining the car. There were four of us in the car and we were having an interesting conversation while en route to the airport when all of a sudden I heard a big thump, crash, the back of my head was hit hard by something and our car started to spin around until we could see cars coming straight at us. A bus had rear-ended us with such force that the car was demolished. Fortunately the traffic had time to slow before we could be hit a second time. When the car we were in and the bus came to a stop, the two were parallel and against each other with the car facing the rear of the bus. My door (the rear, left side door) was up against the door of the bus. We were all in shock and I wasn’t even sure if I was okay, when my friend hurried me to a waiting taxi that someone had arranged to take us to the airport so that we would not miss our flight. I sometimes feel that I am accident prone, so I wasn’t in a hurry to get aboard a plane after being in a car crash, in fact of the fifteen takeoffs and landings that I had to go through for the entire trip, I was very nervous for all except the last pair.

The fondness the Bamar or Burmese have for the word shwe, or gold, can be seen in the names which include it: Shwedagon, the most famous pagoda in all of the land, Shwezigon, a pagoda in Bagan said to have a relic of the Buddha himself, and the adjacent towns of Nyaung Shwe and Shwe Nyaung (Gold Banyan Tree, or Banyan Tree of Gold), but I think of Myanmar as a country in shades of red. The red of the soil made more so by the rains of the wet season, the red of the betel nut spittle, the dark red robes of monks or bright red of novice monks, the red of the bricks used for the many of Bagan’s pagodas, and the reddish-bronze color of the people’s skin in the countryside.

Tradition & Burmese Names

Traditionally, Burmese people have no last names. Instead, they have appellations that precede their given names based on gender and age. This title changes twice in the life of a man, at the age of about nineteen years, and again at around the age of thirty. The title only changes once for a woman when she reaches the age of thirty.

A man and a woman may have the same given name, Hla Myint, but the man will be called Mg Hla Myint until he is nineteen years old, then his name will change to Ko Hla Myint. When he reaches the age of thirty, he will be called U Hla Myint. A woman with the same given name will be called Ma Hla Myint until she reaches the age of thirty, then she will be called Daw Hla Myint.

Male	Female
0-18 years: Mg (pronounced “Maung”)	0-30 years: Ma
19-30: Ko
30 and up: U	30 and up: Daw (pronounced “Dah”)

Dating & Marriage

One man told me dating is a relatively recent phenomenon unheard of five years earlier. Dating of sorts, may have occurred, but only surreptitiously or with a chaperone, but a man and woman would generally marry some time, even a couple of years, after making their intentions known. Traditionally, boys and girls would stop playing with each other sometime around puberty. Boys who were caught with girls after this time, were derisively called mainmasha (effeminate, gay). Young men would only “date” young women they had known for a long period of time. There were no phones and girls stayed home, so it was difficult to meet and get to know a stranger. Nat (a traditional animist, pre-Buddhist faith) festivals, which occur monthly, where the only occasions for a boy and girl to get to know each other without concern about what other would say. Thingyan, or the water festival, held during the hot season in April was the best of all festivals for such meetings. During this festival, when everyone throws water on each other, girls would be more relaxed and carefree. Another important festival for romantic meetings, was Thadingyut, or the lighting festival. During this festival, Burmese people put up lights for the Buddha. The festival is held at night and parents are not at home, so it is a time when young lovers often elope.

Polygamy in Myanmar

I spoke to an ethnic Burmese whose father had married the village headman’s daughter, a Buddhist, and moved to Rangoon (the earlier name for Yangon). He became a successful businessman in the city and decided to take on a second wife, also Burmese, but a Christian. He had six children with the first wife and three daughters with the second wife whom he setup in a separate, second home. The two wives knew about each other and were polite to each other, but were never friendly to each other. The two sets of children would only gather together one time of the year at the Christian wife’s home during Christmas time.

The Longyi & Other Fashions

After landing in Yangon, the first noticeable uniqueness about Myanmar is that men are wearing longyi, or traditional hip wraps. They come in different colors with different designs, but longyis worn by men are clearly different from those worn by women.

Men are constantly unwrapping, stretching out and retying their longyis. They can also be seen holding the ends of their longyi and almost swing their arms back and forth with the cadence of their walk. The longyi is incredibly versatile because it can be worn ankle length or brought up to wear as shorts when playing sports, performing physical labor or walking through knee-deep water.

After I arrived in Shan State, I noticed that longyis were not as popular amongst the men there as elsewhere in Myanmar. I asked a Shan man about this and he explained that since the weather is cooler, longyis are not always as popular as Western-style pants.

Women typically wear ankle length longyis. Though women will readjust their longyis, they do so with less frequency than the men and as much as a way of flirting as women in other countries might adjust and caress their own hair when they are sure someone is gazing at them.

There is more variety in the types of shirts Myanmar’s women wear, but tight fitting shirts are the norm and sometimes they are very sheer without causing undo attention from passersby.

Although I never saw any signs of baseball being played in Myanmar, the men , whose hair is invariably cut short, seem to prefer baseball caps over any other form of hat. Women usually wear their hair tied back though some women with long, particularly beautiful hair, will let it hang loose. Girls may have their hair cut short or in pigtails. Children, under the age of ten, often have their heads shaved bald.

Both men and women typically wear thin, Myanmar-made slippers.

Both men and women appear to have high levels of propriety when it comes to dress. Seeing a woman’s shoulders while she is bathing at a public well or on a beach, for example, is attractively revealing since you would not normally see her shoulders bare in a public situation.

Tattoos

Tattoos are incredibly popular amongst men in Myanmar. Typically, they are made at propitious times to seal a vow to abstain from alcohol, sex, or some other perceived vice; or act as a talisman for good luck, to protect against some danger such as a snake, or to make a man strong for fighting; or they may be worn simply as decoration.

Betel Nut

Long before I had ever seen betel nut, I had read about it in books. Betel nut is really a seed of the betel palm, properly known as areca nut. Decorative betel nut containers and metal nut-crackers were once highly prized, especially amongst the wealthy and court classes of Southeast Asia. Commonly chewed while held in the mouth like chewing tobacco, betel nut was wildly popular throughout Southeast Asia up to the middle of the last century, but has fallen from use in most places and now it is typically only seen used by older women in the region. Myanmar is the one exception. In this country where the longyi has not yet been relinquished for the Western trouser, betel nut is still popular amongst young men and amongst both sexes in later years. Mixed with lime and wrapped in leaves at stalls selling it in downtown Yangon, Mandalay, and the markets of smaller cities, one trishaw driver seemed out of place when he told me that when he chews it, he sometimes mixes in tobacco, but he does not chew it much because it causes constipation and headaches. In the defense of chewing betel nut, he did say that it was good for the teeth because it was hard. It is said to be a mild narcotic, but it didn’t seem to have much of an affect amongst the taxi drivers I rode with who enjoyed it. Betel nut stains the teeth and mouth a dark red color and the roads of Mandalay were littered with the telltale signs betel nut spittle. So beware, when in Myanmar and you hear a loud kissing sound, it may be a trishaw trying to get past you or it may be someone who needs to relieve their mouth of spittle which has accumulated while chewing the precious nut.

Buddhism

Similar to religions everywhere, the most widely practiced religion in Myanmar, Buddhism, is not always practiced in its truest form. It is practiced with elements of Hinduism and commercialism and alongside pre-Buddhist/Hindu Nat worship. Water is ritualistically poured over Buddha statues and old banyan trees at famous pagoda complexes. A statue of Buddha bathed in colorful, electric lights is said to be more powerful because of the lights. The faithful pray in front of a Buddha statue before moving on to a room with Nat statues where they pray also. A guide criticizes a couple he sees praying together, “People are not supposed to go and meditate with their husband or wife. They are supposed to clear their minds and remove themselves from this world when they meditate. How can you meditate with your wife?” Aside from these imperfections in the way a religion or philosophy, as many adherents to Buddhism I have met maintain it is, there are institutionalized practices which usually remain the same even outside of sects or the two main branches of Buddhism, Mahayana and Hinayana.

Just about every rule I had thought a monk lived by, I saw broken in Myanmar: monks walking with girls, taking pictures while laughing with women at a pagoda, wearing sunglasses, accepting and paying for things with money, and walking as if they were strutting down the road with part of their robes thrown over their heads. Not the sort of devout behavior I would expect of a monk and the kind of behavior I never saw reflected in the actions of the country’s seemingly more devout nuns. I came to think it would be just a matter of time before I might see a Burmese monk drinking alcohol or entering a brothel. When I went to a bar for a couple of beers, I did see a young bald man sporting a moustache, watch and layman’s clothes in a bar. Could this be a monk in disguise, I thought. After all I had seen a monk with a goatee while traveling through Myanmar. It may just been that the Myanmar Beer I was drinking was playing with my imagination,… or was it?

The people I inquired about such things I had seen said that these were either not real monks, that Buddhism is at a low point in Myanmar, or more pointedly, blamed the government for co-opting the Buddhist leadership in the country with expensive gifts.

It can be seen everywhere that Buddhism has traditionally been an important part of the life of people throughout Myanmar through the magnificent pagodas that dot the landscape. In fact it is remarkable that huts will surround the one permanent structure in an area, a pagoda made of bricks, stone or some other permanent.

Yangon

Yangon is a sprawling city bustling with activity. In the older center of the city, extending from the golden Sule Pagoda, people sell food and drinks, betel nut, cheroots and cigarettes from small, roadside stands. Unlike some cities where people merely walk from their cars to the entrance to buildings, Yangon is characterized by throngs of people walking to and fro. Crowds gather outside a movie theater or sit at small, plastic chairs on a sidewalk sipping tea and eating a snack. People selling food and various household goods line the sidewalk making it all but impossible to walk by. The city bird is the crow. Their screeches become more noticeable when the din of the traffic and the chatter of the masses lessened by a brief rain shower. The rain is the only relief from the air thickened by the black smoke belching from over used cars. Blackish gray stains from the heavy rainfall and extremely humid air mar the city’s common, older buildings just as in all of Southeast Asia’s cities.

Mandalay

Mandalay is the least industrialized, least commercialized, least developed world reknowned city I have ever visited. Neighborhoods filled with huts buffer the city at the edge of the Ayeyarwady River. Mandalay in May is dirty. There is dirt on the side of the road, and at times, in the middle of the road. When trucks drive by, the dirt gets blown into the air. When the winds kick up, which is common, they also blow the dirt around. In the outdoor, central market area, the rains turn the dirt to mud and the numerous carts, cars, trucks and pedestrian traffic turns the mud to slush.

Then contrast between this setting and the women and girls at market with their faces decoratively covered with thanaka paste* and hair adorned with beautiful, fragrant flowers (*made from the rubbing of bark of the tree against a whetstone, thanaka helps keep the skin cool in the heat).

Throughout Myanmar, I found that electricity was available, but unreliable. In Mandalay, I was told that because the river (the Ayeyarwady River) was low, that electricity was being rationed. Electricity would run for eight hours, then be cut for eight hours, then run again for eight, and so on. The sun would fall at six in the evening, and the air around the streets becomes filled with chatter of people enjoying the relative cool, horns of cars honking to get slower trucks, cars, scooters, bicycles and pedestrians out of the way, and the sound of generators where people are fortunate enough to have one. Walking down the crowded street, it would be difficult to find your way and avoid rain puddles were it not for oncoming traffic lights, alternating constantly between circular beams to coronas of light surrounding silhouettes between their source and you.

Bagan & the Bagan countryside, where tradition lives on.

With some notable exceptions, the beauty of Myanmar lays not in its decrepit cities or smaller towns, but in its villages and the general populace. This holds true especially in Bagan, which at the same time is also the exception to the rule. Bagan is fascinatingly beautiful because of its centuries old pagodas, their architectural forms, Buddha statues and paintings as well as its outlying countryside where traditional life can still be seen, smelled and tasted.

Jaggery is a caramelized candy from the juice of the palm. Sometimes it is made plain or mixed with some coconut, or perhaps some milk. Toddy, or a palm beer, is made from the palm juice as well. It is sweet like wine when it is first made, but becomes more bitter as if ferments throughout the day. You could see ladders attached to the sides of palm trees everywhere in the Bagan countryside and so I realized that jaggery and toddy were surely popular. I even asked a few people if they drank toddy and how old they were when they first drank it. My waiter at a restaurant, now a young father of a ten year old and a five year old, told me he first drank toddy when he was ten. Then he offered to buy me one, but it was much stronger than the toddy I had tried the day before. Mumu is a fifteen-year old girl, she first drank toddy when she was five, and her friend, Kindidasu, first drank the brew when she was six.

Water is a like gold in many places throughout Myanmar. In the countryside of Bagan, I saw a bullock cart with a wooden barrel on it as I saw many places. I asked the woman of the household about it and she explained that they it took them about three hours to get water for their everyday needs. I saw a group of people waiting with large cans at a cement stoop of some kind. When I got closer I saw water dribbling out from the bottom. This is where the villagers would get their water. In Nyaung Shwe, I saw a young woman carrying two pails hung from a bamboo pull she carried over her shoulder make several trips to a well and then back to her home. She would be gone for about five minutes before she would reappear with the empty pails. She made at least four trips before she returned having washed and changed her clothes, to pick up the last two pails of water. I also watched a child as he rode his small, toy car across the street with two plastic containers to and from another well to get water for his own household.

Bagan, the historical site, is a truly remarkable outdoor museum. The location of pagodas built from as early as the ninth century and as late as the fourteenth century, though construction continues on smaller pagodas in the plain today, Bagan is easily as impressive as Angkor in Cambodia.

One of the villagers reigns over Nan paya, a Hindu structure made of brick dating from the eleventh century. He keeps the opening locked and does not permit visitors to take pictures because he sells his own pictures of the temple, so my informal guide, a fifteen year old girl tells me after she rejoins me when I leave the temple. The temple, like many of the historical pagodas in Bagan, actually houses a smaller walled structure within it. The temple has several beautiful carvings of the four-faced Brahma, which are only visible with the aid of a light provided by the caretaker.

Gawdawpalin pahto (thirteenth century) is a majestic pagoda though Ananda pahto (twelfth century) is superior in its architectural beauty. Both have spectacular Buddha images, and Mingalazedi (thirteenth century) near Nan paya also has beautiful paintings. I had visited these and a handful of other pagodas in Bagan when my guide had suggested I see Dhammayangyi (twelfth cetury) and Sulamani (twelfth century) before I leave Bagan. You could easily spend weeks in Bagan, slowly, meticulously exploring the ruins, but I only had a few brief days and these two pagodas were, for me, the most spectacular I have ever seen. The combination of Buddha statue styles and paintings were well preserved and beautiful. I only wished that I had an expert to guide me through the significance of the intricate stories painted on the walls of Sulamani and to share what is known about specific statues at Dhammayangyi. I feel fortunate that I have seen such marvels before they have been obscured by glare behind high security glass cases.

The Military Government (May, 2001)

Note: When talking about the military government in Myanmar, I have consciously chosen to be vague about identities and places or have changed minor referential points to protect the individuals who spoke with me based on the fear that was expressed to me by all who said anything about the government. Nearly all of the hotels I stayed at, which had to be registered with the government, were recorded so I took an extra caution in avoiding talk with hotel personnel about political issues.

I did not really know what to expect when I landed in Myanmar, but I was cautious. I had spoken to several people who had lived in Myanmar, but since emigrated to the U.S. long before I made my trip. One person I had started to interview had refused to continue citing concern for the safety of family members who stilled lived there.

I met a Burmese man in Bangkok just before I left for Myanmar who told me how he had been arrested for political activities of some kind and was sentenced to three years. During the first week of jail, the inmates were to have their heads shaved, but it wasn’t a clean shave. Instead their heads would be haphazardly shaved here and there to humiliate them. Not ready to give into the humiliation, which was even greater because he is a Buddhist and views his head as the most spiritually important part of his body, T____ refused to have his head shaved. He was sent to solitary confinement for his refusal. There was no bathroom in the cell and he didn’t want to drink water because he would then have to smell his own piss. He was beat up several times that first week. He fought back every time, but this just meant that he was beat more. The guards were soldiers, but the chief administrator was a civilian and he happened to make rounds after T____’s first week of confinement. The warden spoke to T____ and asked him why he wouldn’t agree to have his head shaved. T____ explained that as a Buddhist, his head was sacred and that it was okay for them to shave his entire head, but not to humiliate him by shaving here and there. The warden convinced the guards somehow to shave T____’s entire head and he was released from the solitary confinement.

Unlike China, where specific websites are blocked and all internet service providers have to be licensed, the internet is not available in Myanmar. Email is though, but I was never able to get it to work. The hotel staff didn’t seem surprised.

In the Bagan countryside I saw wells and a pipe that the U.N. had built so villagers would not have to travel so far to get water for everyday household needs. When on a trek to see hill tribes in Shan State I saw wells, schools, even medical facilities built by the U.N., but I couldn’t seem to find anything that the government had offered the villagers. I asked my guide, “The U.N. builds schools, wells, even medical facilities for the hill tribe villagers. They pay taxes don’t they? What does the government give them?” “The government gives them their land,” was his reply. Thinking the relatively isolated hill tribes must live independent existence from day-to-day, I asked “Do the villagers handle their own criminal problems?” “If it is not a very serious matter, they will deal with it themselves. Otherwise they will go down to the police in the town.” When I asked my guide if “they” told him not to talk about the government. He smiled and shrewdly replied after thinking for a moment, “I don’t know much about the government.”

Some people I met seemed surprisingly informed about what was going on between Myanmar, its neighbors and about events even outside of Myanmar. I had heard that some publications were now available in the country. When I asked someone about this I was told that magazines such as Time were available, but sensitive information was censored before it was made available to the public. At my hotels, which were registered for foreign use and typically did not have anyone, but foreign guests staying at them, the televisions often offered MTV Asia, CNN and sometimes HBO, a Thai channel a Malaysian channel. All televisions offered the military government channel but I was told that “government TV is all lies. We don’t believe what they say, we just laugh.” When I asked about the official paper, New Light of Myanmar, I was told the same. Where do the informed get their information? BBC radio.

Being a white-skinned foreigner in Myanmar during the rainy season when there aren’t a lot of foreigners like myself walking around, you get used to people staring at you because you are different. You also get used to hearing people giggling behind bushes or closed shutters as you walk by and start to acquire some level of comfort with this fact. However, you can still discern between people watching you out of curiosity and those watching you to keep tabs on what you are doing.

While in Mandalay, I was walking through the market taking pictures and I noticed a man in his thirties was following me. I would see him and then walk and he wouldn’t be there, then I’d turn the corner and there he was again. A little later I was walking down the street and felt someone looking at me from a car as I passed. I looked to see two men in a car and the one closes to me turned away, but I noticed they had a red light on their dashboard, which I believed marked the vehicle as a police car. They were about the same age as the man who had been following me and dressed nice, nicer than the average person, just as the man who had been following me. Not sure if I was just being a little paranoid, I asked someone I met later about the police and was told that aside from traffic police who wore uniforms, the police only wore uniforms when in the office. Was I being followed, was I being watched, or was I just being overly suspicious?

In one town I visited, a man entered a small business just off the main street where I was sitting and sat down. He talked to the proprietor of the business and asked me where I was from, then, the proprietor left to look for someone to help us with our transaction. The man explained to me that he was fifty year’s old and had grandchildren. Then lowering his voice to a whisper, he grimaced and motioned with his foot as if he were extinguishing a cigarette butt saying, “We are under the boot…You understand?” I said I thought so and asked him if he was talking about the government. He said, “Government no good,” shaking his head back and forth and then went on to complain about the government being responsible for Myanmar’s poor economic state.

It’s not as though people living in Myanmar look downtrodden and miserable. I saw as many smiling faces here as anywhere. Ignorance is bliss, they say and so poverty is relative for most. However, the fear of the government, even for the simplest thing, can be palpable at times. I was at an airport and I wanted to take a picture of a janitor’s tattoo, which I admired for its design. He didn’t seem to mind, but made a quick glance over towards the customs area where an official was busy with some traveler’s luggage and then asked me to follow him to the other side of a wide pillar so that he we could not be seen by the customs officers though anyone else in the area we were in could readily see us. Only then did he say it was okay for me to take the picture.

In another town I spoke to a merchant and his son and they told me how the military government had decided to reroute and pave a new road through their centuries-old village. They were given one week to move without compensation. Needless to say, this cost them dearly. The farmers in the village suffered greatly as well. Their traditional homes were situated next to large trees, which would cool the air near their homes and offer some relief from the intense heat of Myanmar. Their new homes did not have the benefit of such trees and were very hot. They told me that the people are very angry, but cannot do anything. I asked them what they thought about Aung San Suu Kyi. They said everybody like Aung San Suu Kyi.

Everyone I asked, in every town I visited, did like Aung San Suu Kyi. T____ was the most guarded about his support of Ma Suu, as she is also known. He said that she was symbolically the future of Myanmar, though everyone may not agree with everything she says.

I had a particularly long conversation with one man and tried to explain that I felt Americans, like myself, were selfish compared to Asians. So I asked him what he felt motivated the military leaders to impoverish Myanmar if they were not selfish people. He explained that they may not be selfish because they were helping their extended families become rich if not their country.

When I was processed by immigration after arriving at Yangon airport, my name was checked against a list of foreigners, presumably not to be admitted to the country, handwritten in a book and arranged by country and then alphabetically by surname. The two airports I subsequently flew to, Mandalay and Heho, had an immigration desk where I had to be processed through as well. It didn’t matter if I arrived from a domestic flight or not. Though immigration officials in any country will ask where you are staying during your visit, my experience in Myanmar bordered on the absurd. At my hotel in Taunggyi, I had to fill out two forms. One was to register as a foreigner staying in Taunggyi and the other was for the hotel to register that a foreigner was staying with them. Most of the information, passport, visa information, and foreign residence, was duplicated except one form asked me for my father’s name and age. Each form was in triplicate. I also had to tell each hotel I stayed at where I came from and where I was going.

One man told me not to talk politics because there were spies everywhere. “Everyone hate government. They have guns. They from the country—no education.” Where were the military, I asked, because I rarely saw military except when I was in Shan State where they were a common site. “They outside of town.” At last he told me, “Don’t ask people about Aung San Suu Kyi. You leave and go America, [but] they [the military will] take me away.”

Later that same day I went to the edge of a town wondering if hill tribe villages might be within walking distance because the elevation of the town was so high. I came across a neighborhood of huts and dirt roads and began walking through the area taking some pictures. After I short while I turned back and stopped at a restaurant for a drink and took a couple of pictures there as well, then began walking down the main street when someone from behind me yelled, “brother.” He yelled a second time and I turned around to see a short, dark skinned, dirty man probably in his thirties holding up a nearly full package of cigarettes and he said the word “smoke” to offer me one. I motioned that I didn’t want one and he asked me “Where going to?” I motion that I was going straight, but I was a little annoyed that this man, like everyone else, was interested in where I was going. He walked alongside me and I started to veer left to walk down Bogyoke Aung San Road, but he followed me. Looking into his eyes, I notice that they were glazed over as if he was high or drunk. My camera bag was over my shoulder and I had a camera in my hand with a large, 300-millimeter camera lense attached to it.

After my earlier conversation, I was on alert and I started to question things about this man who decided he wanted to walk with me. He’s a farmer: both his clothes and himself are dirty. His body is small, but muscular from long days of work in the fields. Yet he has a full or nearly full packet of foreign cigarettes in his hand, not a cheroot like you’d expect for someone with his apparent income level.

A boy is playing on the side of the street. He has a homemade cart of sorts about two and a half feet by two and a half feet. It’s just a few boards nailed together on four small steel wheels and he uses a stick to help him push it. He’s at the top of a hill now and ready to turn around. He smiles at me and I smile back lifting my camera to get ready to take some pictures. The man walking next to me starts talking to the boy and the boy’s smile fades rapidly. I can tell that the man is telling the boy to go away with his cart. Somehow he is insisting that the boy not take it for a ride. Then the man suggests that we go into a small eatery that we are walking by. I say “No,” and try to motion for him to go on and walk by himself still holding my camera up. He motions for me to walk on instead, even pushing me slightly after motioning me to stop looking at the boy. I start to get a little scared because I’ve never encountered someone so aggressive like this during my time in Myanmar. I’m also concerned after having received a warning earlier in the day and the cigarettes, which seem out of place with the man, suggest payment for something he was to do.

I decide to put my camera away and walk on until the man stops following me. He yells, “Brother,” a couple of times as I walk, but I ignore him. After walking for a couple of blocks, I look back and don’t see him anymore. I’ve become paranoid. I see a soldier or policeman of some sort across the street with a walky-talky and his is walking parallel to me. I keep walking and decide to turn into the market area so that I won’t be followed anymore. When I walk back to the street a few moments later the policeman is no longer there. I walk back to my hotel and make arrangements to take a taxi to the next city on my agenda the following morning. It rains the rest of the day, but I still feel like I’m captive in my hotel.

One of the last people I met in Myanmar had a brother-in-law who was serving a four- year term to be followed by a six year term. His crime? Political activities associated with Aung San Suu Kyi’s party.

Value & Prices

One man in Shan State who approached me in desperation for help to get a letter to an acquaintance in America told me that he earned 200 kyat per day and paid 3500 kyat in rent per month. So I calculated this left him about 2500 kyat for food and other expenses per month. Another man in Yangon told me how he had convinced his son who is employed by the government as a mine engineer at 6000 kyat per month to come back to Yangon and work as a driver for DHL where he can earn 20,000 kyat per month.

At 6000 kyat per month, a town or city dweller can purchase a water buffalo for plowing fields, which may cost about 40,000 kyat, after seven months of saving his money for nothing else. A farmer would have to save for much longer. A strong bullock, used for pulling carts may cost 70,000-80,000 kyat while a weaker bullock may cost 45,000-50,000 kyat. A wood cart may cost 25,000 kyat.

So to put these prices in perspective using my admittedly unscientific base salary of 200 kyat per day, a strong bullock may cost the equivalent of a nice pair of Nike running shoes, but in a country where the salary for city workers who make much more than the farmers who would need a bullock in the first place, is about $3.00 per day. So it would take about two days of work for the average city worker to earn the $6.00 per minute price of a phone call to America, or a little more than two hours to earn enough money to buy a Myanmar made soda pop at 70-80 kyat (forget an imported Thai Coca Cola at 300-350 kyat). It will take nearly two years to save for a 45,000 kyat, new Chinese, Pheasant Sport, bicycle while living at home where rent and food are taken care of by your parents. My bike in America costs about 15 times as much, but gets much less than 1/15th use the Chinese bicycle will get. Those who own motor vehicles can purchase two gallons of petrol at the official, government price of 180 kyat per day*. On the black market the cost is 800-900 kyat. Its no wonder then, why thirty people may sit inside, on the roof, and hang on the back of one of the used Toyota Hilux workhorses for a ride from town to town rather than spend 4000-2000 for a taxi ride that only foreigners seem to take. Nor is it then a wonder that a meal consisting of a plate full of rice and tofu crackers, chili sauce, a lettuce, onion and tomato salad, a bean sprout and tofu soup, fried tofu curry, boiled rice and tea with condensed milk and sugar costs a meager 500 kyat.

[*Note: Three gallons could be purchased per day before the border fighting with Thailand due to yaba, or crazy medicine (amphetamines) being smuggled into Thialand from Myanmar. Now (May, 2001) goods have stopped coming into Myanmar from Thailand and prices are escalating. When I arrived in Yangon, I received 630 kyat for one US dollar. Two weeks later the government had arrested moneychangers, whose profession is officially illegal, but who are allowed to stay in business unofficially, in Yangon because they were changing 800-900 kyat to the dollar.]

Poverty

Sharing borders with one of the most economically successful countries in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Myanmar is impoverished. It’s ironic that this poverty, in some ways at least, has led to the beauty of Myanmar. Would the longyi still exist if wealth and all its entrapments were knocking on Myanmar’s door? Would people still place sprigs of leaves on their cars and trucks to adorn them? Would women, and sometimes men, still decoratively apply thanaka on their faces? Would women still wear fragrant flowers as bracelets around their wrists or adorn their hair with beautiful and fragrant flowers?

Poverty loses its beauty when, behind the smiles of the people who know no better life, you see dignity lost.

It’s the rainy season and yet I was foolish enough to leave my hotel without my umbrella. After walking about two blocks, the rain began to come down heavily. I ran across the street and joined a growing crowd of people who had congregated under the awning of an upscale building. Those in charge of the lobby were quite disconcerted over having such a mob in front of their store so they decided it was time to clean the covered portion that did not extend onto the sidewalk. It was a clear message that the management wanted to keep the riffraff out from in front of their store.

Along the way to Bagan, our boat stopped to let off passengers at a sandy beach, which raised into a small hill of sand where nothing visible could be seen beyond it. There were numerous people waiting for the boat to arrive and several women with fruit, drinks and prepared food to sell the passengers. The boat hadn’t anchored, but it was moving closer to the beach. I was standing up at the side of the boat looking at the scene on the beach when one of the women selling food spotted me and was motioning for me to buy something from her. She held up different items and I shook my head to one item after another. Then she held up a bag of samusas and I tried to ask how much they were. Her response was to heave the bag to me and then try to signify one-hundred kyat with her hands. I was going to throw the 100 kyat note back to her, though I realized it would never make the distance because it was too light, and she signaled for me to wait until the boat got closer. The boat did anchor for a few moments near the shore, but the plank which was pushed out to let passengers walk to the beach kept the gulf between the beach and the boat fairly long. I scrunched up the bill a bit and threw it, but the slight breeze took it and it fell in the water about half way between the boat and shore. Still holding her flat basket of food, she jumped in to the water, and wadding chest in the river, she retrieved the bill. By the time she got back to shore, others were conducting similar transactions and the money was never reaching the shore. It was a spectacle, seeing people jump into the water, and it sadly seemed to me that these poor villagers were losing a bit of dignity in the process of surviving.

It wasn’t long after this snack of tasty, but greasy samusas and a small meal onboard the boat that I started to feel like something was wrong. I suddenly felt dizzy, queasy and the sounds all around me became extremely irritating. Then, I felt a tremendous desire to throw-up. I got up and prayed (figuratively – I’m not very pious) that I might make it to the bathroom before I hurled. I was about three feet from the door of the bathroom when I launched a small mouthful of my stomach’s contents that I just couldn’t keep contained. Then I made it to the bathroom and hurled until my stomach had to be empty. It didn’t take long before my body was expelling everything it could as if a flood from the other end. [I have omitted a real life advertisement for Imodium that I would otherwise have placed here until their company agrees to offer me some compensation].

Beggars can be seen in any country, but they are a relative species. The destitution of a beggar in San Francisco can in no ways be compared with the beggar in Bangkok or those who I saw in Myanmar who were missing limbs or had large open sores where flies fed hungrily. Children beggars are more complicated. Often times they beg because their parents make them. Other times, they beg for themselves. I’m newly arrived in Myanmar, I don’t have my bearings set yet, and a child comes up to me with outstretched hand asking for money. I give her 20 kyat to leave me alone. This satisfies the child and she leaves. Three cents.

I was asked by school children for a “stylo”, or pen from the old stylograph, several times while traveling through Myanmar. I told one person that I was surprised by this and he casually said, “Oh, they will just sell them,” but several others I spoke with said that school children really need pens. At a pagoda complex, one girl came up to me wrapping a small bracelet made of sweet smelling star flowers around my wrist. I say “No” and she tells me, “This for you. No money.” Then she asked me for a stylo. On a large passenger boat, a boy who I had seen several times, asked me for a stylo when nobody else was around. In Bagan, school-aged children also asked me for stylo.

Education seems to be at a low point in Myanmar. After making some innocuous comment about the internet, one student told me that he was not an expert. “We are lucky if we can just touch the keyboard of a computer,” no matter actually learning how to work a program. He wants to study engineering, but the government has chosen Geography as his area of study for him. When nearly no one can leave the country without filling out piles of paperwork and handing out large quantities of “gifts”. His co-worker was a university student until his school was closed. Since the student demonstrations were ruthlessly put down in 1988, few universities have been permitted to stay open or reopen. A pen may be a valuable commodity for a young student in Myanmar, but when higher education isn’t even available to those who would otherwise have the means to gain it, a visitor to this country can only wonder how difficult it will be to improve the economic situation with no future skilled workforce.

An uneducated populace is a cheap form of labor. I saw a crew of four people, women and men, cleaning reflector bumps on the road that surrounds Mandalay Fort. One person had a bucket of water to wet the bumps while the others scrubbed the bumps clean with a stiff brush and toweled them dry.

The conveniences you would expect to be available in any international city were not available in Mandalay, the last capital of Myanmar before the British finished their subjugation of the country in the late 1800s. A block away from the walls of the old fortress, known as Mandalay Fort, people can be seen in mid-day bathing at the street corners where the wells are located.

Since the unofficial exchange rate is so high, foreigners are extremely rich compared to the population of Myanmar. Getting a foreigner to hire your service is a dream for many, so a white man like myself walking down the street will be accosted a half a dozen times with the words “Where you go?” as an opening line to the ultimate question, ”What can I do for you? “

Passing by a village near Nyaung Shwe, I asked some of the villagers who were just returning if it was all right for me to enter it with my camera. They motioned that it was okay and so I began walking around the village taking in the sites of the different life than I was accustomed to that went on there. Small canals ran through the village of wood huts on stilts with a few boats being rowed around. A woman approached me and signaled that she would row me around for two hours for two-hundred kyat (about 30 cents). There didn’t seem to be anywhere she could take me by boat that I couldn’t walk, but for the price I figured I couldn’t lose so I agreed. She jumped up for joy and then started to run about aimlessly in the excitement looking for an oar. I almost tipped the boat over while getting on and every time we went under a small foot bridges made of bamboo, I had to duck deep so I wouldn’t get hit, but it was an interesting trip if only because the vantage point from the boat was unusual. Later I asked someone where the bamboo for the bridges and stair leading into huts came from because I didn’t see any bamboo trees at this elevation, and learned that the bamboo came from the surrounding mountains. We passed a couple of boats with a man holding two sticks out into the marshy water with small, hard metal nets at the end and wires connecting the sticks to small batteries in the boat. At first I couldn’t understand why they might be looking for metal objects in the canals, then, after seeing dead fish in another boat, I realized they were fishing by electrocution. My boat guide didn’t speak a word of English and several times rowed me into a dead end. Two of her small children, one only wearing a shirt and underwear, followed us from the side of the canal. The mother would tell them to wait or go back home and they would start to cry so after a while of them following us, she let them get on the boat. I found out that she had four small children and she showed me her hut as we floated by. The tour took not two hours, but one stretched out hour and then a man got into the boat and told me it was over. I made sure she understood that she didn’t keep to the agreement that she was to take me out for two hours, but then handed her the two-hundred kyat all the same.

The Pre-Industrial State of Myanmar

It is nice and refreshing to see a country so free of industrial structures scaring its surface, the annoying sounds of machines reshaping everything imaginable, and noxious fumes coloring the sky, but it is sad to realize that perhaps the people would not be so poor had they had some opportunities for industrial growth.

It was difficult to see anything other than food and beverages, books and brick and mortar houses manufactured in Myanmar. Even bathrooms of the hotels I stayed at had fixtures from Thailand, not Myanmar.

After I had told a few souvenir vendors that I didn’t want anything, they began asking me if they could trade for some of the things I had such as my inexpensive Thai umbrella or my cheap, $25 American watch. I asked one vendor who was selling gems from a small case, why he wanted to trade for my umbrella. “Because I can not get it here.”

Cars & Driving in Myanmar

Nowhere outside of Japan, I think, is the car market so dominated by Japanese vehicles. One Burmese man estimated that ninety percent of the vehicles in Myanmar were from Japan. The army transport vehicles I saw in Shan State were typically Chinese and I saw a used Korean tourist bus, but I think just about all the other vehicles I saw were Japanese. What made the site of so many Japanese cars even more unusual was that many of the cars and trucks had Japanese writing on them, Kanji, Katakana and/or Hiragana, suggesting that they had been used commercial vehicles that were sold by the Japanese to Myanmar. The people of Myanmar, for their part, did what they could to get every last mile out of the vehicles. More than once I saw someone apparently using superglue to re-adhere molding around the window opening of a door.

The roads in Southern Shan State, even between relatively large cities, are narrow and frayed at the edges making it necessary for slower cars to frequently give way to larger cars. Cars and trucks honk their horns when approaching hidden corners as a precaution and to signal to a vehicle in front of them that they wish to pass. Vehicles that are ready to be passed often turn their left turn signal on, not to signal that they are moving left, but to let the car behind them know that it is safe for them to pass.

Broken Trains & Broken Planes

While driving through the country in a taxi, I noticed a train had stopped and there were people walking around the front and rear of the train. Speaking in a simple, broken English, I told my driver, “Train broken.” He responded, “In Myanmar, many broken trains, many broken planes.” I had a plane to catch in a couple of days so this just made me worry. A broken train is one thing because it can just stop. Try stopping a plane in mid air.

Tourism, Inle Lake and Taxi Rides

No matter where your international trip takes you, Europe, Asia or some place else, anytime you hire someone to show you something there is always more to the experience than meets the eye, and this is not always a good thing. Inle Lake is a popular tourist destination in Shan State if only because of the Intha fisherman. These fishermen are famous because they often row their fishing boats standing up with their leg wrapped around the oar. Other boats that ply the river are passenger boats, boats ferrying goods from one part of the lake to another, and tourist boats all of which are outboard motor boats. The tourist boats are hired at certain areas where tourists are sure to be found and they will drive right up to an Intha fisherman for a photo. My driver did this on more than one occasion and since I have a large camera lense, which permits me to take photos of people without being right in front of their face I would wave him off so as not to be too obtrusive. The fishermen seemed incredibly tolerant considering the nuisance that our boat posed. This was only the beginning of my tour of Inle Lake which took me to a longyi weaving factory, a boat making village, a blacksmiths’s village, a cheroot making factory, a silversmith’s factory and shop, a floating garden village and a “floating market”. Every stop was a place for me to buy something, even the wives of the boat builders shoved souvenir models of boats in my face to encourage me to buy one, and yet I wanted nothing. Somehow, when it was all done, I felt I should have been paid for being run through the gauntlet of shops where I was expected to purchase something.

Taxi drivers, which can be hired to take you from town to town or for an excursion have a network of associates as well. The taxi driver I hired to take me from Nyaung Shwe to Pindaya and then to Kalaw, took me to an umbrella shop, Afterwards, I was taken to the most expensive restaurant in the area where I was the only customer for lunch. Again I chose not to buy anything, but the subtle pressure is pretty intense.

Chinese

There seem to be more ethnic Chinese Burmese living in the San Francisco Bay area than Burmese. I met and spoke with two of them. Chou, who was in his ninety’s when I visited him, and Alice, who told me about the plight of her uncle’s family during World War II.

Chou was born in Amoy, Fujian Province in 1904. His father died before the boy was five years old and his mother, accompanied by his elder brother and a sister-in-law, took the young Chou to British Burma. During the four month long journey from the East coast of China through the Straits of Malacca, Chou’s mother began having stomach pains and died in Penang, British Malaya. Chou’s brother then returned to China leaving the sister-in-law to take him on to Burma where she joined her husband, Chou’s third eldest brother, and the two raised the boy.

In 1931, Chou returned to China after nineteen years in Burma, to marry a woman his eldest sister, who still lived in China, had arranged for him. Chou’s fiancée was an orphaned woman who had been raised by Methodist Missionaries at a school where his sister worked. The new couple then moved to Bamo, a Burmese town just across the border from Yunnan Province in China, where they had six children and Chou ran a small import-export business.

During World War II, the British evacuated to India in anticipation of the Japanese invasion. When the Japanese arrived in Bamo, they rounded up about forty residents and lined them up in front of a machine gun. They never shot the forty, but were beginning their occupation the way they would maintain it, through intimidation and force.

Chou maintains that he stayed out of politics because he was a Chinese man living in a foreign country. Yet he had been a member of the Burmese chapter of Jian Kaishek’s Kuomintang (KMT) since 1927 and had helped KMT soldiers fleeing the Japanese to evacuate to Yunnan.

The Japanese military police, or kempeitai, visited his business where he also sold food, drinks and other essentials. They were good customers, always paying for whatever they took and so they became friends, like brothers to Chou who became an interpreter for the kempeitai. He maintained that those who were arrested by the kempeitai were only slapped around because the Japanese were only intent on intimidating the residents into submission. However, he also said that he was on a hit list they had compiled, but since he was known by a common Burmese pseudonym, “Nice Man,” rather than his real name, they never caught him.

Meanwhile, another Chinese man, son of an Immigrant from Fujian, was taken by the Japanese occupiers from the village where he lived near Rangoon to northern Burma. The man’s wife and children followed, but he was executed. The man’s family then began the arduous trip back to their home suffering untold hardships. The mother and three of the daughters died on the journey.

During my brief visit to Myanmar, there was a general dislike for the Chinese population that seemed second only to the dislike for the military government. The resentment was based on the fact that Chinese were emigrating from China and becoming prosperous in Myanmar while the indigenous populations remained poor. A man I spoke with in Mandalay said that the reason the Chinese were doing so well economically in Myanmar while the country was so impoverished was that China and overseas Chinese investors in places like Thailand were financing Chinese businesses in Myanmar. By contrast, he noted, Burmese did not have this sort of relationships to assist them and the government was doing nothing to help either. In a poorer area of Taunggyi, where most of the home were huts made of natural materials found locally, the cement and mortar houses typically had decorative Chinese papers around the doorway. Apart from this relatively benign site, my travels through Myanmar, perhaps by their nature, did not bring me into contact with “wealthy” Chinese, only a couple of Chinese restaurant owners, and numerous Chinese tourists from afar a field as Hong Kong and Shanghai. However, one particularly bitter man I spoke with in Yangon went so far as to suggest, with a straight face, that the government should institute a one-child policy for Chinese living in Myanmar. He told me he had worked at a factory owned by Chinese people where the pay was scant and the demand for workers to work extremely hard was intense.

Indians

I met ethnic Indians who were Christian, Buddhist and Moslem and whose professions included a construction supplies store owner, a trekking guide, and a tourist guide, but Indians, outside of Yangon, where they are the most populous, are typically seen at tea shops throughout Myanmar’s cities and towns. They charge for Indian tea served in small, maybe four ounce glasses with condensed milk and accompanied with a bowl of sugar invariably containing a few ants, alive or dead. At breakfast time they also serve u-shaped sticks of fried dough with soft centers and a small portion of a bean dip. Customers dip the dough into the dip or the tea before eating it. For lunch they offer an assortment of cookies, samusas, and simple pastries. In addition, a thermos full of “Chinese” (jasmine) tea is placed at the table, free of charge. The cost of a meal at one of these shops is typically less than an American quarter. Most ethnic Indians in Myanmar are Muslim and most cities or towns in Myanmar would not be complete without a mosque.

Typically the only people that approached me in Myanmar to say anything more than “Hello” wanted to offer me some paid service or sell me some food or trinket. Aung Khaing, an elderly Indian with a nice Queen’s English accent, was no different, but when I told him I didn’t need a guide he assured me that he was retired. Feeling comfortable that he understood I was not interested in hiring his services, I asked if he would like to talk about his life with me. Like many Indians in Myanmar, Aung Khaing is Muslim, having gone on the Haj in 1998.

His grandparents came from Malaysia to serve King Mindon, who moved the Burmese capital to Mandalay in 1857, as artisans in his palace. Aung Khaing was born in 1924, in Maymyo (now called Pyin U Lwin), an English hill station. Hill stations were colonial era towns built to offer the European colonials unaccustomed to the heat of Southeast Asia respite from the lowlands. He was eighteen years old when World War II came to Burma. Like all residents of the cities, he evacuated from the town because bombs were being dropped in the area and went to a village to live. Eventually Aung Khaing and others started making forays back into the towns and cities over a period of months to look at the Japanese who they saw curiously bathing on the roadsides. After a while the Burmese resettled in the towns and cities. Aung Khaing had a shop selling sweets. He told me that he met Brigadier General Fujiwara, a graduate of Oxford University in England, in Maymyo at his shop and told the general that he wanted to learn Japanese. As improbable as it seems, Aung Khaing said that the General taught him for six to seven months over which time they became friends and the general adopted him. Then Aung Khaing served as an interpreter for the Japanese including the notorious Kempetai, military police. His responses to my questions started to come slower at this point and he began to look at his watch every few moments. Then he would ask me if I wanted to see some tourist site in the Mandalay and that he could arrange everything for me. I reminded him that I was not interested in his services as a guide and that all I really wanted was to talk to him about his experiences.

Aung Khaing said the Japanese often rode around on bicycles they had brought with them from Japan. He said that in general, they were very rude. The kempeitai would interrogate someone if he was suspected of being a spy by lying him down and pouring warm water in the victim’s nose or by putting an iron rod on the their shin. “If you didn’t give them what they wanted. They stay and torture.” When I pressed him for more information about the kempeitai and his role as an interpreter, Aung Khaing told me that he only worked for the kempeitai for a few days and then asked to be transferred to another group. He explained that he worked in an officer’s hospital helping to obtain supplies of rice and meat as a translator. Other times he would serve as an interpreter for the Japanese when they went to villages. They would go to a village and take everything: pigs, bullocks and oxen without any compensation to the owners. He then drifted back to the topic of being a guide and the services he could provide.

He told me his language abilities had come in handy over the years. He spoke Burmese, Urdu, Hindi, Shan, Kachin, Nepalese, as well as English and Japanese. Tourism in Myanmar started in 1972. Mandalay Hotel was the only hotel in the city at that time. He frequently provided services to Japanese tourists including those who came to perform memorial services for the 300,000 soldiers who lost their lives in Burma during the war. Although he was “retired”, Aung Khaing was deeply concerned that the Japanese tourists might be angry with him if they read what he had told me about their countrymen and the war. He looked at his watch again, and began to ask me what tourist or guide services he could provide me. Our short conversation ended.

I met two other ethnic Indian men while traveling around Myanmar. One was the grandson of a man who left Yangon, where his great grandfather had immigrated to, for Kalaw to work for the Japanese. The family was Christian. The third man I met was the son of a Hindu Indian who immigrated to Myanmar where he met a Shan Buddhist woman and they married. Now their entire family practices Buddhism. I asked one these men about ethnic relations in Myanmar and he said that the situation was pretty good, but that sometimes there are problems between the Muslim Indian population and the Shan or Burmese Buddhist population. To illustrate this, he told me that there had been a problem after a fight broke out in Taungoo just two days previously between a Buddhist monk and a Muslim Indian.

Hill Tribes of Southern Shan State

In the hills above Nyaung Shwe near Aung Ban, Pindaya and Kalaw, pine trees grow in abundance and groves of bamboo bending like canes can be seen every so often. Shan and various hilltribe peoples like the Pa O, Danu, Tenu grow cauliflower, zucchini, potatoes, garlic, taro, ginger, lentils, corn, rice and soybean in these areas. The reddish colored, more glutinous mountain rice is grown in the higher areas.

The Palaung, who live at a higher elevation than the others, also grew tea, oranges and the leaves for wrapping cheroots.

It is difficult for a foreigner like myself to tell the tribal men from each other because their dress does not distinguish them. The women, however, often wear clothes which are strikingly different. Pa O people, or Black Kachin, are a common site in the Southern Shan State. The women wear black or dark indigo longyis, shirts and a colorful towel or other head wrap. Danu women are not said to wear particular colored longyis or other clothing, but coincidence or otherwise, I did see Danu women favoring the color orange for either their longyi or their head wrap or both. The Palaung women, who live furthest up in the mountains, often wear red woven longyi. I saw a group of Palaung women harvesting tea leaves on the side of a mountain, none of whom wore the trademark red longyi and asked my guide why not. He told me that a longyi could be found at market for a third of the price that their traditional longyis cost though they make their own longyis at home.

The hilltribe villages I visited had 200 to 700 inhabitants each. They all seemed to have schools and wells built by the U.N. and one even had a small medical building also built by the U.N. In fact, it seemed that the U.N. provided for necessities that most governments in other countries provide. None of these villages had meaningful roads leading to them, instead they had only foot paths or bullock cart roads leading in and out. Except for the Palaung, who have long houses where multiple, related families live together, all of the village houses were primarily huts on stilts. Even when a hut had been replaced by a brick and mortar structure in these villages or other areas I saw throughout Myanmar, the inside of the building still looked like a sparsely furnished hut with little or no electricity or running water.

Except for villages where Pa O and Tenu people lived together, the villages were mono-tribal, Palaung lived only with Palaung and Danu lived only with Danu. The Pa O and Tenu people dress the same, but their facial characteristics are slightly different. The Pa O and Tenu speak mutually unintelligible languages so they have to speak to each other in Burmese.

Market Scene

Markets are the center of outdoor life in Myanmar’s towns and cities. In Shan State, the regular, permanent central markets in certain towns are dwarfed on certain days in a specific cycle into a big market when various hill tribe peoples descend on the town, throw down bags and blankets and offer their wares. I was in Kalaw to experience one of the colorful, exotic markets where most of the people selling goods arrived by train, Toyota Hilux “buses” or simply foot. The items for sale are typically common, everyday goods like fabric for longyis, Shan bags, flowers and food. Sometimes more exotic items are sold like animal horns, tiger teeth, tiger cub skull, elephant skin and dried organs of some exotic animal.

Markets are primarily a female affair though there are numerous men and boys here as well. Many of the women have dark, thick, muscular arms with veins exposed illustrating the rigor of their daily toil. Mothers from town walk with daughters shopping for household items. Pa O women in their distinctive black or deep indigo with orange towels or white woven cloth, Danu women, Tenu women, and Palaung women in their distinctive red longyis sit about, sometimes smoking cheroots, selling produce or some by-product of their farming activities.

Some beggars make their way through the narrow lanes between the rows of goods for sale. A girl comes up to me and asks for money by shoving her palm in front of me. I shake my head “No,” and she shows me a large, open sore on her arm with flies freely swarming on and about it. A young man is crawling along, moving more by the efforst of his hands than his outstretched legs. The side of one leg is one huge, open sore and more flies seem to be feasting on him.

I see a crowd gathering so I go to see what the excitement is about. The crowd has circled about three feet away from the three men, their various props that have been laid out on a blanket and three boxes, which are the center of attention. The largest of the three boxes is open and a big snake is peering out, tasting the air, as one of the showmen attempts to increase the size of the crowd with this spectacle. Then he places a lid over the box containing the large snake and opens a smaller box with a smaller, bright green-colored snake. Both the men and their props are dirty and poor looking. Once the audience has grown to an acceptable size, an older man steps forward and the younger showman steps back and taking a seat only to reappear now and then the main performer. This older man is a magician employing various slight of hand demonstrations. He turns fake money into real money by passing it through a small press, makes coins disappear and reappear, makes rings move through solid steel bars and pushes a large metal nail up his nostril. Once they complete their routine and collect what donations the crowd is willing to offer, they move to another area of the impromptu market and stage their show again. This form of entertainment, which has probably existed for centuries, continues to thrill crowds in a country where the main forms of social entertainment even in the largest of cities are limited to VCD karaoke, movies, drinking and conversation.

Myanmar’s future

A land of beauty with numerous resources and a populace waiting for the time when foreign investment can unleash their pent up constructive energy will change drastically for both the better and the worse sometime in the future. Ask the people of Myanmar when this change will begin to occur and you will get different answers. Most people seem to think it is up to the military government.