On the road to Mandalay

On the road to Mandalay

28.JUL.04

Riverboat cruise treats visitor to a firsthand look at the people,
culture of Burma

Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay" expressed the allure of the Orient
under the tropical sun for Western imperialists. In the 19th century,
Mandalay was "liberated" by a British-led army carried up the
Irrawaddy River on riverboats and barges from the British base in the
port city of Rangoon (now called Yangon). And this invasion up the
water road to Mandalay inspired Kipling's poem.

Last November, my wife and I took a Smithsonian Institution-sponsored
tour in Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar. The tour's highlight
was a riverboat cruise on the Irrawaddy down to the former imperial
cities of Mandalay and Bagan.


We embarked at Bhamo, a few miles south of the Burma Road built during
World War II by the Anglo-American militaries to carry war supplies
through the mountains from British India to our allies in China. Above
Bhamo, the river is too shallow for the 3-foot draft of our boat, the
Pandaw III.

A boat's deck is a splendid vantage to view the silent fireworks of
the day's dawning, which suggested "thunder" to the poet. Kipling
never actually viewed the sunrise over the Irrawaddy, getting no
closer to the river than the British garrisons in neighboring India.

Nor do the finny species called flying fishes ever take the road to
Mandalay, and the time I saw the splashes of marine animals at play,
keener eyes on the boat declared them dolphins.

Sitting on the Pandaw's sundeck, canopied against the scorching sun,
we could enjoy the river-cooled breeze so the temperature rarely rose
above 85 F in the shade, and we consumed the British prescription for
fighting malaria, gin and tonic. In this comfort, we could watch the
river traffic and the scenic countryside pass by.

Channeled by the north-south mountain ranges, the northern stretch of
the Irrawaddy is framed by high banks and a series of defiles.
Although we were traveling in the dry season, the jungle was still
lush green from seven months of monsoon rains.

The greenery along the riverbanks was broken by clearings for small
farms and villages of thatched huts with bamboo matting sides
typically set on pilings so that water from torrential rains wouldn't
swamp the living quarters.

The river's annual flooding serves to fertilize the land, with jetties
diverting the sediment-laden water into paddies where rice is planted
by hand, as it has been for centuries.

Water buffalo and oxen are still used to till the land, and we hardly
saw a tractor except pulling trailers in the market towns in
competition with animal-drawn carts.

The Irrawaddy is the central north-south waterway through the
heartland of the Burmese people, Myanmar's largest ethnic group.

Shallow-draft boats and barges carry rice and other supplies upriver
from the lowlands and return downstream with village industry
products, such as clay pots and bamboo mats. Bamboo and teakwood rafts
float downriver, sometimes assisted by powered boats, other times by
boatsmen with long poles.

The river also carries sediment that includes flecks of gold. At
certain river bends where new sediment settles, rows of sand-sifting
boats suck up and sluice deposits from the river bottom.

In Mandalay, the river gold is processed into tissue-thin strips that
are sold to devout Buddhists who attach them to statues of the Buddha
as temple gifts.

Such gifts earn merit to advance one's status in the next
reincarnation. Even more merit comes from building shrines or, better
yet, big temples to the Buddha.

The people of Myanmar are predominantly Buddhist, and their shrines
and temples, typically with whitewashed bases and gold caps, were
frequent sights along the banks of the river. These religious
structures became more numerous and more spectacular as the river
entered the rich flatlands. Some temple tops were crowned with racks
of bells that tinkled in the wind.

Visiting magnificent temples was one of the attractions of the tour.
And the soles of our tender feet got a workout because it is an insult
to walk into the temples except in bare feet.

We were also privileged to visit small villages far upriver from the
cities. Away from the major tourist sites, we were like the coming of
the circus when our boat moored near a village and we trooped ashore
to see how the people lived and worked while the villagers were
fascinated to see the boat people and their strange contraptions, like
those that could produce instant pictures.

At one village where we had visited a pottery-making complex, we got
behind schedule and had to use flashlights on the rough pathway
heading back to the boat.

This light show attracted the interest of the village children who
tagged along. On the way, I noticed that a couple of boys were
attempting to step on the beam from my light so I made it jump about
so they could play a dancing game with the beam as we strolled down
the trail.

It was interesting to see communities that lived so close to virtually
unspoiled nature. Not wholly unspoiled because plastic bags had
reached remote villages, and we saw the discards littering village
walkways and jungle trails, presumably because people were unfamiliar
with what to do with nonbiodegradable products. Also, overlogging
turned some areas into moonscape.

Everywhere, the outside world creeps into traditional culture. In a
village where women carried water from a communal well in buckets
balanced on a shoulder pole, one family's humble hut had a fuel-oil
generator to power a satellite TV.


Our deepest penetration into the jungle was to visit the elephants
that work harvesting teak trees. We landed at Katha, the lumber town
that was the model for "Burmese Days," George Orwell's caustic novel
about the arrogance and smallmindedness of the British who ruled Burma
until the middle of the last century when the desire of Western
nations to rule foreign peoples waned.

From Katha, a bus took us into the hinterland on an unusually smooth
road for the area because it served the lucrative teakwood business.
It was a toll road owned by one of the country's generals.

Many normally public facilities are owned as profit centers for
supporters of the military government. Bribes are another source of
income. I had never seen under-the-table money change hands so openly.

The rampant corruption explains why the last time the military allowed
an election, the opposition party won an estimated 80 percent of the
vote, but the military held onto power anyway.

A local source estimated that about half of the country's wealth is
consumed by the military and security forces.

There is some need for a large military to hold the country together
because ethnic minorities capable of armed resistance to the central
authorities occupy the rugged countryside of Myanmar's borderlands.
Heavy commerce in illegal drugs out of some border regions is
conducted with shadowy associations between the central authorities
and borderland insurgents.

According to our guide, Myanmar's 50 million people support some
400,000 monks. Most people in Myanmar have few material possessions
and a "good job" pays a dollar a day. But somehow ordinary people
manage to make generous contributions to the upkeep of the monks, who
appear to eat very well.

The Buddhist goal is to free oneself of the craving to acquire things
and dominate people. Even the country's rulers pay lip service to this
ideal of rising above worldly concerns.

As American tourists, we were embarrassingly rich compared to the
people we were visiting. As a gesture of appreciation for the local
people's hospitality, we donated school supplies to elementary schools
we visited.

A U.S. embassy official in Yangon, Myanmar's capital, briefed us on
the delicate political situation in Myanmar, where Aung San Suu Kyi,
the leader of the pro-democracy party and daughter of the country's
assassinated independence leader, was still under house arrest.

The briefing was off the record, but I can say it confirmed what I
knew from personal observation and published sources.

I would not recommend going to Myanmar without a reliable guide.
Burma's pro-democracy party has called for a boycott of travel to
Myanmar to protest the military dictatorship.

Going there means coming down on the side of those who believe it is
important to promote peaceful contact with peoples whose governments
we dislike.

The U.S. government maintains a boycott of Myanmar products, and we
could not bring home products other than "informational materials" and
"works of art." We did bring home printed matter, and I'm sticking to
my story that my miniature jade elephants are "works of art."

Because of international pressure on the Myanmar government to respect
human rights, we weren't able to use either credit cards or travelers
checks in Myanmar.

Noticeably not participating in these boycotts are Myanmar's immediate
neighbors. While we were in Yangon, the foreign minister of India was
on a goodwill visit. When we were in Bagan, we saw the motorcades of
heads of government attending a regional economic conference of
Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

China, a big player in the region, has built an extension of the Burma
Road down toward Mandalay with expectations of an eventual connection
to the sea at Yangon.

In the beguiling coda to Kipling's poem, the temple bells chimed,
"Come ye back ye British soldier/Come ye back to Mandalay."

The Burmese mock Kipling's pretension that the local culture had any
desire for a return of the foreign occupiers. But tourists are
welcome.

http://www.communitytimes.com/print_...p?sdetail=1719

"Bagyan" wrote
om...

On the road to Mandalay
Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay" expressed the allure of the Orient..
...........

According to our guide, Myanmar's 50 million people ...
I would not recommend going to Myanmar without a reliable guide.

Who was your guide ? Was it a MTT guide ?
Our guide was Khin Khin Shwe (MaLay)
We made a big tour in Myanmar, not just the central tourist area's but also
to the border areas in October last year,
about one month before you.

I very much enjoyed the peacefull silence in Bagan
and the numerous meetings with the unspoilt people of the tribes in the
remote areas.


Going there means coming down on the side of those who believe it is
important to promote peaceful contact with peoples whose governments
we dislike. The U.S. government maintains a boycott of Myanmar
products,...

Not just the US, also Europe
I clearly condemn the sanctions, they are contraproductive

"Sanctions against Myanmar have done nothing in the past year to resolve the
country's political and
economic crisis."
Jeffrey Sachs (director of the EarthInstitute at Columbia University)
in the Financial Times July 27 2004
http://news.ft.com/s01/servlet/Conte...012571727 092



In the beguiling coda to Kipling's poem, the temple bells chimed,
"Come ye back ye British soldier/Come ye back to Mandalay."

"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."
(The road to Mandalay - Rudyard Kipling in 1897)

These are my pictures of the Golden Land:
http://www.actagena.org/pictures/Myanmar/index.html

Frans Vandenbosch wrote:


These are my pictures of the Golden Land:
http://www.actagena.org/pictures/Myanmar/index.html


Nice.

How much was thanaka and the longhi in your pix?

Frans Vandenbosch wrote:

"ggg" wrote in
...

Frans Vandenbosch wrote:

These are my pictures of the Golden Land:
http://www.actagena.org/pictures/Myanmar/index.html


Nice.
How much was thanaka and the longhi in your pix?



do you mean:
http://www.actagena.org/pictures/Mya....2003%20-%2014.

yes.

05.html
and:
http://www.actagena.org/pictures/Mya...-%2008.58.html


excellent.

Thanks.

ggg wrote:
http://www.communitytimes.com/print_...p?sdetail=1719

I received an unsolicited brochure for a similar tour of India. The
price is over $30k for a few weeks.

And therefore probably about $500 if you book it in India.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

ggg wrote:
http://www.communitytimes.com/print_...p?sdetail=1719

I received an unsolicited brochure for a similar tour of India. The
price is over $30k for a few weeks.

And therefore probably about $500 if you book it in India.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

Miguel Cruz wrote:
ggg wrote:

http://www.communitytimes.com/print_...p?sdetail=1719

I received an unsolicited brochure for a similar tour of India. The
price is over $30k for a few weeks.


And therefore probably about $500 if you book it in India.

miguel

yeah.

"ggg" ...
Miguel Cruz wrote:
ggg wrote:
http://www.communitytimes.com/print_...p?sdetail=1719
I received an unsolicited brochure for a similar tour of India. The
price is over $30k for a few weeks.
And therefore probably about $500 if you book it in India.
miguel
yeah.

Why are people so stupid to pay too much ?