September 14, 2006
It’s been three and a half weeks since I last wrote, although this might not get posted for some time yet, depending on the status of access to Blogger. Since I last put fingertips to keyboard, the big news is that the monsoon rainy season has apparently ended early. Although it still rains from time to time, it’s far less frequent an occurrence, and between showers we get periods of hot, sunny weather, clear skies, distant views of towering cumulo-nimbus and stunning sunsets. It’s wonderful to be able to look up at night and see stars, something we couldn’t do for the first five weeks of our sojourn here. It lifts the spirits to look out to blue skies, rather than to an uninterrupted curtain of grey. Strangely, the monsoon only came to Assam, the Indian state neighbouring Burma, on August 29th; only one range of hills separates monsoon-drenched Assam from drying-out Burma.
We have yet to venture beyond the boundaries of Rangoon on the weekends. Only now that we are coming out of our monsoon-induced hibernation are our thoughts turning towards getting out to explore more of the country. My colleague Ray, with whom I was recently teaching in Japan, is on his way through the city tomorrow with his Japanese girlfriend; they will likely be our first overnight guests at our grand mansion. I’m sure that talking to him about Inle Lake and Bagan and the hill country beyond Mandalay will just fuel our wanderlust to see more of this strange and wonderful land.
I’ve continued my weekend bicycle jaunts with my colleague Viola, heading out into the countryside beyond the triangular riverine confines of the city. It’s a wonderful city for biking; traffic is nowhere as busy as in most of the rest of Asia, and on the secondary roads and back streets the only competition for road space is other bicycles, trishaws and pedestrians. For a city of 5 million people, Rangoon really feels like an oversized village. Just 5 minutes’ run from my front door is a large settlement of bamboo huts that could have been lifted from any village in the country, rather than from a major suburb of a national capital. There is none of the frantic rush that characterizes so many major Asian cities; in fact, there is little to indicate that we are in the year 2006. The buses date from the days of the Raj, at least in design, although they have been retrofitted to burn compressed natural gas. Because of draconian police restrictions, there are no motorcycles on the streets of Rangoon, nor are there any of the blaring horns that bedevil the roads of India or Vietnam. We ride a 30-km loop, stopping off to eat watermelon and take pictures, and it’s the best way to see life here off the main thoroughfares.
I love the street scenes we come across while cycling or while I’m out running. Stately processions of monks make their way down the road, begging bowls held resolutely forth, their crimson robes shining bright in the unaccustomed post-monsoon sunlight. Trishaws trundle by with shrill sounds of bells, carrying plump matrons, schoolgirls, monks or office ladies. There is the over-amplified clamour of the lottery man or the monastery fund-collectors, or the roar of the occasional car or truck long overdue for an engine overhaul. The women in the street are dressed in long tube skirts of striking silk designs and sporting face masks of yellow thaunaka paste that makes them look completely alien. The men all wear longyi skirts and frequently have a massive chaw of betel-nut in their mouths which stains their lips and teeth a preternatural shade of red, giving them a vampirish air.
Despite being a city of, apparently, 6 or 7 million people, most of Rangoon feels like a large, sprawling village. Only a few minutes on foot from my house, past a Beverly Hills-like subdivision, lie vegetable gardens and bamboo huts. Between the major streets, large blocks of green land remain. Only in the downtown area is there a feeling of unremitting urban development, mitigated there by the frequent splashes of colonial grandeur. For the most part Rangoon has less traffic, noise, pollution and concrete than most Asian cities, which is A Good Thing.
posted by xuanzang @ 12:39 AM
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