Myanmar Meanderings

It’s been months since I updated this blog, and it’s high time I put that to rights. I have my new Nikon D80 to take better digital photos, and I have a few trips to report on that I took in the last few months of last year.

At the end of April, Joanne and I and our friend and colleague Ken Allison headed south and east on a long weekend road trip. Our hired van and driver first drove us to the premier Buddhist pilgrimage site of Kyaikhtiyo, and then to the Mon State capital of Hpa An, where our hope to take a boat down the Salween River foundered on the vagaries of ferry schedules. We drove instead to Moulmein/Mawlamyaing, the port city at the mouth of the Salween that was once the British capital of Lower Burma. We made it as far south as Thanbyuzayat, the western terminus of the Siam-Burma railway of Bridge On The River Kwai fame, before turning around and heading all the way back to Yangon.

It was a pretty photogenic trip, and it gave rise to a few articles which I wrote up for To Asia With Love, a collection of travel writing to which I am going to be a contributor. I’ll append the articles to this post, along with a few photos. Enjoy!!

Mawlamyaing

When I finally made it down to Mawlamyaing for the first time, I didn’t know what to expect. I was a bit jaded by Myanmar’s cities; all too often any sort of faded colonial charm has disappeared, leaving nondescript huddles of concrete. I was immediately captivated by the first British capital of Burma, however, and spent a happy day wandering its streets, soaking up its sights and its atmosphere of bygone glory.

Mawlamyaing, or Moulmein as the British spelled it, has a beautiful setting. It’s located at where the Thanlwin (Salween) River, one of Asia’s least-known great rivers, is joined by its last two major tributaries. The city sprawls along the left bank of a broad estuary, with a spine of hills hemming in the downtown. A series of grand-looking monasteries crown the ridge, providing a visual focus to the city that’s much closer at hand than, say, Mandalay Hill is to the city of Mandalay. Below the hill, streets run in labyrinthine fashion because of the topography, providing many an opportunity to get happily lost as you meander along on foot.

I’m far from the first visitor to be captivated by the setting. Over a century ago Rudyard Kipling made a brief stop in Mawlamyaing, the only town he visited in the entire country. Although the poem he wrote is called “Mandalay”, the beginning lines are set in Mawlamyaing:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,

There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say;

"Come you back, you British Soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"

There is still a profusion of colonial-era architecture in Mawlamyaing, perhaps even more so than in Yangon. This may have something to do with the fact that the British made the city the capital of Lower Burma from 1827-1852, during their piecemeal conquest of the country. Old schools and grand churches of various Christian denomination crumble picturesquely on all sides, while houses and shop buildings seem to date from the days when George Orwell was in town, shooting his elephant. Because of the relative lack of prosperity compared to Yangon, there is very little traffic on the streets, making walking a pleasure. The city buses make Yangon’s look positively modern; Mawlamyaing may have the only fleet of wooden municipal buses that you will ever see.

Not that many tourists make it down here, and as you walk around, you will find a lot of genuinely friendly waving and smiling and invitations to sit down to tea. Although there are a few official “sights” to see, such as the Mon State Museum and some of the monasteries, it is more the city itself, its quiet streets redolent of tropical languor and genteel decay, that catches the eye. Unlike Europe, few cities in modernizing Southeast Asia really have much atmosphere or appeal as historic cities; Luang Prabang is one, but Mawlamyaing is another, much less well-known. For a contemplative day or three of walking, sketching, photographing or sitting beside the Thanlwin, watching the tide roll upstream or the fishing boats setting out to sea, Mawlamyaing deserves a place on your itinerary. As you sit down to dinner watching the sun set over the river, you might just feel yourself back in the lines of Kipling’s poem.

Kyaikhtiyo

One of the most appealing things about Asia is the profusion of pilgrimage sites, be they Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Muslim or other religions. Buddhism in particular, with its penchant for temples and shrines located atop picturesque peaks, offers wonderful combinations of religious devotion, great scenery and a good stiff walk in places as diverse as China’s Emei-shan, Tibet’s Mt. Kailash and Japan’s Mt. Fuji.

Myanmar is no exception. In a country chock-a-block with temples, there is no doubt that Kyaiktiyo, the Golden Rock, holds pride of place as the leading pilgrimage destination. Sitting in stately isolation 180 km from Yangon, a bruising 3 to 6 hour drive from the capital, it draws in throngs of the faithful to contemplate a huge basaltic boulder teetering atop a precipice, and to add to its encrustations of gold leaf. As a crowd spectacle, hike and terror experience, it has no equal in the country.

After the rigours of the road trip, through an increasingly unpeopled landscape of rubber and cashew plantations, the sheer number of pilgrims thronging Kimpun, at the base of the mountain, comes as a shock. On a busy weekend in the cool season thousands of pilgrims flow through to the trucks which ferry the multitudes most of the way to the top. The trucks, ancient five-ton flatbeds with wooden planks set at kneecap-shattering distances, are packed more fully than physics should allow and then driven uphill in convoy by aspiring Michael Schumachers. There’s nothing to induce contemplation of reincarnation like the wild rollercoaster ride in the back of a truck, packed in with 70 Buddhist faithful, knuckles white with fear, trying not to think about the rumoured accident rate.

The walk to the Rock from the top parking lot is short but exceedingly steep, either along the continuation of the road or, more pleasantly, along a forested path. Every step of the way provides another people-watching shutterbug moment: monks proceeding at a stately pace uphill, souvenir stands offering everything from cold drinks to bamboo machine guns to illegal wildlife products, children daubed with thanaka paste, and parties of exhausted pilgrims sitting beside the path.

More in keeping with the spirit of pilgrimage, and less likely to result in grey hairs and fractured patellas, you can walk up from Kimpun. It’s a surprisingly easy three to four hours through forests, climbing gently to a long, gradual ridge which culminates at the Rock. It’s a shady, breezy path, far from the road and relatively empty of pilgrims, although ubiquitous tea stalls provide sustenance and cold drinks to keep your spirits up. The bird life in the forest is impressive, and is more fun to contemplate than truck-induced intimations of mortality.

At the top, the profusion of buildings takes you by surprise. The Kyaikhto and Mountain Top hotels cater expensively to foreigners, while sprawling pilgrim accommodation provide cheap sleeping to Burmese travellers. A marble-paved piazza leads past endless food and souvenir stands to the main attraction, the Rock. A huge egg-shaped boulder, it is merely the largest of a number of similar rocks which adorn the crumbling ridge. It is only when you see it from beneath that you realize how delicately it is balanced; legend has it that the Buddha himself steadied it with one of his hairs. Now painted gold, topped with a pagoda “umbrella” and covered with layers of gold leaf pressed on by the faithful, it sits, swaying almost imperceptibly in the breeze, as the focus of mass devotion.

If your budget stretches far enough, spending the night in one of the hotels up top is well worth it. Watching sunset set the gold alight is magical, while the crowd atmosphere at night and at sunrise is at its best, with hundreds of devotees praying, lighting incense and offering cafeteria trays of food and drink. As a view of how important Buddhism is to the vast majority of Burmese people, it’s an experience not to be missed. Careening back down the road, getting hang time on the steeper downhills, you’ll be glad that you’ve improved your karma.

posted by xuanzang @ 10:08 PM 0 comments