SAN DIEGO _- It wasn’t easy getting to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. A 14-hour non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Taipei, bucking very strong headwinds, and 4 1/2 hours more to Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon. China Airlines, owned by the Taiwanese government, does not specialize in seat comfort for its coach passengers.
The delight though was the size and make up of our group- only 17 of us, Five married couples and seven women traveling alone. Typically escorted groups average about 36-40 people, unless you pay a premium with companies like OAT for smaller groups. I was surprised, because we had two of our grandsons and a dear friend from D.C. wait-listed. It turned out that the country had become such a popular tourist and business destination, that there was a desperate shortage of hotels to accommodate all the potential visitors. We constantly came across people in the OAT group of 17 who were paying about $1000 more than we did for the same exact tour. We stayed at the same five-star hotels where the power went off several times per day as a matter of course.
Let me tell you about it.
Our first stop was Yangon. In the shadow of Shwedagon Pagoda, a single woman from Hollywood in our group and I had a vigorous dyadic exchange in our bare feet. Willy, our iconic Myanamese guide had just responded to the inquiry from one of us, “What is the monthly salary of the manager of the five star Kandawgyi Palace Hotel where we were staying?” “$1200. USD,” he replied in his rich accent. I was stunned, ran the cash register in my mind and spontaneously blurted out, “Hell, my cleaning lady who comes up from from Tijuana, Mexico, makes more than that!”
The movie-land gal who turned out to be full of contradictions had a fit. She spun in my direction, as did her blonde/black, wiggly hair, carefully parceled, styled, and shaped like a Giza Egyptian Pyramid with its top cut off. She seemed to get into a boxer’s crouch as she jabbed a verbal assault at me, defending the hotel manager, his entire staff, my cleaning lady, all the poor and down trodden of Myanmar and the rest of the undernourished world. In this land of reincarnation she seemed like the second coming of Mother Theresa with a Star of David dangling from her neck.
The next day she disgraced herself forever with our entire group by marching up from the rear of the bus like a Mussolini henchman, standing in the aisle, and thrusting her enraged, pitiless, red, flustered face at a seated woman whom she destroyed with a shouting, venomous attack for being the last to get back on board. In all the years of traveling in groups I had never witnessed such bad manners.
Back to Shwedagon Pagoda, it dominates the Yangon sky. The legend is that when Buddha was alive and preaching 2500 years ago, two brothers who were disciples were returning to Myanmar and asked Buddha for something personal they could take with them. He gave them a single strand of hair. The hair was presented to the ruling king who honored and encased it in a pagoda. Over the centuries, successive rulers felt compelled to enlarge the pagoda and make it more grandiose. Today it stands 336 feet tall and is covered with 60 tons of pure gold. It is is encrusted at the top with 5448 diamonds, 2317 rubies and sapphires, and a 76-carat diamond at the pinnacle.
This Pagoda is actually a huge assemblage of temples, shrines, and mini pagodas approximating an entire city block in western terms of measurement. The structures honor various important people or events for a variety of reasons. Before entering any pagoda in Myanmar shoes and socks must be removed. This was a huge problem for me because of my diabetic neuropathy. After a short while I was in agony, motivated to continue only by the fascinating structures and the behaviors of the worshipers. It was Saturday, and the marble floor in one area was being scrubbed clean by a large number of teen age volunteers on their hands and knees who were born on a Saturday. There were many other ritualistic genuflections from ”Saturday people” as well including flowers and food placed upon an alter in supplication. Willy also told us that the Myanamese have two Saturdays in a week, a detail which I reluctantly failed to explore further.
Yangon reminded me of Bangkok and other Asian cities I’ve explored. It has a population of over five million in a nation of 60 million people. It is the economic center of the country. It was formerly the capital, which was moved in 2005 to Naypyidaw, 200 miles into the interior. Apparently all the government offices, courts, and parliament have been moved there, but no one else has followed. The roads and airport are new, shiny, and empty. In contrast, Yangon is bustling with the usual traffic snarls, its buildings a mixture of decaying colonial British architecture and forgettable Asian modernism. Commercial streets are endlessly lined with sidewalk vendors hawking unwashed fruits and vegetables, hot cooked scary looking dishes with exotic aromas, side by side with cheap sunglasses, belts and betel nut wrappings that give a mild narcotic effect when smoked. The downside is that after awhile if consumed regularly you wind up with a permanent cherry colored mouth and teeth.
Anyone who follows world events knows about Aung San SUU Kyi the Myanamese Nobel Peace Prize winner who was elected president of the country in an election that was voided by the powerful military. She was held under house arrest in her large family compound for 15 years until finally being released a couple of years ago. We went to the closed metal gate of her home which is becoming a sort of photographic shrine for tourists who feel the need to be memorialized in front of the solid blank structure. Her freedom and subsequent election to a seat in parliament are symbolic of the new direction that the military is leading the country. Some of the autocratic but impoverished nations of the world are waking up to the benefits of capitalism as shown by China, and are cautiously heading towards that direction. Myanmar being one. That’s why Obama showed up.
When Carole and I visit a new country, we try to get a sense of how the people are doing economically and socially, Willy our guide told us he had recently completely remodeled his kitchen. He paid the most skilled craftsman seven dollars per day to make new cabinets. By contrast I paid my son, a renown cabinet maker, who has been doing Johnny Depp’s work for years a Myanamese days wages when he went to the toilet while redoing our humble kitchen-even with a nepotistic discount.
The average unskilled worker gets around $2.00 per day, and according to what I read, he is able to save most of what he earns to feed a family at home. While we certainly saw poverty and poor housing, we really weren’t exposed to some of the wretched hovel neighborhoods we had seen in Tijuana, Mexico, or Rio, India and other third world countries. A positive observation was that the people seemed bright and serene. We have been in several countries like India where there is desperation and moodiness in the air. In this very religious Buddhist country of many thousand monks we felt quite safe. By the way, speaking of religion, we visited a Jewish synagogue in Yangon. There are 30 members of the temple which has been around since the 1700’s.
After two days we were off on the first of four flights within the country on a 72-passenger turbo prop Mandalay Airlines flight bound for Bagan, formerly called Pagan. While sitting in the waiting area we observed one of the many contradictions in this intriguing nation. We faced the double doors of the inimitable VIP luxury lounges that grace every airport in the world today(including Papua New Guinea just emerging from the stone age) and out strode a monk with a characteristic shaved head, draped in the traditional burgundy cloth symbolic of his religious piety and toting a businessman’s attache case. What would Jesus have said?
Epilogue: Since I wrote the article above, Myanmar has changed. Aung San Suu Kyi was elected head of the government but the military still controls everything. She has been widely condemned for not speaking out against the displacing of 600,000 Muslim members of the Rohingya tribe to Bangladesh, or the killings and destruction of their villages.
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Ira Spector is an author and freelance writer based in San Diego.