Thursday, February 4, 2010

Burma's Last Stand*

You are thrust into the midst of streets of Mandalay, surrounded by maniacal Burmese drivers on all sides, and solemn Golden-domed stuppas further off. Your weapon of choice is a 125cc moped of questionable age an durability, but it still runs, spry as it was on its first day on the streets, in spite of the odometer being stuck on 99,998.2. Then again, it is stuck, and none of the other gauges work, so it probably has very little to do with the actual distance the bike has traveled.

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to canvas the Mandalay vicinity, and visit three memorable sites:

#1: The snake pagoda of Paleik

#2: the ancient royal capital of Inwa, and the ruins scattered therein

And #3: U-Bein Bridge of Amarapura - the 1,300 yard long bridge is the world's longest bridge built of teakwood

I accept! But, it gets better... First, there's the maniacal Burmese drivers - the traffic here is seemingly devoid of all rules and regulations. Your only cue is to simply go with the flow. The driving is aggressive, but not reckless - you constantly have to be aware of where everyone else is, and to some extent, have to be able to anticipate what they will do, which is why the safest way to go is to drive as they do, so you can be predictable. You don't stop - stationary objects remain stationary in this system, while traffic flows around them. Merging, turning, passing, you just keep going with the flow, and dodge the crossing traffic, fortunately you are never alone in what you are trying to do. It's a lot like the traffic in India in its Lone Ranger, Last Man Standing Wins sort of way, except the overall flow of traffic is actually a bit faster (a scary thought - Indian traffic moving even faster...), as there are no cows or infernal push carts blocking the roads. It also doesn't quite have as much reckless, 'Ah, what's my life really worth?' feel to it - everyone is paying attention. There are no soccer moms here - in the time it would take to quell the four kids in the back of the Suburban, the front grille would've collected a half dozen bikers and motorcyclists... The traffic is made up of cars, trucks, and an inordinate number of bikes and motorcycles scurrying in and out between them, never stopping...

Fortunately, aggressive, I can do. Half an hour in, I was zipping in and out of traffic with the locals, giving a wave to the occasional tourist on a bicycle or in the back of a taxi mini-truck, operating the horn with near-local precision: short half beep means 'I'm here - FYI,' while the long, loud beep means 'Get out of my way, inferior creature!' (all who are smaller or same size, but slower than you, are by definition inferior and are expected to clear out of the way). The clutch/gear box and I still had an occasional disagreement, but we worked on our differences, and all came out better for the experience. Well, I did anyway, and I don't think I caused any damage to the gear box.

Second obstacle, which is complicated by the first, is that you don't know where you are going. I eventually learned that the big road for Yangon would pass through Paleik. Where? How? Would I see the snakes hovering over the pagoda to mark the spot when I got there? Noone knew, so I went... and started asking for directions (remembering India and trying to avoid Yes and No questions - "Sir, Yes, sir!"). When three independent people agree on a direction, you are probably going the right way, just need to figure out where the next [totally unmarked] turn is going to be. I felt I was uniquely prepared for this challenge as well, so I went - bring it on, Burma! I left the motorcycle shop at about 9:20. The snakes get fed and bathed in Paleik daily a 11, so that was my goal. The guide book claims the bus can get you there in about 45 minutes... I figured I was doing OK. After a few 'exploratory' detours, and some helpful directions from a monk, I stumbled upon Yadana Labamuni Hsu-taung-pye Paya (Snake Pagoda for short) at precisely 11:03, feeling rather surprised to have found it.

Yup, I got there just in time for the bathing and tourist picture taking. Feeding would've been cool to see too, but no feeding today. Maybe it was earlier, but I seem to recall that snakes are generally quite happy eating once a week or so, so maybe feeding just isn't a daily thing...

That's a lot of snake!

So, the story here goes (and this one is, as far as I know, the truth, not legend) that some 35 years ago three big pythons crawled out of the jungle and headed straight for the temple, where they have been ever since. The monks are more than happy to take care of them, as snakes do feature pretty prominently in general Buddhist mythology, so it's made quite the rock star out of the previously unknown little pagoda in Paleik. Whether or not the three I saw were the original three pythons I do not know, but snakes do live a long time, especially with no predators and daily baths at the temple, so they may well be.

The snakes built up an appetite for me, so after surprising a street side local restaurant by having a foreigner pop in for lunch, I headed off for Inwa. I was actually trying to get to Amarapura, but Inwa was on the way, so I went through it. After Bagan, seeing a few ruins there underwhelmed.

I mean, it's a nice ruin and all, but if you were the capital for some 400 years, couldn't you have built another 5,000 or so?

Trying to cross the river from Inwa to Amarapura and being told that local price is 300Ks, while foreigner price is 1500Ks (that's only about $1.50 granted, but no ATM's/credit cards in this country, remember) just confirmed what my guide book said - Inwa is not much more than a tourist trap, so I drove around to cross by bridge, paid 100Ks each at two of the three tolls I had passed (I was still angry about the Inwa boat price when the first one came up, so I just drove through, successfully feigning tourist cluelessness), and arrived in Amarapura a short while later. There's a couple of temples here too, but everybody really just comes for the bridge:

Yes, lots of locals do use the bridge daily, it's not just a tourist attraction. And the locals do tend to carry everything on their heads...

You can bike across the bridge too - it is 1,300 yards after all...

This being the dry season, the water levels in the lake are low, so there's a lot of farming on the temporarily dry land under the bridge

And right around 4:30 in the afternoon, I returned the bike back to Jerry, who runs the rental shop I'd used, with nary a scratch on the bike, or on me, for that matter. The first few moments getting through the Mandalay traffic were pretty intense, but after that? I've done worse... It's not like it's driving around the 6-lane roundabouts in downtown Paris!

That was my second day in Mandalay. On the first day here, I also left the city, taking an hour-long river cruise up the Ayeyarwady River to the town of Mingun (Mandalay itself, as you may have guessed isn't as interesting as its surroundings). This had two major goals - I wanted to get out on the river a little bit, since I missed out on taking the boat up here from Bagan, and I wanted to see Mingun, famed for its gigantic, albeit unfinished, Paya (pagoda)

Out on the river

The Mingun Paya was supposed to be three times the size of the current (already towering) structure, but King Bodwpaya, whose pet project this was, died in 1819, after 30 years of work had brought it 'only' to the current stage, and noone has picked up the slack since

Other sights in Mingun - the white-washed Settawya Paya

And this is the Mingun taxi service. Note that it does actually say 'Taxi' on the side of the wagon... I chose not to partake.

A few other notes of interest from Mingun:
- the Mingun Bell is the largest un-cracked cast iron bell in the world. The sign here acknowledges that the Tsar Bell in the Kremlin in Moscow is larger, but the Russian one is cracked. This one is not, even after falling off of its supports during an earthquake in 1838. The same earthquake is also responsible for that extra large crack you might spot on the left side of the Mingun Paya
- next to the bell is the Molmi Paya, dedicated to a Buddhist scholar who is in the Guinness World Book of Records for reciting all 16,000+ pages of Buddhist scriptures, in their entirety, in 1954. From memory! Impressive... A statue of the scholar occupies the center of the Paya and is, appropriately enough, adorned with a pair of reading glasses.
- while waiting for my boat back to Mandalay, I tried a glass of the local Spirulina beer - the anti-aging beer! The next day, with my hat mischievously backwards, and a big python in my hands, I don't look a day over eighteen!

The Mingun excursion doesn't take all that long, so the boat got us all back to Mandalay around 2:30, which, I figured was plenty of time to complete my pilgrimage to the three most revered Buddhist sights in Burma: Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda, the Golden Rock on Mount Kyaiktiyo, and Mandalay's very own (ok, seized from Mrauk U in Rakhaing State, but if they really wanted to keep it, they should've fought harder!) Mahamuni Buddha:

I tried long and hard to get a better shot, but the statue is surrounded by hundreds of worshipers. Not because this is Sunday Mass or anything, no, no, it's just 5 o'clock on a Friday. Same as any other time, any other day, I'm pretty certain. The people love their Mahamuni Buddha! And I was trying not to make too much of a nuisance out of myself.

And that's just about it for both Mandalay and Burma - tomorrow morning I'll have just enough time to climb Mandalay Hill and get some [hopefully clear] views from up there, before packing up and heading for the airport to catch my flight to Kunming, China, where this current adventure is set to continue - hope I still remember how to use my ATM card!

* 'Last Stand,' of course, refers mostly to Mandalay being my final stop in Burma. However, Mandalay was also the last Burmese royal capital before this final part of Burma had been conquered by the British during the Third Anglo-Burmese War, so, historically speaking, Mandalay was also Burma's Last Stand against the British... Just random trivia for your amusement.

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