A Trip to Izamal

The guide book I read before coming here said that Izamal is a beautiful city as every building in the Historical Center is painted gold, including the Convent. It sounds quite amazing and we are looking forward to seeing it. The drive takes a little over an hour and we pass through three attractive towns on the way. We are learning that the one problem with driving ourselves is that when we reach a town, the road automatically takes us into the central square, and leaves us there. We drive around the square and there are always eight exits (two at each corner) and none of them is ever signposted. We have to ask directions from a local. The other problem we discover is that the locals are always anxious to please and feel that an answer of “I don’t know” is rude. Consequently they just make up something, often sending us in completely the wrong direction, which they consider to be polite, but we find extremely annoying.

Izamal is the “City of the Hills” and is thought to be the oldest Spanish city in Yucatan. Its history is dominated by religious events. We live near San Francisco which is also the City of Hills. There is no comparison. The hills of Izamal are only noticeable if you are riding a bicycle. Izamal is located in the middle of the Peninsula . It was conquered by the Spanish and it was the monks in their eagerness to convert the Indians to Catholicism who gave the city its religious distinction. To this day, the people of Izamal are devoted to the Immaculate Virgin.

True to form the road takes us into the square at the heart of the city, where we realize that the guide book was using a little artistic license with the use of the word “gold”. Every building is painted a very bright sunshine yellow. It is very colourful but gives a completely different effect than the one we had expected, that of a city of gold.


The square is dominated by a Convent that was built from and over one of the Mayan Pyramids. The convent is famous for its murals and its central courtyard, which is second only in size to that of the Vatican. We are lucky enough to arrive as the monks (it’s called a convent but it is full of monks!) are congregating in a small chapel for their mid day service. The chapel is lovely, built on the top of a small hill with large double doors on both sides, open to the surrounding trees. Inside there are painted murals, an altar full of flowers and a huge statue of the Immaculate Virgin. The only jarring note is that all the chairs for the monks are red plastic chairs emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo.

The monks generously invite us to be a part of the service, and offer us our own Coca Cola Chairs. The service is quite rousing with two monks playing guitars and the congregation singing along as the Virgin is wheeled forward from her shrine. We feel a little out of place and quietly leave.

A Trip to Izamal

The guide book I read before coming here said that Izamal is a beautiful city as every building in the Historical Center is painted gold, including the Convent. It sounds quite amazing and we are looking forward to seeing it. The drive takes a little over an hour and we pass through three attractive towns on the way. We are learning that the one problem with driving ourselves is that when we reach a town, the road automatically takes us into the central square, and leaves us there. We drive around the square and there are always eight exits (two at each corner) and none of them is ever signposted. We have to ask directions from a local. The other problem we discover is that the locals are always anxious to please and feel that an answer of “I don’t know” is rude. Consequently they just make up something, often sending us in completely the wrong direction, which they consider to be polite, but we find extremely annoying.

Izamal is the “City of the Hills” and is thought to be the oldest Spanish city in Yucatan. Its history is dominated by religious events. We live near San Francisco which is also the City of Hills. There is no comparison. The hills of Izamal are only noticeable if you are riding a bicycle. Izamal is located in the middle of the Peninsula . It was conquered by the Spanish and it was the monks in their eagerness to convert the Indians to Catholicism who gave the city its religious distinction. To this day, the people of Izamal are devoted to the Immaculate Virgin.

True to form the road takes us into the square at the heart of the city, where we realize that the guide book was using a little artistic license with the use of the word “gold”. Every building is painted a very bright sunshine yellow. It is very colourful but gives a completely different effect than the one we had expected, that of a city of gold.


The square is dominated by a Convent that was built from and over one of the Mayan Pyramids. The convent is famous for its murals and its central courtyard, which is second only in size to that of the Vatican. We are lucky enough to arrive as the monks (it’s called a convent but it is full of monks!) are congregating in a small chapel for their mid day service. The chapel is lovely, built on the top of a small hill with large double doors on both sides, open to the surrounding trees. Inside there are painted murals, an altar full of flowers and a huge statue of the Immaculate Virgin. The only jarring note is that all the chairs for the monks are red plastic chairs emblazoned with the Coca Cola logo.

The monks generously invite us to be a part of the service, and offer us our own Coca Cola Chairs. The service is quite rousing with two monks playing guitars and the congregation singing along as the Virgin is wheeled forward from her shrine. We feel a little out of place and quietly leave.

The Cave at Lol Tun

Lastly we stop at the Lol Tun Caves. The caves are famous for their hand paintings dating back to over 10,000 years BC, the fossils of mammoths and other animals, wall paintings, ancient pottery and human remains.

We park in the small car park and are immediately welcomed by a very friendly and very pregnant dog. She makes a great fuss of us and follows us to the entrance.

Here a guide is compulsory as we will be walking for over 1 kilometre through these underground caves. It is not until we are nearly at the end of the walk that our guide tells us that everything we were hoping to see, other than the hand paintings, are in parts of the caves that are as yet inaccessible to tourists.


The lights throughout the caves are on separate circuits, and as we walk through the caves, the guide has to continually find the switch to turn the next few lights on. They are on timers so we cannot dawdle, or the lights go out on us. In true Mexican fashion some of the lights do not switch on. You would expect the guide to be aware of this and have a flashlight at the ready. But you would be wrong. Fortunately we have one of those tiny lights that attach to a key ring and that was our only light to guide us through some of the passageways.

We are amazed and rather touched to find that the dog has accompanied us the entire way through the tunnels. When the lights go off, she keeps quite close to us as if checking we are alright.

At the end of the tour the guide tells us that although we paid an entrance fee to go into the caves, that does not cover his charge and he expects to be paid. When we ask how much, he tells us $50 would be appropriate. Needless to say he is one very disappointed guide.

The dog, however, gets several biscuits from a package we have in the car and seems much happier than the guide.

Uxmal - More Ruins

From Uxmal we take a circular route back to Merida in order to see other Mayan ruins. But our first stop is at a village called Santa Elena where we are told there is an interesting Museum housing several mummified bodies that were found under the church floor. The museum consists of three small rooms with hardly anything in them other than four tiny bodies of children in open coffins, shown beneath a large sheet of extremely dirty glass. At the entrance are three local young women who presumably are there to take the entrance fee of ten pesos.


But they are so excited to see a foreign tourist that all they can do is giggle and blush. We try to talk to them, but they just turn an even brighter shade of red and giggle some more. The museum itself is so depressing that the giggling girls are a welcome relief.

From there we go on to Sayil, where the Palace of the Ants is found. It is a huge Palace of 90 bedrooms, but little has been restored and you are not allowed to go in or on it. Consequently very few tourists come here. In fact we are asked to sign a guest book which shows that the last visitors came three days ago. The site actually boasts a gift shop, which is a truly desultory affair, the entire stock consisting of about seven rather dirty white dresses on coat hangers, hanging from an open sided Palapa. Maybe the last guests were major shoppers and bought up everything else.


Our next stop is Xlapak, which even the tour book describes as “a site of some fourteen mounds”, which makes it sound so unimpressive that they couldn’t even be bothered to make an exact count of the mounds. We drive on by.

The next site is much more impressive. Labna used to be a Mayan city of over 2000 people. It is a large site with three partially restored buildings. Again the setting is lovely with raised streets crossing huge lawns. This site is famous for The Arch of Labna, a beautiful arch that once marked the entry to a nobleman’s house.


Labna is lovely, and we are amazed that there are only two other people here. They are a very elegant pair of Mexican women carrying huge sun umbrellas and strolling across the lawns as if they were at some garden party.

Uxmal

One of the reasons for this trip is to see the Mayan ruins . Next week we will be going to Chichen Itza and Tulum which are the more famous sites and therefore full of tourists. But there are many other sites just as impressive where there are far fewer tourists, and we set off to see some of those today.

Uxmal is a World Heritage Site where considerable restoration has taken place and is still taking place. It is an hour and a half drive from Merida. The drive is easy, as the Yucatan is almost completely flat and the roads are straight, good and fast. But because the land is flat there is no scenery.

Uxmal and the other sites we are seeing today are built in what is known as the hill country, but the hills are only a hundred or so feet high and hardly cause more than a bump in the road.

Uxmal is truly impressive, both in its design and its scale, and even more pleasing is the fact that there are only maybe 25 cars in the car park. In fact the car park is only set up to take about 100 cars. We wander around this wonderful World Heritage Site with just a handful of other tourists.

There are four major buildings that have been beautifully restored: including the Governors Palace, the Nun’s Quadrangle and the Magician’s Pyramid. The Magician’s Pyramid is what we all recognize as a Mayan temple. It is similar to an Egyptian Pyramid, but with steps up two sides and a decorated top. It is more faceted than the Egyptian Pyramids . The Mayans were, what could be called, lazy builders. They built their structures using rubble and then clad them with stone, whereas the temples of Angkor Wat were built stone by stone, each one fitting precisely into the next. The exteriors of Angkor Wat are far more elaborate with carvings and statues. The Mayans decorate the top of their buildings but the bottom half often remains plain.


The decorations are much more geometric, and indeed a deep understanding of geometry obviously pervades everything the Mayans built.

A strong sense of setting dominates Uxmal. There are manicured lawns and trees everywhere. Each building is built on a small plateau affording sweeping views of the land and the other structures.


As in all civilizations water was very important. The Yucatan receives very little water, but the Mayans developed a system of collecting the water and storing it underground that is very impressive.
Equally as impressive is the games arena that sits in the middle of this Mayan city. A large playing field has a huge sloping stone wall at either side with a hoop half way along built out of it. The hoop is set on its side and is 12 feet or so up the wall.


The game was played by two teams of seven, and the object was to get the ball through the opposing teams hoop. The major difference between this and basketball, is that in this game the losing team or team leader is sacrificed. A major incentive, I presume, to play your best game.

Merida - Our First Impression

Joany, despite the non stop talking, is a wonderful hostess and provides free wine and beer, stocked in her fridge, to which we are welcome to help ourselves. After a drink we decide to walk into the center of Merida to have dinner. We are in the Historical District and we walk through streets lined with wonderful old colonial houses, some of which are waiting to find an owner that cares enough to return them to their previous glory, and some of which have already found that person.


They are painted in wonderful deep desert colors of burnt orange, sand and green. The windows and doors are covered in intricate and beautiful iron work. The rooms are tall and large with marble floors. The front doors are double, made of beautifully carved wood and 12 feet tall. Chandeliers hang from the ceiling. They call out “buy me” as we pass.

We find the main square, which is the perfect town square with beautiful colonnades on three sides filled with café tables and chairs, and on the fourth side there is an imposing cathedral, The Cathedral of San Idelfonso. It is actually the oldest Cathedral on the American continent dating back to the 16th century. The conquering Spanish dismantled all the nearby Mayan Pyramids and used the huge stones as the foundation for the Cathedral.

The center of the square is full of people enjoying the evening, and watching the clowns and musicians. The streets around the square are lined with horses pulling Victorian carriages. The carriages are all painted white and decorated with flowers. There are few tourists . It is mainly the locals enjoying all this. It is about as different from our life in Puerto Vallarta as it could be.

We end up at a restaurant called the Villa Maria Restaurant. It is highly rated in Trip Advisor and it is the first restaurant recommendation that Joany makes. She does however warn us that it is a huge restaurant and there will be very few people there, but not to let that put us off, the food is terrific.

Joany exaggerated about the number of people that would be there. The place was deserted, other than 5 waiters, all leaning against the wall, talking to each other.
Normally we would walk on by, but as we don’t know of another restaurant we go in. It is a gorgeously restored 17th century mansion with a central open courtyard with art nouveau hanging chandeliers, and beautifully presented dining tables. The waiter asks if we would like to sit there or inside . Inside there are two more dining rooms both equally elaborate in their settings. It is magnificent and deserted. We eat in the courtyard.

The restaurant has pretensions of grandeur, and everything about it appears first class, until we hear a loud bang. We turn in the direction of the kitchen and see two of the waiters dragging a large old water heater out of the kitchen and across the restaurant floor. It is too heavy for them and they keep having to drop it on the tile floor. Sweat is running down their faces. If this is a regular occurrence it might explain the lack of customers.

As for the rest of the evening, the staff is very attentive, the food is good but not excellent, and the prices are high but not exorbitant, until, that is, it comes to the wine list. Most of the wines are immediately recognizable as coming from Costco (they have a Costco in Merida), and the restaurant is charging 6 times the price they paid in Costco. It leaves an unpleasant taste in our mouths.

Breakfast

The next morning we go down for breakfast in our hotel, the Eurostars Zona Rosa Suites. It is a rather desultory affair, and each morning we hope it will get better, but it never does. It is a buffet with a few plates of fresh fruit cut into slices the previous evening, slices of cheese cut just after the fruit, individual packets of cereal, packaged sliced bread, thin slices of tinned ham, and some warming pans containing refried beans, rice and hotcakes. The hot food was obviously cooked many hours earlier and placed in the warming pans where it sits until 11.30 when it is cleared away.

This morning there is a table of three Mexicans who look a little scary. One of them must be at least 400 lbs and seems unable to sit upright, but instead slouches down at 45 degrees from the floor. We guess that sitting upright is impossible because his stomach would crush his legs. He is wearing a well worn track suit which hasn’t seen soap and water for some time. He hasn’t shaved for several days, and the last time he washed is when he had to take his track suit off to put it in the laundry. His two companions, while equally grubby are far less imposing and far smaller. We are wondering how they could afford to be staying in the hotel, when we notice that the two companions do everything for the large man. He just has to say that he wants more food and they jump up and get it for him. This obviously keeps them fit, as his calls for more are frequent. There is obviously some sort of hierarchy going on here that we know nothing of, but might explain how they can afford to stay in this hotel.

The Blue Tile House and the Palace of Fine Arts

As we wander through the streets leading from the Zocolo, two buildings attract our attention. The first is known as the Blue Tile House. It was built in the 16th century and is covered, not surprisingly, in hand made blue tiles from that period. Inside, is a Sanborns department store with a wonderful restaurant with walls covered in murals from the 1930’s.



The second building is the Palace of Fine Arts, which is an absolutely fabulous building from the Art Deco/Beaux Arts period. Inside there are three levels all covered in Murals by famous artists of the period including Diego Rivera.


Any wall that hasn’t got a mural is clad in wonderful pink marble and edged in black. Staircases are either in black or white marble. Every detail is striking in its art deco design, even down to the small ticket office windows.


As we both collect Art Deco we are in heaven and spend two hours wandering around the building examining every amazing detail. The building houses a theatre with a famous Tiffany Curtain which we long to see, but sadly the theatre is closed for the weekend.

After lunch, we get back on the Turibus and continue round the City. We are impressed with the number and size of the parks and green areas. Many of the main streets are huge boulevards, split by a park like divide full of trees and benches. There is art everywhere: posters of famous artworks line one street, photographs of famous building line another and everywhere there are seats and benches often designed by famous artists in modern designs. If all this street art appeared in any European or North American city, it would be vandalized and covered in graffiti, but here everything is left untouched.

The city is full of statues . We spend most of the day listening on our headphones to endless descriptions of this statue of a famous Mexican President and that Statue of a famous revolutionary. But the only time we get excited is when we drive past a statue of Delores Del Rio , but no mention is made of it through our headphones.

In the evening we dine in an Argentinean restaurant – the city is full of them. Sadly it has a large screen TV inside, tuned to the Superbowl which is being played today. The restaurant is full of Mexicans all yelling and screaming for their favorite team.

Burma - Our Final Thoughts

This is our final night in Myanmar and it is tinged with regret. We have made friends with some of our guides and their memory will stay with us for many years. We could travel the world and never come across another character like Paris. We would enjoy having a boy named Sue as a friend and it was a privilege to meet Rosa.

The Burmese people are delightful, the country beautiful and some of the antiquities are breathtaking. But an underlying feeling of sadness and anger has been with us through the entire trip. We have never seen so much needless suffering. There are millions of people in Africa who are probably worse off, but often the reason for that is the total lack of resources, food and water. But here the country is rich in all of those things, but the Junta controls everything, and the generals are the only people allowed to benefit. Even if the status quo wasn’t changed, the people could be benefiting from the wealth that a popular tourist destination could bring them. The country could easily be as popular a destination as Thailand , Vietnam or Cambodia . But the Junta is hostile to the prying eyes of outside countries, and many tourists who suffer our doubts about patronizing the country decide to stay away.

The Junta controls the people, holding them back, and holding them down, denying them education, denying them the benefits of a rich country, denying them the spoils of tourism, and basically denying them a comfortable life. It is hard to really enjoy a vacation in this wonderful country, when this is the undercurrent. But so many of the people thanked us for coming, and asked us to come back, that we are happy that we went, and determined to return.

Pyin Oo Lwin

In the afternoon we fly back to Mandalay , and from there drive up to Pyin Oo Lwin . It is a slow drive up a steep and winding mountain road. There are police everywhere, and we are told that they are there to clear the road of all traffic as a convoy of VIP cars goes through. Our driver manages to sneak on the back of the convoy and we too get whisked up to Pyin Oo Lwin without having to deal with any other traffic. How we don’t get stopped by the police is a miracle, as the VIPS are all in huge modern four wheel drives, while we are in the usual twenty year old Toyota. It is nighttime, and driving is extremely dangerous as there are no street lights and the roads are full of bicyclists without lights or any reflective garments.

Pyin Oo Lwin is a hill station where the British retreated when they found the summer temperatures and humidity of Mandalay too much to take. Everywhere you can see the influence of the British, from the colonial style homes and their gardens, to the hotel where we stay. The hotel is an English Edwardian building complete with the drafts, rattling windows and linoleum floors, but without the hissing radiators. There is no form of heat, the place is freezing, and the bedrooms feel like dorms in an old English boarding school.

We are here to see the town, and the huge flower festival it holds every year. The festival is held in a large park with lovely walks through the gardens and round a lake. There is even a small zoo. The morning wandering around the park is lovely, the flower gardens are worth seeing, but the town is not.

The Akhu Tribe

The next morning we are off again. This time we visit the village of Vansai , home to the Akhu tribe. Here the women all smoke pipes made from bamboo. They have a sort of turban on their head, and they carry their pipes, tobacco and matches in the folds of this turban. Their faces show the effect that tobacco smoke can have on the skin, as many of them have deeply etched wrinkles around the mouth and cheeks, but despite this we meet a woman of 92 with her great granddaughter slung on her back.




Inexplicably, women in all these tribes live to be much older than men. We have met several women in their 80’s as well as this lady in her 90’s, but few men seem to live beyond 60. It is hard to understand why this is, as the women work every bit as hard as the men, and in this village the women smoke constantly while the men do not.
In this village we also meet several men who are at home looking after the children while the women are in the jungle looking for firewood, or tending to the animals.


The Akhu is definitely more advanced than the Enn village but not as well organized as the Akha village. This is a Baptist village that has been guided by a pastor. Not to get involved in any sort of religious conflict, but it has to be said that the Catholic missionary did a much better job with his tribe.

Tea With The Akha Tribe

Again we distribute cookies and medicine. We meet two young girls with red paint all over their face. It turns out these girls had been fascinated by the red lips of a previous tourist, and she had kindly given the girls her lipstick. They had not had an occasion to wear it since, as there had been no visitors for months. But now we had arrived, they thought it appropriate to put it on. One of the girls had obviously forgotten that it was supposed to go on the lips, and had instead made red dots all over her face. The older girl had remembered where it was to go, but her skills of application were limited. She had a huge red gash from ear to ear. However both young women thought they looked beautiful, and as men have learned all over the world, it is always wise to offer no opposition to these feelings that women have.


Here we are invited to have tea in one of the houses. We feel we cannot turn this down, but we would much rather not drink out of any of the rather dirty looking glasses we are offered. However our guide says that they do wash their utensils in the river water. We follow the example of our guide who pours tea into his glass, swills it round and then tips it out, before pouring in more which he drinks. We are also offered deep fried peanuts straight from the pan, which are delicious, together with some bananas collected from the jungle. We are pleasantly surprised to find that we do not get sick the next day.
When we return to Kyaingtong in the late afternoon, we are both exhausted and promptly fall asleep.
This is not a town famous for its restaurants. There are a few local eating places, none of them catering to tourists. However that evening we find a Chinese restaurant that deep fries a whole fish caught that day in the river. It costs $3 and is delicious.

The Village of Nowohen

We walk down into a valley and up the other side to reach the village of Nowohen where the Akha tribe lives. They also wear black clothing, but this time the women have magnificent silver headdresses, rows of beaded necklaces and beaded belts and bags. The headdresses are made of real silver and have been handed down from mother to daughter. However many of the younger women have given up wearing them because they are so uncomfortable. This, combined with the fact that tourists will pay $500 for one headdress, means that within a few years it may no longer be possible to see this tribe in their original clothing.





This village is quite clearly far more prosperous than the last one, with the 26 houses laid out along two dirt streets, and small corrals with goats, chickens and pigs.


The homes are larger, and better constructed, although still just made of bamboo and matting. We are grateful to see that everyone looks clean, at least when compared to the last village. It turns out that the success of this village is almost entirely due to the fact that a missionary came here 14 years ago, and has taught the village basic principals of hygiene, village planning and husbandry. The entire village has converted to Catholicism. This originally caused some problems as prior to the Missionary’s arrival a tribesman was allowed two wives if he could afford them. In an example of true wisdom seldom seen in the church, the Missionary has told the people that this is fine, and that the arrangement can continue as long as the two wives were acquired before they became Christian.
In this village the wife has a separate bedroom from the husband, and if the husband desires sex, he must knock on her bedroom door first and be invited in. We might be centuries ahead of them in many ways, but we still could learn something from this tribe!

Mandalay Airport

Mandalay has an international airport that can rival any of the major Asian airports. Glass and steel everywhere, restaurants, cafes, escalators and jetways. The only difference between Mandalay and other well known International airports is passengers! Mandalay has none. There are maybe a dozen other passengers in the entire airport. One café is open, all the restaurants are closed. But even more strange is the fact that none of the escalators is working. Nor are the luggage conveyor belts. Nor are the jetways. We have to walk down some stairs and across the tarmac to our plane. The reason, of course, is that this is one of the days when there is no electricity in Mandalay. The airport is vast and very modern. It puts Yangon airport to shame. And yet Yangon is the city that has all the international flights. It is almost impossible to find an international flight that goes to Mandalay, there are only internal flights. This impressive airport was built two years ago, but no one knows why. It is built in the middle of nowhere, a good hours drive from town. The old airport was much more convenient but the Junta announced it could no longer be used.
We have an hour to wait for our plane, and go to the only café that is open. It goes by the name of Swan Pizza, and their logo is remarkably similar, if not identical to, Pizza Hut. However they do not sell pizza. Even more incongruous is that they have large black plastic napkin dispensers on each table which have “ Las Vegas ” emblazoned in gold on all sides. Our sandwich is served on white plates that match the coffee cups. All of them have “J.C. Penny. Basic White” printed on the underside.

Life In Mandalay

Mandalay is a much more attractive city than Yangon. Many of the streets are lined with trees, and bustle with people who seem happier and a little more prosperous than in Yangon . Large portions of the city have good middle class houses. Downtown is more like a downtown as we know it, with many streets full of shops, and a few selling named brands that are definitely high end. There is even a small shopping mall and a few neon signs, although the latter seems rather superfluous because of the lack of power to turn them on.

There are many motorbikes and thousands of bicycles that appear to take no notice of the rules of the road.


Road junctions and cross roads often have a policeman in the middle directing traffic, but no one pays them any attention. Cross roads are quite terrifying, and we sit white knuckled in our car, clinging to the back of the seat in front of us. I try closing my eyes, but it is impossible to keep them closed with all the noise around us.

This is the first place we have seen taxis, but they are not geared to the tourists. They are Mazda pick up trucks built in the 1940’s. They are amazingly small, looking like children’s toy cars. The passengers sit in the back of the pick up truck. You could perhaps squeeze two Americans in the back, but they would be very unhappy. But up to 10 Burmese somehow manage to ride this way.


We are pleased to see that there are many more monks here than anywhere we have been so far. The Mayor of Mandalay refused the Generals orders to kill monks and so Mandalay escaped much of the crackdown. But once the uprising was crushed the Mayor was fired from his job. There are also many nuns, who wear pink robes, and, like the monks go out in the morning to collect food from the people. However nuns can only go out twice a week and can only accept rice and vegetables.

We visit several craft houses, all of them working without lighting. We watch as women stoop over their embroidery doing the most intricate work in semi darkness. Three men noisily beat gold into gold leaf. They will be deaf by the end of their worklife.


Like the rest of the country, electricity is limited. Here they receive power for three days, and then just for 6 to 12 hours on the other four days. Water too is problematical. Each household has to pay $200 for the connection, a large amount of money to most families. On top of this they pay a monthly fee based on usage, but during the dry season there will often be no water available. Few have hot water, and sometimes the mornings are too cold for them to take a shower. If they live in houses and apartments that are more than two stories high, very often the water will not pump up to the higher floors.

Mandalay

Our first stop is the old Royal Palace built in the 1860’s. It is a huge square compound, surrounded on all four sides by a wall and a moat The wall is two kilometres long on each of the four sides.


The entire place was bombed in the war, and virtually destroyed. The government, recognizing a tourist attraction when they see one, decided to rebuild it in the 1990’s. However, where there were once huge wooden columns there are now huge cement columns, and where there was gold leaf covering everything there is now gold paint. It all looks so tacky, and very few people go there. To make matters worse the huge grounds that were so beautiful, are now full of unsightly cheap housing used solely to house army soldiers. Min, our guide, is making her opening political statement by taking us here first.


However a block or so away is one of the original buildings. It is in this building that the King died, and his son wanted to preserve it as a special and separate monument, so moved it away from the palace, thus unwittingly insuring its survival during the bombings. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen, built entirely of teak and covered in intricate carvings. Both inside and out were originally covered in gold, but very little remains on the outside because of the weather. But the inside still gleams, the many tall golden pillars supporting the roof look like a shining forest, It is an amazing sight, that dazzles the eye.


From here we go to lunch in a local restaurant where we have to listen to a CD of Christmas Carols sung in English by a Burmese singer who obviously learned parrot fashion from listening to the original, and has no idea what he is saying. We recognize the song “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”, but instead of singing “If Daddy had only seen” He sang” If Veddy Veddy on the scene”, and “He thought that I was tucked up in my bedroom fast asleep” became “he thawed a ice water up in my bedroom vast and leap".

Poppa

We leave Bagan reluctantly. The last two days have opened our eyes to the wonders of Mynamar, and the small town of Bagan is infinitely more charming than Yangon. We could, and hopefully will, return and spend much more time here.

Today we drive for an hour to the mountain town of Poppa, where there is a temple on the top of a huge rock, with fantastic views, which can only be reached by climbing 770 steps.


There is also a Spa Hotel well known in Myanmar as a wonderful place to relax. We view the sights,


and the charming town of Poppa and then get to the hotel in time for lunch, an afternoon by the pool, and a massage and body scrub.Life can’t get much better than this.

A Boy named Sue has come with us on this trip as our guide. We are just staying one night in Poppa and so we are surprised to see a Boy named Sue arrive with a suitcase nearly as big as ours. But, as the day wears on, the necessity of a large suitcase is made evident by the number of changes he makes during the day. We count no less than 4 different outfits during the one day. He also has some super cool shades that he wears, but his eye sight is so bad he can’t actually see anything with them on, so he is constantly switching back to his regular glasses.

We soon realize that we are the only people staying at the Hotel. A Boy named Sue leaves us alone during the afternoon, but we invite him to join us for dinner. This is an extremely poor country, where many people are dressed in rags, so it seems incongruous to see a Boy named Sue appear for dinner in a very trendy pair of ragged jeans with worn cuffs and manufactured holes

Living in Bagan

Everyone we meet asks us to compare Bagan with Angkor Wat. But they are totally different. Firstly Bagan is on a flat plain. Secondly the scale is so different. Here the buildings are on a much smaller scale, but there are thousands of them. Angkor Wat is all about scale, huge buildings with decaying stucco covered with carvings and statues. Bagan was originally similar, but the stucco was made of mud and over the centuries was worn away by the elements. What remained of the stucco was mostly shaken loose by the 1975 earthquake. So now all the buildings are red brick, which gives them a totally different feel.


The town of Bagan is divided into Old Bagan and New Bagan. The centre of Old Bagan is a one square mile lot that is surrounded by a City Wall and Moat built in the 9th century.


There are 75 stuppas within the city wall, and until recently several small villages.


The family of a Boy named Sue lived in one of these villages. In 1990 the generals told everyone living within the City Wall that they had five days to tear down their house and move to an area the generals would provide. On the 5th day the Generals sent a large truck to each house and the family was ordered to load everything they owned including as much of the structure of their old house as possible, onto the truck. They were then taken to a plot of land in New Bagan, where all their belongings were dumped. They were told that this was their new home. They were given no help or monetary aid to build their new house.

A Boy named Sue is much more reticent about discussing the Generals than our previous guide, but he did tell us that story, as well as telling us that all the guides hate the present Government. However, when we told him that we had heard that all of Myanmar only got electricity for 3 days a week, he looked totally shocked that we knew this and refused to discuss it. This, despite the fact that Bagan is plagued by electricity cuts all the time. We are staying in one of Bagan’s five star Hotels, which is lovely. However the power shuts off several times each evening and everything goes pitch black for a few moments before the generators kick in. The same happens in the restaurants we eat in at night. When the power is on, it is totally erratic with the lights dimming and brightening again all the time. We have a television in the room which, because of the power supply, only produces a picture intermittently, although the sound works all the time.

This is also the first hotel we have stayed in that has Internet. However whenever we try to use it, we are told that it is down and that it will probably be switched on tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. It is never available for our use during our stay.

Bagan

The best way to absorb the splendors and scale of Bagan is to see it all spread out beneath you. The easiest way to do this is to climb one of the taller Temples where you get a 360 - degree view of the plain and can see all four thousand of the stuppas and temples radiating out for miles.


The plain is full of trees and shrubs with the red brick stuppas and temples rising up out of the vegetation. There are groups of smaller ones clustered together, while the larger ones tend to stand on their own.


It is a fantastic sight and one that the Government feels you should pay for. Many of the taller temples used to have staircases leading to the top where you could enjoy the view. In 2005 the Generals closed the staircases in eleven different buildings that the tourists used to climb, and built a watchtower that they now charge $10 for you to use. The watchtower is a truly ugly building designed with no thought of blending into the surroundings. It was built despite the United Nations asking the Generals on three different occasions not to build it. However, the tour guides are so furious with the Generals that they refuse to take tourists to it. Instead, they have scoured the thousands of temples and stuppas for other vantage points, and have found several. It is to one of these that we are taken to watch the sunset and see the fantastic views.


The Generals also built an Archaeological Museum in the middle of the plain, which is another ugly building. They filled it with treasures from the temples and Stuppas and charge the public $5 to enter. Again the guide refuse to take us there, instead taking us to the many temples that still have treasures inside, so that we can view them in situ and without paying the Government anything.

Bagan and Our Guide

Our guide in Bagan immediately reminds us of Lawrence, but without the star quality. He is twenty two, tall and lean with a terrible complexion and very trendy black framed glasses. Like many of the young Myanmar men his shiny black hair has dyed brown highlights. He has on a baby blue sweater over a white shirt and dark longyi, which he wears slung very low over his hips. He carries a mobile phone in his hand, and hanging from it is a small, terminally cute, white and pink teddy bear with a heart emblazoned on its chest. The overall effect leads one to question his sexuality. When he walks, the question is answered by a delicate swaying of the hips. He flashes a 200 megawatt smile that transforms his acne scared face into a very attractive one. What he has been unable to do with his complexion, he has made up for with many trips to the dentist. His teeth sparkle and gleam in the sunlight. He introduces himself by his Myanmar name, which is, he acknowledges, too difficult for foreigners to pronounce, so he suggests we call him Soe. Well that gets us off to a good start, and from this point on we refer to him as a Boy named Sue. He is charming and far easier company than Lawrence, plus he is an intelligent and knowledgeable guide.


We spend the next two days touring Bagan. Until today, we have been unsure about how well Mynamar compares to our previous trip to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Today, Myanmar comes into its own. Bagan is breathtaking; a large plain of around 42 square kilometers on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River, that is home to a few small villages and over 4000 temples and stuppas. Most of them were built between the 11th and 13th centuries, although the earliest date back to the 3rd century, and we see several from the 9th century.


It all came to an end with the Mongolian Invasion in 1287. Fortunately the Mongols were also Buddhists and left the Pagodas intact. At one point there were 5000 of them, but the ravages of time reduced that number considerably. Then a huge earthquake in 1975 damaged many more. Now there are around 4,000 but many are just piles of rubble. There are maybe 2,000 that are worth a visit. We only have two days, and manage to see about 15!