Bagan Myanmar

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This is one of the places we visited in Myanmar which from now on I'm going to call Burma. After a long straight boring bus ride to Mandalay on a road built by the Chinese to privide access to Yangon it's port, we arreved in Mandalay. Our friend Soe Soe was at the hotel looking for us with his trishaw which had 'welcome Angela and Philip' printed right on the pillows of it! After a tearful reunion we made plans to meet the following morning. We spent 8 days with Soe Soe and I'll blog about that later. We eventually left for Bagan, a Unesco World Heritage site about 8 hours away.
Since the road to Mandaly was so good, divided highway and all that, we thought that people who warned us about roads were mistaken. Well the bus started off on a divided highway and about ten minutes later turned off onto a side road that was virtually one lane with large rock/dirt shoulders. We thought it was a pee break or food stop but the bus continued along and we eventually realized this was the road! It pretty quickly became just rock or dusty dirt. The roads here are a man's fist size rocks as a base with dirt layed over them. Soon enough the dirt washes away and your left with a very bumpy road.
We made several 'pee' breaks on the side of the road, leaving the female passengers with full bladders. I couldn't bring myself to try to find a bush to get behind because I imagined walking through a minefield of poop and pee spots because it seemed like the buses always stopped in places where other buses had stopped. Along the way we did make a food stop but all the foreigners on the bus were timid about eating as the driver picked a dubious spot. The ladies were desperately trying to sell the foods atop their heads but with very few takers. We saw one boy with a tray on his head drop one of the dumplings he had and rinse it off in a bucket of dirty water and pop it back on his tray! We usually carry some small gifts for people so I started giving hair clips to the women and girls. they took so much pleasure in it and traded back and forth to get the colors they wanted. Soon all of the vendors were around us and the other tourists were deserted. They used the opportunity to at times quite rudely take pictures leading us to refrain from taking many.......
We had already decided to stay in the small town of Nyaungshwe rather than old or new Bagan because it was more of a real town. The government forcibly removed people from old Bagan years ago and built new Bagan. Now old Bagan is full of huge resorts where you can pay hundreds of dollars for rooms.
The historic site of 'Bagan' covers an area about the size of Manhattan and has around 2,500 structures. I'm sorry but my pictures uploaded like a shuffled deck of cards so they're in no kind of order. We had booked ahead and even though we weren't entirely satisfied with our hotel we had to stay as everything was full. There are not so many independent travelers in Burma, mostly it's tours of older people,, some looking too frail to endure some of the primitive conditions you find here. I haven't seen so many older travelers in all my travels in Asia. The governement here is trying to avoid the backpacker scene like in Thailand so they dictate the price of accommodatiion leading to high prices. We found that the bang for your buck in Burma with lodging falls far below anywhere's else we've been. Most include breakfast though and our hotel had an open rooftop dining room which we loved.
The first day of touring the temples we hired a wagon for the day and spent the day with a lovely young man the age of our son. He is the oldest child in his family and as such has the responsibility of helping his parents and siblings go to university. He has dreams of higher education as well but for the time being cannot pursue them. He bore absolutely no resentment about this it was just an accepted family value.
We trotted from place to place getting an overview of the entire area so that when we rented bikes we would have the lay of the land. The structures date from the 11th century when the King of the era decided that their religion was in need of change partly because the monks got to sleep with brides before the husbands! He introduced Bhuddism and built the temples. The people were so happy with the change that they built many of the stupas. You are able to climb up only a select few of the temples, sometimes from the interior or sometimes from outside. It was a perfectly enjoyable day and a feast for the eyes. For the next several days we cycled around the countryside enjoyng the freedom and the sites. a huge During a huge earthquake in 1975 most of the temples were damaged, many severely. A lot of the beautiful plaster work crumbled from the underlying brick structures and left huge cracks and devastation behind. Over time some restoration work has been done. The amazing thing is that many of them are still used by the people leading to the repainting of many of the Bhuddas.
The picture of me stitting on the stairs was taken on a temple which bus loads of tourists watch the sunset from. It was the only one which has a metal rail to help you climb up. It was so steep that Philip didn't climb up, worried he might reactivate the vertigo he experienced in Nepal on our last trip. We're planning another trek next month in Nepal and he didn't want to cause problems with doing it.
The first two pictures were of the food stop on the bus and some of the vendors, one of them examining the hair clips. The women here wear the ground up bark of a tree on their skin in various different ways. The picture of me with a woman with lines through her thainika (sp?) was taken after I had removed my earrings to give to her. Isn't she beautiful? The picture of me in a longi was taken at the market where I bought it. The picture of the table full of food is a typical Burmese meal. You order a curry ( not at all spicy) and everthing else comes with it!
The whole site was overwhelmingly beautiful and equal to Ankor Wat in many ways. I'm usre there is a million more things I could say about it but I've got to pack for a trip to some islands in the Andaman Sea side of Thailand. We've been back a few days and head out tonight. Hope I haven't made too many typos and spelling mistakes!

Two Days in Yangon

Imagine barreling along busy roads in a rattling, 40 year old car literally held together with duck tape with your knees keeping the back of the seat in front of you up and listening to 'Hotel California' and you're half way around the world? That's Yangon......
We arrived in Burma two and a half days ago and have packed more into three days then we've done in weeks. I feel in love with it in the first two hours and it's been uphill from that.
You immediately noticed a difference when even in the airport all the men were wearing longi or a type of sarong. With crisply starched white shirts, with tshirts, with plaid shirts or with long Indian shirts. Most women are wearing the female equivalent in a rainbow of colors, sometimes with matching blouses of the same fabric or sometimes with other tops. Some are worn as an actual sarong and some are fitted into a beautiful skirt much like in Laos but ankle length. Most women and children wear the ground up bark of a tree, called thanakha, as a makeup or sunscreen, evenly applied or in patterns of carefully applied areas on cheeks and noses and foreheads. It's very exotic.
The first thing we had to figure out is how to get money changed. Tourists must bring newer, crisp, unblemished american bills to exchange for kyat. The freaky thing is that you have to anticipate what you will need for the entire time you're here and bring it with you, having no idea what the real cost of traveling here will be. You cannot access money from a foreign bank here or use credit cards.
We found out that contrary to the past, banks are giving a fair exchange rate so we decded to go there instead of trying a money changer. We walked a few blocks to a bank to be greeted by two doormen and a row of four beautiful women on either side of the inner doorway wearing traditional dress. We were ushered upstairs and given coffee to drink while we carried on our transacion. Oh did I say that the downstairs of the bank was about the size of the lobby of a large, gracious hotel?
So on to the transaction, how much should we change? We had to dither because any sites or museums we visit and some transportation will be government run and they would like to be paid in American dollars. We decided on an amount and then began the process of examining our dollars. Much to our horror four of the hundred dollar bills we had didn't pass muster. It was explained to us that for transactions with hotels etc we can pay with american dollars and they don't have to be as perfect which came as a huge relief. We won't get a very good exchange rate for them though. We left the bank with a bag of cash and went on our merry way.
Two hours later we found ourselve aboard a barge docked behind one of the 'big three' pagodas to see here on bank of the river. The barge had transported pottery from a pottery village in the north, can you imagine our excitement?!! They were packed in straw inside baskets and were being unloaded and set out on the river bank for a sale. They were unpacked onboard and then hoisted onto shoulders and run through the barge and down bouncy planks onto the shore. They were all earthenware with many kinds of beatiful decoration and some were up to my waist.
We were with a new friend and he had a friend who took us onboard. The barge was dark inside with openings on both sides and many small stores were set up inside after the pots were unloaded. The weight that the men were carrying was staggering and they laughed and joked as they had close calls when someone would get in their way and they would lose their forward momentum. It was really a site to behold. We got all the details and will go visit the place they were made when we are in Mandalay.
After this we wandered the streets looking in teashops and watching the trishaws pedaling along. The bicycle cabs here have a sidecar withone seat facing forward, one backward and no umbrella over top. I think this is to keep them narrow so that they don't take up so much space on the streets. Most of the vehicles are 19070's or older and the majority of cabs look like they held together with a wing and a prayer. The scary thing is that vehicles absolutely do not yeild to pedestrians period. The awful thing is that you have to walk forward, sometimes towards a very fast moving vehicle so that you have enough time to cross after it passes you or you'll get hit. Sometimes you have to do this across four or more lanes of traffic. I pretty quickly learned how to say thank you after scurrying across following a local!
The area we're staying in has very few foreigners and we are really enjoying that because we are such a novelty. We're stopped quite regularly by locals for a chat or just smiled at a lot. Burmese people are the friendliest people we've ever come across and that's saying something because we've been in some pretty friendly countries.
We're staying in a hotel with wonderful staff and just by chance we think we have the best room. It's on the forth floor ( 5th here) and has opening windows that look over a green space and at the spires of a distant mosque. We hear the call to prayer and lots of other great sounds from there but I'm happy we're not any closer because first call is very early. I'm helping some of the young men who work here with their English in the evenings. They work very hard at it and are very determined to learn. I've had to interrupt myself a few times because tonight they're busy and have had to stop to work and I'm doing this in between.
Just another short thing. Today we saw the premiere pagoda here called the Shwedagon Paya and I'm sure it should be considered one of the wonders of the world and is probably one of the most beautiful things I've ever laid my eyes on.
I have to go now as we're off early in the morning to Mandaly by bus and I hav to get packed.
This is one of the taxis we took with me paying ( doesn't look half as bad in the picture), me in a tishaw, a portrait of the man who read my cards today, some pottery and the pagoda. Sorry I put one of the same pictures of the pagoda on twice, I must really like the picture! Actually it's because the pictures are so miniscule when I'm going through them to upload that I can hardly see them...
Hope I haven't made too many mistakes because I don't have time or energy to edit this.......

Royal Flora Again

This will be the last post for the Royal Flora. There was so much to see that we couldn't do it all. There were so many beautiful pavilions from other countries that we tried to breeze through them all. My favourites were Japan, Indonesia, Malasia and Bhutan. We were running out of batteries by the time we got to the first one, Bhutan, so we had to save some space for the end which was the 'imagination light garden'when the sun went down.
The Bhutan pictures are the ones of the stone wall with the carved wooden panels and the white stone building. The wicker type fence was from the Japanese garden and the picture of me in the flowers was in the Dutch pavilion. Canada seriously disapointed us both. There was a large photo of Niagra Falls with real water running over it on the outside of the exhibit and inside almost like p[oster boards that a school class might have made. There was one shocking one of the tar sands including a big photo of the devastation like it was something to be proud of. No surprise that the corporate sponsors were oil companies. Around the pavilion there were some totem poles and an inukshuk. I guess if I was the queen of themes I would have told about the people of Canada and the amazing things they do as well as highlighting gardens around the country. I certainly wouldn't have emphasized industry and major tourist attractions. Canada was one of the countries that took it as an opportunity to sell itself in an unflatering way, which only a small number of international exhibits did.
One of the hothouses high on my list of special places was the 'shaded paradise'. It was a huge building filled with lush jungle type vegetation threaded by rustic pathways and filled with garden art and places to sit. When you entered you immediately felt peaceful and contemplative. It was so lovely I could have wandered through it all day.
The large ferris wheel you see in the picture was conceived as a way to view the gardens from above. The large temple type buiding, the Royal Pavilion, was the focal point of the whole property and at a higher elevation. It housed commemorations of the Royal family.The upper level was like a temple and the murals around the entire perimeter illustrated the King's life. The murals were done in tones of greys with faces and highlights in gold. I've never seen anything like it. The King has been responsible for havng many of the temple and palace murals restored over his lifetime.
There are a few odd pictures of gardens and a picture of me standing with the figures that were placed about the property. The light garden was really hard to photograph because it was flashing on and off in places but I think you can get the idea. It was about the size of a quarter of the public gardens in Halifax.

Flora Show Bonsai

Another wonderful exhibit at the Royal Floa show was the Bonsai. They were all outside and in a lovely garden setting and all the plants were up on pedestals in their lovely pots, most of which were concrete.Unfortunately the brochures for the exhibit had run out so although they were numbered we had no information about the age or type of plants. Most of them must have been old though because the trunks of many of them were large. There were also quite a number of them whose roots were trained around stones. They were also the largest Bonsai trees I had ever seen and amongst the most beautiful. I couldn't help but think of my friend Ron who has been playing with Bonsai for years and every summer they go outside onto his deck and into his garden.