Pictures Jade Market

See the guy with the cell phone, well in Burma a cell phone number cost about $700 bucks. This will probably change rapidly as we saw lots of signs for cell phone companies. In asia people don't tend to have land lines and using cell phones is cheap. It was weird in Burma because there was very little technology, nobody walking around with ear phones or talking on phones. In fact the phones in Burma were old 1960's- 70's jobs and they were set up on tables in the street and you paid to use them.
Also check out the stacks of cash changing hands. It's hard to convey how chaotic and warren like this market was and how
exotic. It was impossible to walk around and both times I wished I had shoes on instead of sandles.

Pictures of Marble Carving

Pictures of Gold Pounding

Glimpses of Mandalay

There are so many more things to tell about Mandalay. We visited ancient teak monasteries, hilltop pakodas and back streets. Our breath caught in our throats over the sight of an onion dome floating over a mosque or the sound of the call to prayer or a peek at a strange and exotic hindu temple glimpsed through a gateway. Tea houses filled with men in longis or turbans sitting on child sized chairs.
People spitting everywhere till it seems like you can't find anywhere to to put your feet down.
A weaving studio hundreds of years old making silk with three hundred shuttles and two weavers sitting side by side weaving cloth so exquisite I could barely stand it.
Climbing to the top of a temple severely damaged by an earthquake and wondering if I'll be the last tourist to climb there as I'm risking life and limb to be there.
Having tea in a teahouse with Soe Soe and his friends while they talked politics and drink nescafe coffe so thick and sweet you can stand your spoon up in it.
Eating an early morning breakfast on the roof of our hotel while watching the city come alive.
Holding my breath to hurry by the dried fish stand at the bottom of our street.
Visiting pakoda after pakoda and chatting with monks in each one.
Watching the parade of monks with their bare feet slapping the sidewalks as they collect alms in a line from tallest to smallest. Those little novice monks tear at your heart, they're unbearably beautiful.
Barreling down the street in heavy traffic on the trishaw and hoping there would be no bumps to throw me off my perch.
Sitting at the chapati stand at night on kiddie chairs with a young muslim man staring at me and eventually joining us and asking me where is my gold and do I have money in my trying his darndest to look sexy.
Women in a miriad of colors carrying all manner of things on their heads.
One of the things that we noticed and that was different from traveling elsewhere is that because we were constantly with Soe Soe or his friends we had very little independent interaction with people. There were advantages to this though because it also meant we had translators. It was much the same for the rest of the trip in Burma because you either have a driver ( trishaw, ox cart, ponny cart etc) or a guide with you a lot of the time.
It's so weird. Last night the part of the blogger where you type was translating everything I did into an Asian script so that I had to type on a notepad and paste it to the blog. Tonight mysteriously it's back to normal....

Pounding Gold

After leaving Burma I've come to realize that other than the obvious glut of Chinese products, everything in Burma is made in Burma. This means that because of the way the country has been closed anything that was made by a machine anywhere else in the world, was made by hand in Burma, sometimes with age old processes.

All over Asia wherever there is Buddhism there is a tradition of buying gold leaf foil to apply to the outside of Buddhas's as an offering and act of respect. Nowhere is this taken as seriously as in Burma, a country where there are more Monastaries and Pakodas than anywhere else on earth, I'm sure. There are around one and a half million monks and nuns in the country. The monks dress in shades of amber and the nuns wear orange underdresses and hot pink overdresses. They look like exotic flowers scuttling along the streets with their matching umbrellas to protect them from the hot sun.

The act of applying the foil to a Buddha is only allowed of male worshippers. We saw some statues that had so much foil on them that you couldn't tell what was originally underneath it all. We saw one tourist remove a piece of foil from a Buddha and apply it to a plastic dinosaur from her purse. She then proceeded to place it in front of the Buddah and take it's picture. It would be like walking into a church and taking a precious artifact and playing with it.

In Mandalay you can visit a workshop where gold is pounded into goldleaf much the same way as it has been done for centuries. The small rectangle of solid gold, about 3/4 of an inch wide, half inch thick and a couple of inches long is flattened into a 'ribbon'. A tiny 3/4 by 3/4 piece is placed between two sheets of paper and a stack of these about an inch thick is fastened together. The stack is placed on a stone that has a 45 degree angle. It is then hammered with a sledge hammer for 7 hours until each piece has spread into a 3 inch square of gold foil. There was a line of five stones with men pounding all in a rythm together.

Meanwhile bamboo was soaked for three years and then boiled for three hours and whipped into a fine pulp. The paper made from this is so fine, probably the finest tissue I've ever seen. The stacks of gold are then taken to a room where two rows of women sitting at a low table remove it from the stacks and apply it to the fine paper. I'll never be able to see goldleaf on a Buddha again without seeing those men hammering away with headbands and longis and muscles gleaming.

An Evening With Soe Soe

One of the highlights of the visit to Mandalay was the trip to Soe Soe's village for a meal with his family. When Soe Soe got word that he could come back to Burma he had to find a way to make a living there again. His wife had had to sell his trishaw while he was first in Thailand just to feed the family. He wanted to go back to being a driver but he needed the proper permits before he could get set up. He was told that he needed a blood test which he had to pay for. He took the results back to the official and was told that his blood was bad. He knew this wasn't so because he saw the results of the test but he ended up having to pay off the official in order to get the license. Shortly after this a couple from France visited him in Mandaly. He had met them a few years ago before he left Burma. They decided to buy him his own trishaw. They bought a beautiful old one and Soe Soe completely over hauled it and painted it to look very sharp. We bought him a headlight and tail lights as well as a new tire rim and he definitely had the snazziest trishaw in the city.
Soe Soe's mother is a nun and has been since he was a child as a reaction to her husband taking on a second wife. They were from Shan State.
We had to take the public bus to his village which was a few kilometers outside the city. The bus was a 1940's, small bus, loaded to the gills. I thought he was joking when he said it was the bus! It was rush hour. We crawled over sacks and bags in the isles about a foot deep and I ended up squashed into the long back seat between an old couple on one side and kids on the other. Philip stood in the isle and had to more or less crouch because he couldn't stand upright the isle was so full of stuff. The fellow who rode shotgun and collected the money had to crawl along clinging to the outside of the bus to collect the fares through the windows. People even got on the roof ( we joking call that the upper class!).We were sure we would have to exit through the windows but as if by a miracle a path opened up for us. Oh did I say it was hot like an oven in the bus? We must have reeked by the time we got off.

The village was very beautiful and traditional. The homes were all bamboo or teak with thatch and they were all up in the air. Each home was surrounded by all manner of funky fences with animals and kids running around the yards. You don't actually get to go inside them because they're mainly for sleeping, everything else is done outside. Before leaving Mandaly we had stocked up on goodies and treats for gifts and we had a three month supply of small soaps, shampoo and toothbrushes from all the hotels we had been in.
As we walked along Soe Soe was taking us into to all his neighbours yards to introduce us and give them gifts. Then we got to a most beautiful spot and that was where we were to eat. It was the home of their elderly neighbours. We didn't question why we were there and not at his house. They took us over to their village temple where a little ceremony was underway to bring special offerings to the monks because the next day was to be a full moon festival. The kids were all dressed up and making the offerings. We were then offered tea and a sweet while everyone watched very loud tv and smoked the cigarettes we had given them right in the temple!
After touring around the village we returned to his neighbours and played with the kids for awhile. I am so ashamed to say I can't remember anyone's names so I can't call his wife by name but she made a meal using two of the small bucket type charcoal burners while we all squated around. We had a candlelight dinner outside under the stars. What a feast she made while carrying a whining, tired baby on her back. I couldn't hold the baby because she was shy and she had a cold.
Before we headed back to the city Soe Soe showed us where he and his wife live. They sleep in a lean-to on the back of another house and it's just a little bigger than their bed. It holds them and their two youngest children and all the other kids each sleep in different households and for this they pay high rent.
We decided to help. The neighbour where we had eaten offered Soe Soe the opportunity to take a structure, which was an animal shelter with a frame and roof, and make it into a house on his property. We gave Soe Soe $200 USD and he said that should buy the woven bamboo walls and anything else he needs to get his family under one roof. We were particularly interested to do this because his kids are not able to go to school until he gets his home sorted out. School is free but you must buy your own books and uniforms which keeps many children from attending. We gave his fourteen year old daughter money to buy books and school uniforms and she had to keep herself from crying her eyes out because she wants to go so badly.
After kisses all around we headed off on motorcycles back to the city. I was scared with the wind blowing through my hair and the traffic roaring by but I was invigorated by the small help we could be to one family and the big difference it would make to their lives.

Giving Soe Soe money was a little hairy. When you go to Burma you have to guess how much money you might need and you have to take it all with you in clean new american bills. It's nearly impossible to predict how much you'll need, we heard that prices went up 25-35 percent with fuel hikes and American interest and Hilary Clinton's visit just to give you an idea how fast things can change. Well we were only a quarter of the way into the trip and we had no idea how much more money we would need and a quarter of the money we did have turned out to be not new enough, not the right serial numbers or with invisible folds or blemishes. This made handing over some of it a little hairy because there is absolutely no way to get more.

It's really really hard for people in Burma right now because of inflation and all the stuff going on with politics, the price of basics for locals has become unrealistic.

Mandaly

Well I know this won't be as much fun without the pictures but the internet here is no good and I can't upload pictures.
We arrived in Mandaly after a perfectly boring bus ride. The road was straight and divided with no other traffic and there was not a village, or even tree for that matter, to see. We thought that surely people who swore the roads were poor in Burma hadn't been there in awhile. It was only later that we realized that it was THE only good road in the country that we came across.
We were shocked as we got closer to Mandaly there was a lot of road work being done by women wearing their longis down to their ankles, long sleeved shirts and conical hats with cloths tied across their faces. They were breaking up rock, carring it on their heads in baskets and then laying it all by hand, while squatting, on the new road. They were boiling tar in pits on the side and then pouring it into watering type cans to pour on the road. The only equipment we saw was a steamroller type thing. We had seen this befor but not to the extent we saw it here.Women get paid only three thousand Kyat a day whereas men get paid five thousand so women are the preferred employees.
We arrived in the back of a shared taxi which was a small 1950's car modified into a truck type transport. We later realized we paid more than our share but that's another story! Just as we got tot the lobbly there was a Burmese man at the desk and it was our friend Soe Soe. it was wonderful to see him after two years, and another baby for him, later.
Soe Soe is a trishaw driver in Mandaly where there are over 13,000 of them. The style of trishaw there was with the passengers sitting back to back or one facing forward and one back. I liked both positions for different reasons. Facing backwards you were also facing the traffic and it was one happy string of 'hellos' and 'what country' and smiles. Facing front you got to hear SoeSoe's commentary on everything and see where you were going.
After a breif powwow with Soe Soe we agreed that he would pick us up in the morning for tea and a talk about our time in Mandaly. He was there bright and early with his trishaw and off we went. Scary at first being in the traffic which was compiled of old old buses, trishaws, bikes, motorbikes, low chinese jeeps, trucks, taxis and a few luxury cars.
A lot of people hire a trishaw for the day and do sightseeing that way. We decided to put ourselves in Soe Soe's hands and hire him everyday so that he could spend time with us. He couldn't afford to otherwise because everday he needs to make money to support his six kids. Part of hiring a driver is also to feed him and also we figure to give him a few breaks from having to speak English non stop.
In the end we stayed with him for eight days with a small trip in the middle.
Soe Soe used to be a jade trader. As a teenager he hung around the jade market looking for a mentor. He found one who taught him the ropes and then with a partner he started trading. They would buy and accumulate jade then his partner would go to China to sell it. One day after about ten years his partner never came back from a China trip and left him with no money. He then started driving trishaw where he learned English before he had to flee to Thailand as an illegal migrant, where we met him. He was studying with a particular monk who advocated reading material that was not government approved and knew he was about to be arrested as a political prisoner. He left a pregnant wife and four chilren in Burma and made his way to MaiSot in Thailand. When we met him he was working as a waiter in a restaurant for 1,000 bhat or around $32 a month. He was also teaching other Burmese English so they could fit in to Thai society better. The police tolerate the illegal migrants there because they are treated like slaves in the factories and they could be bribed at payday. Soe Soe is so gutsy. He told me one day he was stopped by a policeman who spoke Thai. Soe Soe said to the policeman that he wasn't Burmese but from the Philipines and couldn't understand Thai and the policeman let him go!
After several years in Thailand during which time he smuggled his family in, he has now been able to return to Burma without the fear of being arrested. His wife made the trip back on her own with four small children including an infant. One of the realizations we've come to is that Burmese people are used to suffering and struggling in their daily lives.
Over the last few years we've managed to send Soe Soe a bit of money now and again with friends who visited Thailand. This will have to stop now as there is no way to get it there.
I digress.......the jade market in Burma is one of the most important supplies of jade for the Chinese market and the Chinese love their jade. To call it a market invokes a romantic, quaint picture although it was anything but. The outer market was set up in rows with the outer rows being sellers of raw jade and the inner rows being cutters and polishers. Then you go to the inner part and there is row upon row of sellers of cut and polished stones beginning with the least expensive and moving on to the most costly. There were smooth stones that were in the $5,000 range right down to small inexpensive stones. He showed us how they can be faked and lots of other tricks on looking for jade.
There were multiple tearooms where deals or breaks from deals were happening, game rooms for a game similar to our crokinole and jewelers making things with jade. It was warrens and alleyways and everthing was wet because they wet the stones when looking at raw ones. There were mounds of red mucky stuff everywhere that was the spittle from the paan's that people had in their cheeks filled with beetlenut and tobacco. I've seen people chew the beetle and hawk and spit in other countries but Burma took the cake. I'd say that the majority of men chew paan and most with bettlenut which makes the teeth a horrible red brown color. The spit is everywhere and in some cases like the jade market always spat in the same place so it builds up. I was sure I was going to get spat on riding on the back of the trishaw! We enjoyed the jade market and seeing the piles of dough the sellers had stacked and the big stakes and all the workers so much that we had a second visit.
Soe Soe also took us to see the marble market. It's an area of the city where marble carvers work. All white marble and dust down a whole street with not a dust mask in sightR The workers are white with the dust and using power tools to grind and carve. They mostly produce bhuddas of all sizes. They are shipped to Japan and Korea and China for starters. There were women crouched beside the statues giving them their final sanding and bhuddas in all stages of formation. It was facinating but left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths when we thought of the poor workers health.
One evening we went to see a traditional puppet show of marionettes. The elder pupateer is in his eighties. Over the years the art was almost lost but a group of people traveled the country looking for old masters and revitilized the art. It was accompanied by a traditional band and a child traditional dancer. Really entertaining both social and political commentary with some humor thrown in for good measure. The puppets were spectacularly beautiful and complex.
Another day we left the city with Soe Soe and went to an ancient city near by. We hired a horse and buggy and did a tour of the ruins. We then visited the worlds longest wooden bridge which is a footbidge over a river made of teak. It was such an atmospheric place with silouettes of monks or nuns or people on bikes crossing.
Every night we got back to the hotel really tired and then ventured out into the dark streets to find supper. There were no street lights and in some areas it was super dark. One of our favourite meals was at a chapati stand set up on the street. There were three women constantly patting and rolling the dough, a boy who made the dough and two people who cooked them non stop. You ordered a curry and chapati and it came with a bottomless pot of greentea, a bowl of dahl and lots of great pickles and chutneys all for about a buck each. We sat at low tables amongst many moslem men in traditional dress and Burmese in their longis, luxuriating in the exoticness of it all, then we took trishaws home down the dark and winding side streets and felt like we were in a different world.
We toured temples and castles and monasteries and the riverside and everything in between. We could be on a busy street one moment and in a peaceful alley the next. It was exciting and also wonderful to be with our friend. I'll tell you more in another installment because in about ten minutes the electricity will go out and it's easier to brush your teeth with light. We are on a three km white sand beach , on an island, staying in a beach hut looking straight out to sea. It feels a bit like camping but with no cooking involved. We fill large pop bottles with water and put them in the hot sand for hot water. A lot of laying in the hammock and daydreaming. I've read three books in four days but there are plenty of books to borrow here so I can read as much as I want to. Goodnoght for now.