A country less travelled

I went back and forth over my decision to go to Myanmar (Burma) for weeks
before I left for Asia and for weeks after I got to Thailand. My express
purpose for going was to do a story on the remainng Jewish community in
Yangon, a group of eight families, down from 2,500 people only 50 years ago.

The politics of visiting Burma are what made me hesitate. A state ruled by a
military government -- the Peace and Development Council (SPDC) -- Myanmar
is seen by many as a place to be avoided until democracy takes hold.

In fact, elections were held in 1989 and were won by the National League for
Democracy (NLD), under the leadership of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San
Suu Kyi. The SPDC placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest and proceeded
to quash any other opposition. To this day, many Burmese are denied basic
rights, political activists are jailed and there is no freedom of the press.

Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have asked on the international community to
boycott travel to Myanmar until the candidates elected in 1989 are allowed
to form a government. But some members of the NLD believe there is nothing
to be gained by such a boycott and that the only people who would suffer are
the Burmese themselves. It can be argued that a decade of supporting this
boycott has yielded no change in the government's position and has kept
tourist dollars out of the hands of poverty-stricken Burmese residents.

After reading the pros and cons of going, being the inquisitive journalist
that I am, I decided that I wanted to see the situation for myself. But I
limited myself to a very short stay; enough to see the synagogue and talk to
the trustee, and to take a short trip to the town of Bago -- a small,
little-touristed town just a few hours from Yangon. And I made sure not to
fly the national airline, stay in government-run guest houses or use a
government-spnsored guide. The only times I couldn't get out of putting
money into the hands of the junta was buying the $5 train ticket to Bago and
paying the $10 airport-leaving tax. In both cases, only American cash would
do; the government does not even accept its own currency!

The experience was incredible. One of the results of the military junta is
that foreign influence has hardly taken hold in Burma. Traditional dress,
the longyi (pronounced lonji,) is worn by almost everyone; men and women
still cover their faces with tanaka, a white paste made from the bark of the
tanaka tree, to protect their skin from the sun; tourists are few and far
between; guest houses offer the same style of accommodation as that in
Thailand but without the blaring satellite televisions playing soccer
matches or B-rated movies; and the lure (for me) of the Internet was several
hundred miles away.

Yangon itself was not unlike Bangkok in its size and hectic pace, with a few
wonderful exceptions -- there are not the dozens and dozens of taxi and
tuk-tuk drivers everywhere asking you where you want to go; and the
government has banned honking within the city limits so buses, taxis and
other vehicles flash their lights warning you to get out of the way. After a
couple of days there, seeing a few of the mandatory sites and having my
interview with the synagogue trustee (read about it in the Jewish Western
Bulletin soon, I hope) I headed out to Bago.

This was the place for me. The first morning, I went to walk the narrow
" streets" around the town. Off the main street, paved roads gave way to dirt
roads, which turned into dirt paths lined with shacks that were almost
falling down next to one another. It was hard to tell if I was in the front
of someone's home or standing in their "back yard." Children ran up to voice
their minimal English -- "Hey you!" (really I don't know where they got this
from) and "I love you" or just to grab my hand or run around me.

When I passed a group sitting and eating breakfast, one of the women
motioned for me to join them. They were gathered around a small wooden
plank, sitting on stools. It was a sort of "restaurant" where one woman was
cooking. I was handed a bowl of ... well ... I'm not really sure. It had
noodles, egg boiled in a broth and what I think was deep fried fish. I
glanced at the chickens running freely around my feet (and the pots),
hesitated for a second, and then dug in. I suppose if there was any place to
get the bird flu, this was it but the mixture was boiled well enough so I
took the chance. The dish wouldn't have made the cover of "Cuisine" magazine
but it was good enough; and they seemed very pleased that I liked it.

Then I took out my digital camera and started taking picures of the kids.
When I played back the pictures for them, they howled and pointed, then
pointed at one another laughing. No English was ever spoken until I offered
to pay for the meal. Then some boy who knew a little said, "One hundred
kyat" (16 cents), which I handed over. It seems everything was "One hundred
kyat.

For the rest of the day I decided to tour the town, which has a surprising
number of temples, ordination halls, pagodas, etc. for such a small place.
Instead of walking, I hired an eager trishaw driver who had a basic (I mean
VERY basic) level of English. (A trishaw is a bicycle that has attached on
the right side two padded seats back to back. Kind of like a motorcycle with
a side-car but the movement is all pedal power.) Between touristy temples
(By touristy, I mean they're mentioned in the guide book but hardly have any
tourists), I asked him to take me to spots where he usually ate or hung out
and we had a great day wandering around.

At one point Zuomoe (my guide) insisted we go to a Buddhist monastery I had
read about. He wasn't really able to explain why... something about the
monks eating... but I agreed. The place is one of the biggest in the
country, housing some 700 monks, and we walked freely from one area to
another, looking into places the monks slept, studied, cooked and ate. I
took pictures of anything I wanted. Then Zuomoe sat down beside the main
walkway of the monastery and motioned for me to wait. Again I wasn't sure
what was up until, after about half an hour, one monk came out and rang two
huge gongs -- a wooden one and a metal one. Pretty soon, two processions of
monks came into the walkway from either end of the monastery, bowls all
strung over their right shoulders, and headed slowly and almost solemnly
down the walkway into the dining hall. They hardly noticed as I, along with
a few other tourists who had been brought in, snapped picture after picture,
our flashes going off just metres from their faces. The lines of the monks
were so long, the procession took about 20 minutes for them all to go in.
I joked with Zuomoe that they must be going in one side of the dining room,
coming out the back and coming around again. He nodded and said "Yes" with a
complete lack of understanding of anything I had said.

During the rest of the day, we visited some more pagodas and the required
reclining Buddha. I tried to teach him some more English and French but the
Burmese have a very hard time pronouncing things like the Enlish "L" at the
end of hotel, or the French "J". We laughed as he tried to learn them. He
taught me how to say "thank you" (kezudemaray) and people were absolutely
tickled whenever I used it.

At the end of the day, he wanted me to meet his family and I sat with him
and had coffee in one of the barely standing shacks like the ones I had
passed that morning. His family sat around and Zuomoe helped us say a few
words to one another. Seeing the poor conditions in which they lived, I was
glad I had come and that my tourist money was going into their pockets and
not into another guest house at some resort island in Thailand. The $20 I
paid for the guided tour meant a hell of a lot more to them.

Finally, not wanting to just return to my hotel, I asked Zuomoe if there was
a place to play pool (a common method of mine for meeting locals and
enjoying each other's company without having to speak the language) so he
took me to a local hang out and set me up in a couple of games with a friend
of his, one of their better players. I lost two games against him but I held
my own, much to the amusement of the men and women watching. I think this
was probably the first time they had ever seen a foreign woman pick up a
pool cue.

The next morning, Zuomoe got me to the right pickup truck back to Yangon. I
tried to give him a hug good-bye but it was clear he had no idea what I was
doing. (THAT was embarrassing!) Instead, we opted for handshakes and the
promise to write.
On my way out of Yangon the next day, I came across a copy of the local
newspaper. It's quite something to see what gets printed where there's no
freedom of the press. The cover and much of the content is comprised only of
international stories taken from the Internet and inside are poems and long
speeches about Myanmar's beauty and the horror of the influence of the
" World Power" (the United States). I think they need some fresh ideas. Maybe
I'll go back and see if they need an editor...

Next week... Chiang Mai and northern Thailand.