Myanmar (Day 128) — Harmon Family

One theme of the trip is to visit places with no McDonald’s and very different cultures. Myanmar fit the bill! Although its decades of isolation have ended, Myanmar still has few tourists and almost no Americans. We met 6 Americans over 3 weeks.

SHWEDAGON PAGODA

We were all up early due to the time change, so we decided to do a family sunrise visit to the Shwedagon pagoda. It is probably the world’s largest and oldest gold temple. With 8 hairs of the Buddha, 5,000+ diamonds, and over 60 surrounding temples, it is a draw for thousands of worshipers day and night.

Maybe the most surprising thing was how active it was with worshipers. On your average week at a famous church like St Paul’s Cathedral in London, tourists probably outnumber worshipers 10 to 1 (or more). Here, there were only a handful of western tourists and thousands of Burmese pilgrims from rural areas and hundreds of Buddhist monks and nuns. (For confusing reasons, you call people from Myanmar “Burmese” instead of “Myanmarian.”) Everywhere you looked, people were chanting, praying, and making offerings.

We also returned to see the temple at night.

All Burmese buddhist men are supposed to be spend some time in training as a monk. The cities are covered with billboards announcing lectures by prominent monks. We have rarely been to a country where religion plays such a prominent role.

*****

DALA

We took a ferry from Yangon to a town across the river called Dala. The lack of a bridge has kept Dala relatively undeveloped, even though it is right next to Yangon. It is as if Manhattan had no bridges, and Brooklyn looked like a rural town in Maine.

The ferry passengers were pretty much all locals. A number were carrying cats — not as pets, we were told, but for rodent control. The ferry waiting station was plastered with ads for medicines for intestinal worms, a reminder that food safety is not exactly perfect here. (But we were excited to be really traveling again! We love exploring countries that are so different.)

We rode around Dala on trishaw bikes.

In what would be a theme in southeast Asia, we visited some small family businesses, like this rice wrap making operation on a family’s front porch. The industriousness of the Burmese people, often in the face of a seemingly impossible system, was evident everywhere we went.

*****

NUNNERY

We felt honored to be able to visit to a Buddhist Nunnery. The nuns try to live a life of asceticism and simplicity. They study and pray 11 hours every day and eat only twice, at 5:30 am and at 11 am. They say the evening hunger keeps them focused on their studies. There is no TV, no make up, and they all must shave their heads. The overall goal is to reduce distractions and worldly concerns. We arrived at lunch to hear the whole group mystically chanting.

The nuns ranged in age from 8 to 82. They were all very welcoming to us as strangers.

*****

AYEYARWADY RIVER

Ayeyarwady means “abounding in riches,” and it is one of the largest rivers you probably have never heard of. Considering the bad roads in Myanmar, we thought it would be fun to do part of the trip by boat and see more of the countryside. It was great to have visit from Gigi and Papa Doc (Jamie’s parents) and their friend and ours Susan Butler. Thanks for coming all the way for an adventure in Myanmar!

As we rode along the river, we saw lots of scenes of daily life, like this family bath time at the river.

A farmer’s house made of dried leaves.

The Harmon ladies!

*****

BRONZE SCULPTURE WORKSHOP

We visited a sculpture workshop where they showed us how to make bronze sculptures using the traditional “lost wax” method. It is cool that this is basically the same progress used by the ancient Romans and others. The steps are:

Carve a statue in soft wax (like below).

Cover the wax statue in clay (making a negative mold)
Heat up bronze until it is a liquid and pour it into the clay mold.
The molten bronze melts away the wax. The bronze takes on the form of the wax inside the clay mold.
After the bronze dries, break apart the clay outside
Viola - You have a bronze statue!

Definitely the most fun part was when the kids got to take a hammer and break off the pottery exterior! Here, Huey bangs away to find a bronze arm underneath.

*****

CULTURE

Myanmar is larger than Thailand or Vietnam, but many Americans can’t place it on a map and don’t know much about it. (It is in Southeast Asia, to the west of Thailand.)

Many Burmese men were a longyi, which is a bit like a sarong in India.

Until relatively recently, people in Myanmar had no family names. Instead, names were based on the day of the week you were born. Interestingly, for this process, there are 8 days in a week! Wednesday is split into 2 days because the Buddha was born on a Wednesday. So our kids would be called Hazel Wednesday Morning and Hugh Thursday.

The local religion is a mix of Buddhism and a belief in traditional spirits called Nats. Burmese people give offerings to Buddha and (especially) Nat statues that might seem surprising in the USA: toothpaste, packs of cookies, cash, little bits of gold leaf, bottled water, bananas, cooking oil, lit cigarettes, and more.

This Nat was given a lit cigarette, betel leaf (sort of like chewing tobacco), and a bunch of money.

Most Americans think you eat all Asian food with chopsticks. But chopsticks have never been common in Myanmar. For centuries, most people ate with their hands, often scooping up food with a ball of rice. When the country began to slowly open to tourism in 1996(!), spoons and forks (but not always knives) became common in restaurants. Even today, eating with yours hands is still the most typical way at home in Myanmar.

You often see trucks with the engine on the outside, like this one below. Like many things in Myanmar, this truck seems to have been made in a very small shop out of simple parts.

Every day is Laundry Day for someone on the river. (Washing machines are not common here.)

Most people do their shopping in local markets with stall after stall of food, clothing, etc. They had many unusual items. One had a huge pile of white powder that turned out to be MSG, the much maligned food additive. Another stall sold fried ants. Ashley and Costanza both tried them. Costanza said, “Bad, but Malarone is worse!”

Anyone for some fish heads with flies?

*****

RECENT HISTORY

Myanmar has been held back by so many things – colonialism, military rule, communism, ongoing civil wars, corruption, and more. In under 100 years, Myanmar went from being one of the richest nations in Asia to one of the poorest. The largest rice exporter in the world in the 1930’s, Myanmar saw its people suffering from malnutrition decades later.

Sadly, Myanmar has the current world record for the longest ongoing civil war – 72 years and counting. Myanmar is made up of ethnic Burmese people in the center and many other ethnic groups in the surrounding areas. In the 1940’s, a leader named Aung San united the factions in a quest to end British colonial rule. The British left in 1948. That should have been a time to celebrate and build the country. Instead, Aung San was assassinated, and the country descended into a chaotic civil war that continues to today. There are currently 20 different armed militias, mostly representing the different ethnic minority groups from the hills against the center. Many parts of the country are off limits, even to citizens, due to the ongoing conflicts.. Oddly, despite all of this, we saw very little security or military presence on our trip.

Myanmar seemed to be on a better path with the 2015 parliamentary victory of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, youngest daughter of Aung San, the man who united Myanmar in the 1940’s. But progress has been frustratingly slow. The people of Myanmar seem to love her, and they say her hands are tied because the constitution (written by the military before they allowed elections) guarantees ongoing military control. Locals say she has still managed to get cease fire agreements with 10 of the 20 armed groups, build more roads, and decrease corruption. But it is not all roses: many battles are ongoing, there are still atrocities, they are still the #2 opium producer in the world, etc. The international community has not been happy with her. But if she can manage to change the constitution without triggering a coup d’etat, she may still be able to be the savior that so many wished she would be. Our local guide said it will take 100 years to find someone else as good as her.

*****

PORTRAITS OF MYANMAR

Myanmar had some of the most evocative people on our trip. They were just living their lives, often with so much struggle. You may notice that many women (and some men) wear a sort of face paint called thanaka. Made from a local tree, it is thought to be both beautiful and a natural sunscreen.

The Pa-O woman and girl (2 pictures above) are part of one of the ethnic groups that has been at war with the government.

If you look carefully at the 2 pictures above, you will see that the old woman with the cigar has 6 fingers on her left hand (2 thumbs). We didn’t notice until we looked at the pictures days later. Later, we met another woman with 6 fingers on 1 hand. This seems to be much more common in Myanmar.

The last 2 pictures are of women from the “long necked” Kayan group in Myanmar. The Kayan are another one of the ethnic groups that has been at war with the government. It can be dangerous for foreigners to visit their home region in Myanmar, and many Kayan people have fled to other areas. Legend holds that these women are descended from an alchemist and a dragon. The women start putting on rings at 8 years old, and they add more rings as they get older. By age 20, they have 24 rings that weigh about 22 pounds! They can’t take them off because the neck muscles atrophy.

The number of people we wanted to photograph seemed like nothing compared to the number of people who wanted to photograph us! Especially Hazel. Many times, they also would touch her arm or her hair.

Here are 9 different groups of people who wanted pictures with Hazel in one afternoon!