Time Travel
Written: Nov 15 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Exotic, time-machine effect of trip back through the decades
Cons: Rough travel, to put it mildly
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| lily's Full Review: Burma (Myanmar) |
To travel through Burma is to travel back in time. Landing in Rangoon is like landing in the 1940s. My mission was to see as much of the country as the visa I'd received, which permitted just one week in the country, would permit. Foiled by awkward and inconvenient train and ferry schedules, I made contact by word of mouth with "a guy who will drive you in his pick-up" to Pagan and Mandalay and back.
Despite the improbability, my call to a phone number on a scrap of paper yielded success. I met with my new friend, handed him about $100 in cash to buy gasoline for the trip, and agreed to meet the following morning to begin the journey. He did return, accompanied by his uncle, a man in military uniform who would "guide" us through the random roadside checkpoints, and we were on our way.
What followed was a week in another lifetime. My travel companion and I sat in the back of the open pickup truck, winding through dusty villages on a great circle route through central Burma, Myanmar. We saw the whole countryside though this backwards lens, the men in their wrapround skirtlike longyi, the women with their faces painted in beige paste, the children looking surprisingly tidy, if barefoot, in school uniforms. Everyone was on paths and roadside and we were the spectators sharing moments of their lives we passed.
By night we flew along the highways with all the big trucks, headlights out because no replacement lamps for these 40 year old trucks were to be found in Burma. We kept our minds off the tens of gallons of gasoline stowed just in front of us, and prayed for a safe journey.
Pagan was our first stop, an ancient city in a nearly moonscape flatland of western Burma. As far as the eye could see were stone and brick temples, the stupas, dotting the countryside. We visited one after another, climbing to the tops, listening to the winds whistle, feeling not 40 but perhaps hundreds or even thousands of years away. We resisted the temptation to pick through the loose rubble at the foot of the shrines as mementos to bring home.
There were few tourists, one or two here or there who found their odd ways, like we did, to Pagan. We were lured by a taxi driver to an uncle's shop, and bought a handful of gemstones for a few dollars.They were pigeon-blood rubies, star sapphires, and jade, all blemished, all probably worth no more than we paid. But they were our treasures of an experience.
We drove on to Mandalay, again by night, and found back alley shops where young girls hurriedly made us a kalaga, a fabric of silk and velvet and sequins,its elephant shapes stuffed thick with cotton, while we watched. We climbed the Mandalay Hill and marveled at the gold-encrusted Buddha.
To be a tourist in Burma is a tense experience. You visit the treasures of its history, keep your western profile low, and only breathe evenly at the end of your stay. There are rumblings of politics and anxiety on the streets, and you feel furtive glances, however imagined, all around you. It is a scary place to visit, one that returns to you in quick midnight dreams for years to come.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
lily
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 6 members
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