Myanmar
Jan-Feb, 2007


In a land far away, across the oceans of place and time, lies a place called "the golden land". In truth it is the land that time forgot. Travel to the capital of the golden land, Yangoon, formerly called Rangoon, and you are immediately confronted by a place that looks like India, like Calcutta, but it isn't. Immense colonial buildings some painted pink, or blue, or hot yellow, slowly decay in the tropical sun. The power supply is intermittent, so at times the city is illuminated at night like any other city, and the giant golden spires of the pagodas shine like a searchlight into the sky. More commonly, the city is plunged into darkness, and business is transacted by candlelight.

But already I am mistaken about Myanmar. The capital, Yangoon, formerly known as Rangoon is no longer the capital. Fearful of attack from their perceived enemy, the United States of America, and advised my a number of astrologers, the military government that rules Myanmar moved, one dark and rainy night, the entire capital to a small town some hundred km away. Today, hardly anyone knows where it is.

One hundred years ago Myanmar, formerly Burma, was a small holding of the great colonial power, England. The English quickly overwelmed the limited defences of Burma, sent the king into exile, carted off as many gold covered Buddha statues as they could, and then settled into a century of beign neglect.

One thousand years before the English came to Burma the Buddha did, or so it is told. He left behind giant footprints, pieces of hair that became the centerpieces of glittering temples, and culture of mindfullness and awareness that even the tropical sun and rain couldn't dim.

It was World War II that began the serious troubles. Hundreds of thousands of people died, almost every town was bombed, and the local culture was devestated. With the war's conclusion, Burma sued for independence from England. This was quickly granted. But since then the various generals that have controled Burma have embarked on ill conceived economic experiments. All the chinese and indians, the shopkeepers, were driven out. Thousands were executed. The local currency, the kyat, was devalued overnight, to make a classless society. Instead of rich and poor, everyone was poor. To signal the dawn of a new day, even the name of the country was changed, from Burma to Myanmar. And over the country a darkness settled that even the golden temples couldn't shake. This is the land that time forgot.

We spent a month in Myanmar in January. Much of it was similar to the last time I visited, ten years ago. The people are still incrediably friendly, the roads still unbelievibly poor, and the devotion of the average person for buddhism still equally intense. Unfortunately though I wasn't able to post anything to this blog while in Myanmar, it just wasn't practical. So instead of writing about everywhere we went I'm just going to write about one place, and hopefully that will suffice.

When you think about development in a third world country you have to ask yourself, "what would that look like? Who would benefit? What are the pitfalls?" In mid January we left the dusty Are Iwaddy plain and traveled into the hills of the souther Shan state to visit one of Myanmar's most famous tourist destinations, Inle Lake. As a tourist destination Inle Lake is forced to confront the issues of development that most other locations in Myanmar merely wished they had. But more of that later.

Set in a shallow bowl between two golden brown ridges Inle Lake looks like a chip of liquid sky has fallen to earth. It extends as far as the eye can see, from the village of Nyaungshwe in the north for more than thirty misty miles to the south. The amazing thing is that the shoreline is hard to find; there isn't any really. Instead, the water imperceptably turns into floating marsh islands that have been cultivated in a neverending series of gardens. To prevent the islands from drifting away they are anchored along their length by tall bamboo poles driven into the bottom. Amongst the floating gardens are some 17 villages on stilts. Almost all of them are only accessed only by boat.

I had visited Inle Lake some ten years before. Sadly, I was suffering from a case of traveler's dysentary at that time. Although I cant remember much about Inle, except for the path to and from the toilet, I can still remember the place that gave me the dysentary, and the young mother holding her barebottomed child in her arms as she served me some foul tasting soup in Mingun.

Even then I can remember Inle Lake to be a touristy town. There was an organized infrastructure of cheap hotels for backpackers and a jetty where motorboats took tourists on tours around the lake. I hadn't taken the tour back then, but Yasha and I had decided that this time, even if it was touristy, we would do it.

Yet on our first night in Inle Lake we were given a bit of a shock. We were hanging around the jetty at dusk when, a fleet of immense tourist buses began to arrive. Plainly they had just made the trip from the airport, some thirty miles distant, and hadn't made the bone-jarring 15 hour drive from Yangoon or Mandaly. These were all package tourists, on a two-week tour of Myanmar. They were helped down from the bus and directly into a motorlaunch. Their samsonite baggage was loaded, and off they went in a cloud of spray. Something major was going on.

Later we learned that five mega resorts have been positioned around the lake, and that the packpackers, although they contribute more money to the local economy then the package tours do, have become the minority.

At this point, Yasha dug in her heels. She wasn't going to go on some expensive tour on the lake with a bunch of other tourists. I agreed, but it seemed a shame to come all that distance and not explore the lake just due to our outraged moral principles. So the following day we decided to rent bicycles instead.

We cycled in the early morning sun on a dirt path between two marshes. Naked children were riding on the backs of water buffaloes, hordes of ducks were squaking, and golden light illuminated everything with grace. It was beautiful.
After awhile, we stopped by a huge, seemingly abandoned monestary. Constructed all of wood, it stood on pilings above the marshy lake front. We walked inside. At least it looked abandoned. The entire first floor was bare, but in the corner there were several pairs of sandals next to the stairs to the second floor. We ascended to find two old monks sitting on a carpeted platform. In the front of the hall, wooden Buddhas, gold painted and seeming of great age, surmounted the alter. No wonder the monks lived in the shrine room, it was probably the only way to deter smugglers. Then, surprisingly, they offered us lunch.

Later we continued on our way. We cycled down a dirt road to find a group of villages rebuilding a crumbling group of stupas (zedis) and buddha statues. We wanded to the lake front. Immediately a woman asked us if we wanted to go out in their canoe. Why not? We paddled out to their village, which was set on stilts admist floating tomato gardens. Just to the south of us we could see the imitation Shan archetecture of a mega resort. It seemed odd, probably none of the westerners in the resort had even been to this village.

After paddeling for some time we went to their house. Set on stilts, with walls of woven bamboo, it comprised a mere two rooms. A little gangplank in the back led to the outhouse. Of course, it emptied directly into the lake. Not more then ten feet away people were bathing. One room of the house had a bed, with a mosquito net, for husband, wife, and three children. The other room was virtually bare. a broken mirror stood on a shelf, two chairs were against the wall, and everyone just squatted next to the fire. The children were chewing on pieces of just-cut sugar cane.

When we left, we paid our new friend 2,000 kyat. That wasn't even two dollars.
Several hundred yards away poeple were relaxing in their hundred dollar room and probably preparing for a spa treatment. It all seemed obscene. But who is to blame? The military government, that enjoys wealth yet deliberately keeps its population poor? The sanctions imposed by the Bush administration on Myanmar? The deliberatly valueless kyat? Even Yasha and I are complicit; in America we aren't even considered middle class, yet in myanmar we have what no one else has, the right to vote.

When we paddled back to our cycles our heads were spinning. There really isn't anything we could do to help these people. All we could do was show them that we had hearts, just like them, and that we cared. Quickly we got on our bikes and rode off. Yes, this is the land that time forgot. But i guess it is now our job to make sure that people in other countries dont forget.