A Brief Guide to Viewing this Page:
      If you see a little photo that looks interesting, click on it and it will open up to its full size. It's a wonderful thing, this html. At the same time, I am kind of disappointed that the photos don't appear as good as I have them in my photo album. I don't know if it is the scanner or monitor or--gasp!--human error. In fact, often just a thumbnail is enough. It is asking a lot of you to click on every single picture (and if you are using a modem you won't have the patience). You are very, very busy people and I want you to have enough time to enjoy other parts of my website such as the Hungarian Pig Killing exhibition or the new South America section or even toilet photos from around the world. That said, if you are dying to see my Photoshop handiwork, by all means, click away.
     The photos at the bottom are extras that I like. I am too lazy to write about them.

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi Crowds

(Note: Soon after I was there (1996), the government stopped allowing Suu Kyi these audiences and I don't think it has happened since. It has been very rare for her to appear in public. I feel honored to have seen this incredibly courageous woman.)

Preparation

Open Blade

     After this I strolled over to the market to look for shampoo. I'd read in the Lonely Planet book that the Burmese use a liquid of herbs and boiled bark and it leaves the hair all wonderful. I had the words written down in Burmese and went hunting around the market for it, purposely approaching women who were already with pen and paper. (I have learned--but sometimes forget--to do this so I don't embarrass someone who is illiterate by presenting them with something to read.) A few people made some vague pointing, but it wasn't until the fifth woman or so who sent a young girl to show me exactly where to find it.
     She led me down a narrow alley of the market, a darkened corridor of mud and haphazardly placed bricks where people cautiously walked. The smells were toxic: dried fish and some sort of fermented shrimp paste or god knows what mixed in with soapy smells and acrid, pungent, industrial, brain-cell-killing odors of unknown origin. A long way down this path we finally came to a group of women selling the magic liquid. It was a brown fluid with bits of bark and plant in it. I was told to use the whole plastic bag at a time (about 300mg, almost as much as a Coke can). The cost: 2 kyats (US 2 cents). As with my barber, I got a picture together with the women.
     It was a great scene at the market. People were over-the-top friendly, even outdoing the unbelievably friendly everyday folk one encounters on the street. Ran into one amazing looking guy who said he was a Buddhist missionary. He said that Bill Clinton was a good friend, as was "James Bond, zero zero nine."

Shampoo

Missionary

Sewer

Betel Nut

Mandalay--The New Light of Myanmar

(Note: The government changed the official name of the country to Myanmar, but acknowledging the name change is akin to acknowledging the legitimacy of the military government, so everyone calls it by it's old colonial name, Burma.
     -Sub-note: "Myanmar" is actually a British spelling of "Myanma"--in case you are fascinated by such things.
          --Micro-sub note: It's hard to read small text in italics, isn't it?)

Post Office

     Several of the newspaper's 12 pages are filled with innocuous international news (e.g. car crash in USA, Israeli politics, Cambodian fighting) but if the paper has got you down and you're considering investigating the TV or radio, The New Light of Myanmar suddenly looks sufficient. One day's TV listings (that rarely change) for the 5-hour weekday broadcast were:

4:45pm "Cute Little Dancers"
5:00pm "Kung Fu"
7:10pm "Myanma Mangoes"
7:30pm "Song Variety"...

     The radio offers no relief. Segments called "My Kind of Music", "Variations on a Tune", and "Portfolio for Easy Listening" are the bolder sounding shows, but anytime I tuned my Walkman in, I couldn't discern any difference to the music.

     I take back what I said about Myanmar Radio. At this moment I can faintly hear the Allman Brothers. That's strange. I thought English language music was forbidden and I'm not near a border. Now I can hear a Northeast Indian station, but I'm not sure if it is the same one, although it's common knowledge that Northeast India is an Allman Brothers stronghold. Now I hear a Thai station. Now I hear another.

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A similar ferris wheel in Rangoon--but motorized. It was too dark to get Maymyo pix. Deepest apologies.

The Shampoo Hunt

Flies

     I like this funky shampoo I use. The tree bark smell doesn't stimulate me, but half the fun is looking for and buying it. Today it was in the deep, dark recesses of the labyrinth market, past the women selling fish who are losing the battle against the zillion flies. This shampoo woman had a ladle in a big ceramic pot that she spooned into a plastic bag. Then she got some of the bark, chopped it up and added it. Voila! Burmese shampoo. Of course, all the women nearby had a great laugh at me wanting this stuff.

Bagan--Surviving on 40 cents a Day

Ananda

Shwezigon

Thatbinnpyu

Brooding Traveler

Sunset

     Tonight Ioana and I were at Shwesandaw Pagoda again for the sunset. Afterward, she had her bike and I stood on the road trying to hitchhike the 5km back to the guest house. A big truck pulled up. It was the second vehicle to pass. I heaved up Ioana and her bike and myself in the back of the truck after the driver said he'd take us for free. A slight kid was the only one in the back with us. He wore a tattered tank top and longyi (sarong). He spoke English pretty well. He said he was working on one of the pagoda restoration projects. He asked us the usual questions but we were pressing him about his life. As the truck drove we had to squint because the dust was swirling around, whipping up into our faces. The sky was nearly dark but the streetlights mixed with the dust gave a soft glow to this kid's face that flickered after each light we passed. He was 17 years old and spoke English a little better than the average Burmese I have come across. I asked if his father was driving but he answered that it was his "master". Maybe it was a rush for him to speak English, because it was with enthusiasm that he told of working 7 days a week from 7am to 7pm. The question I let hang in the air; I was sure Ioana was going to ask it. She did. 1500 kyats a month. (US $12) I only said that he works a lot, to which he nodded. I asked him if he likes soccer and the World Cup. When the truck stopped to drop us off a couple of guys helped lower the bike down. I gave the master a San Francisco postcard and gave the kid my Cameroon World Cup t-shirt I was wearing that he had admired.

     I'm still haunted by the kid I met in the truck. It wasn't just that he earned such a pittance. It was his demeanor and the lighting. I can still picture his face. The truck had bars across the top that Ioana and I reached up to hold on to. The kid was in the back, cornered by us gargantuans and the bike that my leg kept propped up. The kid had to look up to us to speak so when I looked at him I saw him chin up in the black background, dirt swirling. Through my squint his face comes and fades with the filtered streetlights. I hear him speak cheerfully of a seemingly miserable existence. He said something about his father being a manager, but it sounded like he was on his own, fending for himself. I didn't know what to say. I looked up, ahead of the truck to see the long line of streetlights on this lonely street.

     There's scaffolding on dozens of pagodas with crews on every one. I initially thought that restoring these pagodas was a good way of providing work to the many idle people I see. (Truth be told, the entire population could be working on infrastructure projects, there's so much to be done.)

Bricks

At one site I stood and watched and thought twice about it. Young girls stack up to 6 long bricks (approximately 10" x 5") on their heads and climb a bamboo ladder with uneven rungs. They could do this without ever touching the stack on their head. They'd feel their way up the ladder until they reached the top where a guy would take the bricks. Younger girls not much taller than my belly button carried pans of mortar up another ladder. No men did any great lifting. It was as mesmerizing as it was disheartening. Again though, it seemed all the girls would smile and giggle and stare at me like they were just having a fine time. However, once the buzz of my presence wore off and I was forgotten, the looks on their faces as they slowly went to and fro were of a different expression.

Shy Boy

      At another site, this one for building a useless cement wall on a useless new street, a group of girls yelled "Hello!" as I pedaled by. I came back and tried to speak but only one knew a little English. It looked like ugly, hot work and they were dressed like dusty Bedouins, all flowing clothes wrapped around them, only their faces showing. They wanted me to take a picture of them and were laughing the whole time. That is actually the amazing thing about Burma. Every single person, every single solitary person is friendly and smiles. Curiously, in a photo they often look solemn.

Random Page--Life as a Rock Star
       When I leave my guest house, anywhere I am, I feel like a rock star emerging in public. Suddenly everyone stares, smiles, says hello, or wants to start a conversation. Everyone. And like a publicity-conscious rock star, it's poor form to ignore, rebuke, or hide from the fans. At a minimum I smile. If someone says hello, I say hello nearly always--and that's a lot of hellos. The people are that friendly/inquisitive, possibly exceeding that of the Vietnamese and Indonesians. My face seems in a constant state of smiling. The hellos are incessant. I don't mind it, but sometimes I feel like a zoo animal being poked at with a stick. Say hello to the foreigner! See him speak! The "Where you from" and "Where you go" follow-up questions serve usually just as a ruse to get an answer rather than a point of information. So, when I meet a Burmese who really wants and can maintain a conversation, I'm all ears. I'm sure lots of Burmese wish their English was better for just that purpose. Other travelers, I can see, get fatigued with the foreigner-as-freak deal, but that is more a reaction from being travel weary, I reckon. They probably wish they could be a little more anonymous here, but it's not going to happen.
     On the other hand, there is not a lot to discuss; our lives are so incomprehensibly different. The topics that would really spark a conversation, the political situation or life under the generals, are taboo.

Random Photos

Public Transport

City Bus

Charter Bus

Another Bus

Headless Cow

Cow Loading

Burmese Roadsign

3 Girls

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