Moulmein - where giants trod
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
7
22
Trip End
Jul 15, 2007
Moulmein,
Myanmar
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The men in Burma wear longyis (like a dark, conservative sarong) and button shirts or T shirts. The women wear colorful sarongs and elegant fitted tops. Women and children of both sexes wear thanaka (yellow, from a tree bark) on their faces, and sometimes chest or arms or legs. The thanaka is very attractive.
The road from Bago to Moulmein starts at ~1.8 lanes and gets as small as 1.5 lanes - and most of the traffic is either buses or trucks or bikes, or horse carts, not to mention pedestrians - and there rice spread out to dry on the pavement on the side of the road. About 20 minutes into the ride, the bus hits something inantimate at a roadside truck place. We stop, the driver and assistant get out and there is a good bit of yelling and gesturing and the driver and assistant get beck in and off we go, slower, thankfully. Some pretty good music gives way to a video played at top volume. Ay Caramba! The speakers are right above our heads - again. Audience on the video cracking up - on the bus too.
Off in the distance, mountains ...
That was just a dream, just a dream ...
On the video a woman is dancing and she is very good - stylized and what you might have seen at the Human Be-In OR what we saw one day long ago when we walked out of the dark maze of the Saigang market and there was a parade going by and a little girl stood up on a horse cart and did the most amazing dance as they went slowly by where we stood astonished - 25 years later I can see her as plain as can be.
The woman dancer quits dancing and there is a skit, where one of the men is forcing his attentions on her, holding her hand and sweet-talking (into the microphone) despite her efforts to get away. One of the other men kind of slips his leg between them and the women withdraws her hand and the man who is forcing his attentions is now holding and caressing the second man's foot. He's getting into it and starts kissing the foot, but each time staggers back, holding his nose. But the woman is very pretty so, back he comes again and again and we're all laughing hard now. Good skit.
Mountains above,
Padi fields below,
In mystic light.
Through a village in a forest,
A beautiful, graceful girl,
With thanaka on her cheeks,
And a basket on her head,
Walks out of a dark path among the trees.
Then another one!
I met a man on the internet - More about Ken and his wife Heather later. Ken, How I wish, how I wish you were here.
Down in a little valley between green, green hills women bathing by a stream, sarongs up over their breasts. Children playing. How I wish you were here.
Mountains close by the road, clouds touching to tops and sunlight touching the sides with golden stupas glittering in the sunlight - like a hallucination. Smell of growth and wood smoke. Child with short hair and thanaka on her cheeks and nose. Some houses, but mostly hooches, some nice, some poor. It's not too hot, but it is hot. Somewhere along the way I lose almost all my commitments, except for Leslie and David and the mission.
Pulled into Moulmein about 2pm. It's hot as blazes today - the first day since we got to Hong Kong without rain. Taxi man said 2000 kyats to hotel. I said, last time 1000. He said, Okay 1500. It turned out to be about a 1000 kyats ride to the Thanlwin Hotel. The closest room to what we wanted was a big room with shared bath and aircon that barely worked and a fan that turned at about 20-30 RPMs. We caught a tuk tuk shared with two Chinese women with all kinds of gold and heavy perfume on to the Aurora guesthouse where they had no rooms available.
We're really hot by now and everywhere involves at least one long flight of stairs and we're a little dehydrated since we've had only a few sips of water on the long bus ride knowing that there will be 2 stops at most. Actually the bus stopped once for lunch/toilet break (sorry I didn't get a photo of the toilet at the bus stop - which wasn't bad at all, for a squat toilet). So anyway, we're standing outside the Aurora GH, dripping with sweat, (I'm) feeling dizzy, wondering what we'll do if we can't find a room. I left Leslie sitting, dripping on a suitcase on the sidewalk while I took a moto to check out the Breeze GH. They had 2 rooms available, one for $15 with aircon and one really big one with 20 foot ceiling and big windows overlooking the river, but fans only for $18 - "natural aircon" says the man showing me the room. I say we'll take the aircon, but my wife will decide for sure. Back I go to Leslie and we load ourselves and luggage all into one trishaw - oh we were a sight to see!
Lonely Planet says the Breeze is "funky, but adequate." By now we understand part of how things work, so asked if they turn off the electricity at night. He tells us they have a generator, so we take the aircon room. So here we are, in a room with tile walls like a giant bathroom and glad to be here - especially given the ceiling fan that moves briskly. The Breeze is funky but okay and it's right on the huge Thanlwin River and our room very conveniently has a bowl for spitting betel nut juice into - what more could you want?
Several times on this trip Leslie has said, "My father would not believe it if he saw me now." I guess this continues that tradition.
Sorry for all typos, etc. - too much to proof much.
