On to Bagan
Travelogue: September 9th
It seems that every town, village and city in Southeast Asia has its preferred method of transportation. In Hanoi, it's clearly by motorbike (scooter). The streets are absolutely packed with them. Entire families of 4-5 people travel around on them; entire sets of furniture are transported on them, including full-length mirrors. It's inconceivable, without seeing it with your own eyes, how much can skillfully be loaded onto one motorbike.
In Burma (Myanmar), a different form of transport seems to be preferred in each place we've traveled to. In Yangon, cars - circa 1970-80 - are they preferred way to get around. Whereas in Mandalay, it's miniature blue 1970s semi-covered Mazda pick-ups - about two meters in length - which are used as taxis around the city; and, secondarily, trishaws, a bicycle taxi which can fit two passengers back-to-back. In Hsipaw, people mostly travel around the town in what I've been calling tractor-type vehicles. They're hard to describe really. They're something like a cross between a gigantic lawnmower, with the engine, belts, etc. open in the front, and a 'Beverly Hillbillies'-style flat bed in the back to haul entire families (or villages) around in. It's an amusing thing to behold but they are much more common, outside of Yangon, than cars.
In Bagan, like many villages we passed through, they prefer horse-carts. Yes, I mean a horse which carries a cart behind it with a man at the helm who drive3s it with a whip. They aren't tourist horse-carts like the ones that can take you for a romantic swing through Central Park, but rather a real, honest-to-god form of transportation used by locals and tourists alike. It makes a lot of sense, of course, in a place like Bagan which has world-renowned temples scattered around an area "the size of Manhattan," Lonely Planet says, and in heat sometimes in the 100s F (40s C).
It was this form of transport that we chose to take us to see the temples of Bagan. There are soe 2000+ Buddhist temples in the area built between the 11th and 13th centuries. Many of these temples were damaged in a 6.5 earthquake in 1975, but later restored by organizations such as Unesco. We weren't really sure where to begin so on our first day out asked for our horseman's advice. As it turned out these horsemen are well-informed guides as well as drivers. So, he proceeded to take us round to approximately a dozen temples during our eight hour day - stopping for a lunch break in the middle.
At the end of the first day he took us to what is nicknamed 'sunset pagoda'. This is the place where just about everyone ends up at sunset, hence the name. The good news about this is that it's currently low-season, so there are not a lot of tourists around. The bad news is that there are just as many souvenir touts as ever, perhaps about 6:1 (seller to tourist). There are many adult sellers who setup shop at various temples as adults older than 17 have to have a license per temple they sell at. But the average age of the seller's at the sunset pagoda was about twelve. Children aged nine and up sell everything from postcards to books, paintings to statuettes. They all speak English fairly well and can count in up to 10-12 languages, they told me.
At the top of the sunset pagoda, I befriended a 14 year old boy. He was the middle child in a family of seven children. Most of his siblings were also sellers of something, except for the oldest, now married with a baby. His younger siblings all attend school, as he had until the previous year when his father had died and he had to take to selling full-time. He was a very nice, gentle boy who sat talking with me for a while after realizing that I really had no interest in buying anything. (He was selling high-quality copies of the Orwell book Burmese Days, which we already had a copy of.) He confided in me that he buys the books for $2 and tries to sell them for $4-5. He said he sold about one book every two days. When I asked where he sold them, he pointed at two of the tallest pagodas into the plain. "There," he pointed, "in the morning," and in another direction, "there, in the afternoon. And here at sunset, of course." Everyday, even in the low season, when only a dozen or so tourists visited on any given day. The other children, 14 and younger, sold only in the afternoons and evenings, he said, after school. What a difficult childhood, I thought.
While we sat and talked, at one point, he showed me his collection of international currency. It's a common money-making technique for the child-sellers' of Bagan: they ask for Thai Baht or currency "from your country" and try to exchange it for Kyats, the local currency. But this boy had an impressive collection of small denomination bills from as far and wide as Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I asked if he'd ever seen a note from Kazakhstan. He echoed, "Kazak...?" I'm not sure he'd ever heard of the country. So I told him that if he met me at my guesthouse the following day I'd be happy to give him some Kazakh money. The following day we met out front at 1:00pm. We sat on the front swing together as I walked him through the bills I'd prepared to give him: Kazakh tenge, Thai Baht and Vietnamese Dong. Additionally, I'd written a 'California' postcard for him, from the bunch I travel around with to give out at guesthouses and homestays, which had pictures of Yosemite, Monterey, the Golden Gate bridge and the vineyards of Napa Valley on it. Although he couldn't read English, on the back, I wrote him a note that read, "You're a clever boy. Do something great with your life!" I hope he'll have someone translate it for him at some point for some delayed inspiration.
Bagan was also the place where we spent a day in bed with a bout of food poisoning; a second day of visiting another ten or so temples, finishing off a a riverside pagoda filled with delightful kids; and an evening of divine inspiration (after a nap) to develop our next 'five-year plan' (aka part two of the 'ten-year plan'). We really enjoyed our time in Bagan and found it felt a bit like moving out, not just moving on, when we got on the 14-hour bus to Yangon.
It seems that every town, village and city in Southeast Asia has its preferred method of transportation. In Hanoi, it's clearly by motorbike (scooter). The streets are absolutely packed with them. Entire families of 4-5 people travel around on them; entire sets of furniture are transported on them, including full-length mirrors. It's inconceivable, without seeing it with your own eyes, how much can skillfully be loaded onto one motorbike.
In Burma (Myanmar), a different form of transport seems to be preferred in each place we've traveled to. In Yangon, cars - circa 1970-80 - are they preferred way to get around. Whereas in Mandalay, it's miniature blue 1970s semi-covered Mazda pick-ups - about two meters in length - which are used as taxis around the city; and, secondarily, trishaws, a bicycle taxi which can fit two passengers back-to-back. In Hsipaw, people mostly travel around the town in what I've been calling tractor-type vehicles. They're hard to describe really. They're something like a cross between a gigantic lawnmower, with the engine, belts, etc. open in the front, and a 'Beverly Hillbillies'-style flat bed in the back to haul entire families (or villages) around in. It's an amusing thing to behold but they are much more common, outside of Yangon, than cars.
In Bagan, like many villages we passed through, they prefer horse-carts. Yes, I mean a horse which carries a cart behind it with a man at the helm who drive3s it with a whip. They aren't tourist horse-carts like the ones that can take you for a romantic swing through Central Park, but rather a real, honest-to-god form of transportation used by locals and tourists alike. It makes a lot of sense, of course, in a place like Bagan which has world-renowned temples scattered around an area "the size of Manhattan," Lonely Planet says, and in heat sometimes in the 100s F (40s C).
It was this form of transport that we chose to take us to see the temples of Bagan. There are soe 2000+ Buddhist temples in the area built between the 11th and 13th centuries. Many of these temples were damaged in a 6.5 earthquake in 1975, but later restored by organizations such as Unesco. We weren't really sure where to begin so on our first day out asked for our horseman's advice. As it turned out these horsemen are well-informed guides as well as drivers. So, he proceeded to take us round to approximately a dozen temples during our eight hour day - stopping for a lunch break in the middle.
At the end of the first day he took us to what is nicknamed 'sunset pagoda'. This is the place where just about everyone ends up at sunset, hence the name. The good news about this is that it's currently low-season, so there are not a lot of tourists around. The bad news is that there are just as many souvenir touts as ever, perhaps about 6:1 (seller to tourist). There are many adult sellers who setup shop at various temples as adults older than 17 have to have a license per temple they sell at. But the average age of the seller's at the sunset pagoda was about twelve. Children aged nine and up sell everything from postcards to books, paintings to statuettes. They all speak English fairly well and can count in up to 10-12 languages, they told me.
At the top of the sunset pagoda, I befriended a 14 year old boy. He was the middle child in a family of seven children. Most of his siblings were also sellers of something, except for the oldest, now married with a baby. His younger siblings all attend school, as he had until the previous year when his father had died and he had to take to selling full-time. He was a very nice, gentle boy who sat talking with me for a while after realizing that I really had no interest in buying anything. (He was selling high-quality copies of the Orwell book Burmese Days, which we already had a copy of.) He confided in me that he buys the books for $2 and tries to sell them for $4-5. He said he sold about one book every two days. When I asked where he sold them, he pointed at two of the tallest pagodas into the plain. "There," he pointed, "in the morning," and in another direction, "there, in the afternoon. And here at sunset, of course." Everyday, even in the low season, when only a dozen or so tourists visited on any given day. The other children, 14 and younger, sold only in the afternoons and evenings, he said, after school. What a difficult childhood, I thought.
While we sat and talked, at one point, he showed me his collection of international currency. It's a common money-making technique for the child-sellers' of Bagan: they ask for Thai Baht or currency "from your country" and try to exchange it for Kyats, the local currency. But this boy had an impressive collection of small denomination bills from as far and wide as Europe, the Middle East and Asia. I asked if he'd ever seen a note from Kazakhstan. He echoed, "Kazak...?" I'm not sure he'd ever heard of the country. So I told him that if he met me at my guesthouse the following day I'd be happy to give him some Kazakh money. The following day we met out front at 1:00pm. We sat on the front swing together as I walked him through the bills I'd prepared to give him: Kazakh tenge, Thai Baht and Vietnamese Dong. Additionally, I'd written a 'California' postcard for him, from the bunch I travel around with to give out at guesthouses and homestays, which had pictures of Yosemite, Monterey, the Golden Gate bridge and the vineyards of Napa Valley on it. Although he couldn't read English, on the back, I wrote him a note that read, "You're a clever boy. Do something great with your life!" I hope he'll have someone translate it for him at some point for some delayed inspiration.
Bagan was also the place where we spent a day in bed with a bout of food poisoning; a second day of visiting another ten or so temples, finishing off a a riverside pagoda filled with delightful kids; and an evening of divine inspiration (after a nap) to develop our next 'five-year plan' (aka part two of the 'ten-year plan'). We really enjoyed our time in Bagan and found it felt a bit like moving out, not just moving on, when we got on the 14-hour bus to Yangon.