Day 76 - Tuesday March 14 Yangon (Rangoon)

Bago photos

position at 7:30am: N16 39.430 latitude E96 15.080 longitude
temperature: 82F, 94% humidity, partly cloudy
distance since FLL: 24,652 miles

Here is the description of the tour we are taking today:
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8 hours
Seated, Wheelchair.
Price $89 pp

Located fifty miles from Yangon, Bago was the ancient seaport capital of Burma (now Myanmar) and is still today, a storehouse of Burmese culture. King Byinnya, who transferred his Talaing capital from Martaban, established the city in 1369. Its golden age was from 1385 to 1635, when it was capital of the Mon kingdom of Lower Burma, whose rulers included King Byinnya-U, Queen Shinsawbu and King Dhammazedi (who were all instrumental in the construction and gilding of Rangoon's, Shwedagon Pagoda). The next 150 years saw a gradual decline in its importance and by 1795, Bago had a population of less than 6,000. King Bodawpaya undertook some restoration work in Bago at the end of the 18th century. But by then the city was already losing its commercial raison d'être; in the early 1800s, the Bago River had changed its course, cutting the city off from the sea, finally sealing its fate.

En route to Bago, at Htaukkyan, the War Cemetery stands memorial to the 27,000 allied servicemen who died in World War II; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission beautifully maintains it. Set back from the road a little further along you will notice the Naga-Yone monument that has 8 planetary posts with their guardian birds and animals, and an unusual Buddha image, which is circled by a cobra. One final spectacle you may notice as you pass along the road to Bago is the Shwenyaungbin (Golden Banyan Tree). This ancient tree is reputed, in local lore, to be the home of nats (the guardian spirits of the highway). Passers-by often stop to make offerings,and take their new cars out there to be blessed.

Built in 1476 by King Dhammazedi, on the outskirts of Bago, the Kyaik Pun Pagoda is a remarkable structure that sits on a tributary of the Bago River. On each of the four sides is a 90 foot tall Buddha, representing the four historic Buddhas: Gautama, Konagamana, Kakusandha and Kassapa. The Buddha on the west face was damaged in the 1930 earthquake. There is a short walk from the coach to view the pagoda.

Then proceed to Kyatkhatwine Monastery, the biggest monastery in lower Myanmar. Here, the monks spend their last meal of the day in total silence. You may be able to observe the long line of monks and novices file out of the monastery. The golden dome of the magnificent soaring Shwemawdaw Pagoda can be seen as you approach Bago. The pagoda of the Great Golden God, is one of the most venerated and impressive monuments in Southeast Asia. Its origins date back a thousand years when two merchants built it to shelter some hair relics of Buddha. The pagoda was severely damaged by earthquakes in 1912 and 1917 and completely destroyed by another earthquake in 1930. It was finally rebuilt between 1952 and 1954 in a slightly different style than the original. It has a new diamond-studded 'umbrella' and a stupa covered with 1 1/2 tons of gold. The stairways leading to the pagoda are guarded by huge white chinthes (temple lions), each containing a sitting Buddha in its mouth. There are 8 planetary prayer posts and a small museum of ancient Buddha images of stone and bronze, rescued from the original pagoda after the 1930 quake.

A Burmese lunch will be served at the Hanthawaddy restaurant in Bago.

You will also enjoy the sights and sounds of the picturesque market that brims with local produce and handicrafts under its thatched roofs. Flower sellers and vegetable vendors vie for business alongside betel nut merchants. It is truly a photographer's delight.

Bago is probably most famous for its huge, reclining Shwethalyaung Buddha, said to depict the Gautama Buddha on the eve of his attaining nirvana. The Buddha measures some 165 feet in length and 48 feet in height. Built by King Migadippa in 994 AD, it fell into disrepair until King Dhammazedi restored the image five centuries later. With the destruction of Bago in 1757, the Buddha was abandoned and continued to lay undisturbed for 125 years. The British, during construction of the Rangoon-Bago railway in 1881, rediscovered it. An open pavilion, built in 1906, serves as cover to protect the statue from the elements.

Please note: Cotton clothing and a light wrap for the evenings during the cool season are recommended. Do not wear shorts, inappropriate wear or sleeveless blouses when visiting temples. Footwear must be removed before entering a temple. The use of credit cards may be limited; therefore, please bring US Dollars to pay for any incidental items.

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Our tour tickets said to be on the dock at 7:20am, but the earliest full breakfast place (LaVeranda) opens at 7am. So, we are having breakfast delivered to the room in the 6:30am to 7am checkbox on the breakfast room service order form. With our limited experience, this means breakfast will be delivered at 6:30am so we set the alarm for 6am. The breakfast was delived at 6:15am. We both just got juice, fruit and cereal.

We were on the dock about 7:15am and loaded into bus 2. We left the dock in a bus convoy with a police escort. The escort was a motorcycle cop who rode in front of the first bus and waved oncoming traffic to the side to allow us to go down the middle of the rode. Even with this escort, we probably averaged 20 mph due to the state of the roads. But it was a good gesture. What motorbikes were to Vietnam, bicycles are to Myanmar. They are everywhere. We also saw a lot of oxcarts and pony wagons. What jeepneys were to Manila, here they had modified pickup trucks that were used as buses. There were 2 benches down each side of the covered, open-air bed and then people crammed into the middle and on the top and hung off the back. Debbie asked the guide what people pay to ride those "buses." He told her about 100 to 300 kyats. He told here that would be about 10 to 30 US cents. He asked her how much a bus ride would cost in the USA. She told him that it varies, but in her experience you could get most places in most US cities by bus for 35 cents to $1.50. on average. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depends on the city and the distance of your trip. He was amazed. She told him, yeah, and you would never be in the open-air like that, or packed together like that, or hanging on to the outside. He laughed and told her the fare is the same, no matter where you are in or on the truck. The trip took us close to Yangon and then to Bago. It was about 50 miles away. At most of our stops, we were set upon by kids selling postcards, fans, etc. Not in the overwhelming numbers that we have seen elsewhere, but there were usually 3 or 4 whenever we alighted the bus. The city of Yangon is very busy and crowded. Roads leading into Yangon were also crowded with people. But in the coutryside, the crowds thinned out quickly. There was poverty in Yangon, but the countryside seemed much poorer. This is the least developed country that we have ever visited. The roads while designed as wide and divided highways were not in the best of repair. We saw roadwork going on and it was unimaginable. People in mostly barefeet in the hot sun, working with rocks. The rocks started large delivered by truckloads to the sides of the road. The large stones were laid first, then medium size, then small and then powdery. The people were breaking the rocks into the various sizes and hand sorting and sieving them to the approriate sizes at each stage of road work. Then a heavy roller would go over everything. They were handcarrying the rocks or in buckets on sticks. After the heavy roller, they were melting asphalt (tar) over fires by the roadside and 2 men would carry a big bucketful over to the area being paved (in barefeet!) and it would be dispersed into something like large watering cans where other men would sprinkle it over the level surface. We even saw a group painting the stripes down the middle of the road. They had a wooden template and a bucket of paint and some brushes. They would walk along, place the template and paint, then pick up the template and walk a bit further. This road work was going on all over everywhere that we drove so we were able to observe all phases of it though not all in one place. One other item of interest here is that our buses had the driver on the right but they also drove on the right. It was confusing. We observed cars with steering wheels on both sides. Our guide said that originally because of the British that they drove on the left, but that sometime after independence (we think he said something like 1983?) the government declared that all driving would be on the right. So, you might imagine that people are still a little confused.

One of the first things our guide did was to give everyone a bag of sunflower seeds. Clay tried to eat a few but they were just too much trouble without sufficient reward, so they were quickly set aside for another day. Our first stop was about 1 hour into the trip at a WWII cemetery and Memorial named Htaukkyan.

It is where about 6000 WWII soldiers are buried, and a memorial to 23000 soldiers who lost their lives in Burma but whose bodies were never found. It is a very somber place but quite beautiful nonetheless. It is quite well maintained. We were there about 20 minutes or so.

One of the first things you notice is what looks like dirt smeared on the faces of the people. They said it is made from the bark of a tree that grows in Burma and it is ground on a particular kind of stone and mixed with water for a paste and is used as sunscreen and as a beauty aid. Mostly, the women and children wear it on their faces during the day and they said that they wear it all over their bodies at night. (Perhaps it works as in insect repellent as well because they would not need a full body sunscreen to sleep?) They pronounced it as something like "thinaka." We are not sure of the spelling, though there were plenty of young women thrusting small jars of it in our faces everytime we got off the bus. We declined to purchase any.

We next went to a local market. Here the guide turned us loose and said to be back in 20 minutes. He then told us that anyone who wanted a restroom to follow a particular lady. He told the rest of us to go into the market at a certain location, go straight untl you had to turn and then turn left, followed by another left to get out. Well, this market had anything gross that you would want to see (except bathrooms). It turned out that the lady leading people to a bathroom could not find one. (The guide, later, bribed a restaurant to let a few people use a single 'squatter' toilet and 3 urinals all in the same room.) The market was definitely for the locals. We did not see any handicrafts there. It was a subsistance and survival type of market. I do not think anyone on our bus bought anything. Check out the pictures to see why. We did once visit a more grim market in Zanzibar, but it was no where near as crowded as this one. It was a sobering experience.

Our next stop was Kyatkhatwine Monastery. Here we saw 1100 monks file into a dining hall for their noon meal. They were silent but the crowds were not. I think our ship had 7 busloads watching this process. There was also a busload or 2 of Japanese from somewhere. Now our ship's people was bad enough, but this busload of Japanese was even worse behaving. They would do things like break through the line of 1100 monks to change sides of the line every now or then. It was appalling. Our crowd's behavior was better though a lot of them could not stop talking long enough to give the monks procession the attention they deserved. There were maybe 6 or 8 huge caudrons of rice with a couple of people dishing rice out of each cauldron. As the monks went by with their bowls, the rice dishers put a generous serving of rice into each bowl. This particular part of the tour was not a real highlight. There were just too many people around making it a circus instead of a silent dinner procession. All the boys and many of the girls must spend part of their lives as monks or nuns. The boys become novices for a week or so as the family can afford to be without them from about 8 to 12 and anytime up to 20. After 20, they must spend 3 months (if possible) as monks before they are allowed to marry. They shave their heads, and wear the robes and live by the rules of the monastery that they chose or that they are admitted to. The boys do this during the summer school vacation. We arrived at the beginning of the school vacation, so we saw a lot of young Buddhist novices.

It should be probably be noted here about the requirement that footwear be removed to visit Burmese religious sites. They mean barefeet. No shoes, no socks, no slippers. Barefeet. This was emphasized in the literature and in Roger's tour talks. At this first stop at the monastery, people balked. After the first stop more people balked. A good half of the people on our bus, never got off except for the cemetery, the market, and for lunch. What part of barefeet did they misunderstand? And who in their right mind would pay to sit in a hot bus for 8 hours? They mostly did not even look out the windows, when we would come back to the bus, they would have the curtains pulled to keep the sun out and the temperature down, but it was still hot in there and with nothing to see but each other. It defies logic. Now in the defense of some of the people who tried the barefeet and did not do it again. It was bad. These were not closed, indoor facilities like we walked in without shoes in Thailand for example. These were open-air, in many cases, in open sun and the floors were filthy and usually very hot. The first time we left our shoes on the bus because it dropped us right at the door, but when we left the bus had moved and we had to walk about 50 yards down a hot, hot, hot blacktop street in the noon sun. It would have raised blisters on the flesh of your soles if they had not been caked with nastiness. How is this possible, you may wonder. Well, for example, what were the wet spots? Dogs and small children and old men were milling at all these sites and, well, it was bodily fluids. It was bad. But, this is their culture and we only had a few days here, so we were not going to let squeamishness stop us from our visits. We carried on but it was bad. It was actually incomprehensible, you gild everything in sight and only allow barefeet out of respect and then you let the floors go in that condition. Where is the respect in that in any culture?

Our next stop was the Shwemawdaw Pagoda which was the main reason we went to Bago. The Pagoda had a huge golden dome in the center. Around this center ediface were many different temples and shrines holding many different Bhuddas. The sheer number of them was overwhelming, and this does not even consider the 1.5 tons of gold they use to gold leaf the domes every few years. We were barefooted for this visit (as we also were for the Monastery visit). As noted above, this was traumatic for most people on our buses. But the tour information was very clear that you would be required to remove shoes and socks and walk around barefooted on this particular tour. It was an overwhelming site. Only 8 people out of the 33 on the bus got out and some of them only wanted to use the toilets.

Our next stop was the Hanthawaddy restaurant for a Burmese lunch. This turned out well and even Debbie found things she could eat. The meal started with what looked like flat corn puffs, but tasted like shrimp. Debbie skipped these. This was followed by lentil soup which was good and very mild flavored. Next came three types of curry, shrimp, pork and fish along with steamed rice. Debbie ate the rice, pork curry and some vegetables. Clay tried a little of everything. They served a local beer, called Mynamar Lager (made with Grerman technology). The beer came in a large bottle, maybe 1.5 lt., and was good. Debbie had a Coke. We skipped the dessert of fruit to use the restroom and do a little shopping before we left. Both Clay and Debbie got longyis. These are a skirt-type bottom that is the common clothing here in Myanmar. It is an oversized tube of cloth worn as a skirt that is tied differently for men and women. We had gotten tying lessons first thing on the bus from our guide who was wearing one.

After lunch, we made a few stops that were not described in the tour description. The first was to a 'nats' festival. Everyone on the bus (except Debbie) thought the guide was saying nuts festival, and were expecting to go see some nuts. But, we pulled up to another temple instead. There, a show was being put on that celebrated the 'naturals" or nats. It meant another barefooted walk so several people again opted out and just stayed on the bus. Here we saw a dance performance put on by men dressed to the nines as women. There were also shops leading up to the level in the temple where the performance was going on.

The next stop was a Mon weaving village. This was a village of straw, teak and bamboo huts that all had residents that spun and wove cloth. This was not a 'show' village. People actually lived and worked in minimal straw huts. In the bottom area under elevated first floors, most of the huts had looms under there where women were weaving cloth. The live stock was close by as were the kids. It could have easily have been from 100 or 200 years ago. There were no modern conveniences around. We saw no sign of any plumbing or any kind of cables.

Our guide told us that there is one hydro-electric plant at the lake near Mandalay. He said they mostly have electricity in Yangon, vs. the rest of the country and that it is only reliable during the rainy season. The rest of the year it is on and off sporadically.

The third stop was to a Cherroot factory. It was just a larger than normal wooden house, in a village of wooden houses on a dirt road, set back off the paved road. There was running water and wiring in this village. Here we saw maybe 50-80 young women handrolling local Cherroots (sort small cigars). They used a local leaf, and in it they put a mixture of tobacco, wood chips, tumeric and chicory. They were larger than a cigarette but smaller than most cigars. You could buy 100 of them for a $1. They handed out samples, and the people who smoked them gave them mixed reviews. One woman did buy 100 of them for her cigar loving sons. That was the only sale we saw. There was a little snafu at this Cherroot factory. There were 2 buses going to this factory and they let us off on the main road and we walked maybe 100 yards (with our shoes on) down a couple of very small side streets where the buses could not go. When it was time to leave the first bus guide (without the knowledge of the other guide) told everyone to wait and the buses would come pick us up. Then the other guide (our guide) just left and started walking back the way we came. About 2/3 of the people that got off the bus, including us, so about 6 people, followed our guide back to the bus. When we got there, he counted and wanted to know where the rest of the people were. As we waited, a couple of the people who were waiting for the buses at the factory came up all upset about being told one thing and having to do another. The guide went back to the factory and rounded up the rest of our bus.

After the Cherroots, we went to a big reclining Bhudda. This one is billed as being 15 feet longer than the one we saw in Bangkok at Wat Po. Well, it may be longer, but it was no where as glitzy as the one at Wat Po. (We also did not think it was even as large, much less larger.) The Wat Po Lying Bhudda was gold leaf and you could walk around him and see a back side. This one was not gold and you could not 'do the back'. Along the back was a wall in bas-relief of a story of cross-loved. It was also written there in English. The story on this reclining Bhudda is that it is over 1000 years old, but was 'lost' for many centuries. It was discovered by a engineer in the late 1800's who was working on the Burma Railroad for the British.

The last stop of the day was at a pagoda with 4 huge (50 foot) Bhuddas sitting back to back facing outward. These Bhuddas were also from ancient times. One of them was destroyed completely in a 1930 earthquake, but was reconstructed. This new Bhudda has a 'Burmese' face (oval) and the other three Bhuddas have a more square face like the Mon people who originally built these Bhuddas. We walked around this pagoda on a dirt road and did not enter the area of it, so we all kept our shoes on and a few more people came out.

We got back to the ship about 6pm. The tour was long and good. Tonight is Country Club Casual. We went up to LaVeranda which has returned to its original Mediterranean Bistro and Italian Steakhouse menus. Clay wanted the Paella that was the featured dish. He did not think it was great. Debbie had steak but did not have much of an appetite, maybe from all the heat today, and skipped appetizers and dessert. We set a record for earliest out of dinner yet. We were out by 7:30pm and we wanted to go to the show this evening. They are having a local cultural show in the Constellation Theatre at 9:30pm. Debbie set the alarm for 9:10pm and we took a nap. We made it to the show and we enjoyed it very much. They had a little orchestra with a zylophone-type instrument, some drums and cymbals and a special oboe with 6 reeds. They also had some dancers and singers and made a lot of costume changes. The dances were very similar to those from Bali and Thailand and Cambodia. It lasted about an hour and we really enjoyed it and were glad that we had the opportunity to see it. We had a time change notice for our tour tomorrow saying it was leaving at 7am instead of 7:30am. There are some really huge tides up this river, you would think by the change in level that you would be able to actually hear it flush in and out! So, instead of the originally scheduled 4pm sailing, we are scheduled to sail when the tide rises sometime around 1pm and all aboard is 12:30pm to sail as soon as possible. Looks like it will be another busy day tomorrow. At least LaVeranda will open at 6:30am tomorrow.

Bago photos