Lookin' Lazy at the Sea

Kipling only spent three days in Burma, but during that time he managed to pen the most famous poem in the English language about the place. Its opening line runs:

By the old Moulmein pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea

Which is exactly what I did two evenings in a row. Rangoon, Mandalay, the Irrawaddy river, Burma itself, and now Moulmein: this country is full of evocative names that conjure up the dreamiest images of the British Raj. All but one of those place names has since been changed--Moulmein is now Mawlamyine--in a move that could be interpreted as the nation reclaiming its own names from bastardizations imposed upon them by brutal colonizers, or an Orwellian move on the part of the military junta to erase the country's past and seize control of the very words in the people's mouths. (Of course, these two interpretations aren't mutually exclusive.) Speaking of Orwell, he was hardly to be outdone by Kipling in producing memorable writing inspired by Moulmein: during his time stationed there, he famously shot an elephant and witnessed a hanging. 

Mawlamyine was the first capital of British-controlled Burma, from 1826 until they shifted west to Rangoon/Yangon in 1852. As a result, it shares that latter city's mouldering colonial architecture, although on a much smaller scale. In general, Mawlamyine feels a bit like the city that time forgot: the pace of life is slower here, with a quiet bustle in which no one seems particularly fussed about getting things done. Its seaside location makes it hotter and much more humid than the other places I've been, a climate that discourages vigorous activity. As I come toward the end of the trip, Mawlamyine made an ideal place to chill out for a bit, so I ended up spending two days here getting up to not a whole lot. 

My main occupation was hanging out at tea shops, reading and writing. The Burmese tea shop is a noble and ubiquitous institution. Almost every street has one of these little shops, tucked into one of the corrugated-sheet-metal-roofed shacks that line most streets, with plastic tables and little plastic stools spilling from the shade out into the street. The standard tea is a thick, sweet mixture of strong, black tea loaded with sugar and condensed milk. Along with your order, you get as much free, cheap Chinese green tea as you can drink, dispensed from a thermos. Ordering was a bit of a challenge for me, though, as the accepted way to get a waiter's attention in Myanmar is to make kissing sounds, which I just can't bring myself to do, just as I couldn't bring myself to summon waiters in Ethiopia with the customary snapping of the fingers. (Being served by poor black people is uncomfortable enough; getting them to serve you by snapping your fingers is one step too far.)

My hosts invariably plied me with little deep-fried snacks as well. The first tea shop I stopped in was a bit off the main strip so my visit was quite an occasion. Not only were seats shuffled around so that I could be given the most comfortable plastic chair, but the proud owner even sat down at my table for a couple minutes and, in his broken English, asked where I was from, how long I was in Myanmar, etc. The owner was of South Asian origin, as are quite a number of residents of Mawlamyine, where you can hear the Muslim call to prayer along with the various Buddhist chants. The South Asian presence is no doubt partly a consequence of British rule, but also due to trade around the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea that predates the British arrival by centuries. At any rate, it's a bit odd meeting South Asians who speak Burmese, a tonal Sino-Tibetan language that's not at all related to the languages of the Indian subcontinent. But I suppose it's no odder than the fact that I have a number of friends of Asian descent whose first language is English. (And indeed, my grandmother's Hungarian has no more in common with English than Bengali does with Burmese.)

I only did two even vaguely touristy things in Mawlamyine. One was to visit Kyaikthanlan Paya for two sunsets in a row. Kilpling's old Moulmein pagoda, it sits on a ridge overlooking the city and the sea beyond. And oh, the sea! I sometimes forget that I miss the sea. But as soon as I saw it when I arrived in Mawlamyine my heart surged. I last saw the sea in August before I left Vancouver for Chicago, with its decidedly un-sea-like Great Lake. There's no actual beach in Mawlamyine--although a pleasant seaside Strand Road with a sea wall overlooking the water--but it's more the sight and smell of the sea than the feel of it that tugs at my heart. And, with enough imagination, Mawlamyine could pass for a tropical Vancouver: not quite mountains, but certainly hills rise up from the shore all around, and the view out over the Andaman Sea is speckled with little grey-green islands out to the horizon. And like Vancouver, Mawlamyine faces the sea westward, which makes it a great sunset-viewing spot. 

My other touristy activity was a short visit to Shampoo Island, so named because, allegedly, the ancient kings of Burma would engage in an annual hair washing ceremony using water drawn from a spring on the island. It's a little island with just enough room for the mandatory handful of stupas surrounded by a monastery. And one of the monks from that monastery provided me with my strangest encounter in Myanmar. Shortly after I arrived, I was approached by a sweetly smiling little monk--he couldn't have been over five feet tall--who spoke no English but clearly wanted to show me around the island. He was also keen to encourage me to photograph various not-very-interesting-looking things on the island. The first time I got my camera out to indulge him, he leaned boldly in, making as if to try to see the image on my digital camera's screen, and brushed his hand near my crotch as he did so. Once might be an accident, but the second time I was sure it wasn't, and didn't take any more photos. Next he encouraged me to sit with him on a bench in a shady, secluded spot, and encouraged me to touch his shaved head, which he then compared to my beard stubble by touching my cheek. Up I got in a hurry and on we walked, his sweet smiles turning increasingly fawning and gut-churningly saccharine. Eventually he mustered a "you beautiful," which I brushed off bashfully. Soon afterward, he gave up, and left me at the toilets, where he went off to do I-don't-want-to-imagine-what. 

Had I the right combination of fetishes, this could have been the most exciting moment of my life. Unfortunately for the monk, it just made me deeply uncomfortable. But more than discomfort, what afflicted me was the thought of how oppressively lonely this man's life must be, all alone and in the sea of life literally enisled. 

But tourism aside, Mawlamyine made a great city just to wander about in. I most enjoyed the large covered market near the sea, overflowing with smells, colours, smells, and strong smells. The huge baskets of yellow spices and bright red chiles couldn't compete in the sensory overload department with the piles of dried fish, reeking of salt and the sea. Regal matrons would squat on low stools as if they were thrones, sternly surveying their little kingdom of produce, and others would be sprawled out on mats behind their wares, snoozing like dogs in the sun. This went on for blocks and blocks, providing a comforting scene of commerce unfolding without any fuss. 

Walking along the Strand in the evening, I passed large conglomerations of plastic tables and chairs, where half the city seemed to be gathered, gossiping and munching on tasty-smelling eats grilled up by street vendors. A couple hours later, the streets were empty besides small gatherings--quite a number of them--of teenagers singing gentle rock songs with acoustic guitar accompaniment with Western-sounding melodies but Burmese lyrics. 

After a couple days in Mawlamyine it was time to move on. And so I took the four-hour boat trip up the Thanlwin River to Hpa-an, where I'm typing this now. Like my earlier trip down the Ayeyarwady, this one took me past small fishing canoes and riverside villages where children would burst through the foliage to wave frantically at the passing foreigners. As we got closer to Hpa-an, the horizontal lines of river, field, and trees came to be complemented by vertical lines of upward-thrusting rocks. Besides the lack of mist, I really could have been looking at a Chinese landscape painting, with its impossibly precipitous cliffs rising up from nothing. 

And indeed, it's this landscape that makes Hpa-an worth visiting. The city itself is nothing worth writing home about (but nevertheless...), but the surrounding countryside is full not just of magnificent rock structures but also caves. And this being Myanmar, the same enterprising souls that don't seem able to build cities that can go three hours without a power outage have packed a number of these caves with hundreds of Buddha images (there may be power shortages, but this country will never experience a Buddha shortage). The most impressive of these was Kawgun Cave, where little red stucco Buddhas in the thousands sprawl all over the cave walls, and are joined by more substantial Buddhas, serenely overseeing the scene. 

More enjoyable than the sculpture, though, was the scenery itself. A boat trip on the far side of Saddan Cave took us through a natural tunnel in the rock and then along canals dug among rice paddies. Rice grows a bright rich green, much brighter than wheat or corn. And so I slid gently through this deep, deep green landscape, surrounded by rocky cliffs lazily draped with creepers: sometimes, this whole country feels like an oriental fantasy. 

The day ended with a scene that felt like it came right out of the BBC Natural History Unit. After climbing a cliff to watch the sinking sun paint the countryside in soft hues, we descended to the mouth of a cave just in time to see bats in the thousands swarm out into the evening. It felt like I was watching popcorn pop: I could hear the squeaking, and then saw one or two bats circling near the mouth of the cave, then more and more, all winging about at the mouth of the cave but not yet heading out into the evening air. And then pop, out spurted one, it did a quick little circuit in the air and returned to the crowd gathering in the mouth of the cave. Then pop pop, two more did the same. Then a couple more, then a few started out and didn't return. Then more and more, and soon the cave was vomiting forth bats in uncountable numbers. But I tried counting nonetheless, and by a very rough estimate, I saw about one hundred thousand bats shoot out of that cave over the course of twenty minutes. I don't think I'm exaggerating. 

A hundred thousand bats is bad news for insects (and so good news for mosquito-aversive humans), but there was bad news for the bats as well. We humans weren't the only ones aware of this evening ritual of the bats, and as they started to swarm out, the hawks that had been circling patiently overhead started dive-bombing the bat swarm, and flapping about amongst the swarm, trying to pick off an evening meal. One bat, injured but not caught by a hawk, landed painfully not far from me, where it heaved in agony. We left as it was getting dark, and the cave still wasn't empty. 

And now I really can feel this trip coming close to ending. I have to be up very early tomorrow morning a bus back to Yangon, where I'll have half a day before boarding a flight to Singapore the following morning. The wi-fi at the hotel here is uncharacteristically good, so I thought I should shoot this off before I return to the unreliable Internet of Yangon.