nat worship

no discussion of Buddhism or religion in Myanmar would be complete without a mention of the nats.  it's something else that is singular to the country, although the manifestation of evil spirits is common to all religions.  there's a specific list of nats like there are saints.  usually a nat is a human that has met a violent death and they are worshiped in much the way a saint would be venerated.  

ask a national about the nats and you'll get something similar to a 'ghost story' with the same passion and creepiness that goes along with the western tradition.

mt. popa is the largest of the shrine sites and hosts a festival on the full moon in December.  i did not visit mt. popa ... it's a day trip from Bagan because the other travelers i knew were a bit disappointed with the experience.  it is more actively practiced in the rural than the urban areas but they are everywhere and i saw the box below on a tree along the river in Yangon.  there is also an easy to find and quite impressive Nat Shrine in Hsipaw, to the north.

hsipaw to mandalay

i leave Hsipaw on the train heading down to Mandalay and some vague plan to get myself to Inle Lake.  according to the guide books, this is an 'epic train ride'.  seriously?  i already did the Yangon to Bagan train which in my humble opinion is the ride required to earn a I SURVIVED MYANMAR RAILWAYS badge.  there is however, along this ride a very beautiful gorge with a very, very scary train bridge.  it's so old and crappy and rickety that the train has to go really slow as not to deteriorate the bridge further.  why not just go really fast and get as many carriages as possible across before the bridge collapses?  or how about you just pony up the money to replace the bridge?  note on the ticket stub i've purchased .... THERE IS AN ACTUAL ALLOCATION FROM MY FARE FOR LIFE INSURANCE!!! what am i doing??  the total cost of this ticket is 2750 Kyats which is $2.75US so i'm not sure how much the insurance payment would be anyway.

it's a big moment for all the foreigners [the locals sleep through it].  we are excited before, during and after crossing the gorge/bridge.  we even ask for seat assignments to have the best view of the bridge.  we take hundreds of photos and hang out the windows.

afterwards someone says to me, 'i have like 100 photos of a bridge'.  yah, i know you are dying to see it... so here it is.

perhaps as important as the safety issues around replacing the carriages and bridges and other railway infrastructure is reinventing the logo for Myanmar Railways.  i get the MR but what's up with the symbols underneath?  time to rebrand i think.

anyways, it's a 6 hour train ride and costs $2.75US.  when we hit Pyin U Lwin we bail on the train and take a $2US/2 Hour pick up for the ride back to Mandalay.  i make a feeble suggestion to get a shared taxi as that would be inside a vehicle but i go along with the fellow travelers who want to take the pick up.  even though it is raining.  the ride is surreal but not uncomfortable.  the pickup is covered so we aren't wet or cold.  i put on my earphones and just soak it up.  the smoke from a cigarette, the rain on the canvas covering our heads, the guy who is sleeping on the floor between our feet, the bundles and bags that the locals carry, the lights from passing cycles, cars and trucks.  this is Burma.  raw, unfiltered, dirty and noisy.  i've been traveling all day and i should be exhausted but i am so alive.

tea with guerrillas

Hsipaw is a great spot to jump off into well, what i call the villages.  it's the grey zone between where the government is comfortable having foreigners and the restricted area.  i didn't have proper footwear for what would turn out to be a very long trek.  the first day was spent clawing my way up a downward stream of mud.  not a lot of photo opportunities since it was raining all day.  we are tired when get into the village where we sill be staying.

as we pack up to leave the village this little guy comes down the village path to see the foreigners.  the woman at the home we were staying told the little boy that we were taking away children in our packs!  he turned and ran away very quickly - i thought that was really mean.  i didn't bring along anything for the children and we were in areas where we were still a curiosity and children were interested but wary of us.  and no wonder if the mean spirited grannys were telling children we were kidnappers!

the time in the villages were a real window into the lives of ordinary Burmese people.  we passed through Shan and Palaung villages.  we stayed in homes where dinner is still cooked over an open flame in the living room.  we met women trapped in the cycle of poverty.
we saw the power the budhist monks weld in some of the villages.  we played with kids during recess at a school.  we crossed paths with the shan and palaung armies which was a bit confusing at the time.  there are all these armies that fight each other and sometimes band together to fight the Myanmar Army and there are more three letters acronyms for these groups than exist in the whole of washington d.c. afterwards to me it seemed that it is a bunch of narco warlords fighting for control of the resource rich areas.  they were however, quite polite to us, posing for photos [which we were later advised not to publish anywhere public] and sharing a cup of tea.  i can share the photo of this jumbo red snail that was crossing our path.

in one village we stayed at the home of these lovely ladies where the meals are cooked over open flame inside the house.  we knew there were multiple sisters in the family and there was one woman who sat apart from us, in an asian squat, smoking her cheroot, but wasn't participating in the preparation of the meal.  someone asked if that was also a sister and they said, 'no, she's a villager who has come to see the foreigners'.

there is no internet.  there are no cell phones.  they have some solar panels that have been provided by the government but electricity is used sparingly.  they have water courtesy of USAID in most of the villages.  they grow their own food stuff in private gardens.  this is a primitive life.