Over the top Buddhas

Chances to see Burma as the mysterious backwater of international tourism are vanishing.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Price recipient and winner, with 85% of the vote, in 1989 elections, was subsequently put under house arrest for about fourteen of the following twenty years. She has persistently discouraged visits to Myanmar (Burma) because, she maintained it would only enrich the repressive military junta with the Orwellian name of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council).
Lonely Planet, the backpacker traveller's bible (Guide book), recounts a telling joke about the country: George Orwell wrote not one novel about Burma, but three: BURMESE DAYS, ANIMAL FARM and 1984.
A 2007 outpouring of popular protest against the dictatorial regime, mostly led by monks and students, was brutally squashed.

Over the years, a trickle of tourist, prodded by curiosity about what lay behind that bamboo curtain, came just the same. I was one of them, albeit with a goal to defy government edicts by busting borders they kept off limits, mainly because of their repressive actions against remote tribes along those borders. Every time I had to abandon my quest, even on this last attempt. this time, despite fake documents, doctored by me alone - and the help of a scanner, a photo copier and a pen - thus the only one who could be blamed, the perception was, I still might endanger locals for the sake of my thrills.
In 2010 elections were announced. Daw Aung San Suu Yi was sidelined by accusing her of complicity with that American who swam across a lake to her house where she was detained. The winner of the questionable election, president U Thein Sein, a general of the ruling clique, has apparently convinced Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, with several progressive moves, and unheard of face-to-face contact, that he is serious about supporting reforms. Even Hillary Clinton, after an official visit with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, expressed cautious optimism.
Now, according to Aung San Suu Kyi, there are no more moral barriers about visiting the country - and thus the floodgates were opened.
Hotel accommodations were never adequate, even when there was but a trickle of tourists. Now, since it is considered okay to visit, this season, roughly December to March, over 1,200,000 tourist visas were issued. There is no way they can build hotels and other tourist facilities fast enough to deal with the onslaught.
In an earlier report of this journey, I described how I hunted for accommodations in Yangon, personally checking a dozen places 'til I found one with a vacancy. You have to do it in person and lay down the cash the moment they say you can stay. During my four weeks in the country, virtually every foreigner I met, had similar stories of lodging woes.

Talking about resulting hassles - or unintended consequences! - Not only with hotels!
Today I went to Vietnam Airways to book a flight to Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon. All flights were booked for the next three weeks. I tried Thai Airlines for a non direct flight via Bangkok. At more than double the previously listed price, 480 dollars for a one way ticket, I managed to get a paid in full reservation, six days hence.
Back at the hotel, again a windowless room but this time only third floor walk up, the kind receptionist with pointy teeth said, since I'made only a two-night reservation from Mandalay, my room would not be available after that.. Kind as she is, she called around to find a place for me to put down my head. After many calls with no results - she even tried first class hotels - she found a vacancy at Nagani Hotel, a dump in Chinatown, at the other end of Yangon, far from city center.
"Okay, I take that one 'till the 16th, the day of my flight."
"Available only night of 10th to 11th," they said.
"Hu?"
"But two nights from 11th 13th I can give you room here," my friendly pointy tooth helper said.
"And night 13th to 14th?" I said.
"Go back Nagani hotel one night only possible."
"And then?"
"Come back here for night 15th to 16th."
And those will be the kinds of pleasures awaiting travelers in Burma without reservations made way in advance! If economic law applies - price is a function of supply and demand - the twenty dollar a night hotel rooms, if you can find any at any price, will soon be things that only exist in memory.
Not only hotel capacity is overtaxed, as I found out with my attempts to fly to Vietnam. With yesterday's flight from Mandalay to Yangon, that should have lasted about an hour, departure was delayed by 4 1/2 hours.

Vignette

At Nang Shan Noodle Shop, a sidewalk restaurant in Rangoon, a distinguished lady sat down on one of the plastic stools at a table near mine. She wore an elegant, color coordinated outfit; purple ankle length longhi, light purple blouse, and a still lighter shade hair band. In her earlobes shone small diamond pins, from her light gold necklace hung a discrete carved jade pendant, on her arms a dainty lady's watch and two thin gold bracelets completed the stylish image. Her posture was regal and impeccable.
A bowl of Shan noodles was brought to her. She unwrapped a pair of chopsticks, added spicy condiments from the assortment on the table, refilled her tea cup and started eating.
She chewed her noodles with an open mouth, yaw going up and down, sideways, up and down. Suddenly she looked like a ruminating cow.

During the 4 1/2 hour wait for the delayed flight from Mandalay to Yangon, a Dutch bureaucrat, with almost three months annual paid vacation time, and I, passed the waiting hours chatting about our travels, our travel related goals, aspirations and hopes. He calls his hobby; witnessing situations on the planet that are bound to disappear. That was the reason for his coming to Myanmar - shortly after Hillary Clinton came, he said - to see it as it is - pre-Hillary - before the sure to come travel boom. His next journey will be to North Korea, "because that vacant-look pre-pubescent tubby who is now supposed to run the show, is not going to last long." He has already done research about that trip. "At all times," he said, "a traveler is accompanied by two handlers."
"Why two?"
"To watch you and each other."

Just because Buddha, 2500-years ago in India, gave two traveling dudes from Burma eight of his hairs, the Burmese got so carried away with that gift they ended up, over more than two millennia to properly enshrine them and, to boot, build a 55-ton gold Buddha statue attended by 3,154 gold bells and encrusted with 79,569 diamonds. Having just that one edifice to their idol was not enough. Now the number of statues in, on and around Swedagon Pagoda in Yangon, if one includes in the count the plethora of wood, bronze, stone, gold and silver ones that are offered for sale, there have to be gazillions of them. They are so plentiful, there must have been a Burmese Henry Ford who dedicated his life to manufacturing them efficiently.
On a visit in the gray, distant past I had been to Swedagon Pagoda but in my recollection there was not such a Buddha over-abundance. It might be that, so short after my visits to Bagan and Mount Popa, I simply got Buddha-over-saturated.
Once more, quoting a quote from Rudyard Kipling in the Lonely Planet, it says about Swedagon Pagoda: A beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire .... The Golden dome said, This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land that one knows about.
True, the pure gold, gold leaved, gold plated, gold painted, mosaiced, stuccoed, white painted, jade and other natural stone carved, superlative huge, medium and small structures are impressive. They also must be doing some good to some. The place was mobbed by local people who bowed, prostates themselves, prayed, donated cash and flowers, apparently believing all along something good will come from their actions.
My scepticism about such excesses of religious fervor was reinforced at one of the stands soliciting donations. On a board were listed benefits and favors one could gain in afterlife for certain amounts of gifts.
Isn't that what the reformation was all about, when Martin Luther railed against the church's selling of indulgences? What is the difference, I wonder, between a bunch of over fed, fat, old cardinals and bishops in their grotesque finery amidst opulent splendor in Rome and a bunch of overfed fat, old monks, imams, orthodox patriarchs, TV preacher-hucksters that threaten hellfire if the lost souls out there don't send them their money, in short, all those peddlers of afterlife goodies in exchange for loot in this life? Think of the accumulated riches of fringe sects like Scientology and Mormons. They sure didn't make their loot by manufacturing toasters - or, God forbid, produce something useful, like food.
Snake oil sellers anyone?
I got something good and healthy out of it - in this life. It took about three hours of brisk walking to and from there from my hotel - in the tropical mid-day sun. I found, and visited, a restaurant that sold a yummy watercress dish with, ginger, garlic and cold beer, bought a bunch of fruits to take to my room and now, after a leisurely shower where I also washed my clothes, I relax and write this report. Heavenly bliss?

Vignette

I sat in an Indian tearoom out on the sidewalk (since the tea is prepared, served and consumed on the sidewalk, should I call the place instead of tearoom a teasidewalk?) A majority of patrons was clearly Muslim, with haji skull caps and below the chin-bone beards. One, his thin beard colored an orange red, sitting on his folded legs on a stool, spit his burgundy red beetle effluent into a plastic lined plastic basket under the table. I was fascinated by his skill. Even though the distance from his mouth to the basket top was at least five feet, he never missed. With not every patron being such keen spit projectors, the ground between and under the tables, and especially the gutter where the least skillful spitters do their thing, was the usual red tint. A little dog with short legs and long hair was attached by a leach to the master spitter's chair. In some places of the dog's pelt one could detect a hint of white but, cruddy dingleberries an'all, the matted, filthy hair had that reddish tint of beetle nut spittle.
Being totally fascinated with the spitting performance, my stool must have approached the curb and I didn't notice. All of a sudden a stool leg went down into the gutter and I fell backward into the red slime. I managed to get up fast, before rescuing spitters reached me to help. My pink plastic stool was in splinters, my backside was colored red. I quickly paid for my tea - there was no charge for the destroyed stool - and hurried to my room where I stepped into the shower fully clothed (after removing wallet, passport, agenda, cash, pen, flashlight, Swiss Army knife, camera, toothpick and half a roll of Tums).
Tonight, as a special favor by the friendly lady with pointed teeth, I had the rare opportunity to watch CNN to know what piccadillos are brewing between the got-you-by-the-balls-gladiators at republican primaries. I was really looking forward to observe the, who has more money to spend, spectacle but, Witney Houston spoiled it all by dropping dead. Suddenly there was nothing going on anymore in the world, in US politics, in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Greece, with the Euro, the price of oil and Vladimir Putin. It now is wall-to-wall about Witney Houston's incredible qualities and struggles while she was alive.
I like Malaysia-style flat rice noodles with vegetables, ginger, garlic and chicken so, never mind CNN, republican primaries, and waist line, I am going out to stuff myself. In my city wanderings I'd also noticed a store that sells bottles of South African wine. Maybe I'll also take a walk to there.
Now, a day later, passing Yangon time 'till my flight to Saigon, I went again exploring the city and got impressive impressions.
I wonder if anything, apart from making babies, is done inside houses. Streets and sidewalks are workshop, office, laboratory, factory, repair shop, kitchen, warehouse, siesta nook, dining room, hairdresser, toilet, shower, meeting/conference room, notary public and letter writer shop, car park, car wash, library, shoe maker and repairer, tailor atelier - and in some places there is even space to walk. No question, wheelchair bounds have to stay home.
Some of the workshops are super specialized. One, a luggage-handle-repair-place, had a large assortment of brand new suitcase handles on display - but he also installed custom made ones. Another meticulously custom cut gaskets for engines. People brought motors, pumps, fans, the gasket maker traced openings that needed a gasket then produced them of, what looked to me like paper. One fashioned out of old styrofoam packing material new styrofoam packing material. Another flattened tin cans into roofing tiles. You also get an opportunity to observe the quintessential green operation. Next to the man who plucks chickens, sits a man who makes feather dusters. No need to transport feathers to feather duster manufacturers, it is all done in one place, in a vertically oriented industry.
The fifteen-dollar drug store reading glasses, that can be had at a bargain price of five dollars on New York's Canal street, in the streets of Yangon, cost a grand total of sixty cents.
An excavation site for a new building resembled an ant hill. Hordes of people dug with hoes into the muck, others sorted the muck by hand, clay to one side, rocks to another, old brick to a group that separated mortar from brick then, both, old mortar and brick went into separate bags. All items got transported on shoulders to trucks, one for clay, one for rocks, one for bricks and one for old mortar.

... and yet another vignette:

From boxes, baskets and crates, cute little puppy dogs are for sale all over the place. To judge from the way, sellers and potential buyers, pet and cuddle them, it is not likely they will end up in somebody's dinner plate. The only question I have, since most of these puppies are too young to live apart from their mother, is there a Myanmar puppy-bottle-feeding-technique? ... Or, is it like a loving mother saying to her baby: "Oh! You are soooo cute, I could eat you!"