Biding Time

Sandalwood, the Burmese all-in-one cosmetic, is believed to create a smooth complexion, make you smell good, prevent sweating. It functions as a sunscreen and - they think - it makes you look beautiful even if, with liberally applied paste, some, otherwise pretty faces look like the inside of a bowl after you prepared pancake mix.
Thar Aye for growing his retirement fund, plants sandalwood trees on ancestral land in his native village.
We drove to the agency that assigns tourist guide jobs to him. It turned out to be a small roadside office, cum pharmacy. The assignment manager and Thar go into a heated give and take. It soon dawned on me he was trying to get out of already agreed on jobs. The manager confirmed my suspicion when I asked.
"Under no circumstances will I accept Thar's time with me if it involves giving up even one crummy professional assignment, " I said.
Thar broke up completely. Tearfully he insisted, as long as I was in town, he wanted to be at my disposal.
"The best you can do for me is to leave me alone," I said brusquely, maybe even a bit harshly. It was easy to see this is the hight of the annual tourist season when he can make the means to carry him through the year. More important, I didn't want him to mess up his job providing contact.
"Unless absolutely necessary, like seventeen years ago," I blinked at him with what I hoped he'd understand as our 1994 conspiracy, "I totally wish to be by myself."
The pharmacist / travel tour arranger, showed relief. I asked him not to accept any of Thar's resignation attempts. As a result, Thar guided yesterday eighteen American tourists in and around Mandalay and, apart from his guide fee, made a three-hundred dollars commission from the jewelry they bought in the store he herded them to. When this group is gone he'll shepherd another, and then another. Those jobs will continue to come 'till the northern hemisphere snowbirds see the crocuses emerge from the ground and put the snow shovels away 'till next winter.

It boggles the mind how unfettered capitalism by a few for a few has run this beautiful country into the ground. I say, unfettered capitalism because the honchos who ran the show here for the last sixty odd years have virtually the whole country under their thumbs. There are no rules or regulations to impede the free flow of their capitalist creative energy. They own just about everything, they create the laws that put the least possible obstacles in the way of running their businesses. They have no need to invest in lobbyists because they themselves have the power to do whatever the situation requires. They are the law. As a result, the country ends up in an indescribable fiasco, with nothing for most and everything for a few. In Myanmar, the 99% versus the 1% has come full circle.
During colonial times, this country was considered the region's breadbasket. Now, besides gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, huge tracts of valuable virgin lumber (that, to a large extent has now become furniture and wood paneling all over the world), an abundance of fertile land, and an amiable, peaceful population, it also has oil and gas. Still, the infrastructure crumbles everywhere. Compared with its neighbor, Thailand, who has practically none of Burma's natural treasures, and virtually the same climatic and topographic circumstances, it is a hopeless basket case. On my last visit to the country the Kyat bills (name of the Burmese currency) had been changed from units like 5, 10, 50, 100' 1,000 etc. to uncountable monstrosities like 9, 45, 90, 450, 900 etc. One day the junta declared all the old bills to be worthless. Everybody had the right to exchange only a small portion of their cash for new currency. Talking about instant wealth distribution! It certainly enriched the rulers, and it worked instantly at leveling the general population's wealth.

While wandering around in town I saw some areas that look like gated communities in the US, except each home has its own gate. Right in between crumbling, dirty, pot-holed, crowded, alleys, you'd suddenly come upon a high ends estate type neighborhood with perfectly paved streets and landscaped center dividers. Elaborate, gaudy villas peak out over high, razor wire topped walls. Those houses, I found out, belong mostly to Chinese investors.
A real gated community is on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. A square enclosure of 3,500 yards (about two miles) per side, behind a 500 feet wide moat alongside a 30 feet high wall, is accessible, for a ten-dollar fee, to tourists wishing to visit the palace. The ticket comes with strict warnings not to trespass beyond the straight road leading to the palace. Numerous military sentries make sure you keep to the rules. The top military brass, the country's rulers, have their digs in the huge compound in the middle of the city. One can only imagine how luxurious they are.

Thar joins me for breakfast at the hotel before he has to meet his tourists. We talk about politics, life, how he lost all his savings with the currency changeover, and his total devotion to Buddhism. He assures me that now I don't have to worry anymore what I write in Myanmar, about Myanmar, with some limits about describing the government, the economy and Burmese life in general. The leaders realized they are incapable to suppress the new methods of disseminating information.
The day after answering in minute details many aspects of my life, like date and what time of day with what means of transport (a strange question since only flight is permissible) I arrived in Myanmar, for inclusion in the application to be let go north to cross into China, and paying a hundred-dollar application fee, a government agent called the hotel with news the northern region is closed to foreigners. "A messenger will return the hundred-dollars and retrieve the receipt," he said. As soon as I heard that, I rushed out to get the receipt photo copied. Back at the hotel the messenger was waiting for me, returned the hundred-dollar bill when I handed over the paper then left. The copied receipt said it was for the hundred bucks, as a downpayment for a permit to do the Burma road on February 8, from Lashio to the border at Mu-se. I immediately started to make arrangements to pass time in the region until February 7 (hint, hint!).
Next morning I had to leave the hotel at 6:15 AM to embark on an Irrawaddy river boat to Pagan. By the way, the rulers, as they had done with other local names, changing Burma to Myanmar, Rangoon to Yangon, the river is now called Ayeyarwaddy.
Pagan is one of the old capitals and sports 4,400 Pagodas in a relatively small area.
Six AM the reception called that Thar was waiting for me in the lobby. He and his wife were there to drive me to the boat landing and to give me two large bags of travel provisions. Before leaving, Thar made me sit on a chair, then he and his wife stood in front of me and put their hands together in prayer. They dropped flat to the ground, raised their upper bodies, hands joined praying towards me, went down again, up, down, up down as I had seen people in front of Buddha images. Totally embarrassed, I pleaded with them to stop - to no avail. When they finally got up, Thar hugged me, western style, and cried again. He said I was responsible for all that went well in his life. The provisions they brought for the less than ten-hour boat ride were eighteen bananas, four bags of potato chips, two sweet rolls, six little bags of biscuits, two toasts with chocolate filling, five limes and two bottles of water.
The boat has a restaurant and, although called the fast boat, it is only fast when compared to other decaying wood and rusty steel floating contraptions on the river, the ones with very loud and smoky one-cylinder tuck-tuck-tuck engines. For the 180 kilometer (about 120 miles) downriver journey, going with a 4-5 mph current the boat took almost ten hours. That "fast" boat seems to be reserved exclusively for tourists. There too, as in so many other places I'd noticed before, the average age of passengers must have been around sixty.
A horse and buggy picked me up at the boat landing for the trip to my guesthouse where I'd made reservations from Mandalay. I don't like my new digs at all - bad vibes. It feels, sort of, like Bates Hotel(?) from the film Psycho. It gives me the creeps..
I'd barely settled in when a young man came into my room and introduced himself as Thar's second son, the doctor. Over dinner he told me he makes, as a doctor since four years, the princely sum of about one-hundred-dollars a month. His spoken English, like his father's seventeen years before, is not fluid, to say the least. He never gets chances to practice even though he remembers a large vocabulary.
Next morning, which is today, I wandered around in search of a more suitable guesthouse. I am writing now on a little veranda off my charming twenty-dollars per night bungalow. All is pleasant here, except for the maintenance man who is painting furniture next to me with a very strong smelling paint and other odors wafting by, one I identified as coming from burning car tires. Birds don't seem to mind, they keep merrily chirping away.