Finding Normality in the Golden Land

At some point during any travels, maybe at Angkor Wat or Machu Picchu you look around and see all of the splendor around you but then wonder "This is nice, but I wonder what normal people do here."  This is particularly easy to think in Myanmar, a.k.a. the "Golden Land", a place that is dotted with shining gold temples and eye-popping sights everywhere you go.  Quite often, we never get to see it, but sometimes with a little bit of luck and a pinch of exploration, it can be found.

During one of the days we were staying in upper Shan state, we decided to rent a motorbike.  It was expensive ($18/day compared to about $8/day in Thailand) and the bike was not in what I would consider to be good shape: the front console had been ripped off, exposing a bunch of wires that were held together by tape and prayers.  It worked, though, so we set out.

Bumping into our Guide

Deciding to turn somewhat randomly to cut across a small valley, our bike took us through some compacted mud roads and through some small villages.  We slowed down in the villages, out of respect for the noise that we were making, as everything else seemed so quiet.  We eventually stopped to take a picture of a couple of water buffalo that were lazily grazing in someone's front yard.  As soon as we stopped our bike, though, the family in our house was waving for us to come in.  They looked so nice that we just couldn't say no.


Inside the house, the house mother offered us some "yeh nwe jahn", the green tea that is served with just about any meal in Myanmar.  With water heated from the wood-fire stove in the corner, we, along with a couple of grade school aged kids, sipped our tea and watched the one, static-filled station flicker and wobble on the TV screen.  Through some broken Burmese and a little Thai we were able to convey to the house mother that indeed the tea was good.

Fortunately, one of the sons spoke a little English due to some time spent studying at a monastery in Lamphang, Thailand so after our tea, he invited us for a tour of his town.  With nothing on our agenda and a personal guide at our disposal, we said yes and headed out into the town.

The Cave

So, what is there to see in a random town in Shan State, Myanmar?  Our first stop was to a nearby meditation cave. (because what town is complete without a meditation cave?)  We weaved through some small paths that took us past clear-cut forest and thickly clustered banana trees.


After about 10 minutes, there were some concrete stairs heading up the side of what looked like a barren cliff.  At the top, we found ourselves inside the meditation cave, surrounded by small Buddhist statues on one side and a vista of the surrounding lands on the other.



In the cave, our guide tells us that he comes up to the cave to meditate a lot.  We ask him some questions that we think are fairly insightful only to get matter-of-fact answers about his life.

Us: "Do you come here to meditate?"
Him: "Yes"
Us: "What's the longest that you have spent up here."
Him: "Maybe 3 months."
Us: "Is meditation hard?"
Him: "No.  It's easy."

...I guess for someone who can meditate easily, staying in a cave for 3 months is no large feat.

We descend from the cave and start walking through what can generously be described as the "center" of town.  There's not much to see, from a "specatular" point of view.  Mostly single story houses built on stilts with families lounging around in them.  Occasionally, we would walk by a building and think "Is that really a spinning wheel in there?  Do people still use those?"


Spirit Land

Of course, no visit to any town in Myanmar is complete without a visit to the local nat shrine.  For someone just passing through, it may be easy to miss this hidden world of nats (spirits) that reside in Myanmar.  To put it simply, a significant proportion of the population actively believes that there is a spirit world that can cause good and bad things to happen to you.  Proper treatment to the nats will cause good fortune (or at least not bad fortune) and improper treatment is just a bad idea.  There are hundreds of different nats all with different stories, some of which come from the ocean, others which come from trees (this is why the largest tree of a plot is always saved), and others that just inhabit a particular area.  I don't claim to understand it all, but I do know that people take it seriously.

The nat shrine in this town has some horses and what looks like statues of some white guys.  We tried to get our impromptu guide to explain a little about it, but with our language barrier, we were only able to understand that we were looking at something related to the town's nat(s).  I'll leave you to decide the story behind it.




Boozin' it Up (or not)

Finally, our "tour" ended at one of our guide's neighbor's house, a.k.a. the local rice wine factory.  At the time when we were in this town, it was nearing the Thingyan festival, which a reasonable person might describe as "people getting drunk and throwing water on each other."  So, presumably, this town was getting geared up for the festival, or at least hoping to make some profit by selling some cheap, local rice wine to eager consumers.

The "brewer" was an affable, plump guy who was eager for us to try his concoction.  Usually, we play along and we accept most food or drink that is offered to us.  After seeing the open, rusting canisters full of a bubbling rice concoction and smelling what was being cooked in them, we politely declined, miming that we probably shouldn't drink if we want to ride our motorbike home.  We did except a small snack of freshly cut green mango with sugar, though, which reasserted itself later in the day. 

Later, I remembered a story somebody once told me of a tourist in Indonesia going blind from homemade booze and was glad we decided to keep our sobriety (and vision).  It also didn't help that the canisters probably contained gasoline before they were filled with yet-to-be-fermented rice wine.  



Priceless

Coming full circle, we ended up back at our motorbike saying goodbye to our new friend.  While we were at the brewery, Bessie had slipped off and purchased a couple of bags of snacks that we were hoping would go to his younger brother and sister who were watching the TV with us earlier.  As we left, we thanked him and gave him our presents, but he kept his hands firmly behind him and declined to take any of it.  Because of our Western sentiment we always feel like we should repay someone for their kindness to us, but for him, his time was his gift to us. Here, in this small, remote town in Myanmar, there was no need to match his gift.  Maybe simple hospitality is a gift that is impossible to repay.