Sunday, December 14, 2014
Impressions of Myanmar (Burma)
Flying from Bangkok to Mandalay was a jump back in time. The airport in Mandalay is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of fields, with none of the development that surrounds other airports. The airport was clean and efficient, lethargic and empty. Ours was the only airplane that I saw.
There’s no bay in Mandalay, which is a hot, dirty, sleepy little town many miles from the ocean. The buildings are mostly two to four story blocks; Chinese functional architecture. I didn't see any interesting examples of older European buildings. Our hotel was surprisingly nice and the staff worked hard to make us feel at home. We ate at some local restaurants a block or two from the hotel, and the food was OK, not bad but not memorable.
We visited the Palace where the last king of Burma lived until he was defeated by the British, The walls were wood but the roof was sheet metal giving an overall surreal feeling, and the grass looked as if it had not been mowed for some time. At sunset we went to the top of Mandalay hill, climbing some 1800 steps under cover all the way. The view at the top was stunning.
A small bus took us to Bagan over roads that varied from new highway to an almost non existent track through a shallow river. I saw many carts pulled by oxen along the way, and the restaurant we stopped at for lunch was little more than an open building with a dirt floor and some plastic tables. In contrast, our hotel in Bagan was very nice and even had a beautiful garden and pool.
The pagodas and temples in Bagan - there are thousands of them - are spread out over a large area. We hired a driver with a horse cart, a two wheeled device with a padded platform to sit on, and saw several sites. It is a dry rather barren area that is beautiful at sunset, and I took some nice pictures, I was told that Bagan at sunrise is also beautiful. There were a large number of tourists from all over the world at Bagan and several large signs urging everyone to dispose of their garbage properly and to ‘Warmly Welcome and Take Care of Tourists.’
We returned from Bagan to Mandalay by the same small bus, a five hour trip, and then rode thirteen hours by big bus to Moulemein, a surreal trip with stops every two hours throughout the night. Moulemein is a small sluggish city on the ocean with some interesting architecture. We had one great meal in a small restaurant on the bay of fresh seafood.
The VIP bus we took from Moulemein to Yangon was wonderful, a big Chinese thing with only two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other. There were thirty seats altogether and one ticket was 10,000 kyat - about 10 USD. The TV monitors on the back of the seats worked and we watched the Fifth Element with Bruce Willis.
Yangon is the largest city in Myanmar, and it has an area near the waterfront of interesting old buildings that are in an unfortunate state of decay with plants growing out of the facades. It feels as if the city has been asleep for fifty years and just woke up to a state of disbelief. There are huge development projects under way, but I didn’t see a single US company represented there; no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no Subway. We rode on the train that circles the city, a three hour trip, and except for our digital cameras it could have been 1954 as easily as 2014. We had a good dinner at Junior Duck, a Chinese restaurant overlooking the river. We drank cold Myanmar beer and watched the sunset, then ate stir fried seafood in the open air second floor balcony area.
My overall impression of Myanmar? Nice people (mostly) who seem very religious; poor infrastructure; minimal development..
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Monday, December 8, 2014
Monday, December 1, 2014
Pa-Auk Forest Monastery and Meditation Center
" You will suffer."
These words of encouragement came from the Abbott after listening to my answers to his few brief questions: ” Do you want to learn to meditate?” (yes) “Do you have any experience with meditation?” (no) “Are you Buddhist?” (no) “Can you sit cross legged on the floor for ninety minutes? (no) At least he me some basic instructions on how to meditate, and a book to read on the subject.
I went to the meditation center, which is located near Moulemein, Myanmar, with my friend Htun Thein, with whom I had known in Thailand ten years before while I was working for MSF (Doctors Without Borders). We had often talked about going to the meditation center, and now he was eager to take me.
The day at the meditation center began at 3:30 AM with the pounding of a wooden drum. At 4:00AM the first of five ninety minute meditation sessions began. I was allowed to sit in a chair, but outside the main meditation hall so that my head was not higher than the heads of the monks who sat on the floor inside.
We ate breakfast at 5:45 AM and had lunch at 10:00 AM. We were not allowed to eat any food after 12:00PM. For each meal I walked through the long food line after the monks were served, holding my tray with a large metal bowl that looked like a dog food bowl. The food was bland but okay and there was plenty of it. Breakfast was noodles and vegetables, lunch was rice and vegetables, plus fresh fruit. Hot sweet coffee was served with both meals. We ate sitting on the floor of the covered walkway leading to the meditation hall. After eating we washed our bowls and returned them.
I found the meditation difficult to say the least. The first and last sessions were in the dark. During the evening session mosquitoes buzzed around my head. The first rule at the meditation center was that you are not allowed to kill any form of life, including mosquitoes. The monks sat under mosquito nets but I did not have one; my repellent kept them from biting me, but not from buzzing me.
The first time I tried to meditate the time seemed to go on and on, never ending. I kept telling myself that soon the gong would ring and I could stop, but it never did. When Htun Thein finally told me to stop meditating I discovered that I had been at it for almost three hours, and that there was no gong to mark the end of each session. Htun Thein is a very good meditator, very self disciplined.
My bed was a wooden platform covered by a thin mat. I did have a mosquito net which helped with the insects but prevented any breeze from reaching me. I slept poorly and in the morning I found that the bedbugs in my blanket had feasted on me, leaving 15 bright red extremely itchy spots on my body. If I could have found a bed bug I certainly would have broken the first cardinal rule. You may wonder why I needed a blanket. Well it actually did get chilly around 2 AM.
People at the meditation center were very friendly and supportive. They seemed genuinely glad to have me there even though I felt like a fish out of water. Would I go there again? Well probably not, but I'm very glad I went this time, if nothing else it makes for great journal fodder. And I am seriously hoping that I can learn to meditate, to control my untamed mind.
These words of encouragement came from the Abbott after listening to my answers to his few brief questions: ” Do you want to learn to meditate?” (yes) “Do you have any experience with meditation?” (no) “Are you Buddhist?” (no) “Can you sit cross legged on the floor for ninety minutes? (no) At least he me some basic instructions on how to meditate, and a book to read on the subject.
I went to the meditation center, which is located near Moulemein, Myanmar, with my friend Htun Thein, with whom I had known in Thailand ten years before while I was working for MSF (Doctors Without Borders). We had often talked about going to the meditation center, and now he was eager to take me.
The day at the meditation center began at 3:30 AM with the pounding of a wooden drum. At 4:00AM the first of five ninety minute meditation sessions began. I was allowed to sit in a chair, but outside the main meditation hall so that my head was not higher than the heads of the monks who sat on the floor inside.
We ate breakfast at 5:45 AM and had lunch at 10:00 AM. We were not allowed to eat any food after 12:00PM. For each meal I walked through the long food line after the monks were served, holding my tray with a large metal bowl that looked like a dog food bowl. The food was bland but okay and there was plenty of it. Breakfast was noodles and vegetables, lunch was rice and vegetables, plus fresh fruit. Hot sweet coffee was served with both meals. We ate sitting on the floor of the covered walkway leading to the meditation hall. After eating we washed our bowls and returned them.
I found the meditation difficult to say the least. The first and last sessions were in the dark. During the evening session mosquitoes buzzed around my head. The first rule at the meditation center was that you are not allowed to kill any form of life, including mosquitoes. The monks sat under mosquito nets but I did not have one; my repellent kept them from biting me, but not from buzzing me.
The first time I tried to meditate the time seemed to go on and on, never ending. I kept telling myself that soon the gong would ring and I could stop, but it never did. When Htun Thein finally told me to stop meditating I discovered that I had been at it for almost three hours, and that there was no gong to mark the end of each session. Htun Thein is a very good meditator, very self disciplined.
My bed was a wooden platform covered by a thin mat. I did have a mosquito net which helped with the insects but prevented any breeze from reaching me. I slept poorly and in the morning I found that the bedbugs in my blanket had feasted on me, leaving 15 bright red extremely itchy spots on my body. If I could have found a bed bug I certainly would have broken the first cardinal rule. You may wonder why I needed a blanket. Well it actually did get chilly around 2 AM.
People at the meditation center were very friendly and supportive. They seemed genuinely glad to have me there even though I felt like a fish out of water. Would I go there again? Well probably not, but I'm very glad I went this time, if nothing else it makes for great journal fodder. And I am seriously hoping that I can learn to meditate, to control my untamed mind.
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