A quick end-of-February note, just before I fly off to Toronto. At this time of year there are so many markers, reminding me of people past and present, anniversaries of all kinds:
Today is February 28th, and if she were alive my mother-in-law Ann Hegewald Alford would be celebrating her ninetieth birthday today. She was a wonderful woman with a big heart, who loved books and meeting new people and thinking about the wider world.
My father was born on February 29, one of those special people who have a big birthday every four years and in between just a flicker at midnight for a birthday. He would be turning ninety-one tonight. A friend, Helen is another "29-er" who will have no day for her birthday this year.
Tomorrow the wonderful Evelyn turns five, and Michael, another child of friends and a gifted and lively musician I've known since he was born, is turning twenty-four.
The next day, March 2, was my grandmother's birthday. Since she was born in 1889, this day marks 122 years since her birth. It's amazing to think that we can span such a long time within the web of our family and friends. She was 25 when the first war started, an unimaginably long time ago in some contexts, and a mere yesterday in others..
And so it goes, the intensely peopled days of late February and early March.
It's great to be flying at this time of year: While spanning the globe and seeing things from different physical points of view, I also get to time-travel in my mind's-eye and view the world and events from different temporal locations.
Do you ever do this? It's a rich way of getting a new perspective on things, rather like drawing a map of the world with the south pole on top, or any other switching of normal orientation or perspective.
I'm feeling a little mediative right now, a familiar pre-departure state for me. It may also have to do with our visit to the monk at Wat Don Chang in Ban Chan, this morning. He is another "muscular buddhist", like the Sitagu Sayadaw I mentioned two posts ago. He is putting his energies into providing accessible high quality schooling to hilltribe children. He now accommodates 700 of them in dorms and classrooms, by his wat just south-east of Chiang Mai. I went today with Fern and Noi and new friends J and A, to get a blessing and just touch base. It's like getting a firm footing on the months to come, and I do feel blessed. He's quite a guy.
(And it turns out that A knows all about the Sitagu Sayadaw. She says that all Burmese know about him and that he has a large and growing international following. Good. We need more of this, so that the world connects to Burma and those in need can be helped directly.)
After the monk's blessing we were hungry (of course!). We went for khao soi at Mae Jam Paa - their fish version is especially wonderful - food for the body, now that the heart and soul were well taken care of.
Showing posts with label boat travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boat travel. Show all posts
Monday, February 28, 2011
Saturday, December 11, 2010
SOLO TRAVEL AND THE SENSE OF WIDE-OPEN POSSIBILITY
Because blogspot has been unavailable to me, I’ve had a couple of extra days to reflect on my time in Burma these last weeks. My days there felt so full at the time, and in hindsight the whole trip now appears even richer to me. The richness was of the best kind, a generosity of good luck and wonderful encounters.
A few months ago an old friend who lives on the other side of the country sent me an email asking if she could join me for some of my travels in Burma. I enjoy her company and know that she’s wonderfully open and resilient too: I don’t have to take care of her or worry about her. But still, I ended up writing her a letter that said, I’m very sorry, but I think I need to travel by myself. I’m sure she felt hurt and rebuffed; I would have in her shoes.
But it was and is true, that travel is very different when I am travelling with another rather than on my own. With another there is company and conversation, a chance to talk over the day’s events and have ambitions and fresh ideas about plans for the following days. On my own there is loneliness and there are times of self doubt, or self-criticism, and of anxiety. But still the plusses outweight those minuses.
And the plusses of solo travel? The biggest one is my opennness to new people and chance encounters. There’s more room for the unexpected connection with a stranger when I travel alone. And it’s those encounters that enrich travel. The casual conversation with my Burmese seatmate on the overnight bus (a woman from northern Shan State), the monk and his cousin-brother who took me temple-hopping in Rangoon on an earlier trip, none of this would have happened if I’d been travelling with a friend, enclosed in the cocoon of familiar company.
Another, related plus of solo travel is that it leaves open more possibilities for serendipity, for unexpected events. Yes, they are often connected to the chance encounters, but not always. And I love the unplanned and unexpected. I don’t want to know what tomorrow will bring; I want to discover it as I go. For if I did only what I planned to do, or what I could imagine before the trip began, then my trip would be defined and shaped by my limited knowledge and imagination. But if I am open to the unexpected, then the sky’s the limit.
I was sitting in a large teashop in Rangoon the other day, drinking black coffee (in Burma it is served like black tea, sweetened with sugar and with a wedge of lime alongside) and eating “nan-piar” a tandoor-baked unleavened flatbread, when an older man came over and said hello. Japanese from Osaka, a retired busniessman, he has been teaching Japanese in Mandalay, at the YMCA, for three years. He wants to help broaden the minds and imagination of young Burmese, and he’s doing it, student by student. He’s an interesting guy whom I hope to meet up with again, open and optimistic, and also generous-minded.
A woman I stayed with in Pakokku ten days ago, a small town up the Irrawaddy River from Pagan, taught me some delish Kachin dishes, a real piece of luck. I also learned a lot of central Burmese food technique from her daughter and from her daughter-in-law, a brilliant natural cook. They made fish curry, frying the fish first, then putting it into the long-simmered sauce just before serving. The chicken curry was a new version to me, and so was the way they fried chicken (simmering it first in a little water, until the water evaporated, before frying it in oil). The salads they made, one of green mango and another of peanut paste, were spectacular.
But best of all was the chance, as a solo traveller, to become, if only for a few days, a part of an extended family. I watched in the morning as the daughter put thanaka powder on her ten-year old son’s face, and on another morning as he did his own before school, carefully smoothing it into his skin, then using a toothbrush to make sure his eyebrows were smooth and perfect. A granddaughter, a beautiful tall twenty-year old engineering student, was going to a wedding next day. What to wear? We sat around one evening as she tried on a couple of outfits (both were traditional: short-sleeved fitted top over a longyi, a full-length straight-wrapped sarong). We all agreed which one was best, though she didn’t seem convinced. Next day she got dressed in the less cheerful combo(greys and blacks, elegance but no warmth), but then suddenly at the last minute changed her mind and opted for the pink top etc that we had all preferred. I took a photo of her in the pink, looking shyly beautiful as she headed off to the wedding on a motorcycle.
Pakokku sees only a trickle of foreigners, so I was a curiosity. Several times I was taken by the arm, by an older woman, and led to a monastery or temple and shown around. Each time we’d be followed by a circus of kids, mostly boys, who gambolled and laughed and cartwheeled and showed off in the freshest and noisiest and happiest way. The monks we’d meet smiled at the kids or tuned them out. There was no scolding, no false reverance, instead a wonderful exuberance.
There are urgencies in Burma and pain and suffering, especially along the borders, but elsewhere too. And at the same time there is this potential in the young, an energy and imagination. Totalitarian states clamp down on that energy, but from the things I heard from NGO workers and from others living in Burma, there is action, movement forward, even so. The internet is a huge boon, a help in networking of all kinds. And now there are growing self-help networks, some focussing on education (English language, civil society, conflict resolution) or health care (improving both access and quality), others on environmental change and sustainable agriculture.
And with the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi there’s a perceptible feeling of relief in people, almost a lightness in the air as you walk along the street, especially in Rangoon...
PS I discovered that my problem with making a new posting lies with Safari. I tried opening "new post" with Firefox, and here I am. Apologies for the delay and my techno ignorance!
A few months ago an old friend who lives on the other side of the country sent me an email asking if she could join me for some of my travels in Burma. I enjoy her company and know that she’s wonderfully open and resilient too: I don’t have to take care of her or worry about her. But still, I ended up writing her a letter that said, I’m very sorry, but I think I need to travel by myself. I’m sure she felt hurt and rebuffed; I would have in her shoes.
But it was and is true, that travel is very different when I am travelling with another rather than on my own. With another there is company and conversation, a chance to talk over the day’s events and have ambitions and fresh ideas about plans for the following days. On my own there is loneliness and there are times of self doubt, or self-criticism, and of anxiety. But still the plusses outweight those minuses.
And the plusses of solo travel? The biggest one is my opennness to new people and chance encounters. There’s more room for the unexpected connection with a stranger when I travel alone. And it’s those encounters that enrich travel. The casual conversation with my Burmese seatmate on the overnight bus (a woman from northern Shan State), the monk and his cousin-brother who took me temple-hopping in Rangoon on an earlier trip, none of this would have happened if I’d been travelling with a friend, enclosed in the cocoon of familiar company.
Another, related plus of solo travel is that it leaves open more possibilities for serendipity, for unexpected events. Yes, they are often connected to the chance encounters, but not always. And I love the unplanned and unexpected. I don’t want to know what tomorrow will bring; I want to discover it as I go. For if I did only what I planned to do, or what I could imagine before the trip began, then my trip would be defined and shaped by my limited knowledge and imagination. But if I am open to the unexpected, then the sky’s the limit.
I was sitting in a large teashop in Rangoon the other day, drinking black coffee (in Burma it is served like black tea, sweetened with sugar and with a wedge of lime alongside) and eating “nan-piar” a tandoor-baked unleavened flatbread, when an older man came over and said hello. Japanese from Osaka, a retired busniessman, he has been teaching Japanese in Mandalay, at the YMCA, for three years. He wants to help broaden the minds and imagination of young Burmese, and he’s doing it, student by student. He’s an interesting guy whom I hope to meet up with again, open and optimistic, and also generous-minded.
A woman I stayed with in Pakokku ten days ago, a small town up the Irrawaddy River from Pagan, taught me some delish Kachin dishes, a real piece of luck. I also learned a lot of central Burmese food technique from her daughter and from her daughter-in-law, a brilliant natural cook. They made fish curry, frying the fish first, then putting it into the long-simmered sauce just before serving. The chicken curry was a new version to me, and so was the way they fried chicken (simmering it first in a little water, until the water evaporated, before frying it in oil). The salads they made, one of green mango and another of peanut paste, were spectacular.
But best of all was the chance, as a solo traveller, to become, if only for a few days, a part of an extended family. I watched in the morning as the daughter put thanaka powder on her ten-year old son’s face, and on another morning as he did his own before school, carefully smoothing it into his skin, then using a toothbrush to make sure his eyebrows were smooth and perfect. A granddaughter, a beautiful tall twenty-year old engineering student, was going to a wedding next day. What to wear? We sat around one evening as she tried on a couple of outfits (both were traditional: short-sleeved fitted top over a longyi, a full-length straight-wrapped sarong). We all agreed which one was best, though she didn’t seem convinced. Next day she got dressed in the less cheerful combo(greys and blacks, elegance but no warmth), but then suddenly at the last minute changed her mind and opted for the pink top etc that we had all preferred. I took a photo of her in the pink, looking shyly beautiful as she headed off to the wedding on a motorcycle.
Pakokku sees only a trickle of foreigners, so I was a curiosity. Several times I was taken by the arm, by an older woman, and led to a monastery or temple and shown around. Each time we’d be followed by a circus of kids, mostly boys, who gambolled and laughed and cartwheeled and showed off in the freshest and noisiest and happiest way. The monks we’d meet smiled at the kids or tuned them out. There was no scolding, no false reverance, instead a wonderful exuberance.
There are urgencies in Burma and pain and suffering, especially along the borders, but elsewhere too. And at the same time there is this potential in the young, an energy and imagination. Totalitarian states clamp down on that energy, but from the things I heard from NGO workers and from others living in Burma, there is action, movement forward, even so. The internet is a huge boon, a help in networking of all kinds. And now there are growing self-help networks, some focussing on education (English language, civil society, conflict resolution) or health care (improving both access and quality), others on environmental change and sustainable agriculture.
And with the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi there’s a perceptible feeling of relief in people, almost a lightness in the air as you walk along the street, especially in Rangoon...
PS I discovered that my problem with making a new posting lies with Safari. I tried opening "new post" with Firefox, and here I am. Apologies for the delay and my techno ignorance!
Friday, November 12, 2010
TRAVEL & TRANSFORMATION
I promise this won't become a blow-by-blow of my travels, but I feel I have to write about the feelings of ridiculous lightness and pleasure that have been tickling through me since I reached my neighbourhood in Chiang Mai. It's not just the running into people whom I haven't seen since the spring, nor the softness of the air, nor the loveliness of the apartment with its views of Doi Sutep, the mountain that floats on the western horizon. No, somehow it's the feeling that I am pulling on the familiarity of this place, clothing myself in it like a well worn familiar cardigan that warms and strokes me, and also transforms me in ways I am only occasionally aware of.
The transformations that travel effects in us are special. They take place as we are unmoored from our normal context, so it's hard sometimes to know what is just changed perspective and what is transformation. And perhaps it's a distinction without a difference, because there's a continuum, from the shifting perspective as we move into new places and contexts, and the changes inside us caused by that shifting and uprooting, and then the perhaps more gradual evolutions of our attitudes and thinking as we adapt to a new place and shed some of the anxieties and expectations of the place we left.
Is this too convoluted? It is a complex and interconnected set of issues, but they're intuitively commonsense "insights" I think. And it's fun to have the time to reflect on them at this very moment of transition. There will be more...
I promised last time that there'd be some food in this, my next post. My first Thai food was early this morning, a home-cooked streetfood plate of rice with two dishes on it: stir-fried ground pork with long beans, medium hot and succulent; and beansprouts cooked with slices of firm tofu and some air-dried pork. It was a great start to the day. I sat eating, with the cook's family and a couple of other customers, by a busy lane where children of all shapes and sizes were heading to school in their uniforms, looking shiny-clean and fresh.
But then as I strolled down another lane a little later and reminded myself that I had taxi and airport and a flight to Chiang Mai ahead, I bought a second breakfast: two skewers of grilled pork (moo ping) and a small bag of sticky rice, irresistable. The whole lot came to 15 baht, or about 50 cents (the plate of rice with two dishes had cost the same). The pork was tender and succulent, slightly sweet, and aromatic with a little lemongrass. Now I've really arrived here, I thought as I sat in the sun eating.
And we'll see what comes next, but for now there's a feeling of infinite possibility, and also a contentment with the here and now. So I bask in the transformations of travel.
The transformations that travel effects in us are special. They take place as we are unmoored from our normal context, so it's hard sometimes to know what is just changed perspective and what is transformation. And perhaps it's a distinction without a difference, because there's a continuum, from the shifting perspective as we move into new places and contexts, and the changes inside us caused by that shifting and uprooting, and then the perhaps more gradual evolutions of our attitudes and thinking as we adapt to a new place and shed some of the anxieties and expectations of the place we left.
Is this too convoluted? It is a complex and interconnected set of issues, but they're intuitively commonsense "insights" I think. And it's fun to have the time to reflect on them at this very moment of transition. There will be more...
I promised last time that there'd be some food in this, my next post. My first Thai food was early this morning, a home-cooked streetfood plate of rice with two dishes on it: stir-fried ground pork with long beans, medium hot and succulent; and beansprouts cooked with slices of firm tofu and some air-dried pork. It was a great start to the day. I sat eating, with the cook's family and a couple of other customers, by a busy lane where children of all shapes and sizes were heading to school in their uniforms, looking shiny-clean and fresh.
But then as I strolled down another lane a little later and reminded myself that I had taxi and airport and a flight to Chiang Mai ahead, I bought a second breakfast: two skewers of grilled pork (moo ping) and a small bag of sticky rice, irresistable. The whole lot came to 15 baht, or about 50 cents (the plate of rice with two dishes had cost the same). The pork was tender and succulent, slightly sweet, and aromatic with a little lemongrass. Now I've really arrived here, I thought as I sat in the sun eating.
And we'll see what comes next, but for now there's a feeling of infinite possibility, and also a contentment with the here and now. So I bask in the transformations of travel.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
HEADY SPRING AROMAS AND EXPLORATIONS
Late last night as my taxi turned down my street, in through the open window came the heady scent of May on Henry Street, a mingling of chestnut blossom (the blossom-candles are out in pinky-whiteness on the towering horse chestnuts all across the city); lilac; and lily of the valley. Parfum de printemps is the name of this scent, intoxicating for sure. The heat has brought everything along quickly, so the blossoms are early. They come early and then as quickly fade. This is spring in fast-forward mode. Blink and it's gone.
Well I did blink. I went to New York City for three days for the James Beard Food Media and Cookbook Awards, now very successfully combined in one gala evening. It turned out to be a great chance to see people I've known for a long time but not embraced for awhile, as well as to meet those I know through their work or the internet, but whom I hadn't seen face-to-face before. It's often a solitary life, writing, and these kinds of events are a treat. For those of us who come in from outside New York, it's also a chance to get energised by New York and reminded that however complicated life seems to be, other people's lives are even busier and tighter and more difficult.
The scenes on the street were wonderfully distracting, with some people out in flip-flops or sandals for the heat, others clinging to "May-appropriate" wear and looking sweaty. It was hard to go inside when the weather and the scene outdoors were so engaging, but I did make it to MOMA for the Marina Ambramovic' show "The Artist is Present". I've been tiresome ever since with friends, urging them all to go and take it in. And now I'm telling you, too: go and see it if you can, right away!. I was stunned by the artist's focussed energy, her urgent insistence on attentiveness and on the present moment. It is shocking and moving and awe-inspiring. The show closes at the end of May.
Speaking of the present, Tashi is in Athens, where there is a general strike on and where people are demonstrating how angry they are. I have sent him an email saying please stay out of crowds and tight corners, but do try to find a vantage point from which you can watch some of what is going on. He is lucky to be there to catch some of what it feels like when politics becomes urgent and people are frustrated.
The calm back-waterish feel of Canadian politics does not give our kids any idea of how different politics can be in other places. I was lucky enough to be in France in the spring of 1968 when les evenements unfolded. It was a crash course in politics for a seventeen-year-old from Ottawa. Through the winter there was the commentary in the French papers about the Vietam war, especially once the PAris Peace talks started. And then in the spring I got to watch the optimism and idealism of the students and some workers and then the undermining of their enterprise by the true hard-core pols from the far left, who preferred to stick with the status quo rather than risking giving any power or legitimacy to other political parties or to the students. It was a lesson in the fundamental conservatism of those who have senior positions in the institutions of government, including the oppostition. Conservatism is not always a bad thing. It does help maintain stability. But it can be such a dead hand, holding back social evolution and dampening hopes for change.
I came home that summer with fresh eyes and with my ears unplugged for the first time. Suddenly media bias and issues around point of view and deeper agendas and all those strands that are now raised in media courses etc, were clearer to me, and that marked the start of my adulthood, I think.
Tashi has had a year (it's such a difficult language!!) of Ancient Greek, which he loves, but he does not know any modern Greek, so he'll be depending on English-language-speakers and -news-coverage. He has a Lonely Planet Greek phrasebook of course. I don't think it stretches to "is the demonstration today peaceful or violent?" or "when will the strike be over?"!!!!
POSTSCRIPT: I had an interesting excursion to Queens yesterday with an eating-explorer friend named Jacob, to eat Malaysian food at a small resto called Good Taste, on 45th Street near the Elmhurst train stop. The bendi belacan (okra in a pungent sauce/coating made of shrimp paste, onion, etc) was outstanding, the Assam laksa not as sour as it might have been, but good, especially once it had cooled to room temp. We were given a taste of beef short ribs in a dark sauce which were fab, succulent and tender. It was a problem being only two; on an excursion like that it's more fun and more satisfying to have a lot of people, so you can really explore the menu. The place is owned by Chinese from Kuala Lumpur. From there it's an easy walk along Broadway to the predominantly South Asian shopping near the Forest Hills station (where I caught the E-train for four stops and then the Air Train to JFK, so easy and inexpensive). I just had time for a superficial look around one large grocery store and a peer in to some shop fronts. It's a great place to explore.
Well I did blink. I went to New York City for three days for the James Beard Food Media and Cookbook Awards, now very successfully combined in one gala evening. It turned out to be a great chance to see people I've known for a long time but not embraced for awhile, as well as to meet those I know through their work or the internet, but whom I hadn't seen face-to-face before. It's often a solitary life, writing, and these kinds of events are a treat. For those of us who come in from outside New York, it's also a chance to get energised by New York and reminded that however complicated life seems to be, other people's lives are even busier and tighter and more difficult.
The scenes on the street were wonderfully distracting, with some people out in flip-flops or sandals for the heat, others clinging to "May-appropriate" wear and looking sweaty. It was hard to go inside when the weather and the scene outdoors were so engaging, but I did make it to MOMA for the Marina Ambramovic' show "The Artist is Present". I've been tiresome ever since with friends, urging them all to go and take it in. And now I'm telling you, too: go and see it if you can, right away!. I was stunned by the artist's focussed energy, her urgent insistence on attentiveness and on the present moment. It is shocking and moving and awe-inspiring. The show closes at the end of May.
Speaking of the present, Tashi is in Athens, where there is a general strike on and where people are demonstrating how angry they are. I have sent him an email saying please stay out of crowds and tight corners, but do try to find a vantage point from which you can watch some of what is going on. He is lucky to be there to catch some of what it feels like when politics becomes urgent and people are frustrated.
The calm back-waterish feel of Canadian politics does not give our kids any idea of how different politics can be in other places. I was lucky enough to be in France in the spring of 1968 when les evenements unfolded. It was a crash course in politics for a seventeen-year-old from Ottawa. Through the winter there was the commentary in the French papers about the Vietam war, especially once the PAris Peace talks started. And then in the spring I got to watch the optimism and idealism of the students and some workers and then the undermining of their enterprise by the true hard-core pols from the far left, who preferred to stick with the status quo rather than risking giving any power or legitimacy to other political parties or to the students. It was a lesson in the fundamental conservatism of those who have senior positions in the institutions of government, including the oppostition. Conservatism is not always a bad thing. It does help maintain stability. But it can be such a dead hand, holding back social evolution and dampening hopes for change.
I came home that summer with fresh eyes and with my ears unplugged for the first time. Suddenly media bias and issues around point of view and deeper agendas and all those strands that are now raised in media courses etc, were clearer to me, and that marked the start of my adulthood, I think.
Tashi has had a year (it's such a difficult language!!) of Ancient Greek, which he loves, but he does not know any modern Greek, so he'll be depending on English-language-speakers and -news-coverage. He has a Lonely Planet Greek phrasebook of course. I don't think it stretches to "is the demonstration today peaceful or violent?" or "when will the strike be over?"!!!!
POSTSCRIPT: I had an interesting excursion to Queens yesterday with an eating-explorer friend named Jacob, to eat Malaysian food at a small resto called Good Taste, on 45th Street near the Elmhurst train stop. The bendi belacan (okra in a pungent sauce/coating made of shrimp paste, onion, etc) was outstanding, the Assam laksa not as sour as it might have been, but good, especially once it had cooled to room temp. We were given a taste of beef short ribs in a dark sauce which were fab, succulent and tender. It was a problem being only two; on an excursion like that it's more fun and more satisfying to have a lot of people, so you can really explore the menu. The place is owned by Chinese from Kuala Lumpur. From there it's an easy walk along Broadway to the predominantly South Asian shopping near the Forest Hills station (where I caught the E-train for four stops and then the Air Train to JFK, so easy and inexpensive). I just had time for a superficial look around one large grocery store and a peer in to some shop fronts. It's a great place to explore.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
AFLOAT IN A LARGE LANDSCAPE
Astonishing to be here in Burma, in Rangoon/Yangon, let alone with access to the internet. The young tech guys here have figured out ways around the government's censorship and blocking of blogspot and yahoo and etc etc. Yahoo is still tricky though, so I'm asking people to write to me instead at nomsola@gmail.com It's always great to get mail.
I don't plan to write much about my travels and encounters right now, just to touch base and to apologise for the gaps in this blog! I've been on the northwest coast, not far south of the Bangladesh border. I flew to a town called Sittwe, formerly Akhyub, which was the capital of Arakan when the British ran it (1826 or so until after the second war). But it replaced the early Arakan/Rakhine capital, a place of much renown in its day, called Mrauk U. Now Mrauk U feels like an extended village, with small dirt paths and lanes, traffic on foot and bicycle, with the occasional vehicle, two hours of electricity a day.... you get the picture.
But before it was a grand place, with rulers wealthy and powerful, helped by the fruitful huge rivers and rich fertile rice growing valleys of the region. They left behind temples and chedis and payas, buddhist monuments of various kinds. So as I cycled slowly around on a one-speed, watching out for bumps and chickens and children, I was pedalling through small hills topped with golden chedis, some small, some grand. It's a hard life for people there because everything is done by hand, with effort, but it's also done with grace, sustainably. I learned a lot, and also, I should say, ate some extraordinarily wonderful home-cooked food. More on that some other time.
The trip from Sittwe to Mrauk U involves seven hours or so of travel in an old wooden boat up a huge river and then up a side channel etc etc. The horizon is vast, the boat, and other small boats that we came on in our passage, paddled by one or two fishermen, say, were insignificant in the vastness. Yesterday I made the trip back down, for the same seven hours, through the same vastness, this time more hazy from the burning off of stubble in the fields. And after that came a prop plane flight from Sittwe to Rangoon.
Such a contrast this morning from that slow ease and lack of hi-tech, to see on the TV in the lobby of my guesthouse a broadcast of Obama addressing Congress, carried live on al-Jazeera. It's a new world, we hope. And even in places where the powers that be try to keep the doors closed, people now seem to have more access to the world... Let it continue!
I'm due to fly north tomorrow, to Myitkyina, for eight days. I'm assuming there will be no internet access, or not much, so that it's most likely I'll next be writing here on March 7 or so, just before I fly out from Rangoon to Thailand. Please keep wishing me luck!
I don't plan to write much about my travels and encounters right now, just to touch base and to apologise for the gaps in this blog! I've been on the northwest coast, not far south of the Bangladesh border. I flew to a town called Sittwe, formerly Akhyub, which was the capital of Arakan when the British ran it (1826 or so until after the second war). But it replaced the early Arakan/Rakhine capital, a place of much renown in its day, called Mrauk U. Now Mrauk U feels like an extended village, with small dirt paths and lanes, traffic on foot and bicycle, with the occasional vehicle, two hours of electricity a day.... you get the picture.
But before it was a grand place, with rulers wealthy and powerful, helped by the fruitful huge rivers and rich fertile rice growing valleys of the region. They left behind temples and chedis and payas, buddhist monuments of various kinds. So as I cycled slowly around on a one-speed, watching out for bumps and chickens and children, I was pedalling through small hills topped with golden chedis, some small, some grand. It's a hard life for people there because everything is done by hand, with effort, but it's also done with grace, sustainably. I learned a lot, and also, I should say, ate some extraordinarily wonderful home-cooked food. More on that some other time.
The trip from Sittwe to Mrauk U involves seven hours or so of travel in an old wooden boat up a huge river and then up a side channel etc etc. The horizon is vast, the boat, and other small boats that we came on in our passage, paddled by one or two fishermen, say, were insignificant in the vastness. Yesterday I made the trip back down, for the same seven hours, through the same vastness, this time more hazy from the burning off of stubble in the fields. And after that came a prop plane flight from Sittwe to Rangoon.
Such a contrast this morning from that slow ease and lack of hi-tech, to see on the TV in the lobby of my guesthouse a broadcast of Obama addressing Congress, carried live on al-Jazeera. It's a new world, we hope. And even in places where the powers that be try to keep the doors closed, people now seem to have more access to the world... Let it continue!
I'm due to fly north tomorrow, to Myitkyina, for eight days. I'm assuming there will be no internet access, or not much, so that it's most likely I'll next be writing here on March 7 or so, just before I fly out from Rangoon to Thailand. Please keep wishing me luck!
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