Myanmar: Mandalay and Bagan

Sorry for messing with a chronological posting order, but I’m just getting to sorting through some of my photos and the notes that I jotted down earlier this trip! The following talks about my time in Myanmar (a leg of my trip that I’ve already completed!) and I’m currently writing from Vietnam. I’m also simultaneously posting about some of the things I’m seeing (and eating!) while I’m traveling between Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, and Hanoi, so sorry for any of the confusion that might happen as a result!

—

After Thailand, Marta and I flew to Myanmar – taking a flight from Phuket and stopping over in Bangkok for a few hours in a layover. We made it to Mandalay and stayed there for just over a day, which gave us a chance to get a glimpse at the city. We walked around Mandalay a fair bit, even though we were only there for a little more than 24 hours. We landed at 12:30, but going through immigration, withdrawing money, and catching a bus to ET Hotel ended up taking a few hours so there wasn’t much left of the afternoon once we had unwound at our hotel.

We walked to a restaurant called Aye Myst Tar, which offered a full menu with a lot of options neither of us had tried before. We were pretty obviously lost, and (more than once) had to ask the waiters to explain what some of the side dishes were. Our meal was really delicious, and left me totally stuffed. Before coming to Myanmar, I had only tried Burmese food once – so it’s been a really positive experience to expand my understanding of culinary traditions around the world. It’s no secret that I love tea, so I’ve been thrilled to be in Myanmar where leaves from the tea plant are both brewed as a beverage and eaten in salad form! Consider me a very happy camper.

In Mandalay, we had time to see the Mandalay Palace, which we had walked past the evening before. While there, we asked another couple of travelers to take a picture of us, and we ended up starting to talk and going out to lunch together. I really like how friendly folks are, and being a twenty-something backpacker seems to give you enough in common to strike up a conversation and become temporary friends. We didn’t have much more time for sight-seeing after we parted ways with the rest of the group, so we did miss out on Mandalay Hill and U Bein Bridge, but I don’t really regret it.

Our hotel helped us book a bus to Bagan, and we left Mandalay around 4 pm. We passed time on the bus by snacking (I swear, Marta is the ultimate travel companion because she insists on buying chocolate wherever we go) and watching Children of Men. A co-worker gave the movie to me over the summer, though I’m just getting around to watching it now. While the film was quite good, I have to say that it felt pretty unnerving to watch this while we were on the road – there are multiple scenes with violent car chases, and the uneven rocky roads taking us to Bagan certainly made you feel like you were part of the film. We got to Bagan in one piece, and settled into Innwa Hotel.

Two classmates from Yenching were also in Bagan, though we only overlapped for the first night that we arrived. After some back and forth debating where we should meet, Marta and I caught a motorbike taxi over to their hostel where we spent the night hanging out. Mikk and Luyolo gave us some suggestions for things to do and places to see, and we took down the name and location of a temple where they had caught a particularly beautiful (and semi-private!) sunrise and sunset.

Bagan is noteworthy for its many sacred spaces – more than 2200 temples and pagodas stand today as holdovers from an architectural frenzy that lasted between the 11th and 13th centuries. During the heyday of the Kingdom of Pagan (which would go on to eventually become modern-day Burma), 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas, and monasteries were erected. For three days, Marta and I explored the temple ruins, and caught a number of breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. Without exaggeration, I think that these couple of days can claim the titles for the most beautiful beginnings and endings that I’ve seen in my life.

In the mornings we’d wake up at 4:30 am, and rent the e-scooters from our hotel reception that we’d use for the rest of the day. With vague ideas of where we were heading, we made our way down the roads that frequently forked and turned from pavement to dirt, and dirt to sand. When we found a temple that would give us a good vantage point, we’d slip out of our shoes and climb narrow staircases and perch on the stones and wait eagerly as the deep blue of early morning to give way to the warm blush that comes with the dawn.

There’s something really quite magical about mornings in Bagan – there’s a heavy mist that hangs above the earth, and when you’re on one of the many temples scattered throughout the archeological zone, you’re just a little above it all so you can see the grey of the fog dissolving as the sun breaks over the horizon line. Once the sun has started its climb, a modest army of hot-air balloons is launched and they take lazy paths across the landscape.

Most people in my life can attest to the fact that I’m not usually one who wakes up quite so early. But I loved the routine of waking up, wandering around, and then returning to our hotel once the sun had risen. We’d eat breakfast on our rooftop, sipping teas and coffees to shake off the morning chill, and then take a few hours of down time before heading back out to explore again under the sun.

We rented e-scooters every day that we were there, which is (in my opinion) the only way to cover a lot of ground. Marta and I managed to escape injury while driving, which is no small feat considering that neither of us has been behind the wheel much before. I loved zipping through Bagan this way, and peeling off from the main roads whenever we caught sight of a temple that we liked and wanted to check out.

Sunsets felt just as otherworldly as the sunrises did, and altogether too brief. In fact, we spent our first evening chasing the sun, racing against the clock as it dipped beneath the faraway mountains. We caught the colors streaking the sky, and took in the last of the retreating light with drinks along the Ayeyarwady River, at a bar attached to the Bagan Thande Hotel. So, even on the nights where we missed the main attraction, we still got a chance to appreciate the beauty of Bagan. Other evenings took us to different temples, and each sunset was gorgeous and gave us new and different panoramic views of the archeological zone.

My favorite vantage point for both sunrise and sunset was the view recommended to us by our classmate – the Winido Temple. It was fairly close to the hot air balloon launch point, so we got to see the balloons take off and fly away. We never had a wholly private sunrise/sunset to ourselves, but I’d consider the crowd at Winido to have been a modestly sized group that didn’t distract from the views that we were taking in. While I can understand the appeal of a private sunrise or a private sunset, I also think that it’s nice to be able come together and share these moments with total strangers. In the moments leading up to the sunrise and sunset, there’s a quietness that spreads over the crowd where you’re all there waiting for the exact same thing. It’s equally calming and electrifying to have this sense of common ground with people from all walks of life, and I’m pretty blessed to have experienced it here.

I’d like to say that there’s a lot of beauty in the world. It’s something that I guess I forget about when I’m entrenched in routines and get such tunnel vision that I fail to see the bigger picture. So I’ll take this as a small reminder that there’s a whole lot more going on out there.

Overall, I feel really glad that I got to make this trip and doubly glad that I got to share being here with Marta, who is one of my closest friends from China. It wouldn’t have been a trip without taking a few moments for personal vanity and snapping a couple of portraits here and there. So here are a couple of shots of Marta and myself that I’m pretty fond of.

We ended our time in Bagan after three days, as Marta needed to make it Yangon to catch her flight back to Beijing. So, we took a nighttime bus to Yangon, which departed at 9 pm. I was glad for this – the overnight travel meant a night that we didn’t need to find a hotel for, and leaving late gave us a chance to catch one more sunset.

I hope to return here someday, but until then I’ll have to keep myself satiated with the huge number of photos that are now saved to my computer. While I hope to be able to share some more of these pictures with loved ones in the future, it’d be a dream come true to share the experience in person and have the chance to see some of these sunrises and sunsets together. Missing you plenty.

Love,

Kristen

Seeking Shade in Pathein

Pathein, a city located on the Ayeyarwady river delta in Myanmar, makes it into the margins of travel guides in footnotes about stops to make when traveling south to the beach, or in reference to the scattered workshops in the city that produce handmade umbrellas. It is the fourth largest city in Myanmar – a surprising fact given the calm low-density feel of the place (a sharp contrast to the bustling city of Yangon just 190 km to the east). Few buildings reached above three stories, and many facades proudly proclaimed mid-century vintages in dates elevated on their concrete walls.

When I found the first mention of Pathein in a tour guide, there was something that told me I needed to see it for myself. I don’t really know why, but I’ve had a long-term love for umbrellas. There’s something fun about them, I suppose: strong but delicate, functional but beautiful. I like the contrasts they present, the not-quite contradiction there is about them. A few photographs of these umbrella workshops sent me on a string of online searches for information. I quickly found that the city was a little bit more off the beaten path than I was used to, and if I wanted to learn more I was likely going to have to go there and see it for myself.

The trip to Pathein was straightforward enough: I bought a bus ticket the day before, and only needed to arrive at the station a half hour before departure. Our bus pulled out of the station close to 10:30, a little later than the original 10:00 schedule. We made a few stops along the way to pick up passengers and took a half-hour long lunch break, but other than that experienced no delays. We arrived a little after 3:30, and I wandered along the Strand Road until I found a guesthouse to book for the night.

Wandering around was a nice way to spend part of the afternoon and evening, though it didn’t turn up much in the way of the mysterious umbrellas that brought me on this quasi-pilgrimage. Sometime after the sun had set, I started to feel a little bit dejected. I tried unsuccessfully to find the workshops I had dog-eared when the inspiration for this trip first struck, but none of the addresses were registered by my usually trusty Google Maps. (As a millennial, I am thoroughly dependent on my smartphone in more ways than I like to admit, so this was a horror and made me feel acutely betrayed by technology.)

New days bring opportunities for new runs and new adventures. I’m still working towards a goal of running 50 miles while on vacation (though Yangon has not been a kind city to run in), so I headed out first thing in the morning to explore some side streets and head out towards Kanthonzin Lake. The meandering route that I took led me past a line of Buddhist monks collecting morning donations, a local school, and a public playground. And then, suddenly, I was in front of the Shwe Sar Umbrella Workshop.

I looped back to Shwe Sar to see where the magic happens an hour later, after I had finished my run and taken a much needed shower. I was ushered in and promptly handed a cup of milk tea to welcome me to the workshop. The owner, Ko Min Naung, was happy to answer whatever questions I had and let me poke around and take photos of everything that was going on. He told me that umbrella making was a family trade, and that the business and workshop had been in his family for several generations. He traced the history of the craft to a forefather who worked for the royal family in Bagan, under the last king of Myanmar. Their workshop migrated first to Mandalay and then to Bagan, as the family fled from colonial troops expanding the reach of the British Empire in Asia.

The frame of the umbrella is made entirely out of bamboo, while the top and handle is crafted out of lathe-turned mango wood. The woodworking took place at one end of the workshop, where an enormous machine hummed and spun out curled wood shavings that lifted up in the air and stuck to cobwebs hanging off the corrugated metal walls. I’m sure that my old woodshop teacher would have been taken aback by the machine’s set-up: one part circle-saw, one part lathe, powered by a single cord that dropped from the ceiling and rotated a motor that revolved a rubber fan belt longer than my legs.

These frames are threaded, and fabric coverings are later added over the ribs. Silks are used for parasols – a more delicate accessory, only intended to protect from the sun and not other elements. Cottons are used to make the canopies for more durable umbrellas, which can be used in both Myanmar’s rainy and dry seasons. The fabrics are painted with different designs – silk parasols were given delicate floral motifs, which Ko Min Naung told me made them popular among visitors from China and Japan.

The cotton umbrellas were decorated with traditionally styled graphic patterns in black and colored washes. I was most interested in these traditional cotton umbrellas for both their aesthetics and multi-purpose functionality – while I was looking around, a number were unfurled in the garden to receive a waterproofing wash, which ranged in size from child-size accessory to patio-sized coverings.

To waterproof these umbrellas, a paste is made from a local variety of a persimmon fruit. While persimmons of a Chinese variety are sweet, pulpy, and popular in various dishes and desserts, I was told that the local cultivars were bitter, firm, and not as frequently used for culinary purposes. The sealant had a slight golden color to it, which spread thin over the umbrellas and gave off a clean familiar smell that was not unlike wood stain.

I couldn’t resist buying one more souvenir (as thoroughly impractical as it will be to get back to Beijing). Ko Min Naung agreed that the blue one that I had been admiring was a good choice, and demonstrated a stoic faced pose for me.

When it was time to say goodbye, he lit another cigarette and took a few minutes to find a guest book that had accumulated the signatures of a number of visitors to the workshop. He came back with not only the guest book, but also a pair of hand-carved bamboo drinking cups, which he insisted that I take as a gift. (Really, I’m running out of space, and now definitely keeping my fingers crossed that they don’t weigh my backpack at the airport.) Paging through the notebook, I saw a combination of notes in both Burmese and foreign languages – some that I could recognize, some that I couldn’t. I added my own email and my address back in the US, and I’m hoping to stay in touch.

As a final favor, Ko Min Naung insisted on making sure that I get back to the guesthouse without walking or paying for a taxi – so we said our goodbyes and I hopped on the back of a motorbike driven by a family friend who had been sitting around the workshop that morning. As we sped back to the Strand, I couldn’t help but think that it has been a weird, but wonderful, string of events that led me here.

I have to say that traveling to Pathein has undoubtedly been one of the highlights of my time in Myanmar. It gave me an opportunity to have conversations – and not just about umbrellas! As soon as I arrived, we began with easy small talk about how people around the world take their tea, and later about my education in Beijing, my travels thus far this winter, and Ko Min Naung’s family. I was shown a picture on a phone taken of an old photograph, a brother who had moved to America a few decades before and set up a business in Connecticut. I was told that I should visit, next time I was back in the United States. I was told to remember faces, to visit again, and that friends of mine would be welcome whenever they came. It’s wonderful to feel so warmly received, especially at times like this when I am traveling alone.

I’ve spent the last few days bouncing around Yangon, and hope to catch up a bit with writing some more about the places I visited & post some pictures soon. For now, I’ve been putting my finishing touches on this while in the airport, and I intend to post everything tonight when I arrive in my hostel in Ho Chi Minh City. While in Vietnam, I’ll be meeting up with a few more friends from my program, taking some cooking classes, and staying with my cousin Claire! So I’ve definitely got a lot that I’m looking forward to. 🙂

Until the next update, I’m sending you all the best,

Kristen

Time in Thailand

The first stop on my trip this winter was Thailand. I arrived in Bangkok with Marta and Agustin on the 12^th of January, and we went around Bangkok, Phuket, and Phi Phi Island together. It’s a pretty radical shift to leave the cold of a Beijing winter behind and exchange it for the heat and humidity of Thailand in January. Can’t say that I’m too homesick for the pollution and weather back in China when I return.

Our time in Bangkok was probably the most exciting for me – we walked around the Grand Palace, and some of the temples. I love how colorful architecture is here – the tiles on the high steeped roofs, the mosaics, the golden statues. All of the color and ornamental design made it into a visual feast.

Speaking of feasts… I’m loving the food here a lot. Not sure if I’ve eaten my weight in Pad Thai and coconut milk yet, but I’m getting close. Marta is a fan of banana pancakes here, and I’ve developed a certain weakness for rolled ice-cream and Thai iced coffee.

Besides our time in Bangkok, the rest of our trip was spent in total relaxation at beaches in Phuket and Phi Phi Island. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen water so blue or beaches so white before. My apologies to the Jersey Shore, but the beaches back at home really can’t compare. Even though there are plenty of tourists here, it’s not hard to find a nice place for yourself to swim or lay in the sand. The water is pretty salty as well, which makes it so easy to float – I think it would be easy to fall asleep like that, surrounded by the hum of the water all around you and the soft rocking of the waves.

Really, I have to say that this feels pretty perfect. I started running again when I was in Phuket, which has been a welcome addition to my daily schedule. I haven’t been so physically active back in Beijing – the smog definitely saps my energy and will to exercise. So having a run in the morning for a few miles really helps to clear my head, get some energy out, and feel more in touch. I’ll have to figure out a routine back in Beijing, but for the purposes of this vacation I’ve set a (very attainable!) goal of running 50 miles over the 40 days that I’m on the road.

My last two days in Thailand have been spent on Phi Phi Island. It was raining a little bit yesterday morning, which made for a slow start to the day, but perfect weather for hiking around and finding the island view point (after a series of wrong turns)! Glad to have gotten a gorgeous panoramic view before I left. This afternoon, I’ll be taking the boat back to Phuket where we’ll spend another half day, and then our group will split up. Marta and I will be flying to Myanmar, taking an early morning flight from Phuket with a short layover in Bangkok. Agustin is going to be spending another day in Thailand, and then returning to Beijing (and later, going to South Korea and Japan).

In Myanmar, we will be seeing Mandalay, Bagan, and Yangon. I’m looking forward to exploring and updating you about that trip soon!

Love,

Kristen