Tag Archives: Myanmar

Telling Stories

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A few days before I left on my drive up here to Washington, I sat down with a few Chin refugees from Burma to interview them about how they ended up in Texas. I spent the day listening to their stories, typing notes, and thinking over the experience of conducting these interviews. During my last few years in Yunnan, part of my work involved driving a truck to remote villages along the Burma border to interview indigenous peoples about their language and culture and religion. I absolutely loved sitting in their homes and asking questions and hearing their stories. Now here I was, after a 90 minute trip through rush hour traffic in Dallas-Fort Worth that required a different set of driving skills than the mountains of Yunnan, talking to young people from the other side of the Burma border from where I had lived. A strange circle of events, wouldn’t you say?

My interviews in Texas were for a project I’m working on about the persecution of the Chin people by the Burmese government, told through the stories of several young refugees now relocated to the U.S. Listening to the things these kids went through, first in their villages, then as they endured the dangers of escape, and later in the terrible limbo of undocumented status in Malaysia, I was aware that they were entrusting me with something precious. They were telling me the horrific details not as a means of shocking me, but in the hopes that something good could come of others hearing their story.

I sat there in Starbucks with one guy, a skinny 20-year-old in jeans and a t-shirt, while he told me about being shot at and beaten, about surviving in a tiny boat on the ocean. I was overwhelmed with the absurdity of hearing this harrowing account while sitting there all warm and cozy and safe with our lattes.

And I was convinced once again of both the importance of telling stories and that helping people tell their stories is something I can do well. I’m not saying that to puff myself up or to try to sound important — I say it because it’s good for us to find the things we do well, and then to, um, do them well.

So for me right now that means getting up each morning, turning on my laptop, spreading pages of notes and drafts on the table around me, and telling Lydia’s story, the story of the Chin in Burma, and the story of how food insecure preschoolers in Wake County, North Carolina, are getting their tummies filled and learning healthy eating habits.

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A Few Cooking Resources

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As a follow-up to the story I posted yesterday about learning to cook while in China, I thought I should mention a few of my more commonly used resources. I found myself wanting to mention them in the previous post, but decided not to interrupt the flow of the story by including too many details.

For breads and cakes, I have worn out my Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook. I learned a while back that if you can start to get a feel for the right proportions of dry and wet ingredients in a recipe, you can adapt it to your own flavor preferences, and this standard cookbook has some solid, basic recipes that I’ve tweaked over and over again to make breads and cakes with my own flair. Betty Crocker is also where I tend to turn for basic information about meat and vegetable preparation—it’s just a solid resource book.

A few years back, a roommate introduced me to More-with-Less Cookbook, by Doris Janzen Longacre. For someone living overseas, this book is a must. So many simple, yet delicious recipes. I love that the recipes don’t start with a can of cream of mushroom soup or a block of Velveeta or any number of other American recipe staples that I can’t get here (and really shouldn’t be eating on a regular basis in America, anyway).

My favorite online resource is allrecipes.com, in large part because of its ingredients search function. I can search for recipes that include ingredients that I have on hand, as well as excluding ingredients that aren’t available to me—a big deal if I’m trying to find a recipe that, say, uses cocoa powder instead of baking chocolate. And, again, if you get a feel for how to use the right proportions, this site is a good place to read through several similar recipes for ideas and then strike out on your own.

Several people have asked me over the years about writing up some local recipes, and I just haven’t had time to do it in addition to my other work (with the exception of a blog entry I posted last year of Lydia’s mom’s steamed fish). Chinese cookbooks abound, if you’re in the mood for Cantonese or Sichuan or some of the more popular cuisines. But recipes from Yunnan are a bit more hard to come by, so I was quite excited when a friend gave me a recently published cookbook called A Taste of Shan by Page Bingham, with recipes from the Shan State in northern Myanmar, just across the border from where I live. The Shan of Myanmar have ethnic (and therefore, culinary) ties with the Dai of China, so this book will be a treasure to me in days to come, when I need to whip up something to remind me of southern Yunnan.

(Thanks, Emily, for More-with-Less, and thank you, Erin, for A Taste of Shan.)

Next in the “Finishing Well” series:  ”What to do with our talents”

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Burmese Days Conclusion: Why I Travel

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When I’m back in my own apartment after a trip like this one through Burma, when I’ve rinsed the dust out of my hair and the laundry is out of my backpack and in piles by the porch, ready to be washed, I begin sorting my thoughts and impressions into piles, too. Those that I will share with others through these stories, through online photo albums, through conversations in the days ahead. And those that I will keep and ponder and mull over on my own, letting them soak into the depths of me and become part of how I view and interact with and face the world.

My understanding of myself becomes much clearer when I’m away from my everyday surroundings. The nature of my job for the past few years has involved projects that require intense focus and discipline for a set period of time—usually in the form of compiling, writing, designing, revising, editing. A girl can only take so much sitting behind a computer before her thoughts begin to carry her away. Better to get away of my own accord than to be carried away. By spending time away from home (wherever home is at that moment) I regain clarity of thinking, refocus, and am refreshed to the very core of who Rebecca is.

In new surroundings I am more able to recognize what it is that I value in life, and I can point a finger more definitely to the places inside me that need to change or mature. Sometimes I can do this in a two hour bike ride out to some nearby villages; other times it takes two weeks of busing across Laos. It was by staring at a glacier for several days in Alaska that I was able to comprehend how truly joyful I am to be in my 30s now, something that had escaped me for the entire previous year in Yunnan. And it was sitting under a palm tree in Vietnam, watching a young boy drive a herd of cows across the beach, that I knew the focus of my job needed to change, to become more village-centered, more language-centered. Though I had fretted for months over making this decision, I left Vietnam and returned to work with a sense of both assurance and determination.

I know God hears my prayers from my own couch just as clearly as He does when I’m traveling along the Mekong or looking out a bus window at flooded rice fields. And He does speak to me in the mundanity of answering e-mails and cooking dinner and paying bills. Yet, in the interlude of being somewhere new, somewhere different, even somewhere difficult and unsettling, I have a deeper grasp of who I am and who God is and how it all works in this life that He gives.

In that way, this trip to Burma was no different from others. I had just finished up one major project and need to hunker down and get a couple more wrapped up in the next few months. Being in a new country, talking to folks along the way, helped me think through some ideas that have been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time, and though I didn’t make any life-changing decisions on this trip, the impressions I’ve brought back will simmer and stew and blend themselves into the rest of me in a way that is just as life-changing.

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Burmese Days Part 11: Chaung Tha

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“Relaxing beach getaway” isn’t a phrase generally associated with Burma, but we decided to give the Indian Ocean a try. During our two days at Chaung Tha in the Irrawaddy River Delta, we could count the number of Westerners on the beach on two hands—and there’s a reason for that. Southeast Asia has an abundance of easily accessible beaches and islands, and Chaung Tha is not one of them.

Serene, paradisical, restful after a week on the road (plus all the weeks of work preceding that). But not easily accessible. It took eight hours one way on a wretched excuse for a road, in a bus that should have been put out of its misery when I was in elementary school. Erin said that throughout the bus ride, she kept repeating to herself, “Crab and lobster, crab and lobster,” as a way of remembering that there would be something worthwhile waiting for us at the end of a long, hot, dusty day of travel.

And indeed, the seafood at Chaung Tha was delectable. Local fishermen walked up and down the beach, carrying buckets of still struggling sea creatures for sale. A lady pulled out a huge crab and dangled it before me as I sat on our bungalow porch the first afternoon at the beach—we opted to eat in breezy outdoor restaurants, though, rather than buy straight from the fishermen. Calamari with garlic and lime, crab in a masala curry, massive shrimp with a sweet and spicy Thai sauce. We made each meal on the beach count.

The morning of our second day, we took a small ferry out to an even smaller island that claimed to have whiter sand than the beach where we were staying. As we buzzed along in this tiny and probably overcrowded boat, I thought of all the times you read headlines reporting the number dead in ferries sunk in places like the Indian Ocean and hoped we weren’t about to become one of those headlines. The more I thought about it, however, I decided that while we might be overloaded, we were too small of a ferry to make international headlines if we sank. Then we reached the little island, and I became too busy scouting out a nice stretch of sand to take a nap on my new batik cloth to worry any longer about drowning.

There would appear to be a national ordinance in Burma that one stupa be built per every certain number of square feet of land. You could probably pick this little island up and plop it down inside my parents’ house with room to spare—but they still managed to build a gold stupa smack in the middle of it. Erin and I were the only Westerners on the island that day; the rest were Burmese tourists and families out for a morning in the sun. While some of the local men might wear swim trunks or fold their longyi up into something resembling shorts when they go in the water, the ladies go in dressed as they are, in jeans and t-shirts or in their longyi. Erin and I were the only women wearing swimsuits.

I had a good nap that morning on the island, before going back to our bungalow for lunch and another nap on our not-white-sand beach. I probably needed another three or four days of napping to be completely satisfied, but we had a plane to catch in Yangon. Chaung Tha Beach was a delightful two days of respite, but unless they widen the road and get new buses, look for me in Thailand or Malaysia on my next ocean-side vacation.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Why I Travel“

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Burmese Days Part 10: Shan Noodles

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So many people we met in Burma spoke such good English, I didn’t have a chance to learn much Burmese on the trip. I survived with only two Burmese words: hello and Shan noodles. By the last day of the trip, I could walk up to non-English speaking strangers on the street in Yangon and say in Burmese, “Shan noodles?” And they would obligingly point us in the direction of the nearest shop where we could grab some noodles for lunch.

Fortunately for me, one of our airplanes had a recipe for “Spicy Shan Noodles” in the in-flight magazine—now I can recreate my favorite Burmese dining experience at home if I so choose. Here is the recipe, as it appears in the magazine, for anyone who would like to try it. (I am not sure how much a “tical” is, and I don’t know when I’ll ever be cooking noodles for twenty, but it’s a fun recipe to have, regardless.)

Ingredients: (serves twenty)
Shan rice noodles, 1 bundle
Pork, 40 ticals
Cooking oil, 15 ticals
Peanuts, sesame seeds (roasted), 15 ticals
Colouring powder, 2.5 ticals
Onions, 10 ticals
Garlic, 5 ticals
Seasoning powder (monosodium glutamate powder), 1/2 teaspoon

Directions:
First, slice the pork, into pieces. Next, pound garlic and onions together, until it becomes a paste. Heat oil and add the paste. Stir until the paste begins to brown and add the colouring powder. When you get nice aroma put the pork into the pot. Then continue to cook until tender. Add the seasoning powder. After that, soak a bundle of dry rice noodles into the water, then boil.

Serving Suggestions:
Put handful of rice noodles into a bowl. Add the gravy pork curry. Then sprinkle with half a tablespoon of pounded peanut and sesame, together with thin strips of crispy fried tofu. Then mix the bowl with chopsticks. It is now ready to eat. Pickled radish is a tasty accompaniment and may be added to individual bowls as required. For those who like it a little bit hot, just add as much dried chilli powder as you need.

(Thanks, Erin, for the photo documentation of Shan noodles in Yangon.)

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Chaung Tha“

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Burmese Days Part 9: Yangon

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What our Mandalay arrival lacked in excitement was made up for by our landing in Yangon. After the intensity of the bus ride from Mandalay to Bagan, and knowing that we had two more days of bus rides ahead on our trip to the Delta region, we shelled out the bucks to save twelve hours or more by flying from Bagan to Yangon.

When our little turbo-prop plane landed, we stepped onto the runway and began looking through piles of luggage for our backpacks. Porters were waiting for the plane’s arrival and pushing each other aside, vying to grab the bags of tourists and escort them to a taxi. This was what I had expected in Asia. Within a couple of minutes, our porter had us through the crowds and on the front sidewalk, where the negotiations for a taxi to a guesthouse commenced. Several men huddled in to listen and give their advice, and as usual, the guy who settled on the final price with us wasn’t the actual driver of our taxi. The porter received his tip, and I went around to the back of the taxi because I didn’t think he’d closed the trunk of the car well enough with our backpacks in it. Sure enough, it wasn’t latched. I slammed it down again, and it just bounced back up. No latch.

Once we were rolling, Erin and I congratulated ourselves that we were out of the airport so quickly, giving us extra time to get situated in a room and wander around in search of dinner. Ten minutes later, the taxi engine stalled, and we found ourselves sitting in a round-about with traffic piling up behind us.

“No fuel,” the driver said.

A traffic cop wandered over from where he’d been directing cars nearby. He looked like he was maybe old enough to have graduated from high school and appeared somewhat nervous when he got close enough to realize that the taxi’s two passengers were white women. There was nothing to be done but to get the car out of the road and go for fuel. Erin and I hopped out of the backseat and helped the driver push, while the teenage cop held up traffic for us.

Not only did the trunk have a broken latch—it also wouldn’t stay open without physically being held up. Our driver was too polite to put us out by asking for further help, so he stood there holding up the trunk lid with one hand while trying to dig around for a fuel container with the other arm, until I noticed him struggling and moved to hold the lid for him. He found a jug and sprinted off in search of a filling station, leaving us in the semi-dark Yangon street, the object of much pedestrian staring as we waited. After 15 or 20 minutes he showed back up riding a tri-shaw, fashioned a funnel out of an old water bottle, and transferred the petrol into the tank. It took him several attempts to get the engine going again, but soon we were off. Two more stall-outs, and we made it to the guesthouse address we’d seen in our guidebook.

But the guesthouse wasn’t there. The driver knew the name of the place, and it matched up with the address we’d read—but the building was just flat out no longer there. Early October 2009, and our guidebook published in May 2009 already had obsolete information.

We scrambled to find a second choice guesthouse to tell the driver, and soon we were checking in to our room. A quick inspection of the sheets, the bathroom, and the air-con, and it was time to venture out to find dinner in another new town.

(Pictured above is a Burmese textile merchant in Yangon.)

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Shan Noodles“

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Burmese Days Part 8: Animals

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I couldn’t escape the feeling throughout our time in Burma that we were never more than a step or two away from the swamp or jungle. Mosquitoes plagued me wherever I went, whether I used insect repellant or not, though Erin managed to only get a few bites. We saw all colors of outlandish bugs, one of which stung me on the back of my arm, leaving behind a tiny stinger that Erin had to pull out for me. Bats flapped around in the darkness overhead in several of the pagodas, their guano dotting the bodies of Buddha statues.

I almost rolled the front tire of my bike over a five-foot long snake in the courtyard of our guesthouse in Bagan. As it slithered in front of me, I froze in position and declared, “Oh my!” loudly enough for one of the guesthouse workers to come see what was going on. He looked at me standing there motionless, then looked at the snake, and then said, “This kind is no problem. We say the person who sees this kind of snake is very lucky. So, no problem.” Yes, indeed I am lucky—lucky that I had encountered the non-problematic kind of snake instead of a viper or cobra.

The day before, I saw the largest lizard I’ve ever seen (outside of a zoo, that is) in an outhouse on the side of the road while driving back from a day trip to Mt. Popa. Try as I might to be brave, I couldn’t make myself go in that outhouse while that lizard was in there. I stood in the open doorway looking in at it, trying to decide if I would embarrass too many people at this roadside stop by going behind the outhouse to squat. Our taxi driver must have observed my dilemma because he brought the owner of the place over to unlock another outhouse, this one lizard free.

Even before I faced down the lizard, that morning trip to Mt. Popa was the oddest animal experience of our Burma journey. The top of the mountain houses a monastery and temple to 37 nats (spirits), and visitors must climb a series of staircases and ladders to reach the top. The view was said to be spectacular, so we went. We were warned ahead of time that there were a lot of monkeys at the mountain, so we kept all food out of their sight, as well as our hats and sunglasses, lest they be stolen by a small furry criminal.

Having my cheap Chinese sunglasses stolen was the least of my worries while climbing those staircases. I was more concerned that a gang of crazed monkeys might jump on me and start attacking, like in a Jhumpa Lahiri short story I’ve read. Or that I would step in something wet or filthy that a monkey had left on the stairs. Shoes off out of respect is the policy at all pagodas and temples, so we were barefoot on those stairs.

Barefoot on outdoor pavement is difficult for this girl who has become quite Chinese in her footwear sensibilities over the past few years. Difficult, but I survived both the threat of possible rabid monkey attack and the horror of walking on unclean stairs. Before putting our sandals back on when we returned to the bottom, we scrubbed our soles with antiseptic wipes while Burmese pilgrims watched with curiosity.

Goodbye monkey poop, goodbye Mt. Popa.

(Notice in the picture above, there is a Belgian tourist behind me, using me as a human shield while we walked through this particularly well-populated section of the monkey stairwells.)

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Yangon“

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Burmese Days Part 7: Con Artist

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If I noticed that the children selling souvenirs outside the stupas could understand my English fairly well, I would ask them if they were in school and other simple questions, just to give them a chance to practice speaking a bit more. Many of them said yes, but some admitted that they no longer went to school.

On our last morning in Bagan, one young guy must have sensed that I’m a sucker for kids needing tuition money. I had climbed the steep stairs of a stupa named Bu-Le-Thi and was sitting on an outdoor ledge, looking out across the plain. It was quiet and cool, and I was relishing a few moments to just sit and let the breeze brush over me.

Out of some unseen corner came a guy of about 20, and I knew before he said a word that he wanted me to look at his sand paintings. “You don’t have to buy anything—just come look,” he said. Just like they all say.

“I really don’t want to. I already bought one yesterday, and I don’t need another.”

“Please just look. I’m only home on holiday from university in Mandalay, and I haven’t sold anything yet today.”

He had said the magic word: university. Surely, I reasoned with myself, I could spare $5 to help this kid who is trying to put himself through school. I went with him to the other side of the ledge and let him show me his paintings, telling him I would only buy something from him if he had one that didn’t depict monks or the life of Buddha. He pulled out several paintings of jungle animals, and I chose the one with colors most to my liking. Erin took a photo of the two of us holding the painting, and I bid him farewell and good luck at school.

Sucker.

During lunch at the vegetarian restaurant a while later, the father of the family began expounding again about those parents who send their children out to prey on the wallets of tourists. “Some of the children will tell you they need money for school, but it’s not true. They don’t go to school,” he said.

His statement sank in to my mind, and realization began to rise. “What about this kid?” I asked, showing him the shot of me and my new university student friend on my camera. “Do you know him from around here?”

“Yes, I know that kid.”

“Does he go to university in Mandalay?”

He looked at me with pity on his face, knowing from the photo that I had bought a painting from the kid. “No. He’s a liar.”

I was conned. I like to think I’m smarter than that. But I was only out five bucks, I did get a painting in return, and I could console myself that I’d erred on the side of being generous. But next time I’m asking to see a student ID.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Animals“

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Burmese Days Part 6: Tourism

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Did you know that in the 1990s Aung San Suu Kyi asked Western tourists to begin a boycott on travel in Burma to prevent their money from entering the coffers of the junta?

I didn’t either, until I started planning my trip. I respect Aung San Suu Kyi and would like to support her in her stand for democracy. But I decided that since I’ve spent the past ten years giving my tourism dollars to Communist governments in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and I don’t agree with them any more than I do the junta, then that aspect of the boycott doesn’t jive with me. Visiting people in the Burmese countryside and trying to get a better understanding of what their lives are like—that was a major purpose of my trip, and surely The Lady would agree with that. Thank goodness, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t ask her if she agrees—several weeks before my trip, she spoke from house arrest and encouraged tourists to come back to Burma.

Despite the newness of the lift on the boycott, we met quite a few people on our trip who speak very passable English and whose livelihoods depend on Western visitors. Guesthouses, restaurants, drivers, shop owners—everywhere we went, we found someone who could help us or translate for us. Early October is still the end of rainy season in Burma, so the number of travelers was at a low point for the year. Hopefully business will pick up and the empty places we visited will begin to draw more customers as the weather cools down over the next few months.

The evidence of tourism as an industry was particularly noticeable in Bagan. Since the whole area is an archeological zone, businesses and factories haven’t developed nearby, which helps the town maintain a quiet, rural feel. The bulk of the available work in Bagan is in catering to tourists, both national and international. When the owner of the vegetarian restaurant told us he wouldn’t send his children out to earn quick money off of tourists, he was referring to the abundant number of people waiting outside and inside the ancient stupas, trying to sell souvenirs at a high mark-up. Lacquerware bowls and bracelets, sand paintings of Burmese scenes, longyi made of cheap material, postcards printed circa 1980, the photocopied Orwell novel.

Erin and I were met by a small gang of children outside one of the more popular pagodas, and they wouldn’t stop bugging us to buy something from them the entire time we walked around the grounds of the site. One girl asked repeatedly if we would come look at her father’s sand paintings. Another offered to let me trade for souvenirs using as payment a Tibetan bracelet I was wearing. Giggling, cute, and annoying, they made me feel like the Pied Piper of Bagan as we made our way en masse around the premises.

The most persistent of the bunch was a little boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, who kept calling me señora and wanted me to buy some bamboo bracelets coated with lacquer. I told him I wasn’t going to buy anything until I was finished looking around the pagoda, and then I’d think about it. “OK, I’m waiting here for you,” he said.

Four steps later, he was at my side again offering the bracelets. “Wait here, and I’ll come back and buy them,” I said. “But stop following me.”

“OK, señora, I’m waiting here for you.”

A minute later, he was back. He was so darn cute, I couldn’t get mad. What decent Texas girl could get mad at a Burmese kid for addressing her in Spanish?

We repeated the whole process several times, me telling him to wait, him saying he was waiting here. Finally I clued in to the fact that he wasn’t trying to be obnoxious—he genuinely didn’t know the meaning of the English word wait. I let him follow me around and then bought the bracelets for $1 before I left. The last thing he said to me (and as far as I could tell, it was a complete non sequitur) was, “Mei guanxi. Weishenme?” Chinese for “It doesn’t matter. Why?”

I don’t know why either, kid. I’ve been asking that question for years.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Con Artist“

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Burmese Days Part 5: Bagan

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Our original plan for traveling during the October Chinese national holiday was to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Flights from Kunming to Phnom Penh were fully booked for twelve days straight, so Burma became our plan B. And the ancient ruins in the town of Bagan became a substitute for the Khmer ruins we couldn’t see in Cambodia.

An area of sixteen square miles around Bagan has been declared an archeological zone by the government, though tourists and pilgrims can freely roam through the more than 4000 ancient stupas. We spent three days riding bikes along village paths, exploring the ruins and baking in the heat. As we pedaled along, we passed horse carts and ox carts, some used as quaint transportation for tourists, others still used in everyday work in this rural area. Thousands upon thousands of shrines and Buddhas, crumbling stairways, dark corridors, bats making noise overhead—surely Indiana Jones would pop out of an ancient corner of one of these pagodas at any moment.

Each afternoon of our time in Bagan we managed to end up at the same outdoor vegetarian restaurant for a meal or cold drinks. The family who runs the place were friendly from the moment we sat down there on the first afternoon, and it was nice to be able to visit with them repeatedly over a few days. The father owns a horse and cart which he uses to give tours of the stupas, and the mother and older daughters run the restaurant. The seven daughters range in age from 2 to 26, and the lone son is 6. On that first afternoon, the father told us firmly that his children wouldn’t be souvenir sellers at the pagodas—no, he wouldn’t send his daughters out to make quick money, but he would work hard and send them all to school. It was refreshing to meet someone who believes that quick money is quickly spent, but an education lasts.

This family, though the ones to spend the most time sitting and talking with us, were not the only ones to pull up a chair and chat with us over a meal. I’m used to strangers gawking or asking intrusive questions in China, but very rarely does someone initiate a genuine conversation. Not so in Burma. Many people are eager to speak to foreigners in English, to discuss their lives, to share their political opinions (another difference from China, where I’m used to people merely repeating propaganda, not expressing opinions). The restaurant owner where we ate dinner in Mandalay talked with us throughout our meal, leaving the table at one point to fetch the English book he was currently reading: Anne of Green Gables. “That girl! She is so talkative,” he said, shaking his head.

We also discovered that people were very eager to help us find places if we looked the slightest bit lost. Any time we pulled out a map to consult it, someone nearby would ask us if they could help. In Mandalay, we were wandering around the bus station looking for the bathroom, and a man asked me politely, “Excuse me, can I follow you?”

I’d heard that foreigners are often trailed by the government in Burma, and I spent the nine days we were there trying to see if I could figure out who had been assigned to us. When he asked me this question, I smiled and said back equally politely, “No, but thank you for asking first.”

Turns out he just wanted to help us find the bathroom. Or at least that’s what he said…

(Thanks, Erin, for sharing the above photo.)

Next in the “Burmese Days” series: “Tourism“

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