On the River Road to Mandalay

"Pa-go-da," I said as slowly as a baby uttering its first word

as if that would help in the least anyone understand what I was
saying. Where's the pagoda ?" The old man seemed amused at
my rantings. I then waved my hands over my head frantically and
shouted, "The BIG, BIG pagoda." He seemed to get my drift
since he said something that sounded like an "Aha" and pointed
down the street.

I had gone jogging just before dawn through the wide

deserted streets of Yangon, Myanmar (formerly called Rangoon,
Burma) and got hopelessly lost in a myriad of backstreets. The
best hope I had in finding my way back to the hotel was to find
some directions to the Shwedagon Pagoda, which was just down
the street from the hotel. Unfortunately, asking directions to the
"pagoda" in Burma is like asking someone for the MacDonalds in
America. (Yangon is probably the only city in the world with more
pagodas than MacDonalds - pagodas, a zillion -- MacDonalds, zip.
Only later did I learn that the old man had sent me to another
pagoda miles away from the hotel.

An hour and a dozen pagodas later, I met a Buddhist monk,

who after giving him my animated description of the Shwedagon
Pagoda, pointed through some trees. I looked and there it was.
The morning sun glistening off its 326-foot high gold-plated stupa.
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My wife and I recently visited Burma, often called the Land of

10,000 Pagodas, and the land about which Rudyard Kipling once
mused, "This is Burma and it will be quite unlike any land you know
about." Oh how correct he was.

Kipling's words seemed to hang in the late afternoon air a

few days later when my wife and I lounged on the observation deck
of the luxurious Road to Mandalay river cruiser, sipping iced tea
and watching a fairy-tale landscape along the Ayeyarwady (air - a -
wad' - e) River unfold before us. The Ayeyarwady is the lifeblood
of the land, where, starting in the melting snows of the vast
Himalayas, it plunges south off the Kachin Hills, where at Bhamo it
becomes navigable by steamer. It then enters the Shan Plateau
and further on cuts through the hot dry plains of central Burma and
the center of ancient Burmese civilization past Mandalay. And
finally the river enters the wetter southern part of the country
where it opens up into endless rice paddies before finding its way
into the Andaman Sea.

My wife and I were going upstream from the ancient temple

city Pagan (now called Bagan) to mythical Mandalay. Along the
Ayeyarwady's sandy bank we see woven bamboo huts and women
wearing the traditional longyi (sarong), beating their laundry clean
with wooden paddles. Oxen pull carts stacked with teak logs as
they might have 1,000 years ago for ancient Burmese Kings with
names like Anawrahta and Kyanzittha.. Immense bamboo rafts,
some an acre in size, float downstream. I thought it was strange
the rafts had no cargo until someone told me the bamboo was the
cargo.
 3

"I'm going to get my picture taken in a tonga (horse drawn

cart) when we get to Mandalay," I told my wife. "I'll caption it 'On
the Road to Mandalay.'

Our ship gingerly picked its way among a myriad of sandbars

and shoals that pepper the slow-moving river. Fishermen throw
up straw shanties on the sandbars that will be washed away in a
few weeks when the melting snows from the Himalayas causes the
river to rise up to 40 feet. A packed river ferry, fifty years old if it
is a day, chugs up the river; the tired sound of its engine floating
over the water. The vessel was probably in service when the
British controlled the river during the days of the Raj, a time when
Burma was the eastern part of India and the British Empire.

The river is so calm and the air so still we can hear children
yelling to each other as they run along the riverbank waving to us.
A young girl washing her hair at the river edge looks up and smiles.
Across the austere plain the setting sun catching the tops of white
stupas, lighting them like candles. We see a woman cooking the
evening meal over a fire while nearby an old man leads a bullock
into the river to fill a large wooden barrel with water. And, of
course, more pagodas. It is a scene that has enthralled the visitor
since the time of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. We felt like we had
just walked into someone's living room.

"This tea is really good," my wife says.

And as the Road to Mandalay continued to navigate the

capricious bends of the Ayeyarwady, we couldn't help but think of
the words of Kipling's poem, Mandalay:
 4

Come ye back to Mandalay,

Where the flyin' fishes play.
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin',
From Rangoon to Mandalay.

"I think you've found a friend," my wife said the next

morning when the Road to Mandalay docked at a tiny river village.
We were walking down a dusty path when a little girl, maybe seven
years old, ran out from a woven bamboo hut, grabbed my finger
and skipped along beside us. Her face was covered with thanaka,
a sandalwood paste young women use as both an adornment and
sunscreen. Every time I looked down at her, she would grin from
ear to ear and squeeze my finger a little harder. She would then
yank my finger and point out items of interest, such as ox carts,
temples, and stray dogs. Of course, we didn't know a word of
Burmese, but she never stopped talking and grinning.

When we arrived back at the ship we gave her presents of

paper, pencils and some lipstick for her mother. She took them in
a flash and tore off on a dead run. A few minutes later my wife are
relaxing on the observation deck waiting for the ship to shove off
when we see the little girl come running pell-mell down the
riverbank towards the ship. This time she had a friend with her,
and both girls were wearing bright red lipstick. When they saw us
they waved with all their might and then sat under a shade tree
and blew us kisses until the ship left. As the ship pulled away
from the bank I couldn't help but think of another verse from
Kipling's Mandalay:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda,

A lookin' eastward to the sea.
 5

There's a Burma girl a-settin,

And I know she thinks of me.

"I think they could use a few less monks in this country and a
few more civil engineers," an old woman from Fresno groused from
the back of the bus the next day as we bumped along a hot dusty
road in Pagan. Although we were being thrown about like
pancakes, we were all engrossed in an orgy of temple watching at
what some say is the most remarkable site in all Southeast Asia,
surpassing even Borobudur in Indonesia and Angkor Wat in
Cambodia.

We were passing through a ghost city of thousands upon

thousands of 11th century Buddhist stupas and temples that ran as
far as the eye could see in all directions. Cream colored, orche and
blinding white; some in ruins, some in excellent condition, some
small, others immense like the Ananda Temple that soars over 300
feet.

Pagan was the first capital of a united Burma and was

founded by King Anawrahta in 1044, who along with successors,
built no less than 10,000 stupas and temples in a 200-year building
frenzy. Although, time, earthquakes, and pillage have taken their
toll, over 2,000 temples still remain to provide the visitor with an
awesome spectacle.

"I think they had some engineers at one time," another

passenger said wryly to the woman from Fresno.

About 25 little girls ages from 8 to 12 were waving their

hands frantically and yelling "hullo" and "welcome" the next day in
 6

Mingun, a quaint little village just upstream from Mandalay. We

had taken a half-day side trip from Mandalay to see the world's
largest bell (qualifier, largest working bell), and the largest pile of
bricks in the world (no qualifier needed), or more appropriately
known as the Mingun Pagoda. The girls were there to see that we
didn't miss the sites, and the moment we stepped ashore they
made a bee line for us and before we knew it, four little hands had
my wife and myself in tow. They obviously were not new at the
"guide" business since they knew several phrases in English like,
"Where you from ?" and "Do you like peanuts ?"

We had gone only a short distance when we hear someone

shouting behind us. We turn and see some kind of official running
down the road towards us. Well, our four little guides scatter like
the wind. The government tries to curb what it considers
harassment of tourists by little street waifs and continually chases
them off. After the policemen left, it took about a second for our
guides to re-materialize and take us in tow once more. My wife
asked them if the policeman was a nice man and one of the girls
makes a spanking gesture.

"Bell," one of the little girls says later as we all stand before
the Mingun Bell. A few minutes later another little girl is saying,
"Mingun Pagoda." I was thinking how nice it would be if all tour
guides in the world were this succinct and left the facts to the
guidebooks.

"Burma has the best Cokes in the world," a man on our ship
said at a refreshment stand near the Mingun Pagoda. It was
probably the 90 degree heat that made it so refreshing, but it did
seem the ultimate irony that a country like Myanmar, which for 40
 7

years has succeeded in keeping out all things foreign, was now
bottling the best Coca Cola in the world. (Actually, the Coke was
bottled in Singapore, but, the cracks in Myanmar are starting to
open.)

I knew we were getting close to Mandalay since the density

of pagodas was starting to pick up. My wife and I were chatting
with Ma San, a young Burmese woman, who worked on the
observation deck of the ship, making sure the passengers were
kept adequately filled with cake and cookies. She was a wealth of
information about her country, and we learned more from her than
all the official guides put together. When she wasn't busy waiting
on passengers she would tell us what we were seeing along river;
what was that oxen pulling in that cart (peanuts), what are all
those monks doing (collecting their daily alms), what was the wood
in that boat (teak), what are those boats doing (one boat is stuck
on a sandbar, the other is pulling it out), how much does it cost to
take the local ferry from Yangon to Mandalay ($3).

We didn't ask her anything of a political nature since it's a

sensitive issue. Myanmar is a difficult country to govern in the
best of times due to the many diverse ethnic groups of the region.
At present the country is run without popular decree by what might
best be called, the Myanmar Army. (You know you have a
military-run government when the Director of Bovine Breeding is a
Brigadier General.) One can only hope that the military will
eventually give in to the 'greater good' and allow a more broad-
based civilian government to take over. One suspects that with
such an intelligent and hard working citizenry the country will
prosper once again.
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“At last,” I tell my wife the last day in Mandalay after

plunking down 100 kyats (dollar) for a tonga ride through the
streets of Mandalay,. “We're on on the road to Mandalay."
Actually, it was more of a sea than a road; a river of bicycles, ox
carts, monks, pony carts, over packed buses, and more monks.
There are 16,000 monks in Mandalay, a city of 1 million people.
We saw very few Westerners in Mandalay and the Burmese are
legendary for their politeness and hospitality. We were asked
questions like, “What do you think of our country?” or told,
“Thank you for coming.”

Our tonga was literally swept along on this fabled "road" past
bustling street markets, teashops, craftsmen sculpting marble
Buddhas, a huge stupa surrounded by 729 marble slabs on which
is engraved the entire Buddhist canon, or Tripitaka. It is sometimes
dubbed the 'world's biggest book.' It would take a person reading
eight hours a day two years to read the entire book.

Mandalay was the capital of Burma when the British took it

over in 1885, after which it became just another outpost in the
British Empire. Nowadays, however, with trade restrictions being
eased by the government, commerce along the fabled Burma Road
with South China has given rise to a sort of "boom town"
atmosphere with many new hotels, office buildings, and
department stores being constructed. Our tonga now takes us by
the imposing Mandalay Fort, built in 1857 by King Mindon, and the
scene of a bloody battle in W.W.II between the British/Indian forces
and Japanese army which destroyed the royal palace. In the
distance we can see Mandalay Hill, which offers a vantage of the
pancake plain of central Burma.
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Arriving back at the ship I excitedly tell my Burmese mentor,

Ma San, of our adventure on the "Road to Mandalay." I asked her
if there was one street that was considered the official "Road to
Mandalay."

"We've been on it for the past week,," Ma San said

surprised. "The Ayeyarwady is the 'Road to Mandalay.' That's
what the British called the river when they ran steamships
between Rangoon and Mandalay." She laughed and said I was
watching too many Hollywood movies.

But I learned more than discovering the real road to

Mandalay on this trip. I learned that although Myanmar is one of
the poorest countries in the world, it is a land of hard working,
intelligent people and that once its political problems are solved,
one suspects it will recover its past glory.

And as our plane rose above Mandalay the next day on the
way back to Yangon, I couldn't help but be reminded of the lines ...

Come ye back to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay.
Can't you hear 'ear them paddles chunkin,
From Rangoon to Mandalay.

-the end-