Today started like all days with meditation and kick-ass coffee I make in my room with a rig I bring everywhere with me. At 9 a pre-arranged motorbike rider picked me up to take me to a Bamboo Pagoda that a woman had invited me to yesterday. I had the name of the temple and her name written in Myanmar script to show the driver. I got there on time, the lady was fetched from the long stairway–remember, these temples are NUMEROUS and painted fancifully, so that if you hadn’t gotten used to them in India–& I haven’t– you feel like you’re on an acid trip. Here she comes down the stairs. Takes my ridiculous blue drybag and interlaces her fingers in mine and takes me to her shop half way up the many steps to the temple. Gives me gifts from her shop shows me the killer view and we proceed up to the top where we do some prostrations and sit before what I think is another gold-leaf Buddha. Then she points to a woven basket and points to Buddha. This ain’t mo ordinary gold-leaf Buddha, but a wicker basket Buddha painted gold. His long fingers, his draped robe, his prayer beads, his long-lobed ears, his half-lid, half-smile: Bamboo. There are in-progress photos of this and the lady talks about being involved and all the work and how it took about three months. Back out the door, holding my hand, carrying my stuff, she takes me back down to her shop and then down some backstairs to another temple complex, but this one in a flat valley and theres no one around. Another small temple and another wicker Buddha, but this one is not painted and much more beautiful because you can see the work of all those hands. More prostrations –during which I have my own serenity prayer routine I do–I photograph like a fiend until she is moving all the crap and bowls of fly-infested mango and rice candles and flotsam out of the way. Then into another temple on the grounds more beautiful than the last more prostrations more photos while she delivers this one fresh flowers, then we are walking past the biggest banyan tree I’ve ever seen and into a 110 year-old Chinese temple.
We get some lunch of Shan noodles, little salads and fried tofu with an awesome onion and garlic dip. I am shown the alphabet by our waitress, a hip, strong young woman with a short haircut and a grounded, fun confidence, who is learning English. the characters look like o’s and c’s and f’s in various arrangements so that signage all looks like it says ‘coffee’ to me.
My host pays, my American Capitalist swallows its suspicion and accepts the gifts. More visiting over red bull and milk with other Sellers in the Temple entrance then its off on a moped to a Real Shan home on a garden lot with a real Shan grandma napping on a grassmat on the floor. Visiting, pictures…Then it’s off to my hosts farmhouse, a more modern house with a small cornfield. She shows me the traditional makeup everyone -men and women- wear, which is also a sunscreen, and a medicine. Its an aromatic block of wood that they rub against a grinding stone til it’s powder, add water and paint on in expressive ways, each his own. I get a square on each cheek.
Then its downtown in the rain on mopeds (hence my drybag) to a tea house (see photo) where the friend with the grandma and the grass
house joins us. Tea means you get a thermos of weak green tea then you order tea or coffee, either thing comes with LOTS of sugar and condensed milk, and your table gets an assortment of deep fried treats rolled in sugar. I was really happy to see they dunk (not every culture does, you know).
Then its my guesthouse to take a nap, lest you think I’m unstoppable. Then for coffee at an American-owned cafe called Golden Triangle where I sketched with a kitten on my lap, then walking back chatted with a few moped-cabbies about my hat and their naming system, and got my Myanmar name as I was born on Friday: Than-Than Myint.
And off to the Night Market. The Indian seller of spices and rices wants to know my origins and can speak English so we chat, so does the next Indian. And he gives me a load of bananas and some instant coffee. Both tell me where to go for slippers. Another wants to know my destination and a bit more, so I slither away, give a beggar a pile of bananas and find the Buddhist monk supply shop for slippers and an umbrella. Returning back through the labyrinthine market in reverse, I hear an acoustic guitar and follow it to three young guys giving their hearts to some Myanmar Pop and stop to listen, take photos & videos, and you know the next part: I ask the kid at the egg stall for an empty wooden packing crate, and provide some percussion to the heartpouring crooners. We eat some bananas together chat smile and laugh a lot and I go away to chat with a Buddhist Monk down the road who says his teacher Ananda something is in San Francisco. We talk about travel and Myanmar. So do the Nepalese restaurant owner and I over tea after I finish some nan and curry at his family’s shop. No one has brought up politics. I was advised not to ask, but to let them bring it up who wants to. Not to pry, as there are lots of Chances to regret opening your mouth in the wrong company.
Now it’s pouring, and I am safely back in the guesthouse. Tomorrow there is a rocketstove workshop here…of course. Smiles and blessings from afar, y’all.