November 6, 2019 to November 8, 2019
Thataway
Pyay
Thataway
Dear little friends,
Following Bruce into Pyay from the rural train station 4 miles outside of town in the dark was not something I thought we’d be doing but the air was cooler than any we had felt since we stepped out of Chrystal’s Volvo at the Portland airport, aside from under various different air conditioners of course. I was looking for consolation and that sweet sweet air was it.
There is something a little magical about riding in the quiet right before first light. There are people up already of course, this is Asia and somebody is always up, going to their jobs or the market on a motorbike. Quite a lot happens in the early morning hours, we have found. At the end of a small dark street we looked at the locked guesthouse gate and a passerby (also up early) rang the gate buzzer for us, a little more and longer than necessary, I thought, and we were shown to the room that we were supposed to have entered five hours earlier. So much for that night’s sleep.
But as it happened the Mya Khun Nadi Guesthouse was a pretty sweet place, and after our showers and breakfast we decided to stay another night and moved our kit and caboodle to a cheaper but better room. Sometimes things work that way. Then we went out exploring. Once again Bruce was flabbergasted at the changes since he was in Pyay 20 years ago. Myanmar is on the move, man. So many more motorbikes and vehicles than before, the roads were buzzing. But we put on our Hanoi-honed-motorcycle-madness zen and made our way down to the riverfront road, checked out the scene there, and stopped at a tea shop on the way back.
This was no ordinary rustic tea shop. It was bright and cheery and huge and crowded, and full of lunchtime eaters, with bright murals of food and scenery on the upper walls. Some of that food looked pretty good. The owner stopped by our table and chatted with us in passable English and before we knew it one of the dozens of young employees had a menu in front of us and we were eating some fried cauliflower. Delicious. So now we had a clean safe restaurant we could count on, that is no small feat in Myanmar. The tea was great but not enough to keep us awake so we rolled back to our room for a restorative snooze.
I was awakened by the startling sound of a thousand nailguns battering the roof, a real humdinger of a rain storm. Even the porch roof our bikes were sheltering under started leaking so we moved them down the hallway near our door. Then suddenly that was over and the sandy soil sucked up the two inches of rain and whatever was leftover from that went into the air so we could feel even more greasy and sweaty than usual.
It is a few days before the Tazaungdaing Festival, the full moon in November, a very important milestone in the Buddhist calendar, celebrated in Thailand as Loy Kratong, where they float candled boats down the river and send lanterns up into the air. Apparently it’s a big deal here too, and the Shwe San Daw Pagoda in downtown Pyay was gearing up with nightly ceremonies and music, so we headed back into town. We climbed up a lot of stairs and wandered the temple grounds and had a lovely time.
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For one thing, we saw zero foreigners there. People looked us in the eyes with polite curiosity and smiled and welcomed us. Many selfies were requested and taken with random families, tourist police, teenagers, and most notably, a nat kadaw, whose handler asked us if we wanted to take a photo of them, which of course we did! And, yes, we wanted photos of ourselves with them, oh you betcha! We didn’t know if there would be a nat pwe later, but even if the nat kadaw was just there to make an appearance, it has been uncommon in our Myanmar travels to see a nat pwe so this was pretty special. We attended part of a nat pwe in a small village near Bagan in 2005 and only later learned how special and rare that is for foreigners to see. We are still irritated by the stuffy German tourist from our group who made us leave.
So, time out while I try to explain what a nat kadaw is, although I fully admit my explanation will be oversimplified. In ancient times in Myanmar, before Buddhism, people worshiped various mischievous, protective, or malevolent spirits called nats. In Burma the nats seamlessly join with Buddhist traditions much as pagan decorated fir trees merge with Christian nativity celebrations. The nat kadaws are feminized men who act as wives of the spirits, and in a nat pwe they channel the nats and undergo trances and manifest various characteristics, both bad and good, of whichever nats choose to visit them. The nat pwe we saw in 2005 had a rather elderly tough-looking nat kadaw who swigged from a bottle of whiskey in each hand and smoked several cigarettes at the same time. As I recall, there were several audience members who seemed to be profoundly affected by close proximity to the nats and became faint or would take a cigarette from the nat kadaw, take a drag, and hand it back. It was really something.
This nat kadaw was young and dreamy looking and dressed in exquisite makeup, clothing, and jewelry. I felt like a sweaty ugly troll next to them but pose we must and pose we did. Then we wandered off and looked at more aspects of the pagoda and took a lot of photos and video. Many people were dressed in their finest, and even the poor people in their ordinary (possibly only) clothes or the teenagers in their jeans and t-shirts seemed happy and serene. It was a lovely evening. A coolish breeze made a raft of pagoda bells tinkle far above us, muffled by hundreds of birds chirping in the scaffolding.
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We stopped at the teahouse from earlier in the day and the owner insisted on gifting us some beautiful seafood soup in addition to our more sensible vegetable orders. It was amazing soup and we scarfed it down and sweated some more. It is insane to eat a seafood soup this far inland but sometimes you just have to damn the torpedoes.
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I would like to take a moment and say that, (knock on wood here, baby) we are two weeks into a trip in Myanmar and we have not been sick once, either of us. That is beyond remarkable. I hope I don’t jinx things by saying this, in fact, forget I said anything at all.
Somewhere along the way the shoulder strap to my handlebar bag had lost its stitching and things were literally hanging on by a thread. We had to do an emergency tie job. This is no trivial matter. My handlebar bag is on my shoulder any time we are out in public. It’s a lumpen unglamorous sort of purse but it has everything I need in it so the strap has to work or else. And fortunately, we just so happen to be in Myanmar where people fix things. I haven’t been here yet without a repair job done by somebody who has a little table or booth where they could fix my sandals, sunglasses, and now, a shoulder strap.
But first you have to find the shoulder strap fixer. We went to the market, the most likely place. Outside the market were several women selling thanaka logs. I chose the one watching me with a friendly, open face. I showed her the strap, made sewing motions, she beamed and pointed to a market entrance. Inside the ladies eating lunch next to their dress fabrics and treadle sewing machines tittered oh no no they can’t sew that but if we go thataway…
We went thataway. This is part of the fun. Everybody wants to help the weird but harmless foreigners. I stop and ask far more often than necessary because now everybody discusses the strap, my problem, where the strap fixer is going to be. Step by step, turn this way, go that way (this market was enormous, by the way) go outside again, and there she was, a young lady with an industrial strength treadle sewing machine, who sewed it up in a wink and refused any money for it.
This next part is really important. You retrace your steps and you show everybody who helped you your newly-sewn strap and you thank them again. Back through the maze, your new friends are happy for you and your strap. Life is good. They got to help the foreigner. I have a sturdy strap and a lot of thumbs up. As we popped out of the market again and grabbed our bikes I could see the thanaka lady leaning out of her booth to see the results. Her smile was so radiant I think it may even have splashed across the ocean to your house, you should check out on the doorstep to see if there’s a glow there.
Speaking of splashes, a few blocks later another rainstorm hit and a man let us shelter in his egg shop, bikes and all. By evening the storms had stopped, we visited the pagoda again, took more selfies, stopped for more delicious food, and fell into bed.
When we got dumped out from the train in a strange place in the dark and had to make our way, there were people pointing directions without being asked. I was exhausted and glum and pretty annoyed. Sometimes in a trip you are glum, that’s how it is. But it took very little time for Pyay to work some kind of magic on me. It’s a drab town with a few old heritage buildings in terrible shape. But we had kindness after kindness visited on us and that polished Pyay into a faceted place of beauty. It’s a singular beauty, full of beeping and trash, a stinkin’ busy road and a tiny street where the same toddlers blow kisses at you every time you ride by. You think to yourself, would I live here if I could? Well, probably not, but there is something beguiling about a place where people treat you so well. Of course there are thieves and drunkards and violent people here, because humans come in all flavors in all places, we know that.
And of course we fully realize that we are a novelty, there are very few foreigners here and who doesn’t like being treated like a rock star? Greasy sweaty no-real-talent faux rock stars need to watch themselves lest they seed where they visit with poisonous cynicism or thoughtless, self-centered mistakes. This may require that from time to time you retrace your steps carefully with your mended strap and show people that they matter to you. It’s not that hard.
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| Comment on this entry | Comment | 8 |
5 years ago
I can see the glow of the thanaka lady's smile on the apartment window across the way .. as well as that of all the other smiles generated by your thoughtful walk of gratitude.
And of your smile with your fancy repaired shoulder strap!
5 years ago
The other think I notice in your photos is how *tall* the young Burmese are. When I was there, I, at 5'0", fit in well in terms of height (though I think I was about 20 pounds heavier than a Burmese).
Do you think the Burmese getting taller?
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