October 26, 2019
The Hour Before Sunrise
Portland, Oregon to Mandalay, Myanmar
Dear little friends,
The muezzin is so good, so much better than the muezzin we remember from this Mandalay neighborhood in years past. The new muezzin has such a beautiful voice, his call to prayer is delicately joyous and beautiful and melodic. Listening to him makes me smile and love the world. The old muezzin was so bad we stifled our laughter and whispered coyote howls “Ow-Oh-Ooo!” to each other, so as not to offend anybody else listening with their windows open too. This was back when the ET Hotel had windows to hear full moon all-night temple music heard in our dreams, and the mosque was much closer so there was no escape from the gargled tin-eared groans of the former muezzin, who made prayer an hour before sunrise seem like a hellish chore instead of the rising of a waking spirit.
The ET Hotel lost its windows when new buildings were built right up to each side and we are now at the Diamond Rise Hotel with a view of the moat and the eastern city and has a great breakfast. We needed a waking spirit after our four days of travel. A lot can be said about our plan to have our very long itinerary include two nights of sleeping. That didn’t happen the way we thought it would but, honestly, there is probably never going to be an easy, comfortable way to get from Portland, Oregon to Mandalay, Myanmar until they finally figure out that Star Trek “beam me down” thing.
Our pal Chrystal gave us a ride through a lovely Portland sunset dusk to the airport and out of the windows of our plane to San Francisco we were shocked to see a new fire we hadn’t heard about yet, one that would throw haze far into northern Oregon the following day as we flew toward China. We stayed at a motel near the airport that has great potential to become a chi-chi retro Florida-style boutique hotel that we could never afford so we were pleased that it was still rundown but clean enough for the likes of us.
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One problem we hadn’t foreseen when we bought our One Way Ticket to Mandalays is that when you have layovers longer than 8 hours you have to collect your baggage and take it with you, which is as much fun as it sounds what with two awkward bike boxes and two heavy striped bags. But we soldiered on, on through the 13-hour flight that began with a bonus three hours on the tarmac with us looking out the window at several concerned mechanics who came and went. And also unforeseen was that this flight first stopped in Qingdao and for some ominous reason the Chinese made us all deplane and go through immigration and collected our fingerprints and facial photos so we could go into some database of other foreign riffraff. They are pretty starchy about their security which felt a little much seeing as how we went through security to get on that plane in the first place and if they would just leave us on it for the remainder of the flight to Kunming all would have been peachy but nooooo.
I would like to complain a bit about China Eastern, and it definitely is a no-frills airline, but here’s something good they did. I had discovered that they would put us overnight layover people in a hotel since our next flight to Mandalay was with them too, and they really came through. A guy met us at the airport, put us and our mountain o’ baggage on a shuttle, there was a lovely room in a brand new hotel on the ground floor, we got to shower and have a two hour nap and breakfast, another shuttle to the airport, and then we were Mandalay bound.
After the snippy Chinese airport security apparatus the smiling immigration officer in Mandalay was like fresh air from heaven. The fresh air continued when two security officers graciously gave us permission to assemble our bikes in an admittedly hot and humid part of the airport, providing quiet amusement to a few onlookers but nothing ridiculous. We sweated and assembled and wondered why the airport wasn’t air conditioned until we wheeled our loaded bikes outside and realized that, oh, yes, it had been, because outside was like a ride up a smelting chimney.
| Heart | 9 | Comment | 2 | Link |
Loving following you.
mh
5 years ago
Three nights of little sleep and not drinking enough water made the first few miles a real struggle but we were routed onto a smaller road with lots of temples and a little shop where the guy went in the back and unearthed two freezing cold bottles of water that we downed on the spot and were reconstituted to cellular integrity.
The rest of the ride was pretty fun even though we were deathly tired and ridiculously overheated. Eventually the road becomes completely shaded by trees, the women raising money for temples were out with their earsplitting zany music and silver bowls and smiling wave and greetings. We stopped for our first Burmese tea and as usual they are ever the gracious hosts, a kind elder coaching the shy little girl waitress as she served the imposing foreign guests and collected our money and beamed at us when we left.
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Traffic was insane but oddly we both felt completely trusting and serene. This feeling may be completely detached from reality but in the moment the firehose of passing sights, sounds, and smells is completely absorbing yet you know you can’t absorb it, you can’t appreciate it all fully or ever understand it, you comb through your knowledge of the world and it doesn’t contain what you are seeing and yet there it is right in front of you. There is no time to worry about safety or justice. We rely upon the mercy of the kind, and we haven’t been disappointed with that yet and hope we never are. As I rode I realized that today would have been my dad’s 90th birthday and I sensed that he was watching over us but even if that is a feeling completely detached from reality it doesn’t matter because when he was alive he always did and anything after that is just more firehose that we don’t have the capacity to understand or know.
At only 24.5 miles, the ride from the airport is a distance your typical cycle tourer does before breakfast, but we were sweaty and happy and utterly worn out when the door swung open to our room on the 9th floor. The hotel manager pulled up the window shade and there was the moat, the hills, the bedraggled but vivid buildings of Mandalay. Within our view was faraway Buddhist pagodas, the steeple of a Catholic church, a South Indian Hindu temple, and out of view but soon to be heard, one of the four or five mosques in the neighboring blocks.
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It's the perfect image to make me smile as I look out the window at Centennial's first snowpocalypse of the season.
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After a shower and more hydration we were fit to stagger down the block to Chapati Corner. It has a new name now but it’s in the same place and chapatis still are being rolled out by the hundreds each night and flung onto flaming streetside grills, the young man waiting tables looks suspiciously like the small street urchin who had served us 11 years ago. He had brought us tea and melted our hearts with his sweet face and curious demeanor. Was this the same kid walking around competently making change and supervising the young tea bringers swarming Chapati Corner? We wish we knew.
There is more that happens here than I will ever have time to describe. As I am finishing writing this it’s the moment of sunset and the muezzin is calling again. It’s the same call your mother used to bring you home for dinner, when the light outside is fading and the light inside your home becomes brighter and warmer and more inviting than your exciting chilly outdoor play. You could fall asleep to this song. It soars over the hum and honk of traffic and floats over all the various ramshackle buildings and worshipers and softens the edges of things until you can’t really tell anything apart anymore.
Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 25 miles (40 km)
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And the call of the muezzin .. what a sound to imagine ...
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