Today we flew to Mandalay in the north central part of Myanmar. This town is predominately filled with Chinese people. The city has a very organized lay out compared to Yangon and feels very modern/western. The downtown area is much cleaner with less slum looking areas. Overall landscaping is quite different from Bagan. Temperatures are slightly less arid and much of the area we traverse is relatively dense city. We arrived in time for lunch at a restaurant named the ____ Duck. It was either Peking or Yellow I think. The food was excellent! Classy looking place. It is across from a large, red stone palace with an enormous moat around it now in use by the military. This seems to be a popular place for people to hang out. Busy streets border it on all sides and an exercise trail with workout equipment in bright colors borders the fenced moat.
The hotel is much more upscale than the one in Bagan. We think the owner must have been a friend of our group leader. The simplicity was fine, but everything seemed to have bits of leaves and a fine dusting of dirt on it.
Our afternoon trip consisted of visiting a local YMCA where they teach young kids. Most of the time we sat or stood around while our group leader chatted with some of the locals. Before we left, we hiked up 3 floors to the rooftop to “see the view.” The mountains in the distance were lovely, but by this time weariness and boredom had already set in. I’m sure the YMCA is an important place to the community, but these places we visit seem to lack the ability to express this importance to us in their presentations. Later we toured a now church where Adoniram Judson was in prison. Visiting the church was more sitting and wandering thoughts. We did sing some hymns (of which Amazing Grace seems to be the natural default), but the most interesting part for me was standing outside listening to Buddhist children recite lessons/”prayers.” Prayer is an inaccurate rendering as Buddhists to not speak to or worship Buddha like Christians do with God. The best I have come up with is that it is a form of spoken meditation which acts to fill the human need for communication with the spiritual/divine in religion. The children continued for quite some time; at least 15-20 minutes.
By far the best part of today was the trip to the foot-bridge across the Ayarwady River where I met Joseph(?) (he pronounced his name Yo-shay). Joseph looked to be in his mid teens. He was trying to sell trinkets like most people swarming a popular tourist spot. A seasoned veteran at sales, he asked me where I was from and how long I had been in the country, in Mandalay and where I was headed to next. His English was near impeccable. He said he learned English from tourists and at the local monastery since his family had no money to send any of their kids to school. Joseph’s dad died at some point from drinking. One of Joseph’s brothers had started drinking like his father and Joseph had been estranged from him for about 2 years now. He was lucky to make 1-2 sales of jade necklaces either a day or a week. It was hard to catch that part of the story with the wind and people zipping by pushing bikes across the bridge. I appreciated his story and was interested in some necklaces for friends’ souvenirs, but all of his were large medallions and not really my taste. He also did an excellent job taking a photo of me—one of his trademark offerings to tourists. As usual, I left my money on the bus. Only later did it dawn on my that I could have bought a necklace and given it away to Goodwill back home. He was very kind, gracious and truly in a fix; even if only part of his story was true.
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