2007 Biking Burma

Yangon…

…has a population of 5.5 million. It is busy and polluted and dilapidated with some great restaurants (virtually devoid of tourists).

Here we met a professor of history who lost his job just prior to retirement because he would not teach “propaganda”. “Now I am very poor”, he said, with tears in his eyes. And a taxi driver who said: “Not government. Murderers, robbers. Everything is broken in Burma.” The guide books warn you not to initiate political conversations with the locals as you don’t know who may be listening. Of those who spoke to us, only one man was positive about the government. He was an engineer who had worked for the state before retiring and had lived in Singapore for nine years. If anyone should have known better…

We saved the fabulous Shwedagon pagoda for last. Built on a hill in the city, the Shwedagon is a “visual cacophony”. A cluster of temples and stupas and statues and banyans around the central stupa.

This stupa houses a hair (relic) from the Buddha – making this a popular pilgrimage site. The stupa is 98m high and is gilded (with that ink-thin gold leaf) every year. It is estimated that 53 metric tonnes of gold leaf now cover the stupa.

A portion of the stupa is covered with over 13,000 plates of gold measuring 30 sq cm each. And above this is a shaft hung with gold and silver bells and jewellery. And above this a vane, gold- and silver-plated, and encrusted with 1,100 diamonds and 1,383 other stones. And above this an orb covered with 4,351 diamonds!

So… We had a super trip despite being saddened by the state of the nation. The people were kind and curious and generous; the food on the whole good; the sites and sights eye-candy.

[Join us in Vietnam...]
[See current and previous trips here...]