Bago: Never Ending Buddhas

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Five hours on a bus is a long time if the woman next to you is puking the entire way. I feel badly for her. She's young and pretty and pale and sweaty. She's going to Yangon, I'm getting down at Bago so she can puke in private.

The motor cycle taxi driver tells me it's 10,000 kyats to get me from the bus stop to my hotel. Outrageous!! I can't do...then we straighten it out--he means 1,500 kyats. Okay, good. The bag and I get on his bike, and we drive through a noisy, crowded, dusty, busy town with horns blaring. I catch glimpses of gold pagodas. I know this town is full of them and can't wait to fill the next few hours with touring them.

The room at the Bago Star is dark and cavelike. I want out of there. I hurry to explore, and am way too anxious. The owner woman takes me by the hand and pulls me into the dining room to eat and slow down. She calls her slick nephew, who sets me up with a motorcycle taxi.

My driver stuffs a wad of betelnut into his mouth. His teeth are already reddened by the stuff. I shake my head disapprovingly--I'm his grandmother's age, after all, and someone has to guide him. Off we go. Hey, this isn't so bad--even as he crosses impossible traffic, on blind faith that he'll have a spot when he gets to the other side.

Bago sure knows how to do pagodas and temples and Buddhas. First stop is the snake monastery. A huge bloated python sits in his lugubrious world, breathing, I suppose. People clamor to get a glimpse. Must not touch, however. He's the reincarnation of a monk from up north, who came south to finish building a stupa. I don't think he's actually building it now, he's taking it easy, eating 11 pounds of chicken every 10 days. Every few days he moves of his own accord, drops off the platform and heads for a small wading pool. Nats are nearby. I contribute a note to a funnel of kyats held by a particularly stern looking one. My driver's limited English tells me that the monk's sister (in the form of a nat) is there--perhaps that's his father, too. I just can't get the story straight.

After the snake, everything blurs into one big Buddha and one big shining pagoda. We go to so many. I kick off my shoes, and pull them on to my dusty feet multiple times. In between is a fast ride in honking traffic and the day cooling off. A very large and beautiful reclining Buddha, Shwethalyaung Buddha, lounges before a host of followers. An umbrella of gold fabric protects him. A very large and beautiful pagoda, Shwemawdaw Paya, softens in the setting sun. Words can't describe these places anymore. Gold, solid, beautiful, glistening, incredible--they're all over the place--big and showy and hours and hours of human sweat and hundreds of thousands of kyats behind them all. Most have suffered in multiple earthquakes and sackings and have been rebuilt. Some have coats of bright clear paint on them. Many just have the bright shiny layer of gold--sometimes paint, sometimes, real gold leaf. And they all have stories. Stories of their origin, stories of their rebuilding, stories embedded in them from all the people who have come to view them and pay their respects and pray.

The next morning I do the same thing. Same motorcycle driver, same town, more places. This time they're smaller, more intimate, more private, perhaps because the day is newer and cooler. My driver shivers; I'm warm already. It's all relative.

Whirlwind tour over, I head to Yangon in a rickety taxi with another couple who don't like air conditioning. So I roast in the front seat, I'm sitting in the sun the whole way. We reach Yangon--same busy place that I left three weeks earlier. I head for pleasure--a traditional massage. And for an hour and a half, I am putty in the hands of a young, sweet, pretty woman who kneads everything out of me. Others lie on tables two feet away, getting the same treatment.

I guess I can say I'm tired. Tired but happy. I want to stay, I want to leave, I want to make just one more round in this fascinating country, I want food that I'm not thinking twice about eating. I want to be flooded with the sensations of movement and change, where I don't have to think or evaluate or make decisions. Where I just have to be.

And that's the experience of travel.

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Photos

Motorcycle Taxi
On my way to the bus station in Mawlamyine. Always find a way.

Nats at the Snake Monastery
I added to the funnel of bills in the hand of the nat on the left

The Monk
Reincarnated as a Burmese python

Craftsman
Making paper forms

Lounging Buddha
This large one was finished in 2002