Yangon - downtown and around

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An 830am start and we are off to the Botataung Pagoda. This is down by the river front and is interesting as you can actually go inside the stupa. The passages within are lined with gold leaf in bas relief. There are some “valuable relics” in cabinets, left to the Pagoda by the wealthy seeing donation as a good deed to hasten their passage to Nirvana. Unfortunately they are all behind both rusty metal grilles and filthy glass which is all steamed up on the inside. The monks really should attend Curatorship 101 at college.

The usual regilding of the rather blackened stupa is taking place outside, with a number of security men up on the bamboo scaffolding watching the workers, presumably to stop them nicking the gold rather than putting it on the stupa.

In another hall is a rather fine bronze and gilded Buddha which was made for King Mindon as his personal idol when he moved the capital from Ava to Mandalay in 1858. After the Third Anglo Burmese War in 1885 which lasted a mere three weeks, the British crushed the resistance, annexed Upper Burma which was centred on Mandalay, and abolished the monarchy. They also extracted huge reparations from the Burmese treasury, including this particular Buddha. However we magnanimously returned it to Burma as they asked nicely for it when they attained their independence in 1948. And here it sits to this day.

We then proceed to take a ride on the Inner Line railway, which describes a circle taking about three hours from and returning to Yangon Central station. However like most foreigners we take the shorter option of riding the line to Insein which takes about an hour, and the driver meets us at Insein.

The little train trundles along taking about twelve stops to reach Insein. People get on and off, some ignoring the foreigners, some laughing at these sweaty white people, and others smiling at them. There are two monks who want to have their photo taken, and a boy and a girl with a live chicken we thought was their dinner but was in fact a fighting cock he was taking to a betting ring, Myo tells us. There is a peasant lady with a painted face and a basket of fruit, smoking the weirdest smelling cigarette, absolutely no idea what that was. And there are red paan stains on the floor from people spitting out their evil red slobber after they have been chewing betel leaves (which red mess stains carpets every pavement in Yangon, and projectiles of red spit often have to be dodged as they fly out of people's gobs towards the pavement). A charming local habit.

As you look out of the train window there is all human life to be seen; people living in horrible little shacks made of palm leaves and blue plastic sheeting, open sewers, great stinking piles of rubbish that people are picking over to find plastic bottles to sell (the streets of Yangon are generally clean with little sign of rubbish, we know conclude they chuck all their crap alongside the Inner Line. Periodically the rubbish is burned creating stinking clouds of unspeakable ponginess, and lo, the smoke is drifting over the laundry that someone has laid out to dry on the bushes growing alongside the line (don’t even think of where the water came from to do that washing!). While we in the West moan that our internet isn’t fast enough or someone has said something that someone else might find a teeny bit offensive, people grind out an existence like this, living and scavenging on rubbish heaps......

We get to Insein and Myo assures us that Insein Prison, the most feared place in all of Burma where the junta imprisoned, tortured and killed its political prisoners doesn’t have any political prisoners any longer, a fact belied by a quick bit of internet research that tells me there are still over 100 politicals stick incarcerated there. We don’t get to see the prison, which is a little further up the line, only a few grim looking lookout towers and lots of barbed wire.

Back in the car and off to the dargah – shrine – of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor of India. The Mughals had suffered a precipitate decline in their power, wealth and prestige after the death of the last of the “Great Mughals”, Aurangezeb, in 1707. The Mughal emperor held little beyond titular power in Delhi by the time of the Indian Mutiny in 1857. He was however made the figurehead leader of the Mutiny and after the Mutiny was put down, the Emperor was exiled to Rangoon in 1858, where he died in 1862. He is buried at this dargah with his wife and a couple of his granddaughters. It is a source of pilgrimage for some Muslims who regard him as a Sufi saint, but it was deserted when we were there.



After lunch, Myo having been given the afternoon off, we set off alone to explore the old colonial builidings. Yay! Freedom. He thinks we are nuts looking at old buildings. We walk for about 1.5 hours by which time we are sodden with sweat, but with some good photos and not having been struck with red paan juice once. However it is now time for a shower and a rest......

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