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Published: August 20th 2007
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After finally being templed out, we headed for Mt. Popa the next day - this is a famous religious site here in Burma, home of the 37 nats which is a leftover of I think the animism religion, sort of mixed in with budhism i guess. If anyone has read Amy Tan's saving fish from drowning, you'll be familiar with Nats! We saw all the nat statues up here and got amazing views from the top.
So the other thing Mt. Popa is known for is the resident monkey population - hundreds of them! they are really used to humans now and the freaking locals sell tourists monkey food which i kept telling them in english how bad it is to feed the monkeys (of course they just looked at me). so there's all these monkeys and they were jumping on brian, and grabbing pants and stuff like that - all the way up the 30 min walk or so to the talk. Hui was pretty afraid of them (i definitely was a litlte too, just because i didn't want to get bit!) Anyways, at one point, Hui actually stopped walking because there was a part with a ton of
Mt Popa
SEe the temples, etc. on the top monkeys, and one at head level on the banister. we were all like...just go it'll be okay! so she passes, and sure enough, the monkey jumps on her shoulder and takes a Chunk right out of her! she's like, it bit me, it bit me! i said are you sure he didn't just claw you? we pulled up her shirt and sure enough, teeth marks and a decent size bruised area, with immediate bleeding under the skin. the locals were immediately over hitting the monkey with a stick. hui took it really well, i would have been freaked out (if nothing else, it was just sort of scary surprising) and really really irritated because of the whole rabies situation. Hui is actually the ONLY one of us who got any rabies shots before she left teh states (the thing is if you do get bitten you have to go get more anyways) but her dr didn't even give her the 3 series, just one, which does nothing at all. We decided we'd have to do some monkey bite-rabies research when we got back to town.
We also stopped at some traditional peanut-oil and liquor making shops on the way
my pants
this is a monkey grabbing on to my pants - see pics. We got some lunch when we got to town, and I ordered @kebabs@ - which i've ordered elsewhere in SEA and would be what you might expect, meat on a stick. Instead, out comes a plate of fried chicken with veggies, just sitting in oil. This sort of thing happens a lot when you're traveling but there are days when you just can't deal with it and this was one of those days for me - i was like, i just can't eat this. i coudlnt' even take a bite. Hui was very sweet and shared half her meal with me instead.
I think i commented on a picture somewhere, that i've never seen such overloaded public transport in my life, and our activity for the day was trying to capture a really good, overloaded, bus/truck thing on camera. Tom got some great ones since his camera is super fast. our taxi driver who didn't speak english caught on quickly to our game and would pull over when he saw one coming so that we could try to get a good pic!
In the afternoon, we rented bikes and were riding around looking for the
market but didn't find it, so we sort of ventureed into nearby town Nyaung U which is a bit outside the tourist zone and in the locals area. It was fun to just ride around with the locals and check out the goings on. The big thing here right now is that everything is flooded! (it's rainy season). So if you take the road far enough to either side, the road is flooded under, and what a scene! we were so entertained and kept snapping pictures because we thought it was so curious. and meanwhile, the locals were so amused to see us taking pics of the annual flood....it's so funny when ppl from 2 different cultures just find what the others are doing so strange. Lots of activies at the flooded rivers, people were swimming in inner tubes, bathing, doing their laundry, there was even a little water taxi surface (small little canoes) started that would take ppl back and forth across! There were also cars pulled up halfway in the water, and i coudlnt' figure out the deal - i was thinking, it's not like they can make it across? until brian commented how they were waashing their
hui is brave
we did a quick bandaging job at the top for the bite and i immortalized the moment here. cars there! hilarious. we also saw a cool monk procession passing by, i love hte dark red / maroon that they wear here. When we were down by the river, a local woman started chatting to us, and eventually invited us to her house where she gave us tea and some candy. Talk about a modest home, with the open fire pit in the house, and 6 ppl in this tiny hut. There was a living room area, no separation between that and the sitting area (here they sit around super short tables on the floor, no chairs) and i stepped into it, and she was like, that's my neighbor's house! it was hilarious since there was no divider between the two @houses@. she showed hui and i the thanaka taht they put on their faces, which is actually made from wood - they take the wood and water a stone, then pound the wood on the stone to get the paste. she gave us some to take and put some on our face (see previous pics in earlier entry) As dusk fell, we literallly started getting eaten ALIVE. the hut was so humid and dark and mosquitos were everything,
nat statues
here are the 37 nats it was unbelievable. we made a quick exit! on our way out we saw this completely deserted, decrepit National Democratic League (NDL) building - see picture. The ghosts and shadows of earlier times!!
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Justin
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Bitten by a monkey? Why don't you have any cool stories like that? You really need to be more outgoing, Jaime.