Burma: The Golden Land of Gastrointestinal Tremors on a Democracy Blitzkrieg

Hi lovely readers!

Hope you had very nice filling Thanksgivings, and I'll skip the apologizing this time to just get to it. There's a lot of catching up to do! If you couldn't find me for the last few months, it was intentional. I changed the blog's domain name, as well as several other things on the web prior to my trip to the Embassy of Myanmar in late August. For years I'd thought I was smart about my privacy settings and internet presence, but a day before hitting the embassy I Googled my name and was shocked to see that I came up quite a few times. In fact, I couldn't have paid anyone to search optimize my name better, I was the only 'Alison Maassen' for pretty much the whole first page. Frankly, there wasn't really anything unflattering or bad there...connections to study abroad programs, LinkedIn, etc. Yet those connections alone could have been enough to seal my ties to Sangkhlaburi, to human rights studies, and to GHAP. Though things are warming up in Burma (something I'll address below), at that time I didn't want them to find all of these things and deny my visa application. So I took down what I could, went to the embassy, and paid a little extra for them to process my visa in one day so there was less time to ask questions. Later that afternoon, I went back in a heavy rainstorm and collected my fresh Myanmar visa, well in time for my flight a few days later. (By the way, my use of Burma vs. Myanmar has become kind of sporadic these days, you'll know what I mean if I use one or the other, I'm assuming?)

The flight arrived a little too soon, as I was enjoying the time off in Bangkok, but I took off with my little backpack carefully planned and packed for one month's stay. Nezar dutifully dragged the rest of my (heavy!) baggage with him back up to Mae Hong Son a few days later. It was funny to use the international terminal for such a short flight. It's rare to have a short international flight from anywhere in the US, but this was as short as the trip between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Flying into Yangon, formerly Myanmar's capital and currently it's main city, we filled out the immigration forms and flew over these beautiful flooded rice paddies:

Once I arrived to the airport, I was met by the smiling faces of four of my new students. We crowded into an old taxi whose seats had long lost their spring (after the students smoothly negotiated a decent price) and rode into the city. The ride from an airport into its respective city is never really representative of much, but here at least the road was not an interstate or large highway, just a regular road with shops and busy sidewalks. As we got closer to the center of town, the buildings started to look older and crumblier and soon we reached downtown. The students helped me find my guesthouse, and we trudged together to the 8th floor. There are very few elevators in Yangon, where the power cuts nearly every night. As we leveled each flight, we were met by inspirational signs such as follows:

I slept quickly and soundly, and awoke the next morning excited for new adventures in a new place. And if I thought Bangkok was a sensory overload, then Yangon is a sensory explosion. Not because Yangon offers more sights than Bangkok, but because it is experienced through so many more senses. As a newcomer, Bangkok stops you on a visual level: bright lights, familiar logos, stiletto-shod bar girls, and candy-colored taxis. As a newcomer, Yangon stops you on all levels. Here people stop you on the street constantly, wanting to talk, hear your story, and tell their own story. I met a red-robed monk who may have scammed me of 5,000 kyat (about $6.50), but he also mediated with me and made me feel welcome in the Sule Pagoda. I also met an elderly Anglo-Burman woman named Ethel Beebi, who didn't stand very tall in her faded tamein, but managed to stare me down with her piercing blue eyes. We stood on a street corner as she showed me printed e-mails of her correspondence with fellow foreigners. People are neither shy nor embarrassed. They live where they live and they do what they do, I didn't see a lot of pretense to be anything else. The poverty of Burma, coming straight from Thailand, is shocking. Even Laos and Cambodia looked like dynamos by comparison. Strangers called out "Chan Chan!" affirming my unusual similarity to the Burmese singer/model. The city's strategically-placed speakers pump out messages and gentle Burmese music (far more melodic than Mon music!). Yangon stops your sense of time, much like Havana. It's filled with crumbly colonial buildings and '80s model taxis. The streets are dirty, potholed and crowded, except for the oddly-wide avenues leading up to major tourist sites. Pits in the road are stained with blood-red betel nut spit, or halfheartedly filled with broken red bricks. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well, as small portable enterprises (like street-side tea stands or noodle stalls) seem to encompass one of the few ways to get by. Very few buildings have air-conditioning or even glass windows--many were built pre-A/C, and thus open and designed to capture and channel the breeze. With smaller, stouter buildings and fewer mega-capitalist complexes, most time is spent outside, adding the elements to the senses.

Yangon also stops you on a visceral level...quite literally. It takes it to your gut and challenges you to a best of seven. Unfortunately, Yangon won this series. I spent about 5 1/2 days there (of a planned 30), and 4 1/2 of those days sick as a dog. I didn't even make it to the main event, the Shwedagon Pagoda, and my souvenirs (stereotypical sun parasols) came from the airport on the way out. I had to apologize to my delightful, smart, and enthusiastic students, who found themselves scrambling to find a new TOEFL teacher. 

So, sadly, I can't provide you with interesting personal insights into the psyche of Burma based on long nights chatting in teashops. Nor can I share photos of the dozens of interesting sights I saw. Most unfortunate of all, I can't remember the names of all of the students, as I only met with them a total of 2 classes. But, though I left Yangon losing about a kilo a day, I was able to get healthy and back up to speed after a few weeks in Thailand. Better to be healthy to see Yangon another day.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, as I did have a few opportunities to take photos, and finding a doctor during my illness was an experience in itself. My first day in Yangon, Saturday, was the most beautiful as the sun was shining and the streets around my guesthouse, in the heart of the city, beckoned. I told the students I wanted to meet in the afternoon for introductions and to prepare for our first day of classes on Monday, so I only had a few hours to explore on my own. Since it was only 2 blocks away, I went to the Sule Pagoda, pictures below:

Sule Pagoda is in the center of a traffic roundabout, and there are four of these grand entrances flanking the street.

Just as in Thailand, people purchase offerings of incense, candles, and flowers when they come to pray in the temple. During festivals in Thailand, you will sometimes find paper flowers to make special donations, but here in Burma they had tons of paper flowers on this average day, elaborately folded and formed into the golden umbrella shape above.

One of many Buddha images inside of one of many niches for prayer and meditation.

I loved the reds and yellows of this photo.

A statue flanking one of the Buddha platforms

One fun feature of Theravada Buddhism is a focus on the day of the week on which you were born. Each day of the week is represented by a different animal and a color. Here we see the animal for Monday, my day, a tiger. It's complimentary to my Chinese zodiac animal, also a tiger. Many temples in Thailand and Burma have a separate niche for each day of the week, where you can drop your offerings. One new tradition I'd never seen in Thailand was a Buddha-washing ritual. The small Buddha in this photo sits behind a basin of water, and I was told to fill a small cup with water from this and dump it over the Buddha 26 times, one for each year of my life plus one (for good luck?). Perhaps all the washing is why this Buddha's gold leaf has started to peel away.

A gorgeous, golden place on a gorgeous, golden day

Quiet, mid-Saturday traffic outside the pagoda.

Following my visit to the pagoda, I did some street-by-street exploring, which easily kept me interested and occupied until my students arrived:

Little nuns going for a morning alms run. Nuns are not as common in Thailand (almost exclusively monks), but here in Yangon I saw nuns of all ages and sizes all day long.

The average age of car available in Yangon.

The Immigration Office, next to another old colonial building that has just been restored to freshly-painted glory. This one's still showing its age...decades of rainy seasons have definitely left their mark.

Most of the buildings in downtown are a variation on this theme, wooden shutters remain the central way to control temperatures and privacy.

Even the slightly newer buildings have a definite, dated feel to them.

Homemade street stall

 

 

 

Betel nut leaves artfully arranged. The 'nut' comes from a kind of palm tree, and as it ripens it becomes hard and wood-like. They use special scissors to chop the nut into slices, and then these slices are flavored (depending on preference) with lime, cloves, and/or cardamom. They are then wrapped up in the betel nut leaves as shown above, and chewed. They produce a distinctly spicy taste and scent (you can immediately smell when someone's been chewing betel nut), and cause the chewers to have blood red spit that they tend to spew (nosily) everywhere. Long-term chewers risk permanently stained red teeth, lending them an eerie, vampiric look. When I first started working in the Sangkhlaburi office, I didn't realize the staff were betel nut chewers, and their dried spittle in front of the office porches looked like blood. It took me a couple of days to realize these stains weren't evidence of killing the neighbor's chickens (which then ran around with their heads cut off). Betel nut is so popular because it has the same stimulating effect as a cup of coffee or a cigarette; it's SE Asia's own version of South America's coca leaves or Yemen's qat. HUGELY popular in Burma. I gave it a try for curiosity's sake in Sangkhlaburi, and I think I'll stick to coffee for now (my parents paid too much for orthodontics and dental care for me to pick up this hobby!).

Ah, movies. Everybody everywhere loves movies. In Burma, Korean movies are massively popular (as are all things 'K-pop'), but there's a local film industry, as well. I liked this poster because the two actors are shown in traditional Burmese dress. Every ethnic group in Burma claims a different pattern of women's tamein. This wavelike pattern is one of the Burman patterns.

There are a few theaters showing Hollywood hits, but this theater had Burmese and Bollywood favorites, including a film called "I Love You."

This photo stolen from Google Images would be 'Chan Chan,' or 'Love Love' in translation. She's a super popular Burmese pop star and model known for her Western fashion sense (scandalous short skirts!) and Western looks. And I can't tell you how many Burmese people have told me I look like her. From Mae Sot to Sangkhlaburi to Yangon and on, SO many people have called me Chan Chan. In Yangon, when I understood almost nothing else in Burmese, I'd overhear this conversation while people unabashedly stared: "BurmeseburmeseburmeseCHANCHANburmeseburmeseburmese..." Back in the spring, the director at the Mon Women's Organization taught me to karaoke the following song. God bless YouTube.

 

So, after exploring a few hours and having some lunch at a little restaurant, the students swung by the guesthouse and picked me up. We waited for a bus, dozens and dozens passing by with people hanging out the doors. Each bus employs a boy who stands at the middle door, shouting names of destinations, pushing people off, and pulling people on as the bus speeds away. The buses jerk along in traffic, and the old seats rock on their moorings. I found myself keeping my fingers tensely splayed across the back of the seat in front of me, stabilizing myself against the unexpected bucking of the seat. The bus boys have an incredible sense of balance, watching them was like watching experienced sea captains in a storm. Most of us were squeezed in three to a seat, and I chatted with the students about introductory things: stuff for sale in the shops, similarities to Thailand, the weather. We rode the bus through the city, taking 'the Strand' along the brown Yangon River. We passed tea shops and biryani shops (Indian food is more popular in Southern Burma and Yangon, while Chinese food is more popular in Northern Burma and Mandalay), copy shops and photo studios, and all those other little businesses that make up a city. As we got close to the house where the students lived, we passed the fish market and a couple of ports with cargo boxes stacked high. Eventually we hopped off and took some convoluted blocks to reach their house. Once there I had the opportunity to meet everyone for the first time and start learning names. They told me their ages and their villages. Everyone came from Shan State, which borders Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand, and they were in Yangon studying through an education initiative. This initiative gave them the opportunity to study in Yangon and apply to international universities, thus the need for a TOEFL teacher. Once they completed their studies, they had made a commitment to return to their home villages in Shan State and share their knowledge through education or development programs. Pretty cool. Everyone spoke very good English already, and they were SO eager to learn more. They all knew what they wanted to study at college, and several of them were applying to Webster University, a school that has its home in St. Louis of all places, but runs a campus in Hua Hin, Thailand. We spent a few hours together, which I used to get a sense of place for lesson planning and to arrange the schedule for Monday. I borrowed some of their textbooks to start planning, and then one of the students accompanied me back to the guesthouse. Once back I found an internet cafe and sent out a few emails. While preparing for my trip to Burma, I had to create a new, non-personal email address. They monitor the internet cafes and sporadically take screen shots. If certain things, like 'Mae Sot' (center of anti-government resistance) or 'human rights' pop up on your screen, they cause red flags. Nezar and I had nicknames prepared for all the cities on the border, each named after a mall in Bangkok: Sangkhlaburi was 'MBK,' Mae Hong Son was 'Paragon,' etc. Because the internet is so tightly censored, few places have wi-fi or free internet of any kind. That was hard, to only be able to check email once or twice a day as my sole communication (after getting used to cell phone, Skype, and ample wi-fi in Thailand). When I finished in the cafe, I went home and started planning for a month of TOEFL classes. As I anticipated, the power cut a few times that afternoon while I worked. And when in Yangon, do was the locals do when the power cuts: sit on your balcony and wait (and, if you're lucky, your building's generator will slowly grind into action before the state's power service ever comes back): 

Good a time as any to practice the guitar

Or people watch

Or have a bite to eat

My street from the balcony

Three blocks away, the big beige building with the cupola is "Trader's," Yangon's number one hotel. In front of it is one of the larger business buildings in the city, a place showcasing super-luxe goods like washing machines...and it has a elevator, ooooh! I didn't yet know these buildings would have any significance for me when I took this photo.

That night I skipped dinner and fell asleep early, ready to take on some more adventures the next day. But as I woke up through the night and early morning to use the squat toilet, I realized I was feeling a bit too weak and ill to take on major adventures. Figuring I'd have plenty of time ahead, I decided to lay low, wrap up some planning, and read and rest in bed. One reason I had skipped dinner the night before was because I hadn't seen any nice, clean restaurants open. People had warned and warned against street food in Burma. Thai street food is typically fine (and delicious!), but most people who eat street food in Burma get sick. (I was even told by one good friend that street vendors will sometimes melt plastic into their frying oil...it makes the oil last longer and it gives the food a 'pretty' sheen...eek!) I'd steered clear and had only one meal the day before, noodles from a small restaurant down the road. I was surprised to be sick already, since I usually have a cast-iron immune system, but figured it would quickly pass as long as I took it easy that day. I finished Burmese Days, George Orwell's semi-memoir of his time as an Indian Imperial Police Officer in Burma. In Burma, many people refer to Orwell as 'The Prophet,' as he wrote a series of books that have come to uncannily mirror Burma's political scene of the last century. First was Burmese Days (anti-colonial), followed by Animal Farm (anti-socialist), and then followed by 1984 (the rise of the big brother, censorship state). As if to emphasize his point, the Burmese government freely allows the sale of Burmese Days in Burma (boo Britain!), but people have to smuggle and hide old dog-eared copies of Animal Farm and 1984.

Monday morning I woke up and felt a bit better, though fatigued. I decided if I just got up and got moving the feeling would go away on its own. I found some instant coffee (brewed coffee is a luxury in Burma) and went to the corner where we'd caught the bus the day before. Unfortunately, unlike buses in Thailand which will use English and Thai numbers (and sometimes English and Thai script), the Burmese buses used only Burmese numbers and Burmese script. I know some Burmese, but I realized that I didn't remember the bus number from the day before clearly ('Was it the one with the squiggle to the right or the squiggle to the left?" etc.) So I stood for probably 15 minutes hoping for a sign of what I thought I remembered. I noticed as I stood around that the longyi and tamein really are the most popular style of dress. I saw very, very few men and women wearing anything else. Everyone also seemed to carry lunch with them in those stacked tiffin carriers that keep the rice separated from the curries. While there are private cars, there are no motorbikes allowed in Yangon, and no other forms of mass transport but buses and refitted pick-up trucks. This keeps the bus system over-crowded and relatively chaotic. Finally, I realized I would need some help if I was ever going to catch the bus. Buses look like this:

The small characters on each side of the marquee are the numbers (45), and the three characters in the middle are letters 'M,' 'T,' and 'S.' Sometimes the buses break down in the middle of intersections and the passengers must get out and push the bus (in neutral) down the road.

So I went back to the guesthouse, climbed the stairs (again) and tried to get some help. I had them write down 'bus go to fish market' on a piece of paper, and then I practiced saying it over and over again as I walked back to the bus stop ('dtwa nga zay beh ma leh?'). Thankfully, after a few more buses mine came along and a polite man pointed it out. I rode out to the students' neighborhood and found the house by process of elimination.

We had a nice lunch and I met their other teacher and then I took over for my first class. Just as we got started, the sky ripped open and the rain came down so hard that I had to shout. Class went well regardless. Yet as the day had progressed, I'd found myself starting to get more and more tired--the ache-in-your-bones tired that announces the onset of a fever. I stuck it out and finished class and even did some lesson prep for the next day. I walked back to the bus stop in the rain and the bus finally arrived. There's something so exquisitely miserable about fever, mud-splattered feet, heavy textbooks, driving rain, and waiting for a bus (though I'd imagine most Burmese can think of things far more miserable than that!). I got back to downtown, made a stop-off at the internet cafe, and promptly crashed into bed. My fever climbed and climbed and I tossed and turned, trying to stave off chills and get some sleep. By the next morning, I felt no better and was severely dehydrated (no 24 hour 7/11 shops here!). I had to cancel classes for the day, take on my adversaries--the stairs--and get some water. I didn't eat or move the rest of the day. Thankfully, the owners of the guesthouse were very friendly and I had a little TV. I even had one news channel in English, Channel Newsasia (BBC would have been far too controversial). By the end of the night, I was convinced I didn't have food poisoning, but I was actually going through a second bout of dengue fever. This one felt as bad or worse than the first one. I determined the next day that I would visit the doctor if I didn't feel any better. After another night of no sleep, I felt weak and miserable. The paracetamol was not doing much to help the fever or headaches, either. I had to cancel again on my poor students, and I laid in bed until I felt strong enough to go out and look for a doctor. Fortunately, I was in Yangon, Burma's most cosmopolitan city, when this happened. Had it happened in any place where I couldn't access private doctors, then I could have been in the hands of a health system consistently ranked in the bottom ten in the world (thus the reasons for all the health departments along the border!). During my earlier explorations I'd noticed the Muslim Free Hospital a few blocks from my guesthouse. This place personified the stereotype of health care for the poor in developing countries: an old, crowded building with clusters of sick people waiting in the street next to puddles of stagnant muddy water, waving away flies. I'd also noticed during those same expeditions signs for Samitavej Hospital, one of Thailand's premiere private hospitals. These signs were posted on the tall Hitachi building across from Trader's Hotel. Given my very good fortune in life, I knew which of these I'd be visiting.

Once I reached the Samitavej office, I was dismayed to learn that it was purely informational, providing price lists and descriptions of services in Burmese, for the wealthy who were able to get passports and travel for real health care. Fortunately one of the women working in the office told me about the clinic across the street inside of Trader's. She even accompanied me there, to make sure I didn't fall over in traffic. We were welcomed in by men in stiffly-starched longyis, and the lobby looked exactly like duty-free in an airport: watch shops, makeup and fragrance shops, a fine-dining Korean restaurant, and...a clinic? It seemed remarkably illustrative of just how unattainable good health care is for the average Burmese person. It caused some heart sickness to think that only a few blocks away there were surely children who needed this level of care far more than I did. Especially after my blood test results showed that I didn't have dengue or malaria this time, just a particularly nasty bout of bacterial infection.

To make the rest of a short story even shorter, by the next day I was too exhausted and ill to want to stay any longer. I was sorry to leave the students, and sorry to miss this opportunity to see more of Yangon, but my heart wasn't in it anymore, and I continued to feel horrible (I'd already lost about 6-7 pounds in 3 days). All I wanted was to go home to Thailand and get checked out at one of the hospitals there. So I found a flight and went home that night. After a few more days the fever did go away, but I immediately caught a cold which took a few more weeks to shake. It wasn't really until the end of the month that I felt back to normal.

I'm looking forward to getting back to Burma as soon as I can. Especially watching the remarkable news of the past few weeks. It seemed for a period that a day didn't go by without some new head-turning announcement from the government. There was the release of several hundred political prisoners (a small percentage of the total political prisoners trapped behind bars), then an interesting statement by the head of Myanmar's censorship office, then perhaps most shockingly, an undiplomatic smackdown of a Chinese-backed dam project on the Irrawaddy River. That last move prompted a reanalysis of Sino-Burmese relations, and must have struck a chord with China, which is now looking to strengthen military ties with Burma ahead of Hilary Clinton's state visit--the first by a high-ranking US official in 50 years--on Dec. 1. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been out from house arrest for just over a year, and has been able to speak with leaders like President Obama. Now she and her party (National League for Democracy) have decided to rejoin the political scene; she may even run for Parliament in the next round of elections (though her marriage to an Englishman excludes her from the presidency, based on Burma's constitution). Diplomacy and international affairs in action! I hope it's all real, but perhaps the world press is making a lot out of it because it's so desperate for non-desperate stories coming out of Burma (always war, poverty, poor health, etc.). With all the changes in central Burma, we haven't yet seen what the impact will be on border-based groups like the Mon and the Karen. We'll have to see what happens, but at the pace they're moving now, we could see a very different place by the time I put down another post or visit again!

Thanks as always for your patience and for reading, and wishing you the best til the next time!