Myanmar Redux, Part 3: Bagan to Mandalay

Tammy and I flew from Yangon to Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its legion of ancient Buddhist pagodas and stupas stretching across the horizon. The pagodas and stupas are holy, and for any entrance--which usually means an ascent--one leaves footwear behind. Of course, every day life continues with those who live here, too.

After our days in Bagan, Tammy and I traveled to Mandalay by boat upon the mighty Irrawaddy. Officially these days the name of the river is Ayeyarwady, but the place names Mandalay and Irrawaddy have traipsed through my imagination for years because of poems, stories, and novels, and I wanted to witness them in the real world. The boat trip began before dawn and continued for most of the day. Here are some views of river life.

For us, the Irrawaddy River became our road to Mandalay.

Myanmar Redux, Part 2: Women in the World

 

Whether or not women run the world, they may be the ones actually holding it all together. Here are photos of women in Myanmar.

NOTE: Many women, and even some men and children, wear thanaka--a pale yellow paste made from pulverized tree bark--on their faces. It may be daubed carelessly or painted artfully, and for those of us accustomed to other cultural beauty norms, it often gives people a ghostly, other-worldly look. An article in National Geographic (here) explains:

"Unlike modern industrial cosmetics, thanaka is not meant to be subtle, to hide flaws or accentuate features. It is a sun-bright symbol of health and beauty. It blazes on millions of cheeks and foreheads for all to see. Wizened old farmers in Myanmar slap on thanaka. Young clerks at urban boutiques draw stylized patterns across their skin with the paste. Children march to school with thanaka smeared, hastily, onto their faces by mothers."

Myanmar Redux, Part 1: Yangon

This month another pandemic activity has emerged for me: reviewing photographs currently on my computer, remembering and reliving so many moments, and then deciding what to keep and what to relinquish into digital oblivion. Now, in truth, I hold in my possession a formidable abundance of photographs--film and digital--most of which were generated during the years 1987-2017,  the years I lived overseas. As of now I have appraised maybe an eighth of the photos currently on my laptop; the printed photos from my film-photographing days await in boxes under the bed in the guest room, and there also exists a copious collection of photos on an external hard drive secluded in a drawer somewhere in this house. But right now, I can only dabble in photographic-induced memories beginning in December, 2014.

And, in December, 2014, my friend Tammy and I traveled to Myanmar for Christmas Break, a destination that first began to seem like a viable travel option for us as we listened to the stories and experiences of a friend and colleague who taught at an international school in Yangon--a friend we met while working on our master's degrees with Michigan State University one summer at an overseas campus located in Thailand. (Tammy and I attended three different summer sessions in pursuit of those degrees, one summer in Antibes, France, and two summers in Pattaya, Thailand.) We first met in him in Thailand, the summer of 2001, and he continued to regale us with stories and information about Myanmar until we all graduated the following summer in July, 2002. Still, before Tammy and I actually put together the trip to Myanmar, more than a decade had elapsed.

Although I loved my travels in Myanmar, I struggle these days with conflicting emotions because of the Rohingya crisis--the ugly embodiment of prejudice and discrimination ultimately erupting into attempted genocide. I play with separating my experiences in Myanmar from the horrors and atrocities that have occurred there in the meantime, but I continue to worry inside myself whether or not I can correctly place everything in perspective. Nevertheless, I shall commence with a Myanmar travels redux, largely in photographs.

Should anyone want to review previous blog posts on my Myanmar travel adventure, I did write about it in 2014 and 2015. They can be found here, here, here, and here.

Yangon--formerly known as Rangoon--comprises part one of this redux. Tammy and I flew in and out of Myanmar by way of Yangon International Airport and spent a day or two in the city of Yangon on both ends of the trip.

I took these photos looking onto the city from our hotel.

While on the streets.

These were taken at Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar.

When I visited Myanmar in 2014, I still held Aung San Suu Kyi in revered esteem; I believed she was a beacon for human rights and a principled activist, one who gave up her freedom to challenge ruthless and corrupt army generals. That perspective I now believe was not fully informed. I am deeply disappointed and disillusioned by her callous indifference to the Rohingya crisis. This final photograph was taken in front of the compound where she was detained in house arrest for fifteen years or so. It was a must-see for me at the time. When I reviewed this photograph this month, I cropped out all the signs that gave honor to her and rendered it as just a photo of Tammy and me in front of a white gate somewhere in Yangon. I guess I'm bitter like that.

Bedazzled Weaponry

A few mornings a week, I run. Although on the weekends I often drive to a path along the lava cliffs that flank the sea, my more usual route begins and ends at my house with a meander through multiple streets of the neighborhood designing the middle stretch. Many of the homes I pass have dogs, on good days all restrained by fencing or chains. Because, you see, my lope--which is certainly no longer a dash and might be heading toward an amble--seems to excite them. They bolt to the fence, or as far as a tether allows, and acknowledge me with boisterous barking. Most, I think, would just like to join me in my romp, but some are definitely engaged in defense of property.

I am pretty committed to my established neighborhood route and rarely change it up except to extend its range when I am more physically in tune. For three years I could count my scary encounters with loose dogs on one hand...until this summer. One fateful morning I had to fend off three separate skirmishes with loose dogs, dogs that actually touched me with their muzzle and/or rolled against my legs with their haunches. 

And that did it. Friends have long admonished me to carry a stick or pepper spray when I run, but I rationalized that I really have always been okay when I run despite the occasional loose dog, and I have zero interest in hurting a dog. But dogs willing to threaten me by touching me with their bodies provided the required impetus to inquire about pepper spray at my next visit to Ace Hardware.

The clerk at Ace Hardware pointed and said, "Right there." And who knew that on that day all pepper spray containers on offer sparkled, so I embraced the glitter and bought three.

Now, and since September, I run my neighborhood route with one jazzy canister of pepper spray in hand, and I have learned a few more things. Yes, how to deploy the aerosol from the canister and direct the spray itself is one thing. And, yes, I practiced in my backyard beforehand. But guess what else I have learned?  Two of the dogs from those skirmishes dating back to "the fateful day" have been loose again during my runs. In both cases, the dogs executed an abrupt about-face just as soon as I enacted the motions involved in spraying a peppery aerosol. Actually releasing the substance never even had to happen to instigate their retreat. They already knew what I held in hand and what I planned to do with it! Apparently, I'm not the only one carrying pepper spray in the neighborhood.

And there you have it. These days my running gear includes bedazzled weaponry.

Scrabble Junkie

 

My mom liked to read. She liked to read books and magazines and newspapers and letters and probably most anything that could be read. I remember her having my dad NOT stop the newspaper when we went on vacation because she wanted to read them when we returned. (Some neighbor gathered them up while we were away, though, so as not to have the house look uninhabited!) And she did read those newspapers, maybe not every word of every article, but I have a distinct visual in memory of her surrounded by a rather cumbrous accumulation of newspapers and one spread open across her lap. She also regularly checked out books from the library and luxuriated faithfully reading through her stack. On more than one occasion, I recall coming home from school and observing my mother, cozy on the couch with a book, while some mundane household chore or little project remained obviously undone...obviously unstarted. And my mom, would say, "Oh, is it that late already?! I got interested in this book." So, I learned early, through example, a love for words, especially the written word.

No surprise, maybe then, that my mom's favorite board games for us to play as a family were Scrabble, Boggle, and Trivial Pursuit. She launched us fairly early with Scrabble--once we could read and spell with an entry level aptitude--and nurtured our advancement, helping us to see words from our letters and how we could place them on the board, showing us how to add points and take advantage of scoring bonuses. As her children entered their teens, they evolved more cutthroat playing strategies--thanks largely to the competitive spirit of my brother Ken--and understood that if you yourself couldn't use that triple word score to full effect, then it was surely your duty to ruin that possibility for anyone else playing. In our early adulthood, when the family got together, the "grown-up" children inaugurated Champion of the World Scrabble games, where the winner held the title until the next time all of us came together for another round. Still, with some glee, I recollect taking that title with me one end of summer when I returned to my job in Germany.

And fun fact, I received a deluxe version of Scrabble for a wedding gift.

So I totally hold my mom responsible--and perhaps a little bit my family--that, in this digital age, I am devolving into a Scrabble junkie online. 

I prefer the original Scrabble game app that disappeared this past June because Hasbro/Mattel sold the rights to Scopely who then created quite the "sparkly abomination" version of the game--Scrabble Go. Although I refused to embrace Scrabble Go at first, in mid-July I succumbed. Because, yeah, I'm hooked.

Now, when I first started playing online Scrabble--the original one--I only played with FaceBook friends. (Yes, FaceBook and the app itself made that connection way easy.) This past spring, though, pandemic days triggered a dalliance with playing random players as well, and I have continued. When I began playing Scrabble Go, I had to convince my original Scrabble friends to try it--despite its messy graphic sense and annoying distractions--but none of them have stayed with me except Jamie. (And for this, Jamie, one more reason to adore you!) In fact, Jamie and I currently have three games in progress. 

Scrabble Go, from the get-go, automatically connects you with random player challenges...should you choose to accept them. And I accepted them from the get-go.

Here's the thing, though. Apparently, people play the game and chat. I do not play the game and chat. I only play the game. The chat option was automatically on in Scrabble Go--not so in the original online Scrabble--and, with the clashing clutter of a graphic catastrophe in this new app, I did not navigate options well.  So, these guys--generally of a certain age, like around my age--would challenge me to play and I would. Eventually, after many of them "resigned" from our games just several plays along (and I would tell myself it was because I was winning), I realized they were also attempting to chat with me while playing the game. I decided then to state up front, as soon as someone initiated a chat, that I didn't chat, I only played the game. They persisted; they all thought they could convince me to chat anyway, I guess, because they would continue chatting despite my statement and I would continue not responding ever again. And then they would resign the game. (I was still winning, by the way!)

Now I have the chat option off. (I figured it out--yay, me.) Yet I still have guys challenge me to play who ultimately "resign" or "abandon" the game, so I guess the no-chat icon doesn't show up on their screens until after I have accepted the challenge. What's interesting to me, too, is that I have never had a random female player challenge me and not finish the game, only guys. 

However, at this point, I am beginning to find "my people."  I have a group of random players I've never met and know only by their first names, who continue to play games with me. Never once have they indicated they want to chat although now they could because I have marked them as "favorites." (Here's looking at you Charlotte, Judah, Zion, Willow, Brooks, Doris, Eddie, Renee, Christopher, Ashley, Elizabeth, and Quinn...and always Jamie!) Apparently "favorites," FaceBook friends, and people from your contacts list can chat with you anytime. We don't chat, though, we play!