We get up really early to leave fly to this country. We are worried about clearing customs as we’ve heard it is difficult to enter the country. Not an issue! We breeze through, with the people at passport control as nice as they can be. Although the country is ruled by a military dictator with an iron fist, we see very little evidence of troops or police anywhere (unlike Russia or Egypt). This country has done a nomenclature switcheroo in recent years, changing not only the name of the country, but the name of the capitol city. The former we can understand; it was called Burma because of a mistake of understanding by the British colonialists, and difficulty with pronouncing the real name. As for the capitol, we never heard a real explanation why they changed from calling it Rangoon. They are in Yangon, Myanmar. Myanmar, and earlier Burma, do not usually make the international news for good reasons. Last year, Myanmar was hit with a huge cyclone (a hurricane that originates on the Indian Ocean), with an estimated 1 million people killed in the river delta. (Reports vary wildly.) Several years before, Myanmar graced world headlines when the government quelled a rebellion by shooting and arresting those pernicious Buddhist monks who were lobbying for democratic changes. For centuries, Burma was known for growing poppies—and selling opium. The last democratically elected president is currently living under house arrest, having never served a day as president.Why did we choose to come here, you may be asking yourselves at this point. Well, two main reasons. First, Myanmar has been relatively isolated from outside influence and so the local culture is almost entirely intact. Also, one of Kim’s oldest friends in the world (not that he’s any older than Kim, but whom Kim has known the longest,) is teaching and living in Yangon. It turns out to be an amazing place to visit! Other than in the capitol, it is a bit like being in the early twentieth century.
The people all wear longyis—tubes of fabric that are wrapped and knotted into long skirts. At least 90% of the men and all of the women wear them. Ethan had a
distinct advantage over his fellow soccer players. He didn’t have to continually re-tie his longyi and he was the lone wearer of closed toed shoes. The Burmese (the people and the language are still referred to as “Burmese”, not Myanmarese) prefer light skin and the woman and children wear a tree bark extract, a yellow salve, on their faces to prevent their skin from darkening. At first, it looks like there are bandages on people’s cheeks, but shortly we grow accustomed to the new in “look”.
The food here is like a combination between Indian and Chinese, but with more grease and less taste. Not so good. In fact, this is the first country we’ve not stuck with the local cuisine for our visit. We ended up going out for Japanese once, and had burgers at our friends’ house and out once. The beer and wine, on the other hand, are quite good. There are several different brands of local beer, and Scott
has them all ice cold in his fridge in preparation for our visit (he’s been following our blog). We tried Myanmar brand beer—a nice lager, Mandalay, Dagon, Tiger, all decent, and, our favorite, Spirulina, an “anti-aging beer”. I gather it has some herbal supplement that’s supposed to make you look, act and feel younger (and get a healthy buzz at the same time). Now does that sound too good to be true or what?!! It is even delicious. We have no desire to find out if this doesn’t work, so: Nay Sayers, hold your tongues, please. The beer came in 20 oz bottles—can’t tell you why—that cost about $1.50. We also tasted the red wine. Pretty good, actually. Not worth importing, mind you, but nice with a burger. We spend a few days up at Inlay Lake, about 500 miles north of Yangon. This is an
unusual culture, based on fishing and hydoponic agriculture. There are acres and acres of vegetables grown in the middle of the lake, on mounds of seaweed, tethered to the lake bottom. The houses are all on stilts, and the local people have developed a technique to row their boats, standing, using only one leg, so that 
they had both hands free for fishing. The people were unbelievably friendly and so happy to have us in their country. Tourism, apparently, is virtually non-existent. We took hikes into the 
hill villages and people would literally come running out of the fields and out of their houses to greet us, offering us cups of tea and to visit in their homes. Few spoke any English, but our hiking guide would translate and smiles are a universal language. The people here are really off the grid. They run their own schools and health clinics. We passed 40 people from one village working together to repair their road. Everyone is responsible for working on common projects one day a week. They collected money from each family to buy a generator, which they hook up to a nearby stream to provide the village with all of its electrical power. We were told the government approached the village a few years ago about taxes. The villagers replied that the government gave them nothing, and they would give nothing in return. There are several temples in the area. Some are surrounded with “stupas”, tall, pointy structures built by wealthy families to gain an in with Buddha (kind of like donating a pew in a church). This one here has hundreds of stupas, spilling down the steep hillside towards the lake’s edge. The stupas nearest the temple had been restored, but the rest had a wonderful, ancient feeling of eternity, with nature slowly reclaiming each one, thick vines climbing up and obliterating some, storms causing others to crumble. It looks like the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The most important temple in the country is in Yangon. Shwedagon, located in the center of the capitol, is nothing like the rural temples. It is gilded in, according to an official guide at least, 7500 kilograms of gold. Some of the Buddhas have flashing neon halos, and bright strobe lights. We joked that it was like “Buddha does Vegas”. The night we visited, the whole town seemed to be there. Everyone got a real kick out of our wearing the local longyi, loaned to us by Sandy. On our way in, we watched what we estimated was a million bats stream out of the top of one building, creating a black river of bats, extending for miles. It was an unbelievable sight, although I would recommend an umbrella for anyone considering watching from close by.
We visited Scott’s classroom and spoke to the students about our trip. They had as many questions as you’d think 30 eighth graders would have: none. Scott assigned Siena and Ethan each a book to read and a report to write. It was wonderful having someone else be their teacher—and a real teacher, too.
Since the Buddhists do not drink, there is no Burmese word for “cheers”. In the hill village we visited, though, they do have a word in their language-
Tan-to! (Pa-o for Health!)
The Beatties
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