Sounds like the generals are behind the times and don’t realize how easy it is to control people via public relations campaigns. Good PR is better than 5,000 armies. Just ask all the Americans who voted for Bush and still worship Ronald Reagan, a man who completely screwed the American working class and got away with it because he appeared to be folksy.
“Mandalay is the heart of the culture of Burma,” said my local guide as we drove along the shores of some gigantic lake. Now I’m spozed to walk out across the lake on the world’s longest footbridge. I shoulda brought a hat.
Lots of timeless stuff is going on here at the lake. Now I know how the plowing gets done – teams of oxen.
Ah, the monastery. 1,300 monks. It was like taking a tranquilizer – instant calm. All the monks had toned it down a notch – perhaps several notches – and the serenity was very contagious. It was like that feeling you get after a swim, a sauna and a good massage. Maybe that’s what I should do with the rest of my life. Do they have Islamic nuns?
Ya know, Burma is a very Buddhist country. Duh.
Then I went to a marionette-making factory. Dolls! I love dolls. “This one is only three dollars.” It wore velvet and looked like it had been “Bedazzled”. I bought three of them. One for baby Mena’s budding doll collection, one for my other granddaughter who lives in Los Angeles and one for ME. When I get home, I’m gonna kick myself for not buying five more. Obviously I’m very pleased with my purchases.
“Sorry, no women allowed past this point,” a guard actually said to me when I went up front to photograph a gold-leaf-covered Buddha statue at our next temple stop. It must have had at least two billion dollars worth of gold leaf plastered onto his body -- or more. Anyway, it was humiliating to be thrown out. I don’t know how the statue felt about it but I bet the real Buddha would have been pissed.
Then I talked with some novice nuns at the temple. “We have been nuns all of our lives,” said the oldest, a 17-year-old. “I will be leaving the convent next year to attend the Buddhist university. All the classes there are taught in English.”
Over to the side of the gold-leaf Buddha, I passed by a display of enlarged photos of the generals praying in front of the statue. They would let THEM in but not me? Outrageous.
Then a seven-year-old boy came up to me, carrying a starving baby. I was horrified. Horrified. Was the baby starving because he had no food – or was the boy deliberately starving the baby so he could get money from tourists! I was outraged. I paced back and forth, back and forth in the aisle, desperate to decide what to do. Give the boy money or not? Finally I decided to give the boy money. But what I should have done was to grab the freaking baby and rush him off to the hospital. But the sight of the baby didn’t seem to bother anyone else.
The baby might have been as old as two or three years, but its legs were almost as thin as my pen. I was shocked to my core. I’ve never seen a starving baby before. And after this experience, I never ever want to even hear about any babies starving ever again. Babies are the universe’s gift to mankind. Horrors like this should NEVER happen to babies.
Later I asked my guide if he thought that the boy was running a scam. “Probably not. If anyone is actually starving in Burma, they can get fed one meal a day at any monastery. I think that baby had a disease. I myself gave the little boy money.”
My next stop was a gold-leaf-making factory where I got to watch these two young guys pounding out gold into thin strips. All day long, they slammed sledge hammers down onto sheets of gold until the sheets were reduced to gold leaf. I could hardly pick up the hammers, they were so heavy. But did these guys even look strained? Not at all. And they didn’t even have six-packs. I bought a one-inch-high wooden Buddha covered with gold leaf for only six dollars.
“How much does gold sell for per ounce over here?” I asked.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
