(Sunday)
I have been in the heat for so long I actually forgot what it was like to be cool. I do know that for the last four days I have been in a steam bath in Mandalay, and wearing a long sleeved shirt and tie does not help. When you walk out of the air-conditioned room, your glasses fog up and you begin to sweat profusely. My greatest pleasure at the end of the day is simply to loosen my tie, which I do on the way home at 5 p.m.
The registrar and marketing manager took me to Pyin U Lwin today, which they kept calling Maymyo and a whole bunch of different names. It is 42 miles north-east of Mandalay and more importantly 800 meters higher. Mandalay seems to lie in a huge bowl surrounded by hills or mountains so the heat just sits. When we got out of the car in Maymyo the air was cool, my glasses did not fog up because the air conditioning was not on in the taxi and I felt so refreshed. I can’t remember feeling anything like this in the past nine months. I have never escaped the heat but just never realized it until today. I could breath today. Will I be able to survive tomorrow in the sweltering heat? My air conditioning in the hotel room even seems too cool now.
If you look at the pictures, you will see I visited an enormous cave with all of the attributes of Buddhist worship inside, saw a fantastic botanical garden, visited the miniature village of the major sites in Myanmar, went shopping in the downtown market and various other things but this pales in comparison to what I learned again about the Myanmar people. Their generosity of spirit is overwhelming. When I visited the marketing manager’s aunts home, I was greeted with open arms (and a bowl full of grapes!) One of the aunt’s lives in Brisbane and was just home visiting. Her husband is a doctor who now does translations for Burmese patients because he can’t practice medicine and she was and still is, actually, an IT teacher. Her English was perfect. Of course she misses her 80 year old mother but she reiterated Jane’s comments about leaving Russia in the l970’s…to be able to live in freedom is worth almost any price to pay. She talked about reading any newspaper she wanted, watching any television station and being able to express her thoughts openly. Her niece had to whisper in my ear when we were talking about politics and the upcoming referendum. Clearly, the Myanmar people are in a prison where gatherings are not allowed, there is not freedom of the press and there is a black market for everything, including gas. What I can’t figure out is, if there is a black market for gas, where is the gas coming from? The government sets a quota on how much gas you can buy so when you need more you have to go to the black market. You can get gas ( at an inflated price) but my question is, if you can buy gas on the black market there is obviously sources of gas. Why does there have to be a quota?
When we did leave the aunt’s house, the marketing manager got on her knees in front of her grandmother and said a prayer wishing her well. Now I can’t wait to be a grandfather if this is what it is going to be like.
I have been in the heat for so long I actually forgot what it was like to be cool. I do know that for the last four days I have been in a steam bath in Mandalay, and wearing a long sleeved shirt and tie does not help. When you walk out of the air-conditioned room, your glasses fog up and you begin to sweat profusely. My greatest pleasure at the end of the day is simply to loosen my tie, which I do on the way home at 5 p.m.
The registrar and marketing manager took me to Pyin U Lwin today, which they kept calling Maymyo and a whole bunch of different names. It is 42 miles north-east of Mandalay and more importantly 800 meters higher. Mandalay seems to lie in a huge bowl surrounded by hills or mountains so the heat just sits. When we got out of the car in Maymyo the air was cool, my glasses did not fog up because the air conditioning was not on in the taxi and I felt so refreshed. I can’t remember feeling anything like this in the past nine months. I have never escaped the heat but just never realized it until today. I could breath today. Will I be able to survive tomorrow in the sweltering heat? My air conditioning in the hotel room even seems too cool now.
If you look at the pictures, you will see I visited an enormous cave with all of the attributes of Buddhist worship inside, saw a fantastic botanical garden, visited the miniature village of the major sites in Myanmar, went shopping in the downtown market and various other things but this pales in comparison to what I learned again about the Myanmar people. Their generosity of spirit is overwhelming. When I visited the marketing manager’s aunts home, I was greeted with open arms (and a bowl full of grapes!) One of the aunt’s lives in Brisbane and was just home visiting. Her husband is a doctor who now does translations for Burmese patients because he can’t practice medicine and she was and still is, actually, an IT teacher. Her English was perfect. Of course she misses her 80 year old mother but she reiterated Jane’s comments about leaving Russia in the l970’s…to be able to live in freedom is worth almost any price to pay. She talked about reading any newspaper she wanted, watching any television station and being able to express her thoughts openly. Her niece had to whisper in my ear when we were talking about politics and the upcoming referendum. Clearly, the Myanmar people are in a prison where gatherings are not allowed, there is not freedom of the press and there is a black market for everything, including gas. What I can’t figure out is, if there is a black market for gas, where is the gas coming from? The government sets a quota on how much gas you can buy so when you need more you have to go to the black market. You can get gas ( at an inflated price) but my question is, if you can buy gas on the black market there is obviously sources of gas. Why does there have to be a quota?
When we did leave the aunt’s house, the marketing manager got on her knees in front of her grandmother and said a prayer wishing her well. Now I can’t wait to be a grandfather if this is what it is going to be like.
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