I leaned over the sink to brush my teeth with my tie on (I know, what an idiot) and water splashed all over my tie. After it dried (about 30 seconds), there was an ugly jagged line running at the edge of the water mark. When I asked my secretary at school how to get the line out, she told me to just wash it out with a bit of soap…it was only dust. In other words, when the water splashed on my tie it cleaned off a week’s worth of dust and the remaining line was the detritus remaining. It was only then that I started to think about how dusty Mandalay is. I can’t imagine how filthy the rest of my clothes are. Thank goodness I generally don’t notice these things, until now!
When I looked at the bottom of my feet, I seem to have indelible dirt marks. Whenever you visit a pagoda in Mandalay, it is obligatory to take off your shoes and socks. It would be convenient to do so at the entrance of the pagoda, but what you usually do is take off your shoes in the car, walk over some dusty filthy road filled with pebbles that cut your feet, then walk on burning hot tiles permanently etching your feet in a mosaic of filth. It is sort of humorous watching the monks and tourists high stepping over the hot spots like cockroaches scurrying to a meal.
Coming back from the Internet café the other night (which is a story in itself), I took a bicycle rickshaw ‘thingy’ which frankly was very comfortable and nice, until cars and trucks passed by belching their black smoke from the exhaust and practically killing me. I did try to hold my breath until I got to the oasis of my hotel, but 30 minutes was a little too long not to breath. I can’t imagine what damage these fumes are doing to my health and the health of the millions of bicycle drivers who, if they are not killed by a car, suffer an equal chance of a slow painful death from exhaust fumes…or heat exhaustion.
Buses, which are more like the old Volkswagen vans, are filled literally to the rafters with people. They sit in all of the seats, climb to the roof with their goods and hang off the back of the bus. I noticed the other day that at the back of the bus there were people standing interspersed with people sitting at the back edge, I suppose like they pack sardines in a can to make more room.
The Internet, when it is working, at best is blocked by the government which does not allow sites such as blogspot, yahoo, hotmail and so on. However, this week it is hardly the best as they are working on some submarine cable, they say in a notice. I would presume there are important things happening in Myanmar this week that the government does not want to get out, even though God knows they could leave the Internet working and by the time the news got out it would be irrelevant to anyone anyway because the Internet is so damn slow. I wish there was a newspaper I could read to find out what is happening of world concern but there are no newspapers in English, even at my fancy hotel in Mandalay.
When I spoke to a colleague at lunch today, I asked him why he did not like working at night. “I can’t” he said. “Why not,” I said. He responded that the electricity is turned off at night and citizens in ordinary homes to not have access to light unless they have a generator (which is a great source of noise). When I told him how horrible I thought all this was he responded: “compared to whom?”
When I looked at the bottom of my feet, I seem to have indelible dirt marks. Whenever you visit a pagoda in Mandalay, it is obligatory to take off your shoes and socks. It would be convenient to do so at the entrance of the pagoda, but what you usually do is take off your shoes in the car, walk over some dusty filthy road filled with pebbles that cut your feet, then walk on burning hot tiles permanently etching your feet in a mosaic of filth. It is sort of humorous watching the monks and tourists high stepping over the hot spots like cockroaches scurrying to a meal.
Coming back from the Internet café the other night (which is a story in itself), I took a bicycle rickshaw ‘thingy’ which frankly was very comfortable and nice, until cars and trucks passed by belching their black smoke from the exhaust and practically killing me. I did try to hold my breath until I got to the oasis of my hotel, but 30 minutes was a little too long not to breath. I can’t imagine what damage these fumes are doing to my health and the health of the millions of bicycle drivers who, if they are not killed by a car, suffer an equal chance of a slow painful death from exhaust fumes…or heat exhaustion.
Buses, which are more like the old Volkswagen vans, are filled literally to the rafters with people. They sit in all of the seats, climb to the roof with their goods and hang off the back of the bus. I noticed the other day that at the back of the bus there were people standing interspersed with people sitting at the back edge, I suppose like they pack sardines in a can to make more room.
The Internet, when it is working, at best is blocked by the government which does not allow sites such as blogspot, yahoo, hotmail and so on. However, this week it is hardly the best as they are working on some submarine cable, they say in a notice. I would presume there are important things happening in Myanmar this week that the government does not want to get out, even though God knows they could leave the Internet working and by the time the news got out it would be irrelevant to anyone anyway because the Internet is so damn slow. I wish there was a newspaper I could read to find out what is happening of world concern but there are no newspapers in English, even at my fancy hotel in Mandalay.
When I spoke to a colleague at lunch today, I asked him why he did not like working at night. “I can’t” he said. “Why not,” I said. He responded that the electricity is turned off at night and citizens in ordinary homes to not have access to light unless they have a generator (which is a great source of noise). When I told him how horrible I thought all this was he responded: “compared to whom?”
No comments:
Post a Comment