Bagan

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A problem at the Bagan market

Friday, October 25, 2013 in Bagan, Burma | 3 comments

There’s lots of fascinating things to look at and buy at the Bagan market–until the beggars find you. Photos by David Lansing.

Alex made a mistake at the market in Bagan yesterday. When one of the young children that immediately started following us around handed him a small jar of thanaka, the yellow paste everyone here puts on their face, he took it. I don’t think he even knew what it was. He looked at it curiously, smiled at the kid, and then tried to hand it back.

The kid wouldn’t take it. As far as he was concerned, he’d made a sale.”Ta htaun kyat! Ta htaun kyat!” shouted the boy.

Alex asked our guide, Sai, what the boy was saying. “He want one dollar,” said Sai.

“Give him a buck,” I said, “just so he’ll leave us alone.” By now there were five or six other children, all under ten, clamoring around us, all pushing things at us: gum, bananas, bags of what looked like dried fish.

Alex tried to give the thanaka back to the boy. ”Ta htaun kyat!” he yelled. Alex started to reach for his money.

“If you give the boy a dollar, fifty children will follow you around the market,” said Sai.

In fact, the crowd of youngsters had now grown to more than a dozen.

“Look, I don’t want this,” Alex told the boy. “Take it.”

The boy refused. So Alex put the jar on the edge of a vendor’s table. “There it is,” he said. “I’m not taking it.” And then he walked off.

The boy grabbed his jar of thanaka. But that was not the end of it. Now the pack of children followed us wherever we went, all of them pushing things at us and asking for kyat. It got so you could not even stop at a stall to look at a Buddha or the baskets of odd spices because if you did, a dozen, two dozen kids would harass you. So we told Sai we wanted to leave and quickly we hustled out of the market.

The thing is, we all wanted to buy something—sandals, a longyi (the ubiquitous sarong-like cloth worn by both men and women), beaded bracelets—something. But because we started to feel like we’d been surrounded by a pack of feral dogs, in the end we bought nothing. And left in a hurry. A situation not good for anyone but particularly not good for the vendors at the market.

Tags: Bagan, Bagan market, Burma, Myanmar

Should you stay at the Aureum Palace Hotel in Bagan?

Thursday, October 24, 2013 in Bagan, Burma

A view from the pool at the Aureum Palace Hotel in Bagan looking across the pond to the temples. Photo by David Lansing.

They say the best hotel in Bagan is the Aureum Palace so yesterday afternoon I stopped by to have a look. The resort sprawls across 27 acres and includes a sushi bar, spa, and 72 villas, including the thousand-dollar-a-night Island Villa with its own lap pool, sun deck, and a personal valet.

The Island Villa was vacant (but very beautiful) as were most of the other villas and guest rooms. In fact, on an hour-long tour of the property I think I only saw two or three guests, and they were sitting in the lobby drinking tea. No one at the pool. No one at the spa. No one walking around the extravagant five-star property. So what gives?

Well, the hotel is owned by Tay Za, reportedly the richest man in Burma and a close associate of one of its former military dictators, Gen. Than Shwe. And Mr. Tay Za has been described by the United States Department of the Treasury as a “notorious henchman and arms dealer.”

According to a recent story in the New York Times, after the 2007 Saffron Revolution, when the junta killed dozens of pro-democracy demonstrators and arrested thousands more, “the Bush administration froze his assets and blocked him and his family from traveling to the United States.”

Does that explain why there are few guests? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s because of the weather. We are coming to the end of the intense monsoons here in Burma when daily temps in Bagan often eclipse 100°F. So maybe it has nothing to do with tourist’s feelings about Tay Za at all.

Then again, our hotel, Tharabar Gate, seems to be completely full.

For $1,000 a night you can rent the Island Villa at the Aureum Palace Hotel which comes with its own lap pool and valet–if you don’t mind the company you keep.

Tags: Aureum Palace Hotel, Bagan, Bagan hotels, Burma, Myanmar, Tay Za

Thanaka–the face of Myanmar

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 in Bagan, Burma | 1 comment

A young woman selling bananas at the market in Bagan, left, and a young boy eating his breakfast both wear thanaka paste on their faces. Photos by David Lansing.

You see it everywhere you go in Burma. On the cheeks of a young woman selling bananas; spread widely across the face of a toddler eating noodles for breakfast. Thanaka, a yellowish-white cream made by grinding the bark of particular trees which grow only in places with lots of rainfall—30 inches or more a year—in dry, rocky soil.

Here in Burma thanaka is a sunscreen, cold cream, fragrance, and topical cure all in one. Smelling a bit like sandalwood, it is smeared on cheeks and noses to keep from getting sunburned, and rubbed on chins and foreheads to prevent acne and control oiliness.

Yesterday at the market in Bagan I saw a dozen women or more selling branches of thanaka. According to my guide, Sai, most of the branches come from trees at least 35-years-old. “It take 5 to 10 years just for trunk of thanaka tree to grow 2 inches in diameter,” he said. Which makes you wonder, since the Burmese have been using thanaka cream for over 2,000 years, how there are even any trees left.

A woman at the Bagan market sells branches of thanaka. The bark is then ground up and mixed with water to form a yellow paste. Photo by David Lansing.

Tags: Bagan, Bagan market, Burma, Myanmar, thanaka

The pool at the Tharabar Gate Hotel

Tuesday, October 22, 2013 in Bagan, Burma | 1 comment

Elephants line the pool at the Tharabar Gate Hotel in Bagan, Myanmar. Photo by David Lansing.

There may be over 2,200 temples, pagodas, and monasteries on the dusty red plains of Bagan but all I wanted to do today was sleep on a lounge shaded by a red umbrella beside the jade green pool lined with little clay elephants at the Tharabar Gate Hotel. “I cannot look at temples this afternoon,” I confessed to my young guide, Sai, when he suggested an afternoon visit to the Shwezigon Pagoda.

“No?”

“No.”

He looked at me quizzically. “Perhaps you are not feeling well?”

“I feel fine. Just tired.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “It has been a lot.”

“Yes,” I said. “It has been a lot. I’m sorry. I know Bagan is one of the most amazing places in the world. And I am very much looking forward to seeing its temples. But not today. Today I want to nap by the pool.”

Sai smiled. “Okay,” he said. “No problem. Tomorrow we go to Shwezigon?”

“Tomorrow. Yes.”

And so, with more than a little bit of guilt, I took the afternoon off. I walked from one end of the pale green pool to the other. I ordered a tropical cocktail. And I fell asleep on my lounge chair while reading Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar once again. It was the perfect afternoon.

Tags: Bagan, Bagan hotels, Burma, Myanmar