Magical Hiatus

Smiles: big, wide smiles in beautiful faces.  They met us the moment we drove into the Royal Beach Motel driveway, Ngapali Coast, Myanmar (alternately known as Burma), and they accompanied us throughout our stay.  The Burmese smile a lot.  Even in Yangon (“Rangoon” of old), a sprawling, dirty, half-built, half-falling down city in a jungle, they smile.

Ironies.  Myanmar is by far the most—what’s the word?—“third” of the countries we’ve visited.  The people live under a ridiculous and appalling military government that makes no decisions without consulting astrologers and doles out all the best contracts to cronies.  The repression has yielded a country that has been deliberately and systematically held in the state of a kind of modern medievalia.  Here’s where we finally saw people living side by side in open shacks.  The people go to work in open trucks and crowded buses.  Markets stretch away on either side of dirt roads.  The road between port and Yangon is the worst paved road you’ll ever ride on.  Once visiting here, you will never go to a dentist again with any feeling other than gratitude.  Counter to the government is the church, in this case the Buddhist monastery system.  Monks (in brown robes) and nuns (in pink robes) are everywhere; forests of golden stuppas and pagodas jut toward the sky.  Even the poorest donate food to the clerics.  Where the regular people come into all this is an interesting and fraught question.  Certainly poverty is the baseline.  I’m not going to do the homework on this, but I feel certain that Myanmar has the poorest life expectancy of any country we’ve visited; here is where I worried the most about how people feed their children.  Life can only be very, very challenging for many citizens of this country.

Modern Yangon

The irony is that the Burmese appear to be the happiest people we’ve met.  Everyone on the ship is saying so.  Perhaps they put on a good show for westerners, but I don’t think it’s only that.  It may be cultural; or it may be that freedom really is only another word for nothing left to lose.  I wonder again about affluenza and the anxieties that come with having too much.  Whatever, it’s all summed up in the beautiful, playful word for hello, “mingalaba,” pronounced all in one unaccented stretch (unless musically lengthened for effect: “Miiingalabaaaa!”).

Further painful ironies: the country is inexorably headed toward development.  The government is opening things up.  McDonald’s has a contract here now.  With modernization will come long-needed increases in quality of life and quantity of life for many; dentists will arrive and have a lot to do; roads will be straightened and leveled, and railways will be trued and extended.  Construction is going on everywhere.  In ten years, it may well be that Myanmar will be unrecognizable.  When we return, after modernization has brought its gifts and anxieties, will we still get the smiles?

“Myanmar,” by the way, is not pronounced “My-an-mar” or “Mee-an-mar” but in two syllables: “Mian - ma.”  Gotta catch the dipthong there in the first syllable.

So Noah spent the bulk of his time in Burma at the beach.  Barring some rottenness with a bug or bad allergies, he had a wonderful, wonderful time.  For him it was all about eating delicious food:

Yum, fries

Scrounging for shells:

Playing in the water:

Dancing and leaping on the beach:

Dancing and leaping new friends:

And messing about in boats:

Daddy especially loved the messing about in boats, which included some great snorkeling:

See the fish?

Always there were the beautiful and warm people.  Forgive a distinctively male moment here.  It was just so lovely.  Everywhere in our modest hotel, the young women of the staff glided around with majesterial grace wearing doubtless the most becoming garments ever devised by human hands (figure-hugging skirt and bodice in silk, subtly tricked out in gorgeous embroidery, dark hair held in a florally decorated snood).  Each visit was a variation on a theme of “mingalabas” and shy, fetching smiles.  Watching them sweep the restaurant floor was poetry.  The worst thing you could possibly do at the Royal Beach Motel would be to hurry.  Certainly the wonderful people did not hurry (unless chasing Noah to spank him playfully).  There was no rush and no reason to rush, for either you or the staff.  Between the beautiful sea and the beautiful hotel and the beautiful people, there was plenty to enjoy—a surfeit, a feast.  (And then, finally, the food and drinks did come, and they were marvelous variations on themes of grilled fish, fragrant rice, perfect tropical fruit, and excellent fries and potato chips).

Susu (sp?) with Noah's gift

Nini (sp?)

The people loved Noah, of course, voraciously so.  (Sadly, it was a little overwhelming for Noah, and he went to his shy place most of the time).   They learned his name early and greeted him with teasing and, of course, smiles.  

We loved Burma / Myanmar.  What a beautiful, wonderful, grace-full place, filled with beautiful, wonderful, grace-full people.  We feel honored to have been able to visit.  Too bad Noah was so shy much of the time.  In the end, though, as we were leaving, he danced out the door to “Wake me up before you go go” and applause from his Myanmar family.