On March 21 we took 2 trishaws to the bus stop and boarded an overfull public pick-up truck to Sagaing. There we took 2 other trishaws, went to a market where Papa bought a whole bunch of fruit, vegetables and rice and we took off for Sagaing Hills, an area with an immense concentration of temples: some 400 monasteries and 200 odd nunneries. Back in 1985 my uncle Eric had met a monk there while visiting a hilltop pagoda. The monk invited him to his monastery and Eric ended up spending most of his week in Burma right there. When Papa got there in 1986, he also stayed at that monastery for a few days. So did my parents in 1996, as well as a couple of other Toronto friends since then. But the place is really hard to find if you haven?t been there for a while. So when our trishaws dropped us at a teashop (they had TV5 full blast with war news...), Papa went to find a monastery where he knew there would be someone to help us get to our destination. It only took a couple of hours, but with the help of a local fellow he returned with a young monk who even knew who we were. We then took a "clop-ada-clop" horse cart along the Irrawaddy River to a village. From there we started to hike into the hills (kids helping us with some of the packs), but soon I jumped on a bullock cart (only our 4th mode of transportation that day!) and that's how we made it to Bhodi Chaung, the monastery set up in 1993 by our friend U Revata. He and his mother were there to welcome us and we were shown to our room since the plan was to spend a few days there. The place had apparently changed quite a bit since 1996, with some new concrete buildings. But at this time it was only U Revata and his mother who lived there, as well as an engineering student who got his board there. After a cooling mandi (using rainwater stored in large tanks) he took us on a walk to a hilltop temple from where we had great views of the surrounding plains with a setting sun. We stopped for sugarcane juice and headed back before dark. Dinner was Burmese style: simple, yet varied (my parents liked it).
The next morning we were up at 6:30, had breakfast and went out on another walk with our host to the village we started from. He wanted us to taste some Burmese tea snacks, but by 9 there were none left anywhere. We briefly visited a hospital (my folks were thinking of making a donation) and returned to the monastery for an early lunch. You see, Burmese monks do not eat after 12 pm, so it is important they eat enough before. U Revata ate first alone, but he joined us as well when we had our lunch. The afternoon was spent lazing around in the main building, which was an airy place with only one wall. My parents chatted a lot with U Revata about all sorts of subjects, especially Buddhism and politics (he had participated in the bloody 1988 demonstrations for democracy). And he was the one that told us first about this new virus that is spreading from Hong Kong. I also spent time with him showing my family pictures, drawing and playing cards and Chinese checkers (normally monks are not allowed to play such games). In the evening I presented one of my little song & dance shows, much to everyone's delight. These activities more or less continued the following day (U Revata also showed us some 200-year-old Burmese books and pictures he'd received from the foreigners who had visited him over the years). He had kindly arranged for a cousin of his to come from Mandalay by Jeep in order to take us to the bus station to catch our 5 pm bus to Rangoon. When he arrived we all squeezed into the small car and went first to the house of U Revata's family, chatting some more. He and his cousin then dropped us off at the bus station and shortly thereafter we left for our 16-hour journey.
That trip went OK (A/C and my own reclining seat), but I was glad it was over. The girls of Motherland GH were happy to see me back and they took me right away under their wings (for the rest of the day!). Mom and dad went on their own to first have a Biryani lunch and then go souvenir hunting at the central market. They also went to Shwedagon Pagoda (the No. 1 sight in Burma), but only got to see the outside, because soon after the main gateway they needed to pay $ 5 each to get in (locals don't pay). And since they had been there before, they chose to visit another nearby temple (free entrance), with a large, deep golden stupa (thanks to the setting sun), like Shwedagon.
We had our return flight to Bangkok the next morning and treated ourselves to a bit of luxury by checking into the Viengthai Hotel, near Kao San Rd. A bit like the nicer hotels in China, but a lot better than what we'd been used to for the past months. There was also a nice pool and a copious buffet breakfast, all for US$ 35/night. Mommy was feeling good! First thing on the agenda was to go to the Indian embassy. At first we thought that the news would be negative, but in the end my parents triumphantly got out of there with their visas in hand. So now we knew where we were going after Sri Lanka! Most of the other days in Bangkok I spent at the hotel with papa, while Mommy was running around town on various photo related errands. My parents were closely watching the war news on tv and following how the SARS story unfolded (at one point our trip to Sri Lanka seemed in jeopardy). Papa picked up his suit and shirts at the tailor and he spent quite a bit of time on the internet to write all this down. Once we took a boat-ride on the Chao Praya River, but that's about all the fun things we did. Sure, I got to eat lot's of ice cream again and I swam in the pool a few times, but as far as I am concerned (and my papa agrees with me on this), Bangkok is just one crowded, hot city, where you don't particularly want to spend your holiday...
