The Pagoda by the Sea, and What Was Seen There (Travel Stories They Don’t Tell You #4)
My time in Myanmar was winding down and I decided to cap it off by being a lazy tourist at Chaung Thar Beach, a decision I did not think would have any negative ramifications.
For three days I subsisted on a diet of iced sugar cane juice with lemon and coconuts with rice wine. I would enjoy the breakfast and coffee that the hotel staff would bring to my room, and then, when I felt like it, I would casually stroll down to the beach. I would wade into the sun-warmed waters of the Bay of Bengal (or was this the Andaman Sea?) and swim out until the salty water deepened and cooled, the perfect respite from the heat and humidity.
The water was green and the aggressive surf would kick up swirls of silt as you walked along the tide line. It was not a pristine beach like Ngwesaung to the south or Ngapali to the north (the latter unavailable due to civil war); this was where the locals went, and so it was more “down to earth.”
For me, it was perfect.
But et in arcadia ego, as the saying goes.
I finished my coconut, paid the man his 2,500 kyats, and walked north over the warm sand to Chaung Thar Pagoda. It was new, having been built only a decade prior, but it was unique: it had been built directly into and onto a large boulder, probably 12 or 15 feet high, and capped with the ubiquitous golden stupa. The pagoda itself was small, but something about its being carved into a boulder by the sea gave it a certain gravitas. I was on my daily quest for chay neh, that sweet, refreshing drink made by running lengths of sugar cane through a motorized thresher. I had quit smoking several months prior, but I only traded a cancer-causing vice for one that would no doubt give me diabetes.
While I waited for the vendor to run the sugar cane through the thresher, a teenage girl leading an army of little people came over. She, like almost every single other woman in Burma, wore the traditional thanaka on her cheeks. Her face was shaded by a hat woven from green palm fronds, several of which she had in her hands and tried to sell me. She was very charming, and I’m sure she could use the money, but I politely turned her down; I learned years ago that I couldn’t help everybody. Her subordinates accosted me with shell necklaces, which I also turned down.
In hindsight, perhaps I should have bought something, anything. It would have saved me what happened next.
I walked around the pagoda, my ice-cold chay neh in hand, and one of the girls called over to me. I instinctively looked over to where she was sitting, in the shade of the boulder. When she had my attention, she quickly pointed downwards, and my eyes instinctively followed the gesture. Innocent me, I wasn’t prepared for the trap: an infant boy, lying on a mat in the shade of the boulder, wearing a shirt, and nothing else.
For my avarice, I was punished by the sight of baby nuts.
I assumed the international pose for “Why on God’s green earth would you show me that?” and continued on my way.
I walked between food and drink vendors, thinking I might have some lunch here by the seaside when an older woman came by with a bucket of crabs. She held them each up to me, their little legs clicking, to show me they were alive. Fresh crabs, caught right here in the sea! I made the international symbol for “No, I’m sorry, I have nowhere to cook them.” Finally, she gave me the international “Oh, fine” look and left.
Shortly thereafter, another woman came over, cradling an infant in her arms.
“Ah!” She said suddenly and pointed down at the infant.
Some things are deeply ingrained in our human nature. When someone goes “Ah!” and points, you immediately look to where they’re pointing.
So, naturally, I looked down.
In the time it took to fire a synapse, I took in two things: the face of the child, and the blue shirt it was wearing. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t until the next synapse fired that I took in the next part: that it was the same child from earlier, and he was still wearing nothing but that blue shirt.
Baby nuts again. I had fallen for it a second time.
I wasn’t even mad. Fool me once, as they say. I just wished I could take my brain down to the seashore and rinse it out.
Sitting down was of course a mistake because every old crone selling fish on a stick converged on my location. I politely ordered a bowl of noodles and got a tiny little palm frond pouch wrapped with string from one old lady, just to see what it was (rice and beans), but I had no need for anything else. I turned down sausages on sticks, fish on sticks, necklaces, palm frond hats, more palm frond pouches, and of course, little clicking crabs. The crab lady from before, the one who had given me the international “Oh, fine” face was also there. I was beginning to think it was more of the international “Hey, I gave you one last chance” face. But now I most certainly was not going to buy any of her clicking crabs; I would not be blackmailed.
Seeing that I had refused everything offered to me, the woman who sold me the noodles came over. She looked me up and down, and then held up one finger. She looked at me intently, meaningfully. I took it to be the international symbol for “one more?”
“No, I’m very full!” I said. “Thank you though.”
She kept her finger up, though. She wiggled it, and brought her face in close for emphasis. I shook my hand, smiling, telling her that I did not want any more noodles. She stared back for what seemed like several seconds, in case I might change my answer. I kept shaking my head and smiling.
“Okay, then” she seemed to say.
And with a flourish, she pointed downwards, and there for the third time that day were baby nuts.
“You bitch!” I blurted out.
Everyone laughed riotously, luckily not understanding my English invective. It was the same child! Same shirt and everything — or rather, same shirt and nothing. How had he got there? Who had crept over the shifting sands and placed that child there in the shadows?
“Why are you doing this to me?” I cried.
They laughed.
“Why do you keep showing me baby nuts? I don’t want to see baby nuts! I want to see the sea! While I drink my sugar cane juice and eat these noodles!”
The women laughed harder and harder, cackling amongst themselves in Burmese. Had I been cursed? Were these Burmese beach gypsies? Buy something or be greeted all your days by baby nuts?
The woman from before, her of the “Oh, fine” face, held out her little clicking crab.
“Oh my god, fine! I’ll buy the damn crab! If it keeps me from baby nuts, I’ll buy the damn crab! Jesus.”
I shelled out the 1,500 kyats for the crab — about 42 cents — and when she offered it to me, I made the international symbol for “Throw that bad boy back into the sea.”
I finished my sugar cane juice, but it wasn’t as sweet as before. I felt robbed, both of my kyats and my dignity. I walked back down the beach, over that burning sand, away from that pagoda by the sea, away from the crab-sellers and their curses.
Of course, should I ever again meet crab-sellers by the sea, perhaps I’ll just buy a damn crab.
