Me, Mg and Bago
I COULDN’T tell you how old I was when I ran away from home, but I was old enough to be ashamed I hadn’t tried it sooner.
I’m not sure why — probably because Mum had told me I could not do something I wanted to do — but I vividly recall packing a bag and deciding I was done with being bossed around. I collected my entire cash savings (roughly $50 bucks) a pillow and a blanket, my GameBoy and a picture of my family. Downstairs, I made a couple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tossed some cookies in a ziplock bag, and headed out for the long road to who knows where.
I had no idea where I was going, no plan for when I got there and nobody with me to hold my hand.
SIX weeks into life in Myanmar, I decided to do some solo traveling. For context, this is not something I regularly do; most of my life’s traveling has been done with my family, a group, or a girlfriend.
Though I did take a three week road trip up and down the East Coast after graduating in May, I felt like I was only alone in the car — at every stop, I had someone to visit.
But in Myanmar, for perhaps the first time in my life, I’ve been forced to spend a lot more time with myself. Distinguishing between loneliness and solitude grew harder and harder as the first few weeks dragged on, and somewhere around my third week, I really bottomed out. Friends were few, the food had me projectile vomiting noodles behind a taxi and I had begun to succumb to the temptation of spending most of my time talking to people back home.
During one of those chats, my best friend pointed something out to me — I needed to do what was best for me and enjoy it. Selfishness has a singularly bad connotation, but it shouldn’t. I had an opportunity here to really get to know my own desires. Why not capitalize? Wasn’t that why I signed up to move across the world in the first place?
I chose to start small and take a day-trip: explore Myanmar, explore myself.
YOU’D have to ask my mom, but I think I lasted about 45 minutes on my epic journey as a renegade son. I got to the end of my street before I decided I needed one of those sandwiches, and one or two streets over before I felt nostalgic and pulled out my picture of home.
I burst through the front door not long after, hugging my mom and telling her I loved her so much. Then I probably ate the second sandwich, crushed some Pokemon for an hour and forgot all about whatever it was that I wanted to do in the first place.
I don’t think it occurred to me how important that day was until I hopped on a plane to Myanmar. Running away from home was my first encounter with the idea that I could be solely responsible for my own life, and although that encounter barely took me beyond the cul-de-sac, it was a microcosm of things to come. I had realized that someday I would head out on my own; I had also observed that I was not ready to do so. Yet.
BACK in the days when Myanmar was a land of warring kingdoms, Bago served as a royal capital for several different dynasties. The city is at least 1,165 years old, and many of its pagodas and monuments offer some incredible insight into an ancient culture.
At just 50 miles from Yangon, it makes for a very doable day trip, so I set out for the train station on a Friday morning with a bag of dry clothes, some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a zip-lock bag of cookies and a Kindle. I guess not much has changed since I was a kid.
Traditionally, I plan everything out ahead of time when engaging in public transit; in Myanmar, that’s simply not an option. I had basically shown up at 7 am, hoping to jump aboard in an hour or so (behavior completely outside my comfort zone) and was blessed to catch a train with 15 minutes to spare — for less than $1.
We trundled across the paddies to arrive in the morning hustle of Bago. A horde of motorbike guides greeted me, clamoring for a chance to snag the rare, rainy season tourist. I found one who spoke English, negotiated a cost for the day, and directed him to our first stop with only two words: coffee shop.
As I sipped on the bullshit-condensed milk instant coffee that is the norm here, a second guide came up and engaged in swift dialogue with who I thought was my guide for the day. Suddenly, the new man turned to me, and explained some news: I had been traded to him like a sixth round draft pick, because apparently, he spoke better English.
His name was Mg Hla, and he is one of the greatest men I’ve met so far in Burma.
THAT’S the thing about solo traveling — you’re never really alone. In all the epic tales, from Odysseus to Frodo Baggins and everyone in between, the heroic journey inevitably relies on friends and accomplices one makes along the way. Traveling by yourself is less about self-reliance and more about openness to the characters of the road, the ephemeral figures who flash in and out of your life briefly and remain part of your stories forever.
Mg (pronounced Moe) is one of those characters. As I gripped the handles on the back of his bike, he reveled in explaining the incredible sights all around us. The guy has a true talent for helping tourists discover Bago, and it’s clear to see from the moment you strap on your helmet and take off.
We wound down a muddy village road to see a cheroot factory, where seven women sat on the floor of an empty wooden building, rolling thousands of cigars a day for about $3. At one point, I turned around and saw Mg had corralled the orange cat prowling around the edges of the floor; he had her cradled in his arms, purring as he tickled.
On the way to our next stop, he stopped so I could photograph a family of goats. Without missing a beat, he clicked his tongue and leaned forward to scratch the neck of the baby goat, whose parents looked on peacefully. Amazed, I wondered: was this guy some sort of animal whisperer?
HIS gentle love for animals continued to emerge at the next stop, the Snake Monastery. There we were, in a tiny little room, chilling with a very, very large re-incarnated lady.
And by very, very large re-incarnated lady, I mean a Burmese python.
And by Burmese python, I mean a 28 foot-long, 600 lb. serpent of nightmarish proportions, the kind of dragon that could crush four grown men and eat them slowly over a period of days.
During my visit, the little guy seemed to be chilling, coiled in the corner and taking up 1/4 of the room.
Just feet away stood myself and Mg, a monk and two Indian tourists who were pretty much freaking out. Mg explained that the snake is believed to be the re-incarnated mother of a former prominent monk; she allegedly slithered all the way down from Southern Shan State (about 630 km) and moved into the monastery overnight. She is now 126 years old, and the monks treat her like a queen. The snake has a pool, a shrine, and a 24-hour friend who stays with her at all times, rotating in shifts. That’s right folks — people sleep in there.
Mg had no fear, showing me where to drop my donation (on her scales) and how to take a picture with my hand dangerously close to her sinewy muscles of death. Snakes are my biggest fear, so this moment set my heart racing.
Mg actually laughed, when I asked him to ask the monk if he was ever afraid.
“What is there to be afraid of?”
FROM the snakes, we headed to two monasteries — one to take an epic photo from a unique viewpoint that only Mg could’ve known about, and another to see what 700 monks look like at lunchtime. I discovered that my guide had actually trained to be a monk for 10 years, studying in Myanmar and Thailand, though I never quite understood why he didn’t continue his monkhood.
The monks eat before sunrise, and then again at 11 a.m. That’s it for the day, so this meal is a big one; scores of mostly Thai tourists turned up to drop snacks and rice into their alms bowls as they shuffled into the cafeteria. Inside, the monks sing a chant until everyone has arrived and then dig in, not unlike kids examining their hauls after a long night of Trick or Treating.
A childhood friend of Mg’s was a big shot at the monastery, the third most important teacher there. We had tea with him after lunch, chatting about Burmese legends and the recent floods. The reverence with which Mg regarded his friend was something special to see, a respect beyond my understanding but easy to appreciate nonetheless.
Mg was a pious man, but at our next stop — the 1,000 year old Shwethalyaung Reclining Buddha — I learned about the other side of my guide as we waited out an afternoon monsoon. Sitting in the shadow of a giant hand and puffing on a cheroot, he showed me the bashed bones that once formed his knuckles and a dent in his shin deep enough to hold water; he had fought lethwei, the traditional Myanmar boxing, for years, until a head injury convinced him to stop. They fight without gloves, allow kicking and do not observe a formal end time. It’s occasionally a quite literal fight to the death.
Looking from the serene, massive face of the Buddha to the scarred and smiling face of my new friend, I marveled. This man, at once so gentle with all animals and so peaceful in his faith, was also a brutal fighter whose arm tattoos suggest at least some involvement with the Shan State rebellions.
He extinguished his cigar and grinned.
“Ready?”
I HAD made my inciting action — the decision to travel alone — and I’d met my key accomplice; my story was well underway. We continued on our tour, visiting another reclining Buddha (3rd largest in the world!), an ancient Buddha landmark, a zen Buddha garden, a killer tea shop and a temple I needed to visit for a story at work.
I felt the story coming to its climax when another storm approached and unleashed torrents of rain upon our bike. We escaped the deluge at the last stop on the trip: Mahazedi Pagoda. The 500-year old pagoda was nothing more than a pile of ruins until 1982, when it was renovated to its current, gleaming grandeur. Unlike most pagodas, it has steps leading to the top, offering a breathtaking view of Bago. This was the journey I had to make alone, and Mg seemed to know it as I took off my helmet and gladly sipped some tea from a street vendor.
“I’ll stay here,” he said. “You go on ahead.”
The grounds were eerily deserted as I splashed my way around the pagoda (barefoot, as is tradition here). I saw no security guards or other tourists, just a few dogs trotting toward Mg.
The first staircase I came to was closed and locked, and it occurred to me that maybe the eeriness was a symbol of this site being closed for the day. After all, it had been raining steadily, and it was going on 5 p.m.
For a moment, I was crushed. The Mahazedi was one of the sites I had been most excited about, and we had already skipped the other big pagoda in town because it cost money to see. This was supposed to be the epic culmination of my day trip, not a sad submission to being bossed around by a padlocked door.
Then I remembered — wasn’t “doing what I want to do” what this trip was supposed to be all about?
In an instant, I scrambled over the gate.
NARROW steps, maybe a hundred or so, led me as high as I could go. At the summit, I turned around to see all of Bago stretched out before me. There was the reclining Buddha, looking for all the world like a giant man lounging in the jungle; there was Shwemawdaw Pagoda, the tallest in Myanmar, visible through the mist; over there I could make out the older, smaller reclining Buddha and through the clouds and treetops I could see countless more shrines and temples dotting the landscape.
The storm moved over me in a straight line, and it stopped raining as I stood atop the Mahazedi. To my left were the clearing skies and poking sunlight of the late afternoon, and to my right were the dark clouds of the storm that had just passed through.
Somewhere in front of me, 9,000 miles north-east, was the little house in a little Tennessee town that I had once run away from. Like the monsoon rains, it hit me all at once: The day had come and passed, and I had already headed out on my own.
I still had no idea where I was going, no plan for when I got there and nobody with me to hold my hand — but this time, I wasn’t turning back.
I PROBABLY spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to take an epic selfie, and after hopping the gate to return to my sidekick, I discovered a very concerned Mg. I told him I had climbed to the top; he got much more concerned, explained that its off-limits during rainy season, and told me we should leave now. As he kicked the bike into gear, I looked over my shoulder; two security guards, previously unseen, were watching us leave from the base of the pagoda. They did not look happy.
Mg took me to a bus, bartered me a ride, and gave me a hearty handshake as I left. I had paid him twice as much as I said I would, but it was money happily spent; he had a house to rebuild from the floods, and a family to provide for. I had nothing but beer to buy, and nothing but good things to remember from our day together.
Three buses and two hours later, I sat alone in the steam and cigarette smoke of Yangon’s lively 19th street, happily chewing barbecue pork and drinking a cold Myanmar beer. Exhausted, soaked and already looking forward to my next adventure, I felt comfortable with only one question on my mind:
What do I want to do next?
NOTES:
- For those who find themselves in Bago: Mg Hla can be reached at the Nya Nan Da Hotel, No 10. Main Road. Call him at 09 789 888 657 or 09 317 55255 or 052–2222275. (I don’t understand Myanmar phone numbers at all, so if those don’t work, just go to that hotel and ask for him.)
- The climb to the top of Mahazedi was awesome, but I feel that I should note that it was only available to men. Women were not permitted, as evidence of the unjust fact that Myanmar is still a few decades behind the developed world.
- (The exchange rate as of this writing is 1282 kyat=1 USD) On my trip I spent: 1150K on a train ticket; 1500K on lunch; 4000K on bribes to security guards so I didn’t have to pay the tourist fee; 100K to use a toilet (scammed by some local kids, I suspect); 1000K for the bus ride back and 16,000K for Mg’s services for the day. That’s about $20 USD for the day, less than a dinner date.
- Additional photos:
