TRAVEL SOUTHEAST ASIA
The Land of Mandalay: More than Just ‘Exotic’
Come take a spiritual trip to where Burmese culture of the past is revered
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!” — Rudyard Kipling
Poet Rudyard Kipling’s Mandalay was his dream. Poetry does the city of Mandalay and the country of Myanmar both due justice.
Calling this part of Southeast Asia “exotic” is how Kipling and other British aficionados referred to the place. Mayanar is more than just exotic. Despite constant political troubles, it’s one of the few world cultures still embedded in tradition.
Kipling’s poem “Mandalay” romanticized a country whose culture was much more nuanced and complex than many in the British Empire comprehended. In contrast, it freed itself from the British in the name of its cultural values, only to slip back and forth from democratic freedom to military repression.
Many people have heard of Mandalay. The first time I heard about the city, I was in Las Vegas, of all places, in the late 1990s. Enchanted with the name, it stuck…
