Gloaming of the Mind: Travel Report 23: Mandalay, Imperial City of Burma

Rangoon/Yangon is not the capital of Burma/Myanmar. It was that since the end of British rule, not before that, and only until the current paranoid regime finished building a capital in the center of the land, where there was nothing before. Like Washington DC and Canberra. Tactically for the same reason, which can mean that the strategies of nations remain the same, be they friends or foes.

Now Mandalay, let it roll of your tongue, as you savor the view from the Pagoda above the city. Mandalay is the location of the last palace of a King of Burma.

If this looks too freshly painted to be 150 years old,
that's because it is. This palace was rebuilt with forced labor
in recent years, to attract foreign dollars into govt pockets.

Remember how the Khmer Rouge used Angkor Wat as munitions depot? I think you saw bullet holes in one of my previous posts. Well, the Brits did the same during WWII with this one. The result was that it burned to the ground.

Surrounded by the true ancient capitals of Burma. Amarapura, Sin Wa and that ancient Abode of buddhism Sagain, Mandalay is the seat of the last rightful ruler of all Burmese. Which is not to say the rightful ruler of all that is inside Myanmar's borders today. The wall around the thing is 2.2 km by 1.4 miles. I didn't say they built small back then.

Just thought I would throw this little buddha in,
for all you letter challenged people.

While mentally preparing myself for an onslaught of history of Angkor Wat proportions the day starts early to catch good light, a lost monk or two and no tourists. On our way through Amarapura I experience my first surprise of the day. None of the thing actually survived except a low wall. The question begs how Angkor survived through the eons while this did not. Right, Angkor buried in jungle (no native knew about those colossal ruins for 700 years, mhm), while Amarapura is out in the open, hence destroyed or at least recycled several times.

This bridge, made of teak, reaches across this lake to an island.

People have been crossing it by foot for generations. Amazing sights reward the walker.

As we walk across the bridge, dissonant sounds reach us from the island. We speculate if this is another recorded sermon delivered by tape to the local monastery (I kid you not). We walk on, I am involved in one or another deep theological discussion with Mr Myoswe, who kindly humors my interest and thoughts, while setting of various cascades of analyses and paradigm shifts.

The bridge is long and so is the discussion.

The sounds of religious officialdom increase as we walk through the misty morning glow. Edible ducks sprint away from us. We know they are edible because they dont fly. The ones that fly aren't eaten.

As we get to the end of the bridge we see the reason for the auditory hoopla.

The hoopla is not completely her fault,

but you can forgive me for thinking so.

It seems we have stumbled our way into an initiation ceremony. To which, in true Burmese fashion, we are immediately invited. We take of the shoes, we ogle without ogling, we wonder at the manifestation of bonne chance we seem to keep attracting. Maybe telling ourselves that the proper Reisende deserves this, means that he actually does.

Not Mozart, but then again
Austrians don't invite strangers to
their Bar Mitzvah either

And while they feed me with local delicacies I can ignore most every sound wave, except maybe Schönberg and Silbelius and those two depressed soundmurderers are thankfully stuck in the collective memory of a weird anti classical protest movement somewhere in central/northern Europe. Personally, I believe Schönberg wrote that stuff because his wife was rather sonant - opposite of dissonant, of course - with his best friend, if you catch her drift. Sibelius, on the other hand, has Finish winters as his excuse for what they brazenly call music. They didn't even dare to use it in Guantanamo Bay, for fear of Geneva Convention consequences. By the way, I am going to see a Schönberg Opera in a week or so. If you don't hear from me, I went to Forks looking for a bunch of fine Vampires in the Twilight to take my life in an orgy of blood and diamond skin. And hopefully no more sound.

Cooking for large amounts of skinny people

Volker in his well earned status as gut gewürzter Reisender insisted that we not partake in this meal. And most likely saved me from Amoebas that might have felt like a centipede, only inside my stomach. I was ready to sit and eat, but deferred to his judgement, as I was sure I could test my wimp of a belly on some other occasion as well. Which came at the ready made pwe later that night: