Two Months Around Southeast Asia…

YANGON

I thought I had seen enough, at least in this part of Asia, but clearly I was wrong. It had been a while since a place gave me that constant tingling on my arms, a continual goosebumps. I didn't speak for the first 2 hours we walked through the streets of Yangon, without a precise destination. The first consideration to try to understand where we are is trivial but I think it gives the idea by saying that this is where India meets Southeast Asia. Right away there are images for the streets full of potholes, covered by mountains of garbage and swarming with people coming and going from every direction: 99% of the men wear a kind of skirt while chewing a kind of leaf that makes their teeth almost black and they constantly spit on the ground, leaving stains that look like blood just about everywhere...

The women, for their part, have their faces painted with an ochre-yellow cream, partly to protect themselves from the sun and partly for an aesthetic reason...And all while buses from the 1940s, packed with people beyond belief, speed by at full speed heedless of the tangible possibility of running over 3 or 4 passersby at a time as if they were bowling pins... In the streets you see and they sell everything. During the day we meet only two other tourists, which for a city of 5 million inhabitants isn't bad... Among the crowd that seems to run without a goal we realize that here the main attraction is... us! But once again, the cordiality of the people who greet us at every corner, who stop us, sometimes to sell us something, sometimes just for the sheer pleasure of interacting with us even for just 2 minutes, is a delightful welcome to this country.

Here the smells, the colors and the emotions are strong. It really feels, without exaggerating, like being in another world. A little more used to the idea of being in Yangon, we finally visit the Shwedagon Paya, the most incredible and wonderful stupa that I could have the fortune to admire. Enormous, imposing, almost impossible to describe something like that without being able to see it with your own eyes. The Bogyoke market then closes the day, with its more than 2000 little shops where everything and more is sold, in perfect Asian style....and finally and unexpectedly we find an internet cafe, where we immediately notice that everything is forbidden: from Hotmail to Messenger...but just as they change money and sell gasoline on the black market, even for emails there's a loophole...

MANDALAY - AMARAPURA - INWA - SAGAING

As we expected, the hours spent on the bus to reach Mandalay were torture: - departure at 16:00 to arrive at destination at 07:30 the next day. - a single road where there were more holes than square meters of asphalt. - bus of Chinese origin, so seats made for their small "posteriors". - TV and karaoke for the entire duration of the trip (in typical Asian style...) - rest stop...rest stop?!? Arriving in Mandalay is like taking a bus to the Middle Ages. I thought and thought again, but it's impossible for me to find the words to describe what I saw. If to get around we use carts pulled by horses and in the countryside the oxen still pull the plow, we can't do anything but ask around for today's date to make sure we're not in the 14th century...

For two days we tour the city with its splendid view from the hill, its breathtaking sunsets, an exaggerated number of pagodas, Amarapura and various cities that surround the last imperial capital of Burma on a very uncomfortable "taxi" that, in this case, is a 1964 Mazda (!!!) with the shape and dimensions of the Popemobile. Between potholes and overtaking by little trucks/buses with people attached above and below the vehicle we go around and around and around....and we eat more dust than in a mine......I end up as usual playing soccer with a group of children (wherever you go they're the best, always and in any case...) and haggling down to the last cent even for a ride on a rickshaw...

PAGAN

We leave Mandalay with the idea, later confirmed at the end of the trip, that we will remember this city only for the intense darkness that reigns in every street as soon as the sun disappears... The day of Santo Stefano passes relaxingly on a boat that moves little faster than the Ayeyarwady river itself, which we navigate down to Bagan. Finally I manage to visit (only aboard a horse-drawn cart with the very original name of Myanmar...) what has always been one of my "archaeological destinations": Bagan is immense and, perched on the top of one of the more than 2000 temples scattered throughout the historical area, in the musical silence created by the absence of hordes of tourists, we contemplate the most emotional scenery of the entire trip. Something absolutely incomparable for beauty and intensity. And so we set off, full of energy, heading for Inle Lake...

INLE LAKE

The torture of the bus journey is repaid by the enchantment of our last stop in Burma. The town of Nyaungshwe is small and the atmosphere, besides being cold, is extremely relaxed. Many guest-houses and little restaurants (where pizza and fresh pasta are sold everywhere, after a Bolognese chef passed through here...at least that's what the "legend" says...in Myanmar...go figure...) give a vague backpackers-town air, as Lonely Planet says, although here we mostly find couples and elderly people... The day slips away slowly pedaling around the little town. We stop here and there until lunchtime, when after a pizza we linger to talk with the very charming owner of the restaurant "Mr.

Cook", who speaking a bit of English, gives us the opportunity to shower her with questions about Buddhism, their lifestyle and, with some difficulty in getting answers, about the current political situation of the country and the dictatorship that has held power for decades now.

So New Year's Eve arrives and without any pretensions, since here at 10 pm everything is already dead, we go to eat our plate of noodles (good!) imagining ourselves already in bed at 10:30 pm...but, to our surprise (even though thinking about it it shouldn't be too surprising...) the little restaurant is invaded by about thirty Italians and we end up at one of the 2 tables with improbable people waiting for midnight between Chinese "disco-dance" and bingo games in which no more than 4 or 5 numbers are drawn (paying attention it seems that already with a pair or at most a trio people were winning...go figure...) Starting the year in a different way makes the "usual" more interesting. Maybe we could have done without the sweatshirt and jacket, but the day will be beautiful and Inle Lake even better, with its stilt houses, floating markets and fishermen, famous for rowing with their feet.

Unforgettable.

Burma cannot help but leave a deep mark on those who visit it, on those who experience its places and its people. The harsh social and political situation from which it seems unable to emerge would need more sincere and useful attention from that international community which, in the end, is as if it had forgotten this country and above all its population. A disinterest as always dictated by a conscience that follows only the rules of a market that is not even remotely part of the life and reality of these people. People who once again astonish for the intensity of their soul, seeing in us "lucky-foreigners" not a reason for envy, but simple human beings deserving of their smiles and attentions, sincere and disinterested. Purely true.

Of Burma, besides the potholes along roads that don't exist, the magnificence of Bagan, the dust and the natural wonders, I will remember the smiling faces of the people, the thousand attentions and greetings they always reserve for you. Mingalabaw!!!