Temple Tour Tribulations/MANDALAY

I meet my driver, Boma, after breakfast around 8:30, or "late" as he calls it. He gives me a lot of guff for sleeping in, especially for a guy showing me around on my dime. You'd think he'd be happy to spend less on gas, but I guess punctuality is more important to some folks. He takes me to Kuthodaw Pagoda, where they have "the world's largest book": the Tipitaka, the entirety of Therevada Buddhism's scriptures, written across 729 marble tablets housed inside as many white stupas. It looks like this:

There's a lot of these things.

Here's one of the things in the thing.

You could probably crush a couple of these on a long plane ride.  729 long plane rides.

There's just so many...

...It's...stupa-ndous.

Sorry. Here's some stupa puppies.

In fact, some eagle-eyed readers may remember seeing it from above, in one of my pictures atop Mandalay Hill:

Hemingway probably would've snipped a few lines here and there.

As I'm walking around the "book", I hear a young girl say "hello". I whirl around trying to place the noise, but it takes awhile to realize she's above, on top of a stupa. Curiously, the place is lousy with people picking something in the trees planted around the pagoda. People are just...vertical in this place. I don't know. An old man with one eye is sweeping and must have seen my confusion. "Piss?" he asks, and gestures towards a gate. Gives new meaning to the term "bathroom reader"!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA laughed the trees.

Once I've had enough, which is fairly quickly because what am I gonna do, read?, Boma whisks me to a couple of other tourist spots. However, I've refused to buy the $10 Archaeological Zone ticket necessary to see these sights, 'cause it supports the corrupt government and I'm socially conscious 'n shit, so I see 'em all from the gate. I feel smug as all hell.

Who needs to see the inside of another goddamn temple when you've got oodles of self-righteousness to occupy your time.

I'm actually able to go inside Mahamuni Pagoda, also known as "the Shwedagon of Mandalay", which I'm sure is an impressive and meaningful statement to some people. The big thing here is the Mahamuni Buddha image, supposedly one of only five images of the Buddha created during his lifetime. According to Wikipedia he also breathed on it and "imbued it with his essence", which sounds like something you shouldn't be doing in public, spiritual leader or not.

I find a spot were people are praying in front of the Buddha, and after kneeling for a minute a monk comes up and tells me that I'm in the women's section.

Typical feminazis, hogging all the best views.

He leads me to a government dude who rents me a longyi for 1,000 kyat (about a dollar), infomring that it's the dress code of the temple. After all my efforts, the government got me to pay up for something in the end. Somehow, I always knew when I finally gave in to The Man, it'd be while wearing a dress.

And color-clashing like a motherfucker.

Mr. Monk proceeds to take me on a whirlwind tour of the temple, including the Buddha chamber. He shows off the gorgeous mosaics and decorations, and also asks me how to say "velociraptor" in English, because I am wearing a t-shirt depicting a bandito riding such. We're both learning a lot, I guess is what I'm saying.

Worshipers are allowed to reverently affix gold leaf to the Mahamuni Image, as long as you don't have gross girl hands.

The temple has some pretty extensive grounds in addition to the Buddha pagoda, with a museum and a pond full of fish and turtles that are fed rice cakes by passing visitors. The museum is a bit rundown and covered in dust, but does contain some impressively ancient relics from across the country.

Also this lobster.

Throughout the temple my main man monk was able to explain the little rituals going on around us, things I had seen before but I had no idea about. I mean, it was all the usual "luck/wealth/prosperity/tradition" in the end, but still, it was nice to understand the protocol of the devotions.

Wettin' heads

Rubbin' tummies

He also gave me a quick rundown on some of the early stories from the religion, but none of them compared to what was depicted in this one painting:

Whoa, no one told me Buddhism was metal as fuck.

All in all, Mahamuni was a good time. Travel writing: Nailed It.

Place got some moves.

Mon monk ami curtly ends our tour near the entrance, and I prepare to bid adieu. Unfortunately, he's got a different idea. Turns out he doesn't agree that this is one of those free good-time tours that I keep thinking exist for some reason. Instead, he informs me I should give him 50-100 dollars USD. "For English books in the classroom," he says. Bad, bad monk. I tell him I don't have that much.

"40 is okay," he says. I pull out all the USD I have and show it to him. It's 7 dollars.

"15 is okay," he intones, ever so graciously. I repeat that I don't have that much, just 7 dollars. He tells me kyat is also okay. Just to humor him, I pull out all the kyat I have, about 900 in small bills. I hand it over plus the USD, an amount by which he is visibly displeased.

"Normally people give me 100 or 200, and I give them big blessing. But since you give so little, I give you little blessing." He gives me his "little blessing" and fucks off back inside the temple like the dick he is. Of course, I find out later that real monks will never ask for alms or donations, and I was scammed totes for real. For about 8 bucks, but it's the principle of the thing. I may not have many principles left, but a flimflam monk taking me for a boner ride is definitely against them. If only there was some way I could have known...

Maybe the fact that he looks like a goddamn Skeletor could have been a clue.

Next stop on our tour is Inwa, the ancient capital of Burma from the 14th to 19th centuries. If I ever seem strangely knowledgeable or well-read about this sort of stuff, rest assured I'm looking up about half of it after the fact. While traveling, I'm pretty much a dum-dum. If you want to know where the nearest caipirinha happy hour special is, though, I'm fucking Arthur Frommer. You know, the dude at the end of Euro Trip.

We eat lunch, and I futilely try to charge my camera. We drive over a bridge that Lonely Planet tells me is forbidden to take pictures of, so I take a picture of it.

I mean, come on.

A ferry takes me across a river to where I can get a horse cart to see yet more government ticket monasteries from the outside.

Vroom!

Just a whole bunch more of this junk.

Burma, I hate to judge anyone for their hobby, and clearly building pagodas is your thing, but like, board games are going through kind of a renaissance right now. Maybe shake it up a bit, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Lovecraft at night during thunderstorms, but I'll eat my hat if this isn't a tomb of something unfathomable that slithers in the darkness of men's dreams.

Yeah, I'm just about over all this.

But I'm not over dogs! This one's got a LEAF. Yes you do! Yes you do!

After seeing Namyin watchtower (that's right, the Namyin Watchtower)...

This one.

It's got a Forbidden View of the Forbidden Bridge.

Travel Tip: To avoid touts, wait for their AI routine to finish and eventually their sleep animation will activate. Now you are free to stealth past.

...I take a break for lunch. This being the main tourist circuit, some Canadians from my hostel are in the same restaurant. We chat awhile, and they tell me that seeing the monks eat breakfast in the morning was lame. The monks, probably tired of being watched by tourists, would take their lunches back to their rooms, because they are in fact people and not idealized automatons of Western mysticism. And after all the shit Boma gave me for being late and missing it, one would expect at least...fucking Yoga Flames from Street Fighter or something, I dunno.

The bike doesn't make it much farther before blowing a tire, which Boma gets patched at a small shop on the way. These things happen, etc. We limp along to Sagaing, where I climb Sagaing Hill.

You know what kinda hill I'm talking 'bout.

Travel Wrong: Nice Views and Pleasant Vistas

Wonder what's up these stairs?!

WHOA SO UNEXPECTED WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN IS THAT LIKE A GUY OR SOMETHING?!

Our last stop is sunset at U Bein Bridge, the oldest and longest teakwood bridge in the world. I didn't really know teakwood was a thing before this, but count me suitably impressed. A gathering of people from the Moustache Brothers show are also here, and a couple of Myanmar beers later we get on a boat together to watch the sunset. Of course, my camera continues to have no battery left. If you've ever been to Mandalay, rest assured the view is exactly the same as all the paintings everyone is always trying to sell outside temples. Families, monks, and the guys who sell souvenir images of the the aforementioned all walk its teaky length home, silhouetted against the last purple-pink light of the day.

One of the Moustache Brothers folks, Mathieu, mentions that he's taking a bus to Bagan tomorrow. He's the kind of backpacker (French) who's been traveling for seven months, spends a month in each country, sees everything, probably lacks intermediate math skills because too cool for school, etc. We make vague pronouncements about seeing each other in Bagan.

On the way back to the hostel, Boma's bike gets another flat, which he patches. Can't help it, etc. Then it goes flat again. Geez, Boma. I don't want to tell you your job or nothing, but maybe...new tire? I'm not even mad, really. I walk most of the last few blocks, until some guy gives Boma a trishaw, and we ride that the last block or so. We settle up, and I give Boma 10,000 ks. He is not happy about it, and insists I should help him pay for his busted bike. I do not consider it. In fact, my brain shuts down the neurons that might have even attempted to fire up a thought that would weigh the possibility of considering it. Also, that mountebank monk is still pissing me off. Sooo...no deal. Sorry, Boma and Boma's Bike. I ask the staff of Royal Guesthouse about sharing a taxi the next day, but all the ride shares are full. Getting my own is going to cost 12,000 ks. Woof. Sleep is getting uneasy again.