Photo: http://picasaweb.com/lostconversation/Burma
8 months ago, before leaving, I said to my father "Go, father on this journey I will follow 'itineraries and more and I will not go' never in dangerous places, I will not go 'micca end up in Burma."
And here I am, bold, Willy and his grandfather who supports me at a distance, to check in to Yangon, the former capital Burma.
History and 'very simple: after having been a province of British colonial India together since 1962 and' ruled by a dictatorial military regime: martial law, the real one. In
'89 and the name' was changed to Myanmar, but to us that the regimes do not like, let alone military ones, we keep the name Myanmar (Burma in English), fueling the protest, ok?
Any item is promptly silenced democratic opposition and the mega peaceful demonstrations took place in '88, 97 and 2007 culminated in the Tiananmen bloodbath worthy, where young soldiers in Yangon and Mandalay were forced to shoot the crowd (monks, students and probably their families gathered in the square), who hesitated human monster 'was in turn stopped and replaced by other young people from poor and ignorant, isolated countryside than happy to have an M-16 or AK- 47 between the hands play in the war, thus obtaining a grotesque revenge against the rich and educated university students ...
This destruction is happening today, in the present, not 'history, and still the terror regime makes any gesture or word wrong creates the suspicion of conspiracy and, at best, imprisonment ...
intellectuals and students are constantly under fire from snipers and who talks too much with foreigners must beware of his back and avoid the taboo words'.
I wonder what 's behind this glossy Orwellian madness (which was a prophet writing "Burmese Days", "Animal Farm" and "1984" in the 40s), I can not believe that a sergeant and a sergeant have been invented this pandemonium from day to day, then I say: Burma and 'the No. 2 producer of Opium in the world (No.1 Afghanistan), China skillfully fanned by Russia, with the tacit approval of the U.S. (after all there they are always, always, and their fear toward China, and 'in constant growth), which in turn provide weapons and heavy industry, so while in the Middle East wars "democratic" are reproduced here there is no 'even have the excuse ...
What you see in everydaylife and 'a game of cops and robbers set in an exotic and paradoxical sadly happy. I nailed the corner
burmesi remain stifled and helpless in their old country traditions, while still wonder how some people can sleep at night, on the upper floors and surrounded by luxury ...
I've brought in Burma as a tourist a bit 'wrong and a bit' of good: a 50in of my dollars have ended up in the pockets in the form of government "taxes for the safety of foreigners", in return I worked both my ears need to listen to many voices, I have brought smiles and laughter, I made friends, I have shown the human side to those who live under siege, where your neighbor and 'a spy and shoots you from behind.
I could write another 10 pages of html crap seen, read and tell me directly, but I am becoming talkative and then taking action, telling my 4 weeks in Burma:
Unfortunately I did not purchase of vehicles (after selling skate to a teenager in Bangkok!), and go from traveling to skate and rowing boat to an airplane and 'was a drastic change, but I had no choice, all the border crossings are closed because of fighting between rebels and fan Opioid ...
think that New York is the metropolis, the multiculturalism 'final?
No no, wrong, Yangon 's the real meltin'pot!
Whites, blacks, yellows and reds burmesi, Chinese, Indian, Bengali, Cingal, Pakistan, Nepal, Buddhists, animists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Catholics all in one square meter!
"Hey Brother! Change money! Taxi! My friend! Drink tea! Want girl? "A walk through the streets of Yangon and 'a trip of smells, smells, dust, dirt, colors, sounds, mess, screaming, tunics and turbans, the experience you expected! A city
'beautiful large, where old men sell dubious dishes filled with flies next to a modern coffee shop, where Indians sell bare hi-tech products, where the garbage and 'decorative and spectacular! A dip in
pie 'equal in this world, so that unacceptable under a hot shower and make a' counter-productive, and might as well get used to optimize the layer of sweat-dust-dirt-smog that is created between you and the rest the world, hoping to avoid creating ecosystems strange!
After this experience is multi-sensory part in "Hitchin 'A Ride": the first goal and' go see the new capital was built three years ago in the middle of nowhere to 6 hours from Yangon:
NayPyiTaw (pronounced NiPiDo) and 'to away from it all, unassailable, home to only the military and all government, where the current runs 24 hours a day (in the rest of the country not, so that all generators have fuel and are often rented by the current Chinese companies), and where astrologers have agreed to be the perfect spot on which to give birth to the capital of a new society 'perfect, a new breed ...", disturbing.
No bus comes to us, and no tour guide talks about it, nobody wants to go. I start walking, like a madman, in the hot sun along the surreal, long and deserted road to NayPyiTaw.
I seem to go to Pyongyang in North Korea.
not surprise me to see, behind a dune, a nuclear warhead, or a bomber hiding in the bushes. I was stopped by three checkpoints and in both cases the cops, what amazed me the meeting, ask me where I'd be right stracazzo 'going, I mutter, gesticulating, pretending naturalness and allotment.
The cop tells the walkie talkie on my arrival in town '.
begin to feel like a fugitive. Fortunately
comes with a concrete mixer of burmesi ok give me a ride to their place of work: the construction of the new government building, a huge, no more, 'fucking huge concrete building under construction that stands out from nowhere, that overlooking the palm huts they live in the slave ... er, workers can only be reached by a bridge (For now drawbridge) crossing the huge moat which separates the building from the outside world.
We put the crocodiles? E 'majestic, imposing, beautiful, reminds me of the Reichstag but magnified and with pointed roofs.
Miiiiinchia where the fuck is he? Verro 'arrested?
While a little afraid of me bouncing in my throat there 's also some adrenaline, and I'm more' photos as possible, before it gets ugly face in a scooter: "Hey you?" "Yes?" "No photo "Ok my friend, thankyou!" Uhf, gone, except for now.
Another scooter brings me to the city itself: a tangle 4-lane ring road in the middle of nowhere, casting kilometers of asphalt separating nothing from nothing, while the sun seems to melt the landscape. Am I dreaming? Hallucination? Miiiiiiinchia!
Finally, the first houses, built with Chinese material horrible, all the same, with obscene colors, each with barbed wire and rocket launcher (no joke), each with barbed wire and thousands of antennas, horrible and deserted neighborhoods, no walking, no one lives, where the fuck is everybody? Men or robots?
Ah I see, are all in the central square to drink hot tea, and indeed today 'Sunday. The square
more ugly and sad in Asia, where all square and I mumble. I shoot a juice iced sugar cane, good, cool, and I scan the environment.
Someone speaks to me, and I do not know if 'infiltration, or a mole, listening, and I just nodded.
A man sits next to me and tells me she hates this place and that it 'was forced to move here three years ago from Yangon, with all his family. Then he leaves.
The discomfort grows. In
quality 'of the first tourists in 2009 decided to give the t-shirt "NayPyiTaw of Remembrance."
Seeking shelter for the night and discover that the only available and ', needless to say, a mega hotel pro-government by $ 20 per night (a lot in Asia, the most ever paid' $ 5), so I leave the capital with a sigh of relief and choose the option "night train to the north." Travel
that reminds me of the historic Beijing-Pingyao is crammed with people everywhere trying to sleep, with fewer but more dirt 'bouncing, a train-rocking: cradle you as you sent to hell!
Anyway, yawning arrival to the beautiful Inle Lake, a high altitude lake surrounded by mountains, where, alongside the revolutionary outbreaks and the military, retiring manner and I enjoy them, burmesi, in their simple life of fishing, rowing with one foot while hands pulling the network, balancing on the other foot: the funanboli!
Other lifts on motorbikes funny and truck and destination in the heart of Burma. In the dusty Mandalay find the exuberant Moustache Brothers and chat with monks and local friends, and I challenge worthy of the Gobi desert sandstorms. Sometimes the already 'mentioned layer of sweat-dust-and dirt-smog' really unmanageable ...
whole country and 'chock full of pagodas, especially on the tops of the mountains, these lands are full of golden spuncioni that fill the landscape. The Burmese believe a lot, are devout Buddhists to the end, all link the fate of the next life, I understand them!
Tomo Volume Hunting Hunting arrival at Monywa in soaring with joy and I find two huge Buddha, the first and the second lying in the foot, more than 130 meters high! Much more ' majestic than that of Leshan in China, and inside (!) 25-storey walk (for now only completed 5), depicting scenes from Buddhist hell (transition between one life and another), in which there is no hope of finirci: people chopped, torn to pieces, disemboweled .... Miiiiiiiinchia!
Then in Bagan, after watching a million more temples and pagodas, and 'still time adventures of young burmesi know whom I invite to an incredible event for me: NAT Worshipping Festival: reverence and offered to Nat's spirits, according to ancient beliefs burmesi prebuddiste animate all that surrounds us! A bit like the shamans and animist spirits are venerated sure their protection and their luck.
So I am, 4am, ready to embark, together with a tribe of 80 burmesi, old men, women, young children, range 1-70 years, in a northerly direction towards the small village where there will be 'the real festival.
boat rocking on all of them are beautiful, men wear short-sleeved shirt and Longji, the traditional cloak that covers her legs tied at the life that all burmesi leading daily, and their mouths have consistently dark red spots and their smiles and toothless blood-stained one can 'assume that they have just devoured a zebra in the jungle and instead of' blame the Bethel, the local licorice, a bitter substance that all red chew chain and spit like baseball players!
Women are simple and beautiful in their dresses to flowers, using Thanaka, a yellowish cream, made from a wood, that all men and women, as they use tons of makeup and as protection from the sun: the result is beautifully decorated on faces and arms, endlessly exotic, especially the chubby cheeks of children and sweet female faces. Oh, how exotic!
I am by far the most 'dirty on board (I did not expect all this cleaning!) And with a bit of compassion my friend Bow Meow (brother of the beautiful Mimi) gives me a clean shirt and a Longji: I am a Burmese ! I'm clean!
of English and Burmesi ' the best of all the countries I have visited so far, but it seems to confuse a po'inglese and English: Their "Yes, Nos, Thankyous" laughs are free to flush you!
It starts: from 8 to 11 am for a woman in her 30 starts on the venerable boat, providing food, drinking, smoking, dancing and singing in the furious music coming from loudspeakers crude supplied. After these three hours she will have ', not too much, drank a bottle of rum and smoked at least 60 cigarettes (always two at a time), and donated all the food for 80 people including myself, who belching thank the spirits!
Among the chaotic music, engine noise of the boat and his swing, songs and dances a bit 'of rum drunk are completely stunned and in spirit-trance with my crazy crew! Fantastic, and the best is yet to come 'cause the night after 12 hours of boat against the current, we arrive at the village, and we are not the only ones! Fleets of boats came in and continued all night from everywhere, packed with party-burmesi in jubilant mood, shaky and full of rum. The real deals are managed by a group of men dressed as Nat accepting offers financial and alcoholic returning with euphoric dance.
The public 'in delirium, and everyone is dancing and pogano under the full moon with an atmosphere that .... Dunno ... I can not to define, Fool? magic? Haunted? If only word I understood half of what they say, damn!
A beautiful human sacrifice would be the icing on the cake of the event, but apparently still a bit 'of salt to these people!
The night I sleep, or rather I try, on the roof of the boat with the echo of music that I am whistling in the ears and continues until the morning! And the next day on the way back to the brawl broke out two burmesi, dizzy from rum, can not decide who peacefully and 'the winner of the card game just ended and the result' that the boat tuuuuutta mobilizes to divide the two contenders, including screams, tears and fists flying!
I defile the side and pretend to anything (never meddle in the affairs of the premises) and shortly after the brawl and 'put down, the budget and' positive: only a slight hurt. Bazza
What, gentlemen!
So now I have the protection of the spirits, I will not stop anyone!
Close Burmese experience with a little 'sea, the Bay of Bengal. Burmesi Holiday (here and 'summer until June) bathe fully clothed (!) Because of the extreme conservatism, and I spend the last evening with brilliant symposia in French with a nice pair of Parisians aged over 60 retired (a little' like me!). And finally meet Jack, who was also over 50, that tells me when he was 20 years ago in the Philippines and has the appearance in the movie "Apocalypse Now"! Crazy stuff!
Yes, that's' my Burma, where out of the shit I've done an enormous political, but politics is where the shit and scary, often I was outlawed, and in fact I have been, according to their laws ! After seeing
NayPyiTaw seems to me even, alas, 'the worst is yet to come, but hope I am wrong.
I also hope, in my small way, that what is written with the memory of friends met in Yangon, Bago, Inle, Mandalay, Monywa, Bagan and ChaungTa stay alive, and that those so brave who, defying the lights, I have spoken to have much luck as courage.
Amazing Burma. On the flight to
Bangokok I met a brother with whom I traveled to Mongolia, bringing to remembrance the yaks and camels, and leave you with a poem:
I am now in Thailand, Chiang Mai
And my future ' more uncertain 'than ever
If you want to know my plans already' know
Connected between one month and you'll find!
Ah Ah, what a moron!
YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Photo: http://picasaweb.com/lostconversation/Burma
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