Mandalay

We were up early for breakfast and a trip to the airport for a brief, half-hour flight to Mandalay. From the airport we went immediately to Mahamuni pagoda where we saw a large sitting buddha onto which the faithful were placing layer upon layer of wafer thin gold leaf -- so much that the statue has lost all proportion. The men got to go right up to the buddha to see this up close, but the women were not allowed and had to watch from about 20 feet back. If this vantage point was not close enough, they could go around to the back of the sanctuary and kneel on a carpet before a flat screen TV that was showing a closed circuit feed from a close-up camera!

We were also fortunate to observe part of a "novitiation" ceremony in which a boy of about 7 years of age was being inducted into the monastery as a monk. However, he is only required to remain a monk for 7 to 10 days before returning home to his family. The whole extended family was there for this right of passage, all decked out in the finest attire, and all wearing heavy makeup -- including the boys. Buddhists return to the monastery periodically through life for brief periods of living the monastic life. We are unclear how seriously some take this, however. We frequently saw teenage monks with Western clothes under their robes, carrying fancy smart phones, hanging out as tourists, or even holding hands with their girlfriends. It's clear that monasticism does not always involve the same sort of sacrifices we usually think of in Christianity.

We next drove to a place where all that gold leaf in produced. Tiny bits of gold are placed between sheets of a special, very thin paper made from bamboo pulp. Then dozens of layers of these papers are stacked up in a packet bound in leather with steel plates top and bottom. The packet is placed on a sort of anvil, and guys with big sledge hammers beat it repeatedly for hours. The sharp ring of the hammer strikes echoes throughout the place, so much so that the hammerers generally go completely deaf after 20 or so years of working there. We were told that machine hammers had been tried, but that the same thinness of gold leaf could not be achieved. We suspected, however, that with common labor at just over $3/day, deaf humans are cheaper than the machines. In another room, where the ringing of the hammers is only marginally quieter, women separate the sheets, count them out, and package them for sale in small plastic bags.

We next visited an 18th century monastery constructed entirely of intricately carved teak wood. The carvings served the same function as stained glass in Medieval cathedrals, relating sacred stories to illiterate people. The monastery consisted only of two large rooms, one for worship and meditation and another, with book shelves, to serve as a classroom, library, and at night, as the sleeping area where matts were unrolled on the floor. Cooking and other functions of life would take place outside, or underneath the building, which was raised about five feet off the ground on massive teak stilts (Mandalay frequently suffered from flooding in the rainy season). The monastery is no longer used as a residence, though monks from a newer facility still come there occasionally to study or pray. The reason they've moved out, we were told, was fire danger. But the only fire protection for this priceless relic were some red buckets of sand and a garden hose! One match could easily take it out.

We visited yet another pagoda, the Kuthodaw, which is known as "the world's largest book." Surrounding the main pagoda are 729 tiny buildings about 5 feet square, each containing a stone tablet engraved with a page of Buddhist sacred text. So the entire pagoda is a "book" of 729 pages.

Late in the afternoon we left our comfortable coach behind and boarded one of the local "busses" consisting of a pickup truck with a canvas cover over the bed, and two long boards for benches. The vehicle took us on a wild and winding trip up the steep Mandalay Hill. At the top is another pagoda, which meant going the rest of the way in bare feet (as we have had to go in all of the pagodas). Fortunately there were escalators to take us up the final 200 feet (but we've never ridden an escalator barefoot before)! At the top there was a fantastic view, and of course, many buddha statues and sanctuaries. We opted not to stay until sunset, but it was nearly dark when we returned to the hotel.

Mary and I took a long walk in the evening. Despite being on our feet all day, we get little actual exercise to burn off all of the food we are eating. We skipped dinner for a light snack, and it felt good to walk at a brisk pace for a change. Unfortunately, uneven sidewalks and lack of street lighting sent us back to the hotel too quickly for an early night.