Across a Golden Land - Second Edition

Coming Soon! Second Enhanced Edition

By train, boat, and horse cart, from the haunted colonial ruins of old Rangoon to the mysterious temples dotting the fields of Bagan, cross Burma on an adventure of mystery and discovery.

In his latest travelogue, Michael Desrosiers describes the fascinating and elusive Myanmar as one of the first wave of visitors to the country after half a century of virtual isolation.

With the backdrop of the country's first democratic elections looming just on the horizon, two travelers set out to see a country that is set to change rapidly. Enter an unknown world, a country lost to time... Myanmar, the legendary "Golden Land".

***

Earlier this week, my sister (a primary school teacher in the US), invited me to be a guest at her school's online book club to talk about being an author! I had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed talking a little bit about my life in Thailand, even if the third-graders in the book club were more interested in asking questions like "are there bugs there?" (yes, there are) and "do you have bread there?" (yes, we do).

The book club inspired me to turn back to "Across a Golden Land", a book I wrote a few years back about my adventures in Myanmar (Burma). Over the past two weeks or so, I've been going back over the book, giving in a bit of a polish. I've been rewriting some passages, adding some details, and generally editing and proofreading the manuscript into something that I hope is a little better and even more fun to read than before!
 

I'll be updating more about the book here on my blog shortly, but today, I wanted to give a sneak-peek at the new edition! Besides rewriting some sections, I've decided to make the second edition an "enhanced edition", complete with photos from my travels.

I've been thinking a lot about Myanmar this year, and I have a lot of complicated thoughts about the current events affecting the country (Aung San Suu Kyi, the coup, Rohingya, the military, etc). I know some friends-of-friends in the British Foreign Office who are being pulled out of Rangoon and relocated to Bangkok. A friend of mine from my walking tours who lives and works here in Thailand is not able to see her family, nor is her family able to leave the country.

I wrote a lot about in the book how Myanmar was finally opening up - it was on the cusp of a historic democratic election. Sadly for the Burmese people, the country is once again closed off. Maybe I was naïve, but I hope not. Only time will tell.

What I don't have mixed feelings about, though, is how beautiful the country is, how kind the people are, and my warm and happy memories of traveling through Myanmar in 2015.

The new edition of the book will be a tribute to the Myanmar that exists beyond the headlines. I want to capture the feel of the amazing country, and bring you on my journeys so that you can experience the beauty of the mysterious "Golden Land" along with me.

NEW! Never before seen photos of my adventures in Myanmar!

People in Myanmar were kind, warm, and friendly - like this local kid in Yangon who stopped us just to say "hello".

To thank all of my loyal readers for keeping up with my adventures, I'd like to share some of the photos with you today! I wrote a few posts about my travels through Myanmar in 201, but I use a lot more pictures in my blogs now than I used to. I think I've come to realize how much photos add to my stories. You can read my old posts HERE:

Yangon and the Golden Rock (1/3)

It's a Long Way to Mandalay (2/3)

Cruising in to Bagan (3/3)

But for this special second edition release of my book, Across a Golden Land, I'm excited to share with you this brand-new photo gallery from my adventures!

Yangon

Yangon, formerly Rangoon, is the biggest city in Myanmar. Though it's not the capital anymore, it is still the center of Burmese religion, politics, business, and culture.

The city center is home to Sule Pagoda, the City Hall, and most of Yangon's most famous old colonial ruins.

Book Street - Every day early in the morning vendors arrive on this street and set up shelves stocked with books both in Burmese and English. The books on display were well-worn. Many were missing covers and had the title written in sharpie marker on makeshift brown paper covers.

Mogul Shiah Masjid - even though the vast majority of Myanmar is Buddhist, there is a sizable Muslim population. Outside of Yangon, the crisis between  Rohingya Muslims and the Burmese military is tragic and ongoing.

Not many cities have a street plan built around a two-millennium-old golden pagoda, but Sule Paya, Yangon's oldest pagoda, was made the center of the busy downtown, surrounded by a crowded traffic circle from which the meticulously-gridded British street system radiates. 

We each wrote out a wish upon the little white cards, placed them in the dragon boat, and turned the creaky brass crank connected to the pulley system. The little wooden boat slowly swung its way up to the top top of the central golden spire where it deposited our wishes for good fortune.

The lilac-colored Rangoon City Hall was the first building in town to combine European colonial architecture with traditional Burmese eaves.

In the center of this city square, surrounded by some of the better-preserved old colonial buildings was Mahabandoola Garden. The park, I couldn’t help notice, was surrounded by a short metal fence topped with barbed wire and signs written both in Burmese and English strictly prohibiting the assembly of protesters or any political activities.

Yangon now boasts the greatest collection of surviving colonial architecture anywhere in Asia. Most of these once-grand old buildings have fallen into various states of disrepair and succumbed to a patina of tropical decay, though some are still in operation serving their original purpose.

Botataung Paya, a quiet riverside temple, is unlike the other pagodas in the city. Built to house a holy relic, Botataung Paya is hollow, and worshipers and tourists alike are allowed to enter the glittering golden maze inside. Entirely gilded from floor to ceiling, the amazingly intricate interior of the pagoda is centered around its relic.

the center of the pagoda which can only be viewed through a small opening in the golden wall, holds what is said to be one of the relics of The Buddha's hair.

Some of the colonial architecture in Yangon is still in excellent condition, and walking through the city center puts you back in time to a different era.

The High Court is one of the most magnificent examples of colonial architecture, and still serves its original purpose to this day.

Built in 1901, the Strand Hotel is the one relic of colonial Rangoon which hasn't faded away with time. It almost seems out of place amongst the old crumbling colonial offices and abandoned warehouses. 

At $600 per night, a stay overnight at the hotel was laughably out of my price range, but I could afford a beer at Sarkies, the famous bar off the lobby.

On a rainy Burmese morning, I enjoyed my first pint of Dagon beer.

At night, Sule Paya is lit up more brightly than anything else around. The center of the city glows a brilliant, sparkling gold.

The Yangon Circle Line

One of my goals for the trip was to take a ride on the Yangon Circle Line train.

The Circle Line is a thirty-two mile railroad loop on an ancient train slowly rattling along the three-hour journey. It's the only real public transport in Yangon, and a fantastic way for a visitor to get a feel for real daily life outside of the city center.

Although the Circle Line loops around Yangon, the majority of the trip really felt like we were in the countryside. It really goes to show you how undeveloped most of the country still is, even though we were technically still in its largest city.

 I think it was a really valuable experience to see life outside of the city and look how people really live in what is essentially rural jungle. Again, I was struck by how rural Yangon really is despite being the country's largest city and former capital.

It was incredible how different life was just outside of town. To think- at any of the many stops along the Circle Line, we could have gotten off and taken a short taxi ride back to our hotel.

The slow-moving train stopped frequently at every station we passed. Many people use it as a means to their commute to and from the city center. At every station people would jump on or off the train, and vendors wandered up and down the cars selling snacks and drinks for the passengers.

Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda is the largest and most important temple in all of Myanmar. Today, it totally dominates the skyline of Yangon, and the city’s construction regulations, which cap the maximum height of all buildings to 75% of the height of Shwedagon, ensure that it always will.

The giant golden spire built atop a great hill soars 326 feet over Yangon, and can be seen from nearly everywhere in the city. Surrounding the main zedi are sixty-four smaller pagodas encircling it, also built of gold, and the central spire alone is plated in sixty tons of gold worth more than five percent of the country's entire national GDP.

Shwedagon Paya is the most important temple in Myanmar, and an important pilgrimage site for Burmese Buddhists. The golden pagoda is said to contain a hair from the Buddha himself.

A kindly local man offered to be our guide. He took us to all the hidden spots at the pagoda, and even helped us to "make merit" in the form of a water offering.

In Burmese culture, each day of the week is represented by a corresponding Buddha image. 

At Shwedagon Paya, we were invited to dip a small silver cup into a fountain of holy water to pour over the head of the Buddha of our birthday

Here, a monk dressed in the typical maroon robes seen throughout Myanmar, sits under the shade of a small shrine at Shwedagon Pagoda.

As night fell and the sky darkened, the towering golden pagoda was lit up in bright lights.

From a certain angle, we could see the giant diamond affixed to the very top of the spire twinkling in multicolored hues of red, blue, and green.

A monk was sitting in a shrine nook, deep in meditation, with his robe wrapped around him to keep out the damp chill of the evening.

Mt. Kyaiktiyo

We set off to Kinpun, the base camp for the mysterious Mt. Kyaiktyo. It had rained through the night. Ahead of us, the road had flooded. Instead of the dirt path that had been there before, there was now a muddy river. We were greatly delayed, but eventually made it to the base of the mountain, where we boarded rickety trucks to take us through the mist and rain up the scary winding roads to the very top of Mt. Kyaiktyo.

Nearly two hours later, we were there. The truck pulled beneath a rough shelter, the rain still pouring gloomily around us. 

When we finally got to the summit of Mt. Kyaiktyo, we were in the middle of a dense cloud, and it was impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction.

Mt. Kyaiktiyo is home to one of Myanmar's most mysterious sites: the legendary Golden Rock. The rock is said to balance on a hair from the head of the Buddha. It's covered in gold, and hangs precariously off the side of a cliff face. In fact, it sways back and forth in heavy wind. I certainly don’t know what freakish law of physics keeps it balancing on such a fine and precise fulcrum… maybe it’s the power of the Buddha’s relic after all. Whatever the reason, it’s an awe-inspiring sight. Or, rather, it would have been if we could have seen it better through the dense fog.

Mandalay

We returned to Yangon to board our first-class night train to Mandalay. With a shrug, the travel agent told us that it would take "ten to twenty hours" to reach our destination.

The train was ancient and dirty; a far cry from the glamorous photos we had seen online.

There were four bunks in the small compartment; two lower and two upper, with a small table in between. I dropped my bag onto one of the bunks, the dingy mattress not quite covered by the thin grey sheet that lay across it.

The train in Burma still run along a sixty-plus year-old track built by the British. Unsurprisingly, after so long without proper upkeep, the rails are in a fairly poor state. The ride started comfortably enough, despite the age and state of the train itself, slowly chugging along through the countryside. However, the further we were getting from Yangon, the rougher the ride was becoming.

There were no bedsheets, and it got cold. With the window on my side stuck halfway down, a constant mist of icy water from the pouring rain outside kept me cold, damp, and miserable, but I wrapped up in my longyi and rain poncho as a really poor blanket, and tried to get what sleep I could.

The current Mandalay Palace complex is a 1990's reconstruction built on the site of the old Mandalay Palace. Mandalay was the last Burmese kingdom to resist British Imperial occupation through much of the 19th century until 1885 when the palace was captured by British soldiers.

Unlike Mandalay palace, Shwenandaw, the "Golden Palace Monastery" was an original building, and the only surviving building from the grand Mandalay Palace complex. The monastery was built entirely out of hand-carved teakwood, and was dark and peaceful in the pouring rain.

Kuthodaw Pagoda is the world’s largest book. Not a literal paper book, but rather a collection of tablets containing Buddhist scripture.

Housed inside each stupa, visible behind a metal grate, is a tablet engraved in fine lettering with words from the Pali Canon, that is, the entirety of Buddhist scripture in the Theravada School, is contained in these grounds.

Cold, wet, and exhausted, our last stop of the day was Mandalay Hill, a sacred wooded hill topped with an important temple, the Sutaungpyei “wish-fulfilling” Pagoda. Had the weather been clear we could have climbed it on foot, but it was steep, pouring rain, and we were tired.

The view from the top should have been an attractive vista of Mandalay, but the rain was heavy and the fog, again, was too thick to see much. 

Bagan

The best way to travel in Myanmar is by boat. To this day, the river journey from Mandalay to the ancient city of Bagan is one of my all-time best travel memories.

I had a delicious ice-cold Mandalay beer as I watched the landscape roll past. Lush green hills rose and fell along either side of the wide brown river, dotted with hundreds of glittering golden pagodas wherever you looked. 

We tried to enjoy the view from the top deck, but the cold drizzle and icy wind made it impossible to stay outside for long.

I kept scanning the river for a glimpse of one of the legendarily rare pink Irrawaddy River dolphins, but no luck this time.

We docked in Bagan in the early evening. It was a far cry from the bustling city of Yangon, or even the quiet town Mandalay. Bagan is really nothing more than a small village.

What makes Bagan special are the thousands of ancient temples built just meters from one another all over the area. It's impossible to look out across Bagan and not see at least a dozen of these ancient ruins; the entire region is now a protected historical area.

We hired a man named Bobo and his horse Nanda to take us around Bagan for the day.

We could have hired a taxi, but by far the most iconic and fun way to get around the dirt streets of Bagan is by horse cart.

Regrettably, I can’t remember the names of the dozen or so temples that we visited that day, although Mr. Bobo told us the name of every one. There were just too many to remember. 

Some of the temples we could climb on, walking around on the hundreds of years old ruins, feeling like explorers as we gazed out over the landscape.

.

It was one thing to see the temples from the ground, it was another thing entirely to view the magical scene from above.

At some temples, a local warden with access to the key would unlock the gates and show us around inside with a flashlight.

 Each of the hundreds of ancient temples was unique.

It felt really special to explore some of the better-preserved temples in Bagan. One guide even showed us where soot had stained the ceiling of one small temple when locals were hiding out from the Japanese during the Second World War.

Manuha Temple, bult in 1067, holds a giant Reclining Buddha, one of the iconic sights in Bagan.

Some temples reflected the Indian influence of ancient Bagan.

At one point, we visited another Golden Rock, though this one was much less grand than the one atop Mt. Kyaiktyo.

I enjoyed exploring the temples, and was especially excited when I had to wear my sunglasses for the first time all week - that meant the rain was finally stopping! It was the first time we saw the blue sky during our visit to Myanmar.

After a full day of exploring, we were exhausted, but with the sun finally peeking out from behind the clouds, we were hopeful that we might finally see the sunset we had been wanting to see all week.

Everything we had been through, all the discomfort and terrible weather had led us to this, the beautiful sunset we had been hoping for. We sat on the sandy bank of the Irrawaddy, and watched the red and purple sky darken.

The next morning, the sky was full of hot air balloons carrying tourists high above the ancient city. That's an experience I would love to try someday.

Burmese Culture and Food

Myanmar is called the "Golden Land", which is what inspired the title of this book.

Everything in Myanmar seemed to be called "golden". We tried to take a photo of every restaurant, shop, or business named golden something, but eventually gave up. There were just two many!

Monks in Myanmar don't wear the typical saffron robes seen in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Sri Lanka, which also follow Theravada Buddhism. Instead, they tend to wear robes of dark maroon, unique to Myanmar.

I've read somewhere that this is a holdover from ancient times, when Tibetan Buddhism was practiced by the ancient Burmese kings, but I'm not sure if this is true or just legend.

Burmese-style Buddha images are easy to identify by their golden robes, white skin, red lips, and dark hair. I've been told that Burmese Buddhism teaches that the Buddha didn't truly die, but rather still exists physically in this world.

Instead of lifeless golden statues, Burmese art tends to depict the Buddha in more lifelike colors. Again, I'm not sure how much of this is true, but it's what I've been told.

We really enjoyed eating at a local teahouse in Yangon.

Burmese milk tea is strong and sweet, served hot in little porcelain cups.

Of the Burmese food that we ate on our trip, I enjoyed the noodles in Yangon best of all.

Burmese noodles are famously oily, and are packed with onion and garlic. In fact, I've been told that Myanmar consumes the most onions per capita of any country on Earth!

The first thing I noticed, the first thing that really told me that I was in a totally new country, were the longyis. A longyi is a type of sarong or long skirt, and it is the national outfit of Burma. This is the first country I’ve ever been where the vast majority of the population, young and old, men and women, actually wear the traditional outfit in their day-to-day lives, rather than relegating it to formal events and cultural shows.

When we visited Shwedagon Pagoda, or any other important holy site in Myanmar, even we had to wear longyis, the traditional national outfit of Myanmar.

Thanks for reading! I hope that you enjoyed these photos from my adventures through Myanmar, and that they help make the book more real!