And time stood still

This place, it’s not only centuries and centuries of history and inspiration touching you gently in the face – without crowds and fences and locks and official guides following you around. It’s also talking to some people who don’t even know any other place on earth. Picked up English from grandparents and tourists, never been further than 50 miles, never seen a city, train, elevator, convenience store, factory, never used a washing machine or mobile phone.

Still, there is history to talk about, legends, other countries, politics. Horses, travelling, schools, the whole world.

Still, it’s easy to share a joke, a smile, a meal, a sunset.

Not many places where I feel safe to be me, but this was one of them.

 And the village’s most scaredy horse even protected us from the mad new year water fights, kicking and bolting for the nearest bush at the mere sight of a water bottle or bucket, so the owner made sure to keep the local urchins away.

A doorway so rhyming with the window from Angkor.

I can’t even say anything, all these years, four of them now, and I’m still lost for words.

Which makes me really really reluctant to go back and visit again. Don’t want to break the memories.

 

Before it is ruined

”Burma? We gotta go there before it is ruined!”

That is, before all those picturesque snapshots of poverty are disrupted by electricity poles and shoes and, well, any sign that this is not the 19th century any longer.

Granted, I also reached for my camera when I saw women doing laundry in the river, or a group of schoolkids wearing traditional longyis and shoulder bags. I loved the horse carts and the crumbling houses and candlelight in the temples and the rickety bridges and the labourers unloading vegetables from boats and the drying laundry and country boys ordained as novice monks.

As my two-year-stint in Yangon is coming to an end, it is amazing to see what has changed. What has been lost. Yes, some of the charm will be gone. Even some of the wooden temples might get bulldozed. Glass and concrete hotels are being erected. The taxis are not falling apart anymore when you slam the door. I smile and cringe and have mixed feelings. Skyrocketing prices, rudeness, crime creeping in, yes.

But it is not for outsiders to decide that it would be prettier to keep a country as it was before…. just for our time travel playground. It is theirs to keep, cherish, develop…. or even ruin… or do we really wish hunger, poverty, struggle, lack of freedom on others?

Yes, you gotta come before it is changed.