Week Two

A woman, wearing traditional Burmese sandal wood
paste on her face, selling sweet corn in Scott's Market.

Day fourteen in Yangon! The past week has been quite busy, with trips all around the city to the sites. One of these included the Yangon Zoological Garden. Over one hundred years old, the zoo had about the same square footage as Utah's Hogle Zoo, but otherwise was pretty different. Though some of the cages were small and stark, the natural foliage of Yangon provided many enclosures with the animals' preferred habitats. We saw the rare red panda and white-horned rhino, the obligatory tigers, elephants, and boa constrictors, and the strange great hornbill (which makes us remember bird's dinosaur ancestors). The most surprising part of the zoo, though, weren't the animals. It was the fact that you were invited to feed the animals.

I'm not talking about petting zoo animals either, though there was one donkey and one pony who had a soft spot for bananas. For between 500 and 1000 kyat, a visitor could buy a small basket of the animal's favorite food and toss it right in the cages. The animals, obviously used to this arrangement, came up to the walls of their enclosures to beg when people approached, showing off their cutest sides. The otters were very cute, all in a row with their front paws tucked to their tummies and standing on their hind legs. The hungry hungry hippos came up to the wall and waited for us to drop the lettuce down the (very short) wall into his open, gaping mouth. The elephants, though, were my favorite. Only separated from the human visitors by a shallow moat, the dozen or so giants were close enough to reach out and touch you with their trunks.

Happy happy hippos

Upcoming events are looking good too. The Eggerts and I rallied and managed to book tickets for a weekend trip to Bagan, the Valley of Temples. One of the most observed historical areas in the country, Bagan was once the center of one of the largest kingdoms uniting ancient Myanmar. The height of its power was during the 12th century, but it was founded hundreds of years earlier. In 847, a great archer and warrior king of one of the nearby mountain tribes traveled to a small settlement to save them from "a great bird, a great tiger, and a flying squirrel."

Why the townsfolk needed saving from a bird and a squirrel remains a mystery, but it did the trick. Pyusawhti, as the warrior was named, became a legend. Some even believe he the son of a sun prince and hatched from a dragon egg. With his new superhuman status among the people of the valley, he was able to unite the Burmese people. The Bagan kingdom lasted until the 13th century, when the Mongols invaded. During its long history, the kings of the valley managed to build literally thousands of religious sites, including Buddhist and Hindu temples, pagodas, and more. These sites are the last remaining evidence of the huge metropolis that once house thousands of ancient Burmese.

We will spend only two days and one night in the area, but the temples are literally right outside our hotel. Though most of the sites are Buddhist, I'm particularly excited to see the one Hindu temple in the city. When Buddhism was being introduced to the Bagan people, the king condensed all other religious relics in this one building. It includes murals, statues and other work from many different theologies. This includes images of the animist gods of an even more ancient Burma, called Naga, and elements of this traditional spiritualism remains in the modern Burmese flavor of Buddhism.