Burma, 2

I sought a stream or a bucket of water but when this failed I simply resigned myself to the sticky mango juice coating my fingers. May is the hot season in Myanmar; the wisdom of comfort and convenience rigidly dictates that May is not the time for a sojourn here. But May is mango season. May is a time when this land of gold, rubies, emeralds, teakwood and smiling children drifts from forgotten into a complete void. May is a time when children freely decorate strangers with flowers, laughter.

The purity of a metal chime greeted the sunrise. Held high by a bald child in burgundy robes his chime preceded an ordered line of monks. Each with his head shaved clean, dressed in the same deep red and with a lacquer begging bowl looped under his arm. From the stalls of the street venders, the doors of the houses and the entrance of our hotel the city scrambled to meet the monks, a pot of freshly cooked rice ready to great the procession. Winding down the streets and through the allies the begging bowls gradually filled with a morning meal, freely given to the bald men in burgundy robes who asked for nothing but only walked silently by hoping for breakfast.

Black tea gently poured over sweetened condensed milk blended into a midday ritual of short plastic stools, salty sweat and a few deep fried samosas. With our late breakfast came certainty of an eventual retreat

to the hotel, the air-conditioning and the always welcome cold shower.

Buddha towered over the freshly planted rice fields, a second sunset forming in the gold paint of his robes as the day came to an end. With the onset of an evening breeze the day’s serious work could begin. Tethered to the earth with the thinnest nylon cords, kites, bamboo crosses glued over with tissue paper rose to meet the departing sun.

After a cold beer, fried cashew nuts and laughs we ended another day.