vaga #3/18 curiosities

a small glass but necessary to any passer-by.

Part XVIII

What impressed me the most was the heat and its drought. The LP photos show the weather, of which I took two examples from Southeast Asia. The rest are repeated within these ranges. Still, Myanmar is the only one in the area that reaches 40 degrees, the black mark in April, just when I was there. The rains in light blue, June has the highest rainfall by far in the entire area, and the change is abrupt only in May and then in June when the rivers overflow, the crops are flooded just after they sow the crops, and they lose everything.  The extreme dryness is back to back with the heaviest rains in the area, making it a country of extremes in its crops. Relating an anecdote about the heat in Mandalay, a "western" restaurant, if I can find one, I would stay there, and I wouldn’t go anywhere else until I leave. I think there was only one, once a young man arrived, and the first thing he did was set his cell phone in front of the fan I looked at him, and he look at me and laughed, and I laughed back. Now, the following morning I had my coffee on the terrace, and set my phone on the table, in the sun, when I picked it up it had switched off due to having overheated…… now I understood what happened the young man the day previous about his phone, overheated.

Little by little, I understood that there were ceramic containers everywhere, in towns, in the middle of the road, under a tree in a vacant lot. There are lots of them, from simple forms to the most refined. They are to give water to the people walking by. For the villages and towns, there is no water service, apart from  in the two large cities and a few towns. The rest of the country does not. They use community wells and having those containers with water everywhere, I imagine, is very welcome and essential. The strength of their prayers is for water, that they don’t have droughts and that it does not destroy the land. I put the photo on the cover because I found it extreme from the need for water and the kindness of the offerings even if it is a small glass but necessary to any passer-by.

Myanmar, being a country that was opened to the world 10 years ago, the cell phone companies have taken off aggressively  and this is how the picture looks, because every town, no matter how small it is, has a tremendous pagoda here like Kalaw but with the cell phone store next to it. I am curious about the modernisation with the contrast to those beauties. Being in Mandalay for the water festival, I had previously learned that everything was closed for 5 days, even the train services, and the only thing open was the cell phone sales company and what is also known as the "convenience store"  a mini market and with an English name, totally American, with large refrigerators and very bright. They are also new to the market and their trade does not respect the strong tradition of the water day or the celebration of the birth of Buddha. It makes you think ...

I don’t know how these school boys manage to kick the ball, the umbrella to protect from the  the sun is a MUST, and it helps a lot, I already have it integrated, there are still ethnic groups with their traditional clothes in the middle of the city and cool Dude from Mandalay, who asked me for a cigarette, the look in that place so Buddhist was strange and he was cool. in less than 2 meters, in fact we were with some monks talking and from there he stopped his motorcycle to ask me for a cigarette, the contrast was why I couldn't resist the photo, a character like that is unique. And the game they were playing was a sort of Checkers but it is used a lot and the bottle caps are always the chips.

About the tree where Buddha meditated for 6 years, it is assumed that it has the perfect leaf, and they chew it, it is like cocaine, it helps to allay the heat, but I do not remember its name. The use of this leaf is massive, they have black and rotten teeth, the worst teeth in the world, the unusual thing is that my friend the monk also chewed it, they chew it and spit it, and it is terracotta-coloured spit, the streets full of terracotta clumps, even a bus driver chewed it up and spat it into a bottle. THAT'S DISGUSTING, Sometimes they put something white inside it. They take a little of it one after another and it is sold every 15 meters, so they buy it throughout the day. The photos of the tree, leaves, sales in the market, then sales in the street and sharing them in the middle of cooking tasks.

pictures, the tree leaves, selling in the market, common usues during work, street stand selling it


Another curiosity here is that surnames are not used, only names and generally they have 3, and I have seen up to five, there is neither feminine nor masculine, many times they pass down the names of the parents, others have to do with the day of week that they were born which is extremely important and other names that are attached. For example, strength, generosity, bravery ... ..and others that do not mean anything "Oo" for example. It is very confusing to me how to follow the genealogical line, but talking to a hotel receptionist she told me that they are not confused and that the system has always been like that and they have no problem understanding it.

Do not touch anyone on their heads head because it is the sacred place and the spiritual "hat" of the body.

When they pass food, money, gifts and even greetings, the right-hand touches the left on the upper arm, and they do it in a very exaggerated way, it is seen elsewhere but is much more obvious here. Peter tells me that it is a very old tradition to show that you do not keep a knife in your other hand.

Along with Cell phone shops and mini-markets, modern gas stations have appeared. It seems that the possibility of concessions was opened, so they are everywhere. I realised it on the trip between Bagan and Mount Popa, about 45 minutes on a small road you do not see normal roads, 8 meters wide. and the sidewalks are all included in those 8 m, there were many totally modern gas stations, they are huge and one next to the other, something around 5 km apart and from different companies. But all absolutely empty and on little-travelled roads. I was intrigued and involved with the situation, without understanding it.

In the photo below a typical and better gas station than the ones found here, versus the new ones, with no cars, and it is always like that

I put in a video that I made returning with Fatty on a road on the way to Mandalay, a city of more than a million inhabitants at the time, at peak hour I saw that there were no cars, the roads were empty, please watch the video there are no cars, no cars and those gas stations who do they supply? What is the strategy?

Another peculiarity is the tolls, the first photo is the most common one that I saw in the Mandalay and Bagan area where I walked the most, the toll that consists of a shack under a tree and a table, people stop and pay money, and they write it down in a book, very few had a barrier but those that did, were lifted up.… .it's like that, period.

Between the trip from Bagan to Kalau, I saw a real toll, it came out that it had an English name, full-fledged, I took a picture from inside the bus, WE FINALLY GOT TO A ROAD, and we went faster, finally leaving behind the exhausting slow pace and the last photo is just past the super toll …… HA HA HA …… nothing changed… I turned to take the last photo, which also shows the most common type of road.

I end up with this image that fits into my blog about curiosities