I was listening to a radio interview this morning with a writer whose name I never got. What did get my attention was the phrase uttered by either writer or interviewer “one writes to make sense of things”. Maybe. Worth a try perhaps. Whatever, it won’t be an easy task for me to make sense of my trip to Burma this past January/February, or more to the point, to make sense of the affect Burma had on me.

It was wonderful to return to Asia. It’s been over a year and a half since we left. When we landed in Hong Kong airport we had to take their fast train between terminals – only a few minutes and very easy – and as the doors opened letting in the air of the train tunnel, I inhaled that distinctive smell of something like humidity. “Ah, the smell of Asia”. Familiar, I was so glad to be back.

Sometimes I think of my friend Connie who I met on my first trip to Bangkok staying at the Marriott on the Chao Praya river, which remained our favorite hotel in that city for a number of years. Connie was 89 at the time and had been living in Thailand for many years. She is an American who left the States for Asia just after the Second World War and never returned to the US to live. I went to stay with her for a few days at her home in Hua Hin, the town where the current King has a summer home, a couple of hours drive south of Bangkok. It was early days for me in Asia back then, and meeting Connie was a treat – what stories she had to tell about her life in Asia, and her extensive travels around the world. Last I heard, she was still taking major trips here and there, despite being in her 90’s. She and her family had lived in Japan right after the War, then Hong Kong before settling in Thailand, which turned out to be the permanent home. At one point during our visit, she predicted that I would stay in Asia after our 4-year stint. Even then, only a few months in, what she said resonated. She believed that Asia would get under my skin, and I know now that it has.

Even though I don’t live there anymore, and despite those predictions did indeed come back to live in Canada, this trip back to Asia has reconnected me in a quite wonderful way. Memories of past trips and experiences come to mind, and I relive those breathcatching moments. There were such great times everywhere but it seems like the very best memories of them all were those from Laos and northern Thailand. (Bali stands alone, as it should.)

Because of my visits to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam in some ways there was a sense of familiarity with Burma especially in Shan State where I felt most comfortable and most close to what was familiar to me from Laos. But that was only a fleeting sense for in as many ways and more, Burma was different. As the days and weeks of discovery unfolded, I found myself very often surprised by what I found. And somehow I lost my balance.

This trip was intense, the most difficult of any of my past travels. There were things I saw that made me angry, much that made me hopeful and some things that almost broke my heart. The cities were a surprise to me, I never expected the size of Mandalay or the orderliness of Yangon. The architecture and art is astonishing as is what has driven this people to establish monuments of the scale and volume that they have done and continue to create.

I have never been as affected by a place or by travels physically, as I was in Burma. From the very beginning, plunging into the country without enough of a pause for the horrendous journey around the Pacific, I was often overwhelmed not only with making sense of it all, but also by what felt like my own frailty. From watching my step, to navigating the minefield that was Burma food, I felt physically vulnerable while at the same time needed to be well and active to have any chance of following the itinerary before us. There were a lot of plane trips inside the country as well as all the international travel, and quite a few hotel changes with constant packing and unpacking. I was badly stomach sick for a couple of days and queasy for longer, at which point the itinerary went out the window (which turned out to be a good thing). I didn’t sleep for 3 weeks meaning for the entire time I was there I didn’t sleep more than 3 hours at a time, sleep that was often filled with awful nightmares, interspersed with hours of wakefulness. This continued for too long after my return home.

The insomnia was so powerful, as were the vivid images in sleep that I even wondered at one point if perhaps I had been enchanted or bewitched or cursed by one of the Burmese nats, those ghost creatures that are revered and worshiped, alongside the Buddha. When we went to visit their prime headquarters at Mount Popa, I was careful not to wear black, as I heard it might anger them, but I did wear a black shirt the following day at our hotel on the next mountain, with its views over looking the nat shrine on top of the exposed core of this ancient volcano. Could it be that they considered this too their domain? And the big question, do you have to be a believer in order to piss them off?

Along with the pervasive, Buddhist imagery everywhere in the country and all the outward showings of devotion through offerings and art, it seems astrology, numerology, superstition, spirits and magic also live in Burma. Nat worship predates Buddhism, and Mount Popa, a now-forested extinct volcano is considered the home and shrine of the 37 sort-of official nats. There are lots more in forests elsewhere in the country. Local tourists whose road trips are a reason for a pilgrimage and vice versa, make the stop here to make offerings and seek blessings from the nats, each of whom has an exciting, sometimes romantic and bloody life story to be told, and most experienced violent deaths. Access to the top of the volcanic pillar, upon which rests the buildings of a Buddhist temple (evidence of the meshing of the Buddhist and earlier animist beliefs) requires you to climb 777 steps to the top. One goes barefoot, of course, as shoes and socks are not allowed in any shrine or temple – the whole structure being considered the shrine. This turns out to be, shall we say, an interesting barefoot climb as the covered stairs all the way up are inhabited by countless monkeys scampering around you as you trudge on up. How you feel about their proximity, depends on how you feel about their proximity. Although people are constantly scrubbing the tiled steps for you, like everything in Asia, it is wise to watch your step.

In the small town at the foot of the volcanic pillar and temple is a building housing the avatars of the 37 nats and assorted beasts – the Mother Spirit of Popa Nat Shrine. The first sight of these painted, porcelain mannequins is a choke laugh surprise, a gaudy, sparkling, explosion of exuberance. The inside walls are patterned in mirror tile and the carved wood  painted bright colors. Murals of stories from the lives of the nats when they lived as humans lined the tops of the walls under the ceiling of the anteroom. Strings of Christmas-type lights were strung all over, some blinking. Worshippers had draped dozens of bright scarves around the necks of the nat avatars. Money was tucked into their hands, in their belts and hats. Fruits and flowers were heaped at their feet. I watched the local travelers, the Burmese, coming into the shrine with their offerings and prayers and wishes. People kept coming and coming.

Greeting you face on as you enter the Nat Shrine is this Mother Goddess of Popa, flanked by her 2 sons. The story is that she was a princess who was taken captive when one King defeated another and was brought to Bagan. She managed to escape and fled in to the woods around Mount Popa. She changed her appearance through meditation to resemble an ogress and survived in the wild. She took a lover, a hero of Bagan and gave birth to twin sons, who grew to serve the King. When they were later executed, she died of a broken heart and became a nat. She has ruled over Mount Popa ever since.

The nat avatars are draped in scarves, other clothing, costume jewelery, flowers, fruits, money… The stories of the nat’s lives are every bit as colorful as their shrine.
This guy in the red scarves on the horse is the Drunk Nat, who in life liked to drink and hang out at the cockfights. Offerings of choice include full bottles of Johnny Walker Red. He is the guardian of drunks and gamblers.

After climbing the 777 steps to the top of the shrine, our reward was a night at the nearby Popa Mountain Resort, with its private balconies open to the magnificent view of the volcanic plug topped with its temples, standing tall before a wide plain and beyond to far views of distant mountain ranges. A reward worth the days to follow of hobbling around with sore calf muscles? Could be.

Beautiful uber-private villas with huge windows and balconies looking out to the views.