Burmese Days : Life on the Water

We took a peaceful and relaxing trip on a beautiful teak house boat down the Irrawaddy river from Mandalay to Bagan. On the way the ship stopped at villages on the shore - no harbour needed: the ship's ropes were simply cast ashore and fastened on branches and sticks dug into the sand bank. Then steps were carved out of the sand and we could get on land. Floating down the river, we saw many picturesque village scenes of strange beauty anywhere between a medieval Breughel painting and the 21st century. People use the river for bathing, washing clothes, cleaning, fetching water ...

                                   More Here...

I never encountered an unfriendly face towards my cameras and being photographed. Most people smiled back and were curious and engaging.

My daughter was asked on three different occasions by complete strangers to pose for photos together with their women. On any of our travels we had never experienced anything like that before - why would someone want to have a stranger on their family pictures? And we had seen many tourists in Myanmar, at least in the tourist spots where we went. It may have been, because it was the time of their winter vacation.Villagers from the countryside, where tourists cannot go yet, come down to visit the pagodas or for family festivities, so a western woman for some may still be quite a sight. Or maybe they mistook her for a celebrity on a UN mission?

Burmese Days : Handwerk und Kunsthandwerk

The tourist route from Yangon over Bagan to Mandalay and up to Inle Lake leads to many artisans' workshops: lotus and silk spinners, weavers, silver smiths, a blacksmith's workshop,  lacquerware producers and others. These are pictures of craftspeople on Inle Lake and Bagan where we watched not only the making of  local products but also a small cheroot-"factory". Artisans of Burma

                                                                               Producing Thanaka paste
Many women and children in Myanmar have their faces painted with a white paste, mostly patches on the cheeks, often done rather crudely. Thanaka paste is used by nearly everybody as a general cosmetic. It has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory ingredients and can also be used as sun screen. It is produced by grinding the bark from the Thanaka tree (Hesperethusa crenulata) mixed with water.

                                                  Thanaka market stalls

                                                           Boy with Thanaka paste applied to his face

Beautiful lacquerware products were used in Burma households for all purposes until plastic was introduced.
As nice as it may look, lacquer needs turpentine for dilution of the substance gained from the lacquer trees and the men apply the lacquer with their bare hands (and clean them afterwards with cooking oil and ... Diesel!).

                                Lady spinning silk imported from China

                                                          Lady drawing a delicate silk thread from lotus stems


                                                         Cheroot cigars are produced and smoked mostly by women .

 cheroot smoker 

the blacksmith's shop

More here ....

Should I stay or should I go?

Germany seems to be the only country in the world where people can get into a fist fight and other life threatening situations when they cross an empty road at a red  light - mind you: as pedestrians! Ever so often, when I cross a street at a red light, someone shouts at me  "You are a bad example!" "Don't you have children!?" "Didn't your mother teach you anything?" Therefore I avoid crossing at a light like the pest and go an anarchical 20 m up the road and cross there. Sometimes, when I am in a patient mood,  I wait  and watch the other people waiting on either side of an empty road, watching the empty road, no car in sight, waiting for a car that is not coming to justify their obedience to the rule, and watching unobtrusively each other, trying to judge each other - who will stay, who will have the courage to go first? Can I cross without drawing wrath upon me? Without evoking another "good" person's aggression? Can I pretend to be non-German and not know about the unwritten rules for pedestrians? Can I pretend the lights are just "suggestions" as anywhere else in the world? And who will be the "correct" guy to say something?

This habit must be a leftover from Germany's bad days when every other person was  a "Blockwart" working for the Stasi and telling on his neighbours. In some Eastern parts of Germany they even had - and still have -  a special regional light,  the Ampelmännchen. Here I captured the split second when both lights of the Ampelmännchen are shining, the red is not quite gone but the green already visible, with the Brandenburger Tor in the background.

                                            Ampelmännchen

Andere Länder - andere Sitten: In Paris, when I was waiting at a red light on a very crowded street - lots of other people in a hurry had passed before me to honking horns and angry drivers  - I did not dare cross. A car approached, slowed down, the driver rolled down his window, waved a hand and thanked me for waiting at the red light and letting him pass!  In some countries even cars go on a red light if the road is empty, although for a German that seems to be evoking disaster to the effect of not being allowed into heaven on judgement day ...
Living in Germany certainly has its advantages, but sometimes German correctness goes way beyond what is sensible.

                                                                      A London traffic light on Hyde Park Corner  

This is a collection of traffic lights and other crossings and experiments with them.

Burmese Days : The people of Inle Lake

Inle Lake in the Shan-State of Myanmar at an elevation of 900 m is a large and very shallow  freshwater lake that provides a living for about 100.000 people who live on the lake shore or in houses on stilts. They farm the lake by fishing with their characteristic long-boats that they propel using an arm and wrapping a leg around the oar and farming the many man-made swimming islands. Living on Inle Lake

                                                              Fisherman with the famous one-legged rowing technique

                                                   with a fish trap

Camellias

This winter is unusually warm here in Germany. For the first time ever,  I have camellia and witchhazel flowering together on the terrace since christmas.

                                                                                         Camellia japonica "Hagoromo"
                                                            with witchhazel Hamamelis x intermedia "Pallida" in the background

Camellias have been growing in my garden since 1997, when the first plant was given to me: the perfect white Camellia "Shiragiku".
I planted it on the west side of the house (we then lived 400 m above sea level in the Taunus hills) where it survived several winters with lots of snow and temperatures down to -15 ° C. It started flowering only at the beginning of May, together with the white Rhododendron-Hybrid "Cunningham's White" which we had many of - so that the effect of the white perfect flowers was largely lost. When we moved to a lower area, the bush received a place on the north side of the new house, with lots of light from above but no sun. Here it has been thriving ever since, surviving the strongest winters without protection outdoors and it flowers at the beginning of  April  a month prior to the white rhododendrons. We have planted it in fresh rhododendron soil a couple of times - Camellias can be replanted like rhododendrons without loss to growth if done carefully. In our experience the only thing that would prevent them from flowering is a very dry summer and autumn. When the new flower buds are formed, late summer to October, they need a lot of water and the soil should always be moist. Otherwise they might throw off the flower buds in spring just when you wait for them to open.

My second Camellia was "Mary Phoebe Taylor". She is of a more delicate kind, pink flowers with long lank branches, that can be trailed up a wall. Her flowers are slightly hanging down, so they are best seen from below. We have replanted her in different positions several times and have found a place in the back of a border under tree cover which she seems to like. She is less frost-hardy than the other two.

My favourite is "Dr Burnside" - an amazing bush. I bought it in 2004 and planted it close to a west facing wall with no morning sun for protection. There it was rapidly overgrown by the rose "Rambling Rector" that grew next to it and I forgot about the camellia. In 2010 our new gardener Paul started work and he rediscovered it and moved it a bit to the front out of the wall's shade. And now the bush looks like this

and flowers every March/April - at a time when the garden is still quite bare. The sight of this bush in flower is stunning -  I pass by in the mornings when I go out and I always have to walk over and admire and check whether they are real or some Heinzelmännchen secretly attached plastic flowers to the bush - it looks artificial and a bit immodest and boisterous in our humble garden, but very healthy, and very out of this world in cold German early spring.

Camellia "Dr Burnside"

Burmese Days : Yangon Colonial Heritage

Burmese Days: I borrowed the title from George Orwell, who spent five years in the 1920s as a police officer for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He is ever present and widely available from street sellers in several languages together with other sensible goods like hats, umbrellas for sun protection or pants with elephant print to cover knees for temple visits. Literacy is said to be high. And though the military government has dispersed universities to areas outside of the cities to make student demonstrations more difficult, and once even closed down universities for three years and so trashed the education of a whole generation, a good education seems to be high on the list of most Burmese.

                                reading list

By the way, for further reading of Burma's history I can recommend  two books by Thant Myint-U: "Where China meets India" and "The River of Lost Footsteps", both very readable and leading through Burma's long and varied past up to the present time. Thant Myint-U founded the Yangon Heritage Trust with the aim to secure Yangons colonial buildings in the city architecture for future generations. Colonial heritage

                                                                         

Burmese Days : a Noviciation Ceremony

Mandalay is the religious centre of Myanmar. When we arrived, the whole city seemed to be busy with religious activity. A chanting monk on a loudspeaker kept us awake all night - a bit like a muezzin, with the difference that the monk kept at it 24/7 for five days!

                                                                   The chanting monk who kept us awake

When a young boy becomes a monk, the parents arrange for a noviciation ceremony. Parents save no cost to make the celebrations as ostentatious as possible.  It is a big important event, only comparable to a wedding.
During the winter school holidays, several of those ceremonies took place. We came upon a stunning extended procession to celebrate the novices of a large family.   They had  rented an elephant and the children were dressed like princes and riding on horses. Often, all children of different ages of an extended family, sons, cousins, nieces and nephews and god children  will join together to save cost on the occasion and sometimes a rich sponsor invites the lesser well-off to be able to become novices. A novitiation procession, Mandalay

Burmese Days : Monks

When travelling through Myanmar, one sees many monks in red robes and nuns in pink, busy in the streets and in groups hanging out.
Becoming a monk is a regular part in the life of a Burmese boy - for girls it is quite common too, but a harder sacrifice for most of them, as they have to shed their long hair. Nearly all young boys strive to become a novice monk at least once in a lifetime, and unlike christian monks and nuns, choosing this path does not mean they have to commit for life. They join a monastery, get shaved, wear the robe and get an introduction to the faith. Their task is to collect their own food and alms for the monastery in the mornings. Afterwards they attend lessons. Lunch is the last meal of the day, after that they have to fast until the next morning. Our guides were all monks at some stage of their lives, one just for a day, some for longer periods or repeatedly.

                                                                             Novice monks sharing their collections

                                                                     Duties

                                                                A group of young nuns collecting alms

                                                                 A monk resting at the Su Taung Pyai Pagoda in Mandalay

Burmese Days : more transport

Some of the most interesting photographic subjects are the various resourceful and imaginative, picturesque transport vehicles. Never a large empty limousine with a lonely driver - every inch is always put to good use. The following collection of photos show  vehicles used for transport of all kinds of stuff, in and on and around ..

                                   means of transport

Since the "opening" of Burma a few years ago, the number of cars  and motorcycles has risen dramatically, mostly due to Japanese used-car imports that have their steering wheel on the wrong side of the road. Yangon and Mandalay, the two largest cities with over 5 Mio  people and 1,5 Mio resp., have quite a few back-ups like any modern city. This is a nightly impression of a motorcycle mêlée that I took out of the bus window making in-camera image overlays.

Happy New Year 2015

with this "Picture of the Month" from Bagan in Myanmar!

Health and Happiness for you, your families and loved ones and "Immer Gut Licht" !

Burmese Days : The train to Insein

From Yangon a circle train goes to the small market town of Insein, more famous for its notorious prison for political prisoners. We looked at the market in Insein and the activities along the track. The train was very very slow, sort of hop-on-hop-off-speed, had neither doors nor windows, and carried all sorts of market produce and their vendors.  I like to go by train as one sees the backside of the cities, although in this case the train went right through and people got on and off along the way.

      

                                     

                                                                                  The train ride to the market at Insein

Burmese Days : Yangon - Harbour

These are pictures from an evening cruise of Yangon inner harbour. The inland harbour is right opposite the old "Strand" hotel. Dockmen were busy loading and unloading containers on christmas day, small water taxis with noisily firing outboard engines  in between .  Yangon harbour

I could not resist doing a bit of wildlife safari and checking out the 3d tracking autofocus feature trying to catch sea gulls in flight. My oldest son threw bits of food up in the air and I tried to focus on the fighting diving quarreling birds trying to catch the little titbits in mid-air. I am very proud of the results! 3D tracking is vastly improved on the D800 and D810 compared to the D700.   Free as a bird

Burmese Days: Yangon - Shwedagon

We started our journey in Yangon (or Rangun), the former capital of Myanmar until 2006, with a visit to the largest and most important pagoda in Burma: the Shwedagon Pagoda. It goes back to the 13th century and possibly earlier to around 500 BC and is said to contain a relic of eight hairs of Buddha. It is a very impressive sight dominating the city. Many layers of gold leaf have been added to its body - supposedly 60 tons of gold cover its surface. At the moment it is in the process of being regilded; therefore it was covered in bamboo scaffolding.

The Shwedagon Pagoda

On a Tuesday afternoon it was crowded with locals, who visited not only to pray and worship Buddha but also to have a family outing or a picnic. Every Burmese should visit the Shwedagon at least once in his lifetime.