Steve and Cathy's Blog

This is a semi-Sea Day, because we are scheduled to arrive at 5:00pm. We attend a really interesting Peter Croyle lecture entitled Buddhism and Rice Cultivation that is a great introduction to both subjects. Later in the day, we attend Afternoon Tea in Horizons. This good idea is Cathy’s and we go because we are due to leave the ship at 6:15 on our evening excursion, so we stoke up on little sandwiches, desserts and tea with Brian and Barbara.

Insignia arrives in Myanmar about an hour later than scheduled because of some adverse winds and currents, and the dock is located about seventeen miles south of Yangon. [Standing on the dock are about 15 people who had gone on a 4-day land tour to the Taj Mahal. They cheered as the ship eased up to the dock. They seemed so happy to see the ship we became curious about what had happened on their land tour! Have to check that out…] We are scheduled to proceed on the excursion Shwedagon by Night Tour at 6:15. Fortunately, clearance is quick, and we are on our way shortly after 7:00pm.

Our guide is a very lively young man names Zaw Zaw. One of the first things he explains is how people are named in Myanmar. There are no surnames, and the name you have is somewhat determined by the day on which you are born. That’s about all I understood, but suffice it to say, the names we hear are interesting. [Also he said his mom liked Zorro so she named him a Z name.]

Zaw Zaw also explains that the seventeen miles we are going to travel to get to Yangon could take a while. Traffic is tremendous in the area, and the railway line is in decrepit shape. [Looking out the bus windows was interesting. Very dark. Even the towns were dark. Many small shops and restaurants with hardly any light. People sitting on kid-sized plastic chairs that most of us would not be able to stand up from. We speculate that the Burmese people are used to squatting so these seats work just fine.] It indeed takes about ninety minutes to reach our destination, which is the Shwedagon Pagoda. Shwe means gold, and dagon is a derivative of Yangon.

This is the most important Buddhist shrine in Myanmar, where 80% of the people practice this religion. Archaeologists date the building of the pagoda to between the 6^th and 10^th centuries CE. However, legend has it having been started over 2,600 years ago, making it the oldest Buddhist stupa in the world. Regardless of its actual age, it is one of the most remarkable religious sites you can ever imagine.

Shwedagon Pagoda itself is 326 feet high, and it is surrounded by three other pagodas and dozens and dozens of smaller structures housing images of various Buddhas. It is an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists from all over Myanmar. The main area is fourteen acres, and the entire 114-acre landscape sits on a hill 190 feet high. The pagoda itself is covered in either gold plates or gold leaf, and there are over 80,000 jewels at the top, including a 76-carat diamond.

Because this is a Buddhist temple site, one is required to remove shoes and socks and go barefoot. [I was a little paranoid about that because I was worried that my orthotics would become misplaced so I carried my shoe and socks in my bag. We had to go through a security x-ray and no one cared that I carried them instead of leaving them in the huge pile at the door.] Shoulders and knees must be covered. If someone is wearing shorts, he/she must rent a longji (sort of a skirt worn by both men and women). We arrive around 8:30-8:45, enter through the Foreign Visitors Entrance, ride an elevator to the main courtyard and enter.

Zaw Zaw leads us around for about an hour, gamely explaining the significance of the various Buddhas, explaining some of the rituals people are performing and so forth. It is all quite confusing for those of us with little or no knowledge of Buddhism, but we are also totally distracted by the magnificence of this place.   It is crowded with thousands of people, but it is almost quiet. It is super-well lit up, and we are allowed to take as many photos as we wish. [It was very hot and humid but that sort of added to the ambience in a way. You could smell a strange incense-y smell and the marble felt warm on our feet even though it had been dark for over 2 hours. There were families and young people everywhere. And so quiet! Even with so many people. There was an occasional tong tong tong sound of a bell every once in a while. And swift flying squeeking birds overhead that almost looked like bats. Maybe they were…]

There aren’t all that many tourists. Other than all of us from the ship, all the rest are Myanmar folks. It is heartening to see how many young people are there, and families as well. The people of Myanmar take their religion quite seriously. In fact, every male is required to spend several months as a monk, perhaps starting as early as seven years old.

About an hour and hundreds of photos later, we are led back out to the Southern Entrance where we entered. We have been given disposable towels soaked with aloe so we can clean off our feet, don our shoes and socks and make our way back to the buses. It is now close to 9:30-10:00 and still the traffic is heavy.

We arrive back at the ship around 11:15. We are greeted by the manager of the restaurants, who has graciously left the Terrace Café open. We are too tired for that, so we crash. Steve immediately downloads his photos on to his laptop so he can see how they came out.

In closing, let me just say that there is no way that my words could possibly do justice to what we saw this evening. [We chatted with a fellow passenger who said “You’ve heard the phrase ‘Seen one temple seen them all,’ actually it should be ‘if you’ve seen THIS temple you’ve seen them all.” We concur.] I am including a few photos of Shwedagon Pagoda, but I invite you to go to the Steve Knight Facebook page for more and larger pictures. This is a place that Cathy and I will never forget, which happens to anyone of any faith who visits this sacred place.