Travel Meditation (TM) 1: planes and airports

This is part one in a series of posts about my travels in Myanmar. They're different from my normal blogposts, definitely longer, but I had fun writing them so I hoped you might like reading them. Toward the end, they tell more Myanmar itslef, and I thought you might like reading about that too.
 There is seated meditation (za-zen), there is walking meditation (kin-hin), today I attempted travel meditation (tour-in).

Though I’m staying with my friends in Yangon, they have to work during the week so I booked a trip to visit Bagan (the site of many ancient pagodas) and Inle Lake (a beautiful lake area). I booked the trip last minute, from my friend’s office at the embassy, over the phone in halted English and had to fumble my way to the tourist office to pay for the entire thing in cash (crisp $100s) at 4 o’clock on the Friday before my trip.  So on Monday morning I was going on absolute blind faith that the documents that the people gave me would somehow get me on two different plane flights, two different  hotels, sightseeing, and transportation to and from the hotels and airports. I speak only two words of Burmese: JaySuBay (thank you) and MaynGuhLaBah (hello) so I had no real way to negotiate my travel if anything went wrong. This is not how I normally travel. I normally plan everything in advance and know exactly what I’ll be doing. But it just didn’t turn out that way, this is the way things happened instead.

My friend dropped me off at the domestic airport in Yangon at 5AM.

“Do you have your ticket?” he asked.

“I hope so…” I said as I produced a booklet which contained four carbon copies of handwritten flight numbers, departure cities, and departure times.

“Okay,” he said with a hopeful smile. “See you Thursday at 6:50, right?”

“I think so…” I said. 6:50 was the time that I wrote down on the scrap of paper next to the phone when the woman told me, in broken English, what time I would be returning to Yangon from a place called HeHo on Thursday night.

I hitched my backpack onto my shoulders and spied a hotel tour group walking through the doors to the airport. “Score!” I thought as I followed them through the double doors, hoping that if I followed them, they would lead me to the check- in counters. They promptly turned left, into the men’s restroom. “Darnit!” I thought. “I have to do this one on my own.”

I continued walking through the airport and easily found the Air Bagan “check in counter” (it was a kiosk). I walked up to the lovely women there and gave them my booklet and passport. They smiled and asked if I had any bags. I didn’t really want to check my backpack.

“Can I bring it as a carry on?” I asked, as I held up the large yellow backpack. She called to her strong assistant. He took the bag from me and I watched as he struggled to fit it in the frame you use to check to see if the bag is too large. It totally didn’t fit. He lifted it out again.

“Yes!” he smiled, and brought it back to me.

“Hmmm,” I thought. “I guess it’s an empty flight.”

The woman then handed me my boarding pass and kindly stuck a sticker on my right shoulder. Then she went back to what she was doing.

“I am okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said and pointed away from the counter. “Immigration first,” she said in the same tone of voice a parent would say ‘dinner first’ before dessert. I looked at my boarding pass: no gate number. I looked around: no apparent ‘Air Bagan’ section of the airport. “Guess I’ll just figure it out when I get there,” I sighed.

I walked over to immigration (which was also a kiosk) and handed them my passport. They looked at it and directed me toward security. I put my bags on the conveyer, walked through the security thing and then there I was, with everyone else, waiting for my plane: still no gate number, still no ‘Air Bagan’ section. I looked around and noticed that this terminal was identical the terminal in Papeete, Tahiti. There was a restaurant on the second floor and a bunch of kitchy tourist shops on the first floor, surrounding a bunch of plastic seats. In Papeete, everyone waited in the same place, regardless of the flight or airline. You just got up when they called your flight. I hoped it was the same deal here, but then realized that I had no choice in the matter anyway. I started reading but also kept my eye on my watch, mostly to know when to panic when my flight had left without me.

At around 5:55 (my flight left at 6:15), I saw the women from the Air Bagan kiosk cross the waiting room area. I followed their every move and then I saw someone walking around with a sign that said “Now boarding flight 315.” I quickly put away my book and made my way toward the women. Once there, I was directed toward a bus. As I got on the bus, I watched myself choose my seat. At first, I considered taking the first open seat, but then reconsidered because it was next to people who I thought didn’t speak English and I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to say. Next I considered taking the first single seat, but that seemed anti-social. Finally, I sat next to a couple who appeared British. “Nice,” I thought to myself. “You came all the way to Asia to sit next to people from England,” and then I sighed and listened in on the conversation of the people across from me.

We got off the bus, got on the plane, and then I heard the captain say “Mandalay."

“Oh s***,” I thought. “I’m on the wrong flight! This plane is going to Mandalay. I’m supposed to be going to some Nee Ow place.” Then he said the flight number and I whipped out my carbon copy thing. It was the right flight number, I don’t know why he said Mandalay.

Finally, we took off. I looked out the window and decided to try to be present to the moment. I concentrated on my breath, cleared my mind, and began to actually feel the force of the plane as it accelerated down the runway.

“This is so cool. I am totally present to the motion of a plane taking off!” I thought to myself.

But then we veered to the right a little, and then to the left, and I thought, “Oh, not so much, I don’t want to be present for that. That’s a little too much.” And then we straightened out and we took off, and I was okay.

As we lifted away from the ground, I reached for my book, but then I thought, “Oh, maybe I should be present for this, maybe I should be watching the ground below me.” So I did, I watched as we flew over Yangon and I was pretty sure I saw the pagoda near my friends’ house. Then we soared higher, through the clouds, and I decided it was okay to read my book.

About a half hour later, we began our descent, so I put my book away. As I looked down, I saw one building that had a swimming pool attached to it.

“Dude, I bet that’s my hotel,” I thought both excitedly and ashamedly. I had gotten a great deal on a really fancy place, because it’s monsoon season. I doubt the place is run by locals, I doubt the place is eco-friendly, I’m sure I’m doing bad things my giving my money to them AND, you can see the place from the air. But oh-my-gosh there’s a pool, that you can see from the air!

We touched down in the Nee Ow place and got off the plane. We walked through the terminal to the arrivals area where five people were standing holding signs with people’s names on them. When I had asked the travel agent how I would get from the airport to the hotel, she said there would be someone waiting there, with a sign, with my name. I scanned the signs: none of them said my name. I scanned the hotel names: none of them said my hotel’s name. I sighed, and dropped my shoulders.

Then I was pointed toward some sort of tourism board counter and was directed to buy a “cultural pass” for ten American dollars. I had read about this in the Lonely Planet guide and knew that it was sort of a scam, but it was a governmental scam, so you might as well go along. I paid my ten bucks and stepped back to where I had been before, dutifully waiting for someone to appear with a sign, with my name on it.

“Maybe my plane was early,” I hoped. Then I decided that there were other people flying in today so the driver had decided to come a little after my flight and a little before theirs. Either way, I decided that the only thing I could do was stand there, and wait. After a while, I pictured the guy from the hotel, standing somewhere else in the airport, waiting for me and now thinking, “Well, I guess she never showed up,” and putting away my sign and driving away. 

Then I spied a van, at the curb outside the terminal and I thought, “Maybe they’re waiting for me out there.” But then I was afraid to leave the airport. I have this ridiculously irrational fear that once I leave the airport, they won’t let me back in. So I stood there a little longer. But then I pictured the guy giving up on me and leaving and so I forced myself to walk outside, to the curb.

As soon as I stepped through the doors, I saw three more men standing, with signs, and the third one said my name (actually, it said my first and my middle name). I waved at the man and pointed to myself. He smiled, put down his sign, and turned around and walked toward his van, and I followed him.

As we got in the car, I started to worry. What if there’s another Shannon Elizabeth? What if there’s some Mr. Shannon and I’m in his van and going to the wrong place. But then I looked at the sign, which was now placed at the corner of the windshield and was relieved to see that in fact, it said, Miss Shannon Elizabeth. (stay tuned for part 2)