That night at dinner, I was present to the wait staff the same as I had been the night before. I met them as individuals, asked them how their day was (genuinely this time) and was happy to hear about their days. I learned that many of them lived in the hillside villages, rode their bikes to work, and often hiked the trails. It was nice to see familiar faces in the dining room. It was fun to share our appreciation for some of the traditional dishes of Myanmar, to talk about how incredibly good the mangoes are here.
As the waitress brought me my dinner that night, I noticed a couple of things about my dinner: I was served dishes that I had never eaten before (they appeared to be higher quality variations on the traditional fare) and the meat that I was served seemed be higher quality (usually you are served two pieces of meat: one piece which you can actually eat, and another piece which, as far as I can tell, is basically the base from which the other meat was pulled: bones, cartilage, and a little bit of meat. That night, I got two pieces of meat that I could eat). Shortly after I remarked on the flavor of one of the dishes and expressed my appreciation for the new salad they had brought me, the chef came out and we had a minimalist conversation in which, through our gestures, I expressed my gratitude and he expressed his pleasure with his dish.
And then I got delusional. “Wow,” I thought. “They must really like me in the kitchen. I wonder if the wait staff is talking to the kitchen staff, telling them how I’m all nice and stuff and so they’re making me special meals.” But then the next morning came, and I ordered eggs the same as I had ordered eggs the day before. The day before, my eggs were seasoned, and had melted cheese in them. But this morning, they were just eggs. “Uh oh,” I thought. “What have I done? Did I offend someone last night?” And then I got my reality check: “Different chef Shannon, different chef. Nobody likes you more or less because you’re being present to them. You don’t get good food for being kind and compassionate, you don’t get bad food for doing nothing, there are just different chefs in this world and you got a good one yesterday.”
After breakfast, the driver picked me up and asked, “You want to see long-neck ladies?” He had mentioned this the day before, that we would go to the village of long-neck ladies and that I could take a picture. I did not want to go to the village of long-neck ladies and take a picture. I knew a little bit about this tradition of having girls wear a series of metal collars around their neck that stretches their necks. I had read somewhere that this was done to actually protect the women; that in ancient times there was a fear of women being stolen from their villages from neighboring tribes and the belief was that if they had long necks, no one would want to take them and so they would be safe.
But I didn’t want to gawk at these people, at these long-neck-ladies, it just seemed so circus-side-show-freak. I had seriously considered saying “No, I don’t, I don’t want to stare at and take a picture of these people as if they’re some freaks of nature.” But then I thought about this and realized that it didn’t have to be like that. I didn’t have to stare at them as if they were freaks, I could see them the way they are: women who are respecting a tradition, women who are choosing to do this and taking pride in it (or, who knows, just following in their mother’s footsteps). So instead, I said okay and we headed off to the village of long-neck-ladies.
It turned out that the “village of long-neck-ladies” was the back room of the paper factory. So I got another tour- this time of how you make paper from the pulp of mulberry trees- was shown another ‘show room’ and bought a final handicraft (a nice lampshade). Once I made my purchase, I was lead to the back room where two women with many metal cuffs along the length of their neck were diligently working at looms. “You want to take picture?” the guide asked. “Oh, no thank you,” I answered. I greeted the women, remarked on how hard their work was, and thanked them. Then I made my way back through the factory to the driver.
When I got i,n the driver explained that we were going to a pagoda and that it was about twenty minutes away. We rode for quite a while on the open lake and then entered what appeared to be a river. We slowed down a bit and I noticed that in certain parts of the river, there were lines of bamboo posts with an opening, in the middle of the river, forcing us to navigate through the small opening. Through this opening, the water flowed more forcefully and so the driver’s brother had to speed up the boat to make it through. I loved this, it made me feel like we were on a white water rafting trip, and I sat up each time we passed through and smiled and turned around to see our wake. We went through about 15 of these before finally stopping at what appeared to be a restaurant, at the side of the river.
We got out of the boat and the driver said to me “We walk to
pagoda now, about twenty minutes.”
“Okay,” I said, and followed him as we walked along the
river. We passed many shops, then walked across a bridge that lead into what
looked like the center of a town. There was a school and a market place. As we
walked, I asked quite a few questions of the driver, about what the buildings
were, about the school and the market, etc. He answered mostly in one word
answers so after a while, I decided that he wasn’t up for talking that day, and
just stopped asking. When we finally got to the pagoda he said, “I meet you
back at the boat. You know the way?”
“I guess so,” I said, and shrugged my shoulders. “Walk along
the river until I see the sign that says ‘Art’?”
“Yes,” he said, then smiled and walked away.
As I walked up the entrance that lead to the pagoda, I
wondered why he left me there. Was he leaving me to my solitude? Did he not
want to have to escort me through the vendors who sell me stuff? Was he tired
of talking to me? As I kept walking, up hill, toward the pagoda I thought,
“Oh, no, it’s none of that. It’s just a really long walk, up hill, to
this pagoda, and he doesn’t strike me as the long-walk kind of guy. He’s the
guy who rides around in a boat all day, ferried around by his brother.” And I
thought this was funny, that he was kind of a kick back guy, that this all
might be entertaining for him, that maybe he was enjoying this too.The pagoda itself was pretty cool but it had one of those ‘Ladies prohibited’ signs in front of the Buddha so I moved on to the outside of the pagoda where there were tons of really old and crumbling pagodas. I worried a bit about walking around the edges, going on trails that weren’t really part of the pagoda itself, worried that I would bother the workmen who were restoring them. But then I thought, “All I am is a person, appreciating the Buddha statues inside the old pagodas, what’s wrong with that?” and the workmen barely batted an eye as I walked past.
As I left the pagoda, I walked past all of the vendors again. I was surprised to see a couple of vendors who had arms and legs but were missing a hand or foot (this looked like a result of a birth defect, not an injury). I was also surprised by my reaction to them: I didn’t feel any pity for them or treat them any differently than I had the other vendors. I just noticed that they were missing a hand or foot and noticed how they were able to hold their handicraft or their newspaper. I walked back through town, past more vendors, and found my way back to the boat. Once I got in, the driver waved to me and said, “Bye bye, I live here, my brother take you from here.”
I was pretty sure he was joking but I was equally aware that even if he wasn’t, there wasn’t anything I could do about it so I said, “Okay, have a good afternoon,” and waved at him and looked ahead as his brother started the motor. He jumped in behind me and we pulled away.
“You want lunch now?” he asked.
“Okay,” I answered and shrugged my shoulders.
“There is no lunch near the monastery so it better we go now,” he explained.
“Okay,” I said.
Then he got all chatty: he started to ask me how I liked the pagoda, how I liked the village, how I liked his country. As he was suddenly Mr. Talkative, I thought about how I had decided earlier to not talk to him so much because I thought he wasn’t up for talking that day and I said to myself ‘Not always so…” and laughed.
On our way to lunch, it started raining. Then it started pouring and the driver offered me an umbrella. “That’s okay,” I said, as I motioned to him that I didn’t need it. I wanted to prove that I was a tough American, that I could handle rain, that I didn’t need no stinkin’ umbrella. But then it started to monsoon, and at first, I kind of enjoyed it. It was nice to get wet and not worry about it. But then my pants were getting really wet and, like, the rain was so thick that you couldn’t see in front of you and I thought “Who are you not using the umbrella for? What is it you’re trying to prove?” and as I turned around I saw that the boatman was using an umbrella, and that I was the idiot who wasn’t. So I grabbed the umbrella, struggled to open it, and as soon as I did, it stopped raining, completely. That’s when I laughed, really really hard at my self and this situation.
”It just… isn’t… working. You can’t keep trying to be someone other than who you are. This is who you are, be it. “ And so I was. I walked awkwardly up the stairs of the restaurant, kind of pointed out the ridiculousness of my wet pants to everyone who passed by, ordered soup and one rice dish because I was tired of ordering the same huge spread of Myanmar food, and got fresh squeezed pineapple juice again, because it’s just so good. After I finished my lunch, I sat at the foot of the stairs to reapply sunscreen for about the third time that day. The driver approached me and asked, “You ready?”
“Almost,” I replied. I pointed to his face. “See, you have this lovely sunscreen. I have to buy mine,” I said as I pointed to the bottle of sunscreen in my hand. He laughed and headed down to the dock.
As I got in the boat, he told me we were going to the monastery. We ferried through the inlets and then turned on to what I thought was the side of the road: a big crop of lotus blossoms. Instead, we pushed through the lotus toward an opening in the water. As we pulled up to a dock in front of a wooden building, the driver said, “Leave shoes here,” and looked up the stairs that lead to the monastery. Then he turned to me with a look of embarrassment on his face. “Maybe it is lunch time,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Should I not go in?” I asked.
“It is okay,” he said. “Maybe it is lunch,” he said again with a smile and pointed to the steps that lead up to the monastery. I took all of this to mean something to the effect of: “Sorry about that. This isn’t going to look much like a monastery, you’re not going to see little monks, in robes, reading books and praying. I’m not sure what you’re going to see, it’s their lunch time so… go ahead, but know that it’s lunch time.” So I did, and it was kind of funny. Everyone was seated on the far side of the building, eating. They sat in little groups, kind of like we do at our tables in the dining hall, and apparently, they had already chanted the meal chant ‘cause everyone was talkin’ away! It was loud, you could hear the sound of dishes being washed, plates being eaten from, and people cleaning up, as well as people talking.
I stayed on my side of the monastery, looked at the Buddha statues, almost walked over to their side but decided against it. I read an explanation of the monastery on the wall and felt proud that it read that they were accepting of people regardless of race, creed, or culture. I put a donation in their box and walked down the steps to the sound of many monks, working together to fix the roof on their building.
The driver walked up to and pointed to a fish in the water. “You see fish?” he asked.
“Yes…” I said as I looked at this one fish, sitting still, in the brown water. I waited for him to give me some information about this fish, some significance or story, but he didn’t. I looked at him and then I said, “I think fish is asleep.”
“No,” he said. “Just sitting.”
“Oh,” I said, and I tried, I tried to have this fish be a part of the tour, but it wasn’t, it was just a fish sitting there. So then I pointed to the scenery in front of us, asked him about some plants, asked him about the mountains and I must not have communicated well because he couldn’t really tell me about any of it, other than to say that the purple flower was a water hyacinth. I felt like he was trying to extend the tour, like he felt bad that it was lunch time at the monastery, that it was only two o’clock and we were done, but there was nothing we could do. We had seen everything I guess, and I didn’t really need to see any more.
“We go to hotel?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said and we stepped in to the boat and rode home.
As we pulled up to the hotel the driver asked, “Which room is yours?”
I looked at the little houses, on stilts, trying to determine which was mine, “One of those in front,” I said. “Room 110.”
I got out of the boat and he said, “Bye bye, see you tomorrow.”
As I walked up the dock to the hotel, his question repeated in my head: “Which room is yours?” and it was hilarious to listen to myself spin a tale around it. I wonder why he asked that? Was he checking to see if I was in a fancy room? What if he came back to my room with me? What if I invited him to my room? What if tomorrow, on our boat ride, we totally connected and had this incredible romance? But then I gave myself a reality check: you don’t speak each other’s language, he is a boat driver, in Myanmar. But then I gave myself a zen check around that: you don’t know that you two wouldn’t connect, you can’t decide who he is based on labels, don’t decide what’s going to happen before it happens. And then I spun some more and suddenly, I pictured the two of us experiencing total angst as we struggled to find him a job in San Francisco while we lived together in my little room in my apartment…
“OH MY GOSH!” I shouted at myself. “Four words, and you’re marrying the guy… All he asked was ‘Which room is yours,’ that’s all he asked. Maybe he knows someone who is staying there, maybe he wants to know which room is yours so he can tell whether or not you're ready to pick up each day, you have absolutely no idea what he meant by that phrase and it wasn't even a phrase like wanna get a drink! Four words have changed the entire nature of your relationship with this man. Stop the presses, slow down your horses, and be quiet about this. So I did, I just laughed at myself and the little girl in me as I walked up the dock to the hotel.
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