2004 BURMA or MYANMAR a trip revisited by heart after 19 years

After three years of five trips to Cuba I decided to change continent and chose Myanmar returning after 1990 when I visited Indonesia and Thailand. The flight was not direct but via Bangkok which also in the following years will become the transit airport for travel to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Arrived in Yangon or Rangun which is no longer the capital replaced by Naypyidaw, I started walking around it in the historic center visiting the old Sule pagoda where I met a former bonze who offered to be my guide and since he spoke good English I accepted and everything was easier. He took me to visit markets, old colonial buildings and of course the Shwedagon Pagoda which is a real wonder, perhaps the most beautiful of the Buddhist ones I have ever visited. On the last evening we went to dine in a huge restaurant boat on the lake where we attended a folk show and tasted all the specialties of Burmese cuisine. Then I took the bus in the direction of the old northern capital Mandalay where I visited a huge royal palace and various temples surrounded by walls, Mount Popa which is a monolithic mountain that you have to climb the winding stairs to the top where there is a beautiful panoramic temple, then Calaw a beautiful green mountain town that I didn't have time to visit because I stupidly decided to leave immediately for a trek up to Inle Lake. A guide and a porter for my huge suitcase arrived. We walked through the countryside and passed through small villages where we were guests for lunch and the night in the huts of peasants known by the guide. We spent a night in a pagoda on top of a hill and the next morning we began the descent which took us to the lake where I had a stroke of luck as a religious festival was being celebrated in the lake with processions of huge boats occupied by dozens of burmeses in colorful costume and many musicians. I made friends with a Spanish couple and we went together to visit an archaeological site in the hills. The peculiarity of the lake is that there are vegetable gardens and floating villages, craft workshops and temples, including one where the monks have managed to train a group of cats that perform by jumping inside a fiery circle. Another pecularity of the Inle lake is that fishermen row using their foot to maneuver the oar, so they have free hands to use the nets. Subsequently from Mandalay I made excursions to the Midun rock which was to become an unfinished temple, then an island with an ancient dangerous palace of a yellow color because it was full of snakes and a long wooden bridge built over the river. Finally I took the ship that from Mandalay took me to Pagan or Bagan, the locality famous for its valley of 7000 temples built over hundreds of years by the Buddhist faithful to be forgiven for their sins. The valley is spectacular and there are temples the size of cathedrals with huge statues of the reclining or standing Buddha inside and other small temples. I went around it by bicycle with some difficulty because the bottom is sandy. Eventually I arrived at Ngapali beach which takes its name from Naples because it seems that a Neapolitan tourist who arrived there ended up saying "I seem to be in Naples". It is a beautiful and long beach with palm trees, black rocks and wooden bungalows that host tourists, further on a fishing village that I visited observing the activity of the fishermen who left and returned from fishing and the work of the women who flocked to divide the caught fish. I made friends with a young fisherman who invited me to his house and introduced me to his sisters and father. At Ngapali there was a serious risk: the deadly encephalitic malaria which had spread in those days and which caused some deaths. They didn't warn us but we saw that the attendants lit embers in the rooms which gave off anti-mosquito fumes. Apart from this danger, Burma is a country that I really liked for its landscape, its pagodas and its people.