That and one other experience convinced us that, even though about 70 percent of the Burmese economy is black-market and the government often appears hopelessly out of touch with society, people take it seriously. We went to the Rangoon train station to try to get a Burmese to buy us train tickets instead of doing it at Tourist Burma at the official rate. The same people who wanted to buy our dollars, Walkmen, cassettes, cosmetics, T-shirts and even underwear, wouldn't touch our money to break that rule. It's as though the government tacitly cedes certain areas to the black market, and the people steadfastly leave the other areas alone. So we were able to convince every hotel not to stamp our currency form, but for transportation we had to pay official dollars.
From Rangoon we took a night train to Mandalay. Burmese trains are kind of like riding a horse all night, only you're in a chair. In Mandalay, even the Jeeps disappeared, and the streets were empty except for horse-carts and rickshaws. We took a horse-cart out to Sagaing, "the spiritual center of Buddhism in Burma," where about 500 monasteries surround a pagoda on a hill. We were escorted up the hill by a group of uniformed school kids entranced by Tom's sunglasses (every little kid we met on the trip, in the smallest, remotest villages, yelled "Rambo!" when he caught a look at Tom's shades). They introduced us to U Revata, their English teacher at the East Gondalon monastery on Sagaing Hill.
U Revata invited us back to the monastery, a peaceful brick structure where we ended up spending the night. The children gathered at his feet in front of the blackboard, where were written the words "DUTY TASK PERFORM" and several other related concepts. During the lesson, U Revata would read a phrase like, "The dog bit the man's toes" and then the children would chant it back in unison between 25 and 50 times: "Dogbit-man'stoesdogbitman'stoes!"
Between Mandalay and the "pagoda-studded plain of Pagan" lies a 27-hour boat trip down the Irrawaddy River. We had a choice between "cabin" and "deck" and for an extra dollar chose the cabin. Well, the deck looked like steerage, every square inch filled by a body or a basket of smelly goods. The cabin, however, was not much better. It consisted of three wooden bunks and a table, and we shared it with a wealthy Burmese family, their electrical appliances, and eight or nine monks with shaven heads and long orange robes.
The Burmese monks are supposed to lead a very ascetic life, one meal a day and only six belongings and lots of chanting and of course celibacy, but they didn't act much like it. At any one time, three or four of the monks would seat themselves in a circle around me and just stare. The trip was quite pleasant; off the boat you could see pagodas in the middle of nowhere, clusters of thatched huts on stilts, and old-fashioned fishing boats. The only thing was that the monks insisted on smoking cheroots while keeping the windows closed, we figured so that they could really feel the difference from the deck and get their money's worth. I locked horns in a head-to-head battle with one old padre, opening my window every time he shut it, and finally leaving one arm hanging out. Hell, I paid my 30 kyats same as the next guy.
At night the boat stopped in Pakkoku. Tourist Burma had told us we had to sleep on board, but that turned out to be another official lie. We guessed that since Pakkoku wasn't on any of our maps, it must be a tiny village; it turned out to be a city of 200,000. We stayed at a family inn called the Myayatanar, where innkeeper Tint San spoke impeccable English and his son played "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da" on the guitar. They took us into town to the festival that was going on that night. We expected another pwe, but instead it was a huge carnival with a ferris wheel, Kung Fu movies blaring, and enormous garish posters everywhere--so much for quaint village life.
No one can ever describe adequately the unearthly peace of Pagan and its 2,200 pagodas, and maybe that's why everybody uses the guidebook phrase about "the pagoda-studded plain..." The village has just one paved road, but everywhere you look is a white spire or a crumbling red-brick bell, completely silent but for the occasional children running out from among the weeds calling "Peace! Peace!" and holding up two fingers in a peace sign. That and "Rambo!" seem to be universal.
The last sight I remember on leaving Burma is 2,000 dots on the landscape as the plane rose out of Pagan, good old Burma Air. I'd only changed $15 with Tourist Burma, but I had three bags of Burmese lacquerware and a full-size traditional puppet, and I don't know where I lost all my tapes and T-shirts. Must have been those crazy Burmese--an especially tricky people.