Construction

Yangon builds its new buildings in concrete.   Some are a mixture of concrete floors and pillars with the spaces in between bricked in and then covered with stucco.  It is a building technology that is quickly looks like shit, unless it is painted over frequently.  The effect of rain and mildew on concrete is not a pretty sight.

 

The technology displayed at the different building sites ranges from heavy piling machinery to wicker baskets to move dirt.  The balance lies towards the bamboo baskets.  I have seen one concrete mixer and many instances of concrete mixed on bag of cement at a time, using a shovel, some sand and gravel, and a bucket of water.   The excavation of a storm sewer in my street was entirely done by pickaxe and shovel, the heavy red silt loaded using wicker baskets, and the mortar for the brick wall and the concrete cover mixed by hand.  No machine was used, except a truck to haul away the dirt.  Nearby is a relatively big job to restore the decayed walls of a small canal.  It too is an entirely electrical and internal combustion engine free work site.

Old teak wooden houses are still interspersed between these blocks of concrete in many areas.  In Yangon, few are maintained well; many feel like redevelopment sites waiting for an investor.  Teak houses are still the norm in several provincial towns in Mon state.  The dominant built form in the countryside is hut of woven bamboo(?) walls and an assortment of tarps, corrugated steel and palm leaf roofs.

The Acoustical Landscape

The acoustical landscape in Myanmar is very public.

No fundraiser for a local monastery will think twice of mounting a sound system on a truck to spread the word.  This morning there was one of those through my little Shan Kone Street at 8 am.   

No lottery seller will venture out without a looped and amplified message on his battery-driven stereo.  The celebration for Mohammed’s birthday included a concert that was still going full blast at 3:30 am.  I checked from my balcony.  There were three persons in the audience and four musicians playing.  A rough estimate of the number of people who were in earshot at that hour:  800.

Many a pagoda has fantastic speakers wired up, broadcasting, in the original sense of the work, live or recorded prayer services. The main pagoda in Thaton is so convinced of its message that it reaches all within at least a kilometer of its golden dome 24/7.  Just south of the Pagoda and well within its acoustical reach is a mostly Muslim neighbourhood, judging by the predominance of hijab-wearing women.

A sharp contrast to the acoustical landscape of Edmonton, which is dominated by the drone of traffic interspersed by sirens of emergency response vehicles.

The mundane and the exotic

Today, the local Muslim community celebrates Mohammed’s birthday in front of my apartment and right in front of the Hindu temple.  There have been repeated parades with a drum band, followed by singers/hand drum players.  Earlier, a woman had to be calmed down by her relatives as her dancing had gone into overdrive.  Right now, there is a communal meal accompanied by a male singer and some speeches.  The open door to my balcony brings the proceedings into my living room.  Not that the a closed door would keep the festivities out.

The open back door to my apartment, as always, frames the Swedagon Pagoda.  The noise-scape there is dominated by the recorded and amplified goings-on in the nearby monastery.  Today the music has a wild gamelan-like tone.

The laundry machine in the kitchen and churns away within the ambit of the Buddha; the laundry lines on my balcony and front room are within the range of Mohammed’s birthday celebration.  I shuttle in between as if it is normal, like procession of mostly middle aged men who (re)enter a monastery or a row of nuns going out for ... what?

The Boat to Myeik

The Boat from Kawtaung to Myeik

There is a boat from Kawtaung, the very southern-most town in Myanmar to Myeik and from there on to Dawei.  The Lonely Planet says so.

 

Two fellow Cuso volunteers and I flew down to Kawtaung to travel on that boat.  The hotel in which we stayed there has a large poster showing the boat, but the lady behind the reception desk said: “no, no boat today.  Too much wind.”  The representative of the Myanmar Tourist Office confirmed that there is indeed a boat to Myeik.  The 03:00 hour sailing time is inconvenient, but the boat sails regularly.  But sorry, not today. “too much wind; maybe tomorrow.”

Asking around with hands and feet, smiles and pictures of boats at the ready, we heard that the boat sails regularly; that it hadn’t sailed in a month; that a man with a megaphone would go around town in the evening before it really sails; that it would sail tonight; that a bureaucrat somewhere decides daily if it sails or not, depending on the winds over 35 knots.  "Negative profit opportunity" said the man in the hardware store that sells tickets to the boat.

Kawtaung has reversed the typical Myanmar answer of “yes” even if “no” is the answer and no yes action will occur.  In Kawtaung, the answer is always “no,”

But the weather in Kawtaung was steady and glorious; never a storm cloud on the horizon.  There is a bit of a smuggling atmosphere there, amplified by billboards addressing human traficking and drugs.  We developed a sneaking suspicion that there are boats sailing between Kawtaung and Myeik, but that the authorities would rather not have foreigners on board.  What would we have found if we would have showed up on the jetty at 02:30 hours.