Locals pass the time on Lake Inle. Photo / Lindsay Wright
Lindsay Wright treads lightly amid the sights in Myanmar.
Within an hour or two of disembarking at Yangon International Airport, it became clear my trainers just weren't going to cut the mustard.
In Myanmar, the final throes of the monsoon were still making themselves felt. Daily showers pelted city streets, leaving ankle-deep puddles of muddy water in their wake.
Looking at the feet of the other pedestrians, it was obvious that jandals were the footwear of choice — light and cool, waterproof, easy to slip on and off for entering pagodas, hotels and houses ... and cheap. Burmese jandals come in a variety of colours and style from flamboyant pink with purple rubber flowers to the staid black flip flops of the business classes.
So I set out to get myself shod in the local fashion. But try sourcing a pair of size 12 flipflops in a nation of size five feet.
Near the Bogyoke Aung San Market in central Yangon, an alley was lined with shoe vendors squatting behind stalls piled with jandals; spangled jandals, bling on black velvet thongs, platform heels and psychedelic rubber. A woman vendor caught my eye with her warm smile. I pointed to my feet held 12 fingers up and shrugged haplessly.
She regarded my oversize paddles and summoned the surrounding shoe sellers to ask for advice. They stared at my feet; giggling and estimating the size with widespread hands.
The first seller grabbed my arm and steered me to the low stool behind her stall then hurried off into the dark nether areas of the market.
I settled in and began making eye contact with the crowds shuffling by, but my brief career as a Burmese shoe salesman was a flop. After all, would you buy shoes from a pale- skinned, red-nosed giant with a goofy grin and feet like a goose? People scurried past on the far side of the alleyway, heads down and eyes averted.
I was rescued by the stall owner who hurried back through the milling crowd with a triumphant smile on her face and a new pair of black jandals waving in her hand.
The other salespeople inspected them carefully, checked the tread and tugged on the thong fastenings, then insisted I try them on. I slipped my sodden shoes off and slid my feet into the new jandals, wriggling my toes in delight.
"How much?" I asked. She bustled around behind her stool, emerged with pen and a piece of cardboard. K3500, she wrote. About NZ$4.80.
My natty trainers were shelved at a friend's house and it was the jandals that carried me to the railway station that night. All round me Myanmar people flapped through the dark streets, surefooted on the slippery footpaths. I felt at one with them — united by our common footwear. I had joined an international league… jandal wearers of the world.
The paddy fields and dimly lit villages of lowland Myanmar rocked past while we ate our spicy dinner and washed it down with good local beer. I flipped my jandals off outside the sleeper cabin door and they were still there the next morning when the train pulled in to Thaxi. After all, who would steal shoes that were twice the size of almost any other footwear in the country? I slipped them on and strode across the platform to the "Upper Class" carriage that would take me into the hills at Karlaw.
It's been a few years since my last pair of jandals popped their thongs, so my new Myanmar models chafed a bit between my toes, but I soon got used to that.
Branches from trackside trees whipped past the unglazed windows and sprayed passengers with mulched leaves as we rocked across spindly looking viaducts and hooted through bush clad cuttings. Farmers in bamboo coolie hats waved from ox-drawn wagons plodding beside paddocks fenced by drainage ditches.
Three times the diesel locomotive tugged our wagons backwards and forth on hillside switchbacks, and, as each manoeuvre gained more elevation into the hill country, the verdant flora of the foothills was replaced by spindly conifers.
Karlaw, 1308m above sea level, was a summer resort for British colonists and much of the architecture remains. My jandals joined the two score or more at the door of the Railway Hotel — I estimated there were three other Europeans there by the size of their footwear.
The jandals came into their own as we splashed through fresh puddles created by afternoon thunderstorms and trudged the slimy sidewalks and market places of downtown Karlaw. I saw a soldier, immaculate in olive green uniform, sidearms, truncheon, sheath knife . . . and jandals.
Another former colonial hangout, Lake Inle (pronounced and often spelt Inlay) was a further four hours by train and we spent two days chugging around the 22.4km long lake in graceful teak tin bau (longboats). Powered by small diesel engines, the boats carry people, produce, fuel — everything to sustain the 50 villages and towns that line the lake and their distinctive roar and rooster tails are visible from dawn to dusk. They powered past, laden within millimetres of their gunwales with grinning villagers sheltering under bright umbrellas and bales of goods on their way to market.
My jandals slipped nicely between the ribs of the boat and I got some silly satisfaction from watching the cool breeze sweeping across their soles, while I wrinkled my toes on the floorboards.
They were kicked off at the doorway of the factory that spun soft strong cloth from lotus stems, while I padded around inside. My jandals joined the ranks outside lakeside restaurants where boats blasted past a few metres from our table, waterfront silversmith workshops, boatbuilders and craft shops.
The next day we powered the length of the lake, swishing through the tall reed stands that surrounded the paddy fields and floating gardens of the shallow isthmus at its southern end.
The Pekon Princess is the only hotel in its namesake village and looks like it was built for a tourist boom that never arrived. We were the only white folk around and my black rubber footwear was as conspicuous on the white tile floor as I was among the villagers.
Somehow, in the cool dusky hours, we were pressed into joining a family Shan band. Inle and surrounds are deep in the heart of Shan State and my jandals beat time as I hammered at the dangling brass drums. Food was produced, the newest generations of the family carried out for a cuddle. A stooped and grinning grandma shuffled over to see the big footed foreigners for herself. I demonstrated a haka, fluttering hands and writhing tongue, but the cultural clash overwhelmed my audience who henceforth treated me like a demented maniac.
We bused to Loikaw, sharing foot room with cartons of freight which seemed to burgeon at every stop. Myanmar is a country of pagodas — the golden stupa — or cupola — protrude from forest and suburb alike, often paid for by families of foreigners hoping to ease their way into the afterlife and ensure their return as one of the upper orders of mammalia, rather than rodents or reptiles.
My jandals and I trudged up the stairs and gangways to the pagoda at Loikaw, stopping a few times to be photographed with laughing Burmese folk while they flashed V for victory signs with their fingers. From the top, we watched the afternoon thunderstorm roiling its way across the lowlands and beat a slippery retreat back to ground level.
Mandalay is an icon … and also provided us with an explanation to the gold covered stupa which gleam at dawn and dusk throughout Myanmar. "We take a small piece of gold — 32 grams," the goldsmith held up a small nugget. Änd roll it in this machine. "He ground the handle of what looked like an old fashioned laundry mangle, and a thin sheet of gold fed out. "Then we put it between these two pieces of wood which have calfskin on them and hammer them for five hours."
Three men swung heavy wooden mallets in unison — beating out a dull rhythm. The resulting thin sheets of gold are fastened to the stupas — a big pagoda may have as much as 50-65 tonnes of gold cladding — and will undergo regular re-gilding. Other unpainted teak pagoda last 150 years or more and are adorned by frescoes of intricate carving.
At Bagan there were 5000 pagoda within about 5sq km — a fest of worshipful architecture in all shapes and sizes, some dating back 2500 years when the Lord Buddha last lived here. But a massive earthquake in 1975 demolished about 2000 temples. The ruins are almost as impressive as the survivors.
Signs outside warned people to take their shoes off — in a warm country, the marble floors worn smooth by centuries of bare feet feel almost sensuous.
It took 11 hours shivering on a bus with hyperactive air conditioning to return to Yangon, rattling along lumpy concrete roads, overhauling ox carts and scooters labouring under loads of people and produce.
At Bogyoke Market I found the shoe vendor who'd sold me the jandals. She clapped her hands delightedly as I related where they'd been in my pidgin Burmese, and tried to sell me another pair.
But these jandals are coming back to New Zealand with me. Getting rid of them would be like shooting a faithful old horse. After a thorough scrub I used them on the plane and now they perch outside my back door. I might bring them inside come winter — they are tropical jandals after all and we've been through a lot together.
GETTING THERE
Cathay Pacific flies from Auckland to Yangon, via Hong Kong with return Economy Class fares from $1109, on sale until August 15.
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