[May, 2001] I was filled with apprehension over my trip to Myanmar especially after the car I took to the airport in
Bangkok for the flight to Yangon was rear-ended by a bus, jarring my head and completely ruining the car.
There were four of us in the car and we were having an interesting conversation while en route to the airport
when all of a sudden I heard a big thump, crash, the back of my head was hit hard by something and our car started
to spin around until we could see cars coming straight at us. A bus had rear-ended us with such force that the car
was demolished. Fortunately the traffic had time to slow before we could be hit a second time. When the car we were
in and the bus came to a stop, the two were parallel and against each other with the car facing the rear of the bus.
My door (the rear, left side door) was up against the door of the bus. We were all in shock and I wasn’t even sure
if I was okay, when my friend hurried me to a waiting taxi that someone had arranged to take us to the airport so that
we would not miss our flight. I sometimes feel that I am accident prone, so I wasn’t in a hurry to get aboard a plane
after being in a car crash, in fact of the fifteen takeoffs and landings that I had to go through for the entire trip,
I was very nervous for all except the last pair.
The fondness the Bamar or Burmese have for the word shwe, or gold, can be seen in the names which include it:
Shwedagon, the most famous pagoda in all of the land, Shwezigon, a pagoda in Bagan said to have a relic of the
Buddha himself, and the adjacent towns of Nyaung Shwe and Shwe Nyaung (Gold Banyan Tree, or Banyan Tree of Gold),
but I think of Myanmar as a country in shades of red. The red of the soil made more so by the rains of the wet
season, the red of the betel nut spittle, the dark red robes of monks or bright red of novice monks, the red of the
bricks used for the many of Bagan’s pagodas, and the reddish-bronze color of the people’s skin in the countryside.
Traditionally, Burmese people have no last names. Instead, they have appellations that precede their given names
based on gender and age. This title changes twice in the life of a man, at the age of about nineteen years, and
again at around the age of thirty. The title only changes once for a woman when she reaches the age of thirty.
A man and a woman may have the same given name, Hla Myint, but the man will be called Mg Hla Myint until he is
nineteen years old, then his name will change to Ko Hla Myint. When he reaches the age of thirty, he will be called
U Hla Myint. A woman with the same given name will be called Ma Hla Myint until she reaches the age of thirty, then
she will be called Daw Hla Myint.
| Male |
Female |
| 0-18 years: Mg (pronounced “Maung”) |
0-30 years: Ma |
| 19-30: Ko |
| 30 and up: U |
30 and up: Daw (pronounced “Dah”) |
One man told me dating is a relatively recent phenomenon unheard of five years earlier. Dating of sorts,
may have occurred, but only surreptitiously or with a chaperone, but a man and woman would generally marry
some time, even a couple of years, after making their intentions known. Traditionally, boys and girls would
stop playing with each other sometime around puberty. Boys who were caught with girls after this time, were
derisively called mainmasha (effeminate, gay). Young men would only “date” young women they had known for a
long period of time. There were no phones and girls stayed home, so it was difficult to meet and get to know
a stranger. Nat (a traditional animist, pre-Buddhist faith) festivals, which occur monthly, where the only
occasions for a boy and girl to get to know each other without concern about what other would say. Thingyan,
or the water festival, held during the hot season in April was the best of all festivals for such meetings.
During this festival, when everyone throws water on each other, girls would be more relaxed and carefree.
Another important festival for romantic meetings, was Thadingyut, or the lighting festival. During this
festival, Burmese people put up lights for the Buddha. The festival is held at night and parents are not
at home, so it is a time when young lovers often elope.
I spoke to an ethnic Burmese whose father had married the village headman’s daughter, a Buddhist, and moved
to Rangoon (the earlier name for Yangon). He became a successful businessman in the city and decided to
take on a second wife, also Burmese, but a Christian. He had six children with the first wife and three
daughters with the second wife whom he setup in a separate, second home. The two wives knew about each
other and were polite to each other, but were never friendly to each other. The two sets of children would
only gather together one time of the year at the Christian wife’s home during Christmas time.
men wearing longyis, Bagan
After landing in Yangon, the first noticeable uniqueness about Myanmar is that men are wearing longyi, or
traditional hip wraps. They come in different colors with different designs, but longyis worn by men are
clearly different from those worn by women.
Men are constantly unwrapping, stretching out and retying their longyis. They can also be seen holding
the ends of their longyi and almost swing their arms back and forth with the cadence of their walk. The
longyi is incredibly versatile because it can be worn ankle length or brought up to wear as shorts when
playing sports, performing physical labor or walking through knee-deep water.
After I arrived in Shan State, I noticed that longyis were not as popular amongst the men there as elsewhere
in Myanmar. I asked a Shan man about this and he explained that since the weather is cooler, longyis are not
always as popular as Western-style pants.
Three girls near Nyaung Shwe
Women typically wear ankle length longyis. Though women will readjust their longyis, they do so with less
frequency than the men and as much as a way of flirting as women in other countries might adjust and caress
their own hair when they are sure someone is gazing at them.
There is more variety in the types of shirts Myanmar’s women wear, but tight fitting shirts are the norm and
sometimes they are very sheer without causing undo attention from passersby.
Although I never saw any signs of baseball being played in Myanmar, the men , whose hair is invariably cut
short, seem to prefer baseball caps over any other form of hat. Women usually wear their hair tied back
though some women with long, particularly beautiful hair, will let it hang loose. Girls may have their
hair cut short or in pigtails. Children, under the age of ten, often have their heads shaved bald.
Both men and women typically wear thin, Myanmar-made slippers.
Both men and women appear to have high levels of propriety when it comes to dress. Seeing a woman’s
shoulders while she is bathing at a public well or on a beach, for example, is attractively revealing
since you would not normally see her shoulders bare in a public situation.
Tattoos are incredibly popular amongst men in Myanmar. Typically, they are made at propitious times to
seal a vow to abstain from alcohol, sex, or some other perceived vice; or act as a talisman for good luck,
to protect against some danger such as a snake, or to make a man strong for fighting; or they may be worn
simply as decoration.
Long before I had ever seen betel nut, I had read about it in books. Betel nut is really a seed of the
betel palm, properly known as areca nut. Decorative betel nut containers and metal nut-crackers were once
highly prized, especially amongst the wealthy and court classes of Southeast Asia. Commonly chewed while held
in the mouth like chewing tobacco, betel nut was wildly popular throughout Southeast Asia up to the middle of
the last century, but has fallen from use in most places and now it is typically only seen used by older women
in the region. Myanmar is the one exception. In this country where the longyi has not yet been relinquished
for the Western trouser, betel nut is still popular amongst young men and amongst both sexes in later years.
Mixed with lime and wrapped in leaves at stalls selling it in downtown Yangon, Mandalay, and the markets of
smaller cities, one trishaw driver seemed out of place when he told me that when he chews it, he sometimes
mixes in tobacco, but he does not chew it much because it causes constipation and headaches. In the defense
of chewing betel nut, he did say that it was good for the teeth because it was hard. It is said to be a mild
narcotic, but it didn’t seem to have much of an affect amongst the taxi drivers I rode with who enjoyed it.
Betel nut stains the teeth and mouth a dark red color and the roads of Mandalay were littered with the telltale
signs betel nut spittle. So beware, when in Myanmar and you hear a loud kissing sound, it may be a trishaw
trying to get past you or it may be someone who needs to relieve their mouth of spittle which has accumulated
while chewing the precious nut.
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