miscpics: October 2007 Archives
A sign shop, apparently, on North Boulevard.
The Shwedagon Pagoda is a massive golden stupa, in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma). (Darn this endless double-naming!) According to Wikipedia, "The crown or umbrella is tipped with 5, 448 diamonds and 2,317 rubies. The very top, the diamond bud, is tipped with a 76 carat (15g) diamond." In the background of this picture you can see the base of the stupa, and surrounding it is an enormous complex that buzzed with the activity of monks, worshippes and tourists and reminded me of (no disrepect to this sacred site intended) the North Carolina State Fair.
At the airport as I was leaving Burma, I spent my last few kyats ("chats") on a souvenir picture postcard of one of the thousands of temples in Bagan, which I had visited just a few days earlier. The color does not seem oversaturated to me. It strkes me as just right. Perfect. Bagan ("Pah-garn") is an amazing place.
At one time there were over 13,000 temples on this plain in central Burma, on the east bank of the wide and muddy Irrawady (properly the Ayeyarwady) River. About 2,200 of these temples remain standing today. It is not until you climb to the top of one of them that the rest of them are revealed. They dot the landscape like jewels. Really, that"s how it feels!
Climbing the temple. Up here some boys tried to sell me some stones, which they said were jewels, rubies I think. The scraped them and showed that they didn't scratch. They said they would take anything for them, but I (foolishly") wasn"t interested.
A massive Buddha in the base of one of the temples. You had to wander about, into the shadows, to find the doorways and stairways to the next level. There was a feeling of real adventure about this place. Like Indiana Jones, but that was just a movie!
Panning for gold by the Irrawaddy river.
The world"s largest book stands at the foot of Mandalay Hill in Mandalay, Burma. The text is carved and inscribed in gold, in the Burmese abugida script, into both sides of 730 stone tablets, for a total of 1460 "pages." Each stone tablet stands under a white structure with its own roof with a precious gem on top, and these structures are arranged around a larger golden pagoda. The carefully edited text is the Tipitaka Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism. Construction on this enormous project began in 1860 and was completed in 1868. I visited it in 1986. It was a grey day and as I recall was no one at all on the grounds, tourist or local, as a friend and I explored it. It was run-down, but there were signs that someone was caring for it as best they could. As a graphic designer and a book lover I was impressed but saddened. It is an amazing structure, an astonishing thing, really, standing neglected in a dusty corner of the world.
Click here for more pictures and information from Wikipedia.
