Back to the country of monks: beyond the pictures

MYANMAR | Friday, 5 July 2013 | Views [314] | View Smaller Image

A late afternoon at the U-Bein bridge. Peaceful, nothing looks to have changed in a country stucked into the past for 50 years, except some tourist boats in the distance. It's hard to imagine that in 2007 Mandalay, with the most important monastic population of Burma, suffered mass arrests in monasteries during the Saffron Revolution. Since western medias in early 2012 have promoted the opening of the country that occurred one year before, it has become destination #1 for travel agencies.

Orphans like here in Bagan are welcomed in monasteries were they will receive an education. And poor families will send there one of their sons to study. Every begging bowl belongs to a monk. In Buddhist families, every boy will spend 3 months in a monastery between the age of 5 and 15.
In Burma, around 2% of men are monks. In 2006, some of them confided in me it was a way to have a decent life without the risk to be requisitioned by force by the military junta for building roads, pipelines...

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Intense life around the Golden Rock, one of the holiest places for the Theravada Buddhism. Till recently, westerners had to leave the top of the hill before sunset if they hadn't booked into one of the three government’s hotels.

The drawback of the tourism rush is the inadequate accommodation capacity in Burma and the massive arrival of cash that has raised prices up to 10 in 18 months for activities related to tourism. As a side effect, locals may have difficulties to access these services.

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Back to the country of monks: beyond the pictures

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