ANYWAY…
here is a recap of my day so far.
I arrived at my guesthouse at 10, and found a map of the city. There aren’t too many things I wanted to do here, just see some pagodas, the palace, and Mandalay Hill. I’m staying near the palace and everything else looked walkable, so I decided I would go into the palace through the west gate, come out in the east, then go north to the hill and pagodas.
I had heard the palace was huge, but it really is HUGE. It takes about 30 minutes just to walk down one side. There is a big moat and wall around everything, too, so I couldn’t even see anything. I got to the first gate, and there was a ton of barbed wire and guards with a big sign that said NO FOREIGNER ENTRY AT THIS GATEWAY. Shit! I headed north.. same situation at that gate. I’m certain that the one I would be allowed in is the south one, which would have been my last one, but I didn’t even make it that far.
So I went to a couple pagodas around Mandalay Hill, saw the world’s biggest book and biggest iron Buddha (I think). Then started up the “Hill.” Okay, I really didn’t know what to expect because where I’m from, we call that a “mountain”. I felt like I kept climbing stairs forever, then—oh! this is the top! yay!—oh, more stairs. This happened about ten times. It just kept going and going forever. After about an hour, I reached the real top, covered in sweat. Oh, okay, cool view, now I have to go ALL THE WAY DOWN. It felt like I had been gone for days, and since there are pagodas the whole way up, I was barefoot. No shoes in Burmese (and many other countries’) religious places. My feet are .. pretty gross after Bagan and now the Hill today.
Soo, on the way down and up, there are people selling stuff the whole way. There are also a few palm readers. One of them, a man who looked as though he had climbed the hill 80 years ago and said “fuck it, I’ll stay here and tell jibberish to foreigners to make money”, stopped me to ask what my motherland was.
“America.. have you heard of it?” Ha ha ha I’m so funny.
“Yes, USA number one! Me Nepali!”
“Oh wow, cool!”
“Come, talk, talk, five minutes!”
“Ah.. I can’t.. very tired..” and I know you’re just going to try to get money from me..
“Five minutes! Sit!”
So I sat and this dude pulled out a chalkboard and asked me my birthyear, month, and then guessed the day. “27?” “26.. very good guess..”
He then flipped through this little old book and started writing down random numbers. “5—lucky number! Luuucckyy number for you!”
Then I think he told me I would marry a man born in 1982 or 1983 and we would have two “chillren”. I’m also supposed to get a lot of money in May 2010, so I look forward to that. Then he said stuff about Australia and Germany and India, but I kind of missed a lot of, well, everything he said.
He also read my palms and said I was “verryy luuuckky” several times. He tied a red string around my wrist—verryy luuckkyy. Then after five minutes, hey, what do you know—“Okay $10!”
“TEN dollars?! No way.”
“Okay five.”
“FIVE dollars?! That’s a lot of money.”
He kept insisting on five, but I got him down to 3,000 kyat and a picture of him, haha.
Then I went alllll the way down the hill and walked allll the way back around the palace to this little internet cafe with no internet access. I think tomorrow I’m going to try to find the entrance to the palace then try out a Burmese movie theater?
