by Mike
Wandering around the dusty roads of Bagan, we took a turn toward the river and discovered a thriving little shoreline where women washed clothes, kids splashed and others bathed modestly. As we strolled past gardens that hugged the sandy bank, we met a little boat pulling to shore, letting passengers off. Three kids paddled people across the river to what must have been a small village on the other side (though, as you can see in some of the pictures, it doesn’t look like there’s anything there. I suspect the town was far back from the shore, out of the way of floodwater).
We waved the kids over and asked if they’d take us on a little tour down to the gold-covered pagoda that commands the river’s bend.
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The kids were young. They appeared to be managed by another young man on shore. I don’t remember exactly how much they asked for the half-hour ride there and back, it was something like one dollar, but we decided to pay five. We immediately regretted it. On the one hand, spreading the wealth is good, but on the other we were encouraging them to be reliant on (and to rip off) tourists, which can ruin a culture in the long run.
When we handed the kids the money they didn’t really give a look of “Thanks!,” rather they seemed to look at the money and say, “How do we hide this from our manager so he doesn’t take a cut?”
You might remember that kids from Bagan were the ones who served us at a tea shop in Yangon when we were contemplating child labor. So I guess, when I put the two situations in perspective, I’d rather give money to the boat kids who can remain home (even if working with tourists) than to tea shops who have taken kids from their families to live and work in the big city because they have no apparent prospects.
Obviously the better solution would be that the government provide adequate education, but that’s not the case right now.
(Then again, if I wasn’t so obsessed with money then maybe it wouldn’t be a central part of this story. That, itself, is counter-productive, I think.)
People fished. Another boat appeared to be dredging the river, its pump making a tremendous noise that didn’t travel too far in the humid air, but was plenty loud close up.
Throughout the trip I worried about my ankles being exposed to mosquitoes in the bottom of the boat, so we lathered up in bug repellent. Myanmar hasn’t rid itself of malaria and dengue fever, so we were constantly conscious of risky situations. Though it’s easy to look back at the pictures and romanticize the trip, a lot of energy in third-world travel is spent on minimizing risk and paying attention to your body. Am I just a little dehydrated, or is this the start of an illness? Though I’m hungry, is this food safe? Can you catch anything from drinking river water? And so on…
Posted on July 6, 2010 at 12:16 am.
by Mike
This is Amaya, proprietor of our current farmstay in St. Laurent de la Cabrerisse. She’s pretty rad. She does things we all wish we could do but are too self-conscious to pull off, like riding a fierce fox (above) or pooping under the dinner table during dessert, as she did last night (not pictured). This afternoon she managed to sneak a whole Coke and then spent the next hour running in circles screaming.
Amaya only speaks French and she speaks it better than we do, though I’ve been learning French for five times the length of her life. Occasionally she’ll bust out in a song she’s written.
“Do you want to hear my song? Do you want to hear my song?”
“Yeah! Let’s hear it!”
“Poulet poulet. That’s the song.”
“That was very nice!”
Amaya is friends with most people she meets, especially the old men in the courtyard who pass their days on the benches. They’re always happy to have her pulling on them, climbing on them or playing the guitar in the middle of the group. She’s quite a gutsy gal.
Posted on March 20, 2010 at 8:05 am.
by Mike
Kids playing in the surf – near Krabi, Thailand.
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Posted on January 11, 2010 at 8:54 am.
A dangerous professional choice.
by Mike
Two immense trees tower over parts of the landscape in southeast Bali. In the evening, when it’s cool and beautiful, the trees are visible against the orange sky like temples on the horizon. They can be seen across emerald rice paddies where farmers work late into the evening; they’re visible to the farmers’ kids socializing on the street; they’re visible to duck herders, using long sticks and whooping noises to herd their frantic flock past the kids. All this happens on the road as it bends between rice paddies to the ocean. We set course for the trees.
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Posted on December 15, 2009 at 9:39 pm.
Nothin wrong with kids & dogs. Chinatown, Bangkok, Thailand.
by Mike & Nicole
This morning someone asked me if I was ok. I was fine, I just wasn’t smiling. Stoic, you know, to show I wasn’t taking their culture for granted, not treating it like an amusement park.
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Posted on December 4, 2009 at 9:23 am.
