One night in Yangon I was catching the ridiculously crowded public bus back to my guest house. I was standing up the front where the monks sit. Reaching for some money the monk in the seat shook his head at me. I wanted to pay the attendant but the monk kept giving me this look of “Don’t”. The monk didn’t speak English but eventually I worked out that he had paid for me and he wanted to help me get home. When we got down I thought he would just point me in the right direction and be gone but he escorted me right inside my guest house. The owner spoke English and told me the monk would like to come tomorrow to see me at 10 o’clock. What could I do but say OK? That night we had dinner together, a monk is a very cheap dinner companion – they don’t eat after 12 noon. Even so, somehow he ended up paying for me. Chris Hall would be proud.
The next day I went to his monastery where there was a man who could translate. The monk’s name was U Ki La Ta. He had been to London and knew it could be hard in a foreign country so he wanted to help me travel around Myanmar. I agreed.
First stop was the bookstore for 2 dictionaries and 3 English-Myanmar phrase books. “I can do this” I thought. It was frustrating and hard initially. I would want to go somewhere or do something but could not communicate this to U Ki and so we would end up somewhere I didn’t want to go. It would normally turn out for the better but not without a bit of agony first. We would be together every hour of the day, except at night when he would go to the monastery to sleep, returning in the morning. How do you communicate “I want my own space?” when your phrasebook has only sentences like “Please lower the price” in it? Or “I know you wake up at 4am, but I like to sleep in, please don’t come before 10 o’clock in the morning”. It would become a running joke, here was I with my love of sleep and food together with a never-tiring, never-cold, never-hungry, never-wanting monk. 14yrs of monk hood makes you super human.
He took good care of me, too much care at first. He made sure I never paid too much for anything and could remember market prices like anything. Sometimes I wanted to give more than the market price but he wouldn’t let me! But our increasing knowledge of the others language was an iron that could smooth out all these little crinkles, and a certain rapport developed.
He was used to taking public transport all the time and so I did too, riding in or on top of cramped buses.
For all the government does or doesn’t do, it certainly has the populace scared. People are afraid to talk about politics or criticise anything to do with the government. This became really apparent when I was talking to a book store owner. I was asking about the NLD and he was afraid to talk to me because he thought U Ki was a government spy and had a tape recorder in his bag. Paranoia has a strange way of spreading and I found myself checking his bag later, there was nothing in it. I felt ashamed.
Speaking of baggage, no one travels lighter than a monk. He was me with my 15kg backpack and a carry bag, and he was travelling with a shoulder bag containing books, umbrella, razor, and one spare set of robes.
