The Michigan Daily-Saturday, July 15, 1978-Page 9 nda la y a hypnotic motion nearly swept me off my et. intricate carvings of flowers, people, and imals cover the surrounding shrines, and rice per pictures depicting characters from Bud- ist fables hang inside. The innumerable Bud- a images fashioned from brass, wood, and me that fill these smaller temples were over- ielming. Whether reclining or sitting, large or iall, they all possess the same enlightened untenance and long ear lobes which, in Burma, licate great truthfulness. While the "winking wonder" is spirtual en- antment and fantasy, Rangoon is the physical ality of one of the poorest developing nations. len I reached city proper, the potholed ulevards teeming with people and the ar- itectural influence of the British Raj caught eye. Lying 21 miles upriver from the Gulf of artaban, Rangoon was once a gracious colonial rt, the capital of British Burma. However, ny of the dignified Victorian buildings have llen into severe disrepair, abandoned and arded up when nationalized by the gover- kent years ago. A few, like the railway station th its majestic colonnade, offer proof of for- r British dominance. he driver cajoled me into staying at the and Hotel, one of the aging British dinosaurs fering from malnutrition and neglect. While I ed to image the former glory of this square- led hotel with its porticoed facade and soiled Ate stone walls, the driver eulogized it as one Rangoon's finest today! Albeit a little seedy, it s comfortable, had hot and cold running ter, and room service-luxuries unseen in my budget travels. OWNSTAIRS in the lounge I chanced upon an Australian couple I met earlier that mon- Thailand. Sitting down to exchange anecod- and quaff a few gin and tonics,'the bar came life: several French tourists planned their itineraries at the bar; a rotund Indian with a whispy moustache spat at a distant spittoon and missed; a rat scurried for cover under a table; the overhead fans whirred as the upper- crust of Burmese society sipped whiskey and beer. My friends, who had just finished their tour of the country advised me tp plan my week carefully and head upcountry as soon as possible. Rangoon is just a shadow of Burma, they warned. Since the country is 85 per cent Buddhist, I wanted to see as many pagodas as a week would allow. What could be a better choice than Pagan, the "City of Four Million Pagodas"? Along with Cambodia's Angkor Wat (wat means temple) and Indonesia's Borobudur temple, Pagan rates as one of Buddhism's greatest achievements. The plane fare was $35, and there was a flight every morning - but not necessarily on schedule. Following a two hour delay, due partly to the ceremonious departure of the visiting Yugoslavian vice president, the twin-engine Burma Airways corporation plane finally took off. Barely two hours later we landed at tiny Nyangoo Airport, a single runway affair with a spartan terminal. Bloomin' idol made o'mud- Wot the9rcalled the Great Gawd Budd- Plucky lot she caredfor idols when Ikissed 'er where she stud' On the road to Mandalay ... The transition from Rangoon to Pagan is dramatic, like passing back in time to the primitive 1920's of the British Raj. Climbing out of the airport bus I stepped onto the single road that winds its way through the dusty walled city of 3,000. Small guesthouses with names like the "Moe-Moe", "The Burma", and the "Cooperative Inn", dot the main artery, offering accommodations for $2 or less. Bullock and hor- se carts trundled back and forth carrying produce and people between villages. Situated on the left bank of the Irrawaddy River in the central dry zone, Pagan once cradled a population of over 1,000,000, serving as the center of Buddhist learning, culture, and government in the eleventh century. Today it is anxiously with activity. Women smoked Kiplingesque "wackin' white cheroots" and sold gold painted lacquer dishes, boxes, and animal figures. Children with sandalwood powder smeared on their cherubic faces played tag in the narrow aisles of fruit and vegetables. And young men passed the day admiring the beautiful village women. A festival was in progress. Later, my amiable hotel manager, U Po, told me that every temple of note has its own pwe, or festival, and that these temples double as social and often commercial centers of the community. With Burma's plethora of pagodas, I speculated that a festival must take place almost every day somewhere in the country! U Po added that all boys must live the ascetic life of a monk from three months to two years, depending on his con- venience and free will. T HE NEXT MORNING I hired a horsecart for $1 an hour and set out to recapture Pagan's era of the temple builders. An un- marked dusty road skirting he miniature hills revealed a panorama of pagodas. Pagan is like an open-air museum, the thousands of eroded temples and monasteries its archaeological exhibits. Beginning in 1057 with King Anawrahta and lasting over two centuries, a succession of Burmese rulers covered the city's 16 arid acres with thousands of monuments of all shapes and sizes. But the ravages of time, a sacking by Kublai Khan's Mongols, and an earthquake in 1975 reduced an estimated 10-20,000 buildings to 5,000; only 100 or so interest tourists today. Rounding a parched hill covered with accacia trees we were suddenly back at the celebration, a great white temple rising up before us. The young wiry driver explained with much dif- ficulty (one of the advantages to hiring a jeep with an English-speaking guide), that the festival honored this temple, the Ananda. Con- struction scaffolding defaced the Ananda which, like 400 other temples damaged in the quake, is undergoing restoration. SeeON, Pageii