Sunny, our affable hiking guide, told the Brazilian Princess (BP) and me we had two options: spend the first trek night in a local villager’s home, or sleep over in a Buddhist monastery.
Immediately visions popped into my head of spunky young novice monks waking us with gentle Burmese chanting in a bright, sunlit building domed with flowers and bells gently ringing in the breezy courtyard under frangipani trees. Elders would meditate with us, peacefully emancipating our attached western minds and inviting us into an enlightened state of nirvana – all before breakfast!
And very fit 20-somethings, wavering on their faith to this monastic lifestyle and all the silly celibacy it requires, would sagely ask us for our worldly guidance, in the privacy of our sleeping quarters, obviously.
Without even a sideways glance, we both shouted to Sunny, ‘We’ll take the monastery!’
BP is not actual royalty, but she has princess, er, tendencies. After a month of traveling through Southeast Asia together, I counted on her to demand only the best bungalows (with a discount, damnit) and to send back imperfect tom kha gai — even from street vendors. She was something else, but we bonded over our common commitment to support local people as much as possible.
And you know, hot monks need help, too.
We were on a three-day hike through the hilly farmlands of Myanmar, trekking from Inle Lake to a Kalaw in Shan State, one of the country’s few areas open to foreigners. Myanmar isn’t the easiest country to travel in. Fly Myanmar Airways, and you might as well give your stash of freshly printed US dollars directly to the rather unfriendly military regime. Buy a train ticket, and you hate Aung San Suu Kyi. But travel by foot? You support local people!
Tourists don’t really come to Myanmar – about 300,000 did last year, and only four percent of those were American. “Am I the only Brazilian to ever travel here?” BP asked when we turned in our visa applications in Bangkok, spooked by her own trendsetting.
Most visitors are Thai, French or Chinese tourists, on organized tours that support government-run transportation, hotels and entertainment.
Locals hate tour groups . But supporting the government in some ways is unavoidable – even privately-owned hostels and eateries have to pay a 12 percent tax to Uncle Junta.
By traveling independently, BP and I could spend our kyat the way we wanted. That way was village by village, with the promise of a little interfaith fling with brown-eyed, bald men of the crimson cloth just over the muddy hills.
We climbed.
Six long, highly anticipated hours later, we arrived, sweaty but ready to mingle. One elderly monk, head hanging in the ennui of religious servitude, was there to soberly greet us. Sunny neglected to mention this monastery had been neglected and only three monks lived in residence. None of them were under age 75.
It was the darkest monastery ever on earth, ever. Teak wood blackened by cooking smoke suffocated the lodge-y space, dotted with apathetic Buddhas. An endless wall of Polaroids documented bald, cotton-swathed monks unsmiling and emaciated in what appeared to be the most depressing days of their lives. Even the candles dimmed of their own accord, embarrassed they had to shed light on such gloom.
The Head of Monks was a silent blob of skin and bones morosely hanging out in the darkest corner of the monastery with a single, flickering candle mood-lighting his grump. His black-rimmed spectacles were peeking from beneath a pile of plush polyester blankets that featured smiling orange kittens in a field of pink roses.
He only moved to pass gas – loudly and with the unapologetic flourish unique to old men. When we said hello, he farted and groaned in reply.
Clearly, this was not the hot monk orgy I’d had in mind. Instead, it was like spending the night in the palliative care unit of a haunted geriatric home, but less fun.
In Myanmar, the big vice is chewing kun-ya, a cocktail of betel leaves, areca nuts, something dodgy called ‘slaked lime’, something even more questionable called ‘cutch’, and – don’t quote me on this – I swear I saw the kun-ya hawkers in Rangoon smear in Elmer’s glue. Chewing this blob gives you this wildly charming bleeding-from-my-gums look that I normally associate with meth addicts.
Men chew it. Monks chew it. I chewed it and promptly spit it out, which is what you’re supposed to do. It was hard to tell if the red soil was enriched with iron, or leached with loogies.
Turns out the Head of Monks is a big kun-ya chewer. I don’t know if it’s related, but he started complaining to Sunny that he was being tortured by bad spirits on his left arm. I suspected living in one of the nine layers of hell might’ve had something to do with it, but I’m sure Dante is banned in Myanmar, so I kept my mouth shut.
The old man was in luck, though. Sunny happened to be moonlighting as a black magic exorcist that month. You know, when he’s not hiking two princesses through Myanmar’s lake district… He was a man of many hats! Sunny performed a 30-minute exorcism that closely resembled a Swedish massage. Then bam! It worked. Almost like magic. The Head of Monks was this close to forming a wrinkly smile as he hobbled away, grumbling in Burmese and hawking up more holy red phlegm to be deposited by our flip-flops.
With monastic intrigue going way over our heads, BP and I voted to spend the next night in the village with garlic farmers.
Julie Lauderbaugh writes The Snarky Traveler, a travel humor blog dedicated to making her mom cringe. In 2010, she left behind her life in Portland, Oregon, and bought an around-the-world ticket. You can follow her on Twitter and join the Snarky conversation on Facebook.