Time zones are a strange thing and they take on a somewhat arbitrary quality in this corner of the world. Burma has decided it isn't in one or another time zone but, instead, in its own time zone. Remarkably a propos for this divinely backwards country of 42 million souls. Therefore, we are informed to set our watches one half-hour forward….or is it back. Two days later forward or backward will be an important distinction.

One bizarre requirement upon arrival in Burma is that each adult must exchange US$200 into FEC's or Foreign Equivalent Certificates at an artificial rate of 1 FEC to the dollar. It is a method for the military government to acquire foreign currency and they force hotels and restaurants to accept them but they pocket the foreign currency usually US dollars. Get it? Meanwhile most Burmese use the nation's standard currency called kyat which is all over the board as far as valuation.

Arriving at the airport in Rangoon we were greeted by a smiling young Burmese woman behind the immigration counter. She invited us to contribute a "present" by repeatedly typing "10" into a calculator and showing us the display as she said in fairly clear English that only one of us will have to convert $200 into FEC' s. After the third time I see her type "10" into the calculator and slide it across the counter toward us, the lightbulb gets switched on. Aha! I am being asked for a "present". Ten US dollars floats out of my wallet up onto the counter just to see what will happen. She places the calculator on top of the money, slides it to the side and gives us our 200 FEC's. In the absence of our "present" we would have been forced to exchange US$400 into FEC's and thereby support the government. The lesser of two evils I tell myself as a rationalization for the cost of the "present". Later I would realize that it was a rather useless transaction….for me.

After sharing our travel plans within Burma with our cab driver's English speaking co-pilot, he turns to us with beetlenut stained teeth reminding me of Dental Awareness Day in grammar school where we chewed on tart red tablets to reveal plaque on our teeth. I couldn't help but smirk recalling the similarity. He encourages us to forgo our overnight visit to the strange, spectacular monk magnet known as the balancing golden boulder of Kyaiktiyo Zedi. The conditions of the roads are very poor and the quality of transportation is highly suspect he claims. Kyaiktiyo Zedi is only 150 KM (105 miles) from Rangoon but it will take six hours one-way in an overloaded bus with locals encrusted to every handhold. It is a long way to go for a visit of one attraction...a gold leaf covered boulder balanced on the top of a large cliff. After a brief sequestered huddle, Lisa and I break to inform our self-appointed travel guide that we will take his advice and extend our stay in Bagan in Northern Burma to four days. His sage advice proves to be quite worthy.

He smiles a red stained tooth smile and tells us we will need money and he can handle the "black-market" transaction but we must not tell anybody. Visions of Zimbabwe flash through my mind and I hand over a clean crisp $100 bill which he disappears into a smoke stained building in downtown Rangoon. "There goes my $100" I say to myself wondering if I will ever see him again. Ten minutes later he reappears with a bundle of bills, 100,000 Kyats in 1,000 note denominations. When a meal for two of rice and chicken, with fried noodles and vegetables, two cokes and a beer weilds a price tag of under $2.00 I think we can accept this coincidentally round exchange rate of 1000 kyat to the dollar. The official rate at a bank for this devalued currency is less than 7 kyat to the dollar. But you can only buy kyat. No one will buy them back and part with their prized US dollars. The black market keeps the country running. We learned how this works in Zimbabwe.

Next item on the agenda: traveling from Rangoon to Bagan. The trip takes somewhere between 14-18 hours by bus over bone jarring roads no improved since the British left in 1948. Then there's the rail option but it is not recommended because the trains frequently breakdown and we would be stuck in rural areas of Burma for at least 24 hours before the government realized it didn't want foreigners poking around in non sanctioned tourist locations and made an attempt to relocate us, most likely by truck. Although we were attracted to the adventure of a train ride through the country, neither option seemed appealing on our limited amount of time in the country so we opted for a flight to and from Bagan. It was amusing watching the two travel agents attempting to contact the airline office at the airport. A bank of five telephones lined up across their desks and they began busily dialing the six-digit number hanging up and trying again for fifteen minutes. They must've tried a hundred times before success. I returned to the hotel and Lisa and I headed off to explore Downtown Rangoon in the sticky heat. Apparently we chose a part of town to which few westerners are attracted. We wandered around like headless chickens drawing the gaze of many Burmese. Lisa was once again thankful for having dyed her hair a darker color. We wandered around, viewing the local merchants' wares. Every man and boy in the city had his mouth packed with a palm leaf wrapped around chopped beetlenut sweetened with a creamy sugar sauce. As they walked they spit humongous mouthfuls of red juice onto the sidewalks. The red tinted sidewalks suddenly made perfect sense. Yuck! When in Rome…we decided and we both were given chopped beetlenut to sample. Bitter. Chalky. It was no wonder they sweetened it and covered it with a leaf. Lisa got sick. I waited for the narcotic like buzz to descend upon me. No luck. Later, we stopped for a $3.00 meal and decided maybe it wasn't too smart to be wandering around the downtown area at 9:00pm at night.

The next morning my reliable Timex Indiglo watch woke us at 5:30 AM. The plan was to visit the Shwedagon temple on the outskirts of town to witness the sunrise. With no taxi's around we decided to walk. It was only a few miles up the road, no problem. We arrived and were amazed at how little activity was going on. There were no tourists here at all. Not one. And very few locals. We removed our shoes and walked up the marble steps to the main Pagoda scratching the passing sky with it's 326 foot spire. The entire massive pagoda is covered in gold and has been so since the mid 15th century when Queen Shin Paw Pu donated her weight in gold, all 90 pounds. This was beaten into thin sheets and lacquered onto the whole spire. Subsequent donors have by now covered the Shwedagon with several layers of gold and today the pagoda is covered by 13,153 - 30 sq. cm plates of solid gold, topped by a gold and silver covered vane studded with 1,100 diamonds. These diamonds have a total 1,718 carats and the vane is also set with 1,383 precious stones. Over this a hollow sphere of solid gold covered by 4,351 more diamonds weighing 1,800 carats and topped with a single 76 carat diamond. It is a jewelers wet dream.

We wandered around amongst the brown and burgundy robed monks, more conservative than their saffron clad Thai counterparts, and the few locals who had arrived to pay their tributes to Buddha. I found it odd that the sky was not yet getting light after about a half-hour after our arrival, roughly 6:45 AM. Finally the sky began to grow light and we sat on the cold marble staring up at the spire in awe as the first light of the day warmed the horizon. The same sun that was losing its strength at 3:30 PM in California. The hundreds of solemn Buddha images peered from their marble shelters as the sun bathed the gold spire. The air felt thick with silence as everyone savored the smell of sunrise and the taste of the tropical morning air. It really felt different at that moment. Then the sun melted away the magic as the first rays of erupted on the horizon. Within twenty minutes it began to feel like a day, as any other day.

Early morning is now my favorite time of the day, before everyone else is up and moving around. There is so much beauty in the rapidly transforming light. It is a time of introspection and to feel humility in our insignificance compared to the awesome forces of nature. But you don't have to travel half way around the planet to appreciate that.

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