Teach you I will...

So we found ourselves at the Shwedegon Pagoda in Rangoon with wet pants and hot feet. In Burma, you don't take your shoes off upon entering a temple, you take your shoes off upon entering a temple complex. As such, you walk around the Shwedegon, or any temple complex, very carefully. In many places, such as Shwedegon, they have helpfully put down white marble pathways, as white marble only gets extremely hot on the feet, as opposed to the deathly hot surfaces of the non-white marble.

Anyway, we walked in and were immediately met by a man who introduced himself as a guide, and we said sure, as we were at that time without a guidebook, our guidebook to Burma resting comfortably on our bookshelf back in Vientiane. We never caught his name, so we just called him Yoda. It wasn't so much his look that made him seem like Yoda, although that didn't hurt. It was more his way of speaking to us. "You listen, I will tell you knowledge," he said. And we believed him. There was wisdom in those disjointed English ramblings. "You follow. Come. Come. I show you knowledge and history," he said. And we followed. He does look a bit like Yoda too.


It didn't take long for Katherine to realize that Yoda was completely drunk, which was quite a feat given it was 10:00 am on a Thursday and he was at work. He had a penchant for close talking, which meant that Katherine soon developed a penchant for walking relatively far from Yoda. As always, Katherine stuck to the white marble.



Burmese are very superstitious, and their biggest superstition is related to the day of the week a person is born. The day you are born basically pre-ordains your destiny. And there aren't 7 days to be born on, but 8, as Wednesday is split into two days, early, and late, for some reason. Anyway, surrounding the Pagoda are animals that represent the days of the week. People born on Tuesdays, for instance, are represented by the Lion. Wednesday morning is the tuskless elephant, while Wednesday evening is the Tusker. So all of the animal representations have stations around the Pagoda, and people come to make offerings, etc. to their particular day of the week. Katherine and I guessed for a while with Yoda.

"Oh, I was born on a Thursday," I said. "That's a very unlucky day," said Yoda. "How about Friday? I was born on Friday," said Katherine. "Worse," said Yoda. "How about Monday? Is that a good day?" I asked. "Oh, the tiger. That is a very lucky day," he said.

So Katherine declares us both Monday born, and we headed off to give blessings to the Monday corner, the blessing consisting basically of taking water from the faucet, pouring it over the buddha, then over the tiger. Always with the water with these people.