In Myanmar, Buddhism plays an important role in people’s spiritual life. People get up early in the morning and go to temples to pray and stick gold leaf into the Buddha image. They go to temples to seek peace in their mind to escape from the difficulties surrounding them.
- Tai
Evidence really showed that until now the people of Myanmar still putting religion as a center for their way of leading and ruling this country. A lot of temples, giant stupas and Buddha images, which we visited, had been built by the current government. They definitely spent a huge amount of money for those achievements. The Myanmar people, in other words, spent most of their time to pay homage to their Nat (spirits), sitting and praying loudly at the temple, as in the cases at Mahamuni sitting Buddha, that people get up very early to attend the Buddha face washing ceremony.
- Sopheak
Beside agriculture, people also make handicrafts and sell them in the markets or to tourists. I have been to the silver smith, silk, lacquer ware shop and I can say that they were very skillful to make sophisticated products. However, in term of price, these products did not have competitive price. They also did small business or service. It seems that service sectors in Myanmar are still behind other countries in the regions because of the slow development of tourism.
Thanks to the popularity of Buddhism, it also promotes the handicrafts to develop and create jobs for local citizens. Making gold leaf is very widespread in Myanmar. Buddhism followers buy gold leaf to stick to Buddha image to do merit.
- Tai
The language ability of some vendors, including the little children, surprised me. Some could speak up to five languages, although most of what they knew was only simple sentences. That is the reason why I strongly felt that these people should have an access to proper education, because they are more than capable to learn new things. I hope that one day these children would not have to approach foreigners and say to them ‘you buy, you buy, I give you cheap price’ anymore, and get to be in the school, studying, where they belong. Behind the happy face of the local, I know that they have to struggle a lot to survive day-by-day.- Nat
Through the visit to their great sites, such as the old Palace Museum in Mandalay, the National Museum in Yangon, other old cities and monasteries, I pictured myself the glorious past of Myanmar and the power of their Kings which I think were extremely powerful, compared to the Kings in Cambodia. However, the glory of Myanmar appeared at the same time of the decline of Angkor. It was then no doubt that the Kings of Myanmar invaded Ayutthaya of Thailand many times. It is perhaps (my conclusion, which maybe wrong) that the current government is proud of their past and the way of ruling a vast area of land.
- Sopheak
Concerning the preservation and rebuilding of the Royal palace, based on the visit of two Royal palaces in the Union of Myanmar--Hongsavady (Bago) and the last King of Myanmar’s Palace in Mandalay-- I think the Government of the Union of Myanmar spent a lot of money (many thousand millions) to rebuild both palaces. As you know, the palace has many components and each of the components is very expensive. Moreover, the Union of Myanmar is a rich country. They used gold and many kinds of material in rebuilding the palace. It would have been better for the government to use this budget to develop the economy and infrastructure in their country. However, the preservation is good. If Lao PDR rebuilt the palace like that I think it would be very useful for the young generation and tourists to study about the country in the past and very important for tourism.
- Khamla
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