Priced to Move

But soon enough, we board, and yes, I’m again stuck with the S.T.U.D.’s token stud as a seat partner. Fortunately for all concerned, this leg of the trip is short.

And then we’re in Yangon—better known to everyone as Rangoon. What’s with all that name changing? Burma . . . Myanmar. Rangoon . . . Yangon. It’s too confusing. At least Mandalay’s still Mandalay, and the Mogok Valley goes by its real name.

We reach the Mandalay City Hotel later that evening—the next evening? The evening before? All this time zone changing is hard on the brain. By now I’m so sick of planes, airports, and Max reading Antoinette Matlins that I don’t bother to look around, even though I’ve heard the views from the hotel are incredible. I should have enough time for that in the morning. But morning comes too fast for my jet lag, and it brings new experiences with it. When we meet downstairs at the restaurant for breakfast, we also meet our . . . what shall I call them? Escorts is too tame a term.

“Pssst!” Miss Mona hisses to get my attention. “I’m not sure I trust them.”

“I’m sure I don’t trust them.” I nod toward our “guide.” “Check him out. That bulge on his belt and under his shirt? That’s a gun.”

Miss Mona sniffs. “Then that’s no guide. I insist they provide us with a real guide, not some thug who’ll do who knows what to us. Let’s call the embassy.”

“Ah . . . the diplomatic relations deal, remember? I doubt the U.S. Embassy can help us.” I give our “translator” a good look. “That other one’s armed too. And you know the Myanma embassy told us that to get the visas we had to accept a secret service escort for the whole time we’re here. That must be the third one, the one who’s wearing a suit, and who hasn’t said a word.”

Miss Mona leans closer. “Let me tell you, I don’t like him any better.”

“Do you want to go to the Mogok Valley?”

“Of course. That’s what we came here for, honey.”

“Then we’re just going to have to put up with them, deal with the ickiness of it all, get the footage we want to use, and then hightail it back home.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Max says from behind me. “I don’t like the look of this.”

“You mean the Myanmar Welcome Wagon?” Sorry. Sarcasm just pops out sometimes. Okay, okay. Maybe more than sometimes. I gotta work on that, right, God?

“I mean the government types that are going to watch everything we say and do until we board the plane for the U.S.”

I turn to him. “You know what, Max? They’re spies. We know that. We knew the rules from the get-go. But we also wanted these visas, remember? We’ll just have to watch our step. None of us has a hidden agenda, and we don’t want to check out the inside of a Burmese prison cell.”

Miss Mona looks horrified.

Max looks worried.

Me? Beats me what I look like. But I can tell you I’m not loving this. And I’m not feeling the love here, either. They did invite us, but they sure haven’t gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. Did we make a mistake by coming? Is filming the legendary Mogok Valley mines worth the chance of getting stuck with a Go-directly-to-a- Mandalay-jail card?

Sigh. I want to see the mines. The other? Not so much.

After breakfast, we head out, and in the parking lot, I get my first glimpse of Mandalay Hill. It dominates the city and the flat plain below.

“Nice, eh?” our translator asks. “You want climb to top? You see city from there, the Royal Palace and Fortress, the Irrawaddy River, and Shan Hills.”

I smile. “It’s beautiful. But it looks steep.”

“You climb the stair, okay?”

“Stairs? Up a hill?”

He nods.

“Okay. I guess that’ll work.”

Miss Mona comes close. “What’ll work?”

“To climb Mandalay Hill. He says there’s stairs we can use.”

“You and Max can certainly do all the climbing your little hearts desire, Andie. I’m staying by the pool.”

Our translator beams. “Pool nice, eh?”

“Sure,” I say. “But we have pools in the U.S. Mandalay Hill is here. It’s more interesting than the hotel pool.”

“So true,” Max adds. “But will we have time between working to go for a climb?”

I frown. “We can make the time, right, Miss Mona?”

“Climb away. I have me a stack of good books, and the poolside lounge chairs have big old umbrellas. Add some iced tea, and I’m all set.”

Our translator clucks at the unenlightened among us. “When Gautama Buddha visit hill, his hand point to flat land, and he prophesy. He say great city and religion center will be at bottom of hill. Now there’s pagodas, shreeens, three bones of the Buddha, temple with statue of King Mindon.”

Shreeens? He must mean shrines. I shudder. I’m not so cool with Buddhism and all