Myanmar News Articles: To the land of the ‘enchanting mistress’

Day One. Tuesday 9 September 2014

Thai Airways TG 916 starts for London non-stop from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi at 13:00 and I am on it. With a battered book, David Irving's "The War Between the Generals," the story of how the Allied generals were able to work together against a common enemy despite historic differences and long-standing animosity among themselves.

I had already read it twice: the first time during the late 80's and the second when it was given to me by a friendly lady sometime in the year 2000. I had enjoyed it very much, But now I want to read it again because I know I've got if plenty of time when I'm traveling and I want to refresh myself of what Churchill said:

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies-and that is fighting without them.

And of what Eisenhower, then supreme commander of the allied forces, said in frustration:

I'm tired of dealing with prima donnas. By God, you tell that bunch that if they can't get together and stop quarrelling like children, I will tell the Prime Minister (Winston Churchill) to get someone else to run this damn war.

I alternate between sleep and reading during the 12 hour passage to Heathrow, enjoying both.

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The sun is about to set when the plane climbs down to the airport. It then takes 20 minutes for it to taxi itself to the rampway. It is obviously a lot bigger than Suvarnbhumi.

It takes another 30 minutes from to queue up and get past through the immigration. Just comparing the photo in my document and the real me isn't enough. He still wants to check my thumb print and index finger print. He also wants to know why I'm putting up in Oxford when my talks are being organized in London and in Brighton. ("Don't get upset," a friend had warned me. "It's routine and they're just doing their job.")

There is Venerable Maha Sena to pick me up when I come out of the baggage claim area. He wears a long coat made up of Shan fabric Wan-Khawn (also known as Man-Khawn) looking like a Tibetan monk more than a Theravada monk, the likes of which are familiar both in Burma and Thailand.

It takes another hour for us to get to the Oxford Buddha Vihara (OBV) where the Shan's most celebrated monk Dr Khammai Dhammasami dwells. By the time I have washed myself and prepare for bed it is nearly midnight (0600, 10 September by Thai count).

The weather is fine as England enters autumn/fall: pleasantly cool. The trench coat purchased and presented by Khun Pha when I was in New York 19 years ago therefore goes idle throughout my stay.

I then realize I don't feel like coming to a strange land, even though I have never been here before. A sort of déjà vu, you might say. Maybe it's because I've watched a lot of movies beginning with "Ivanhoe" when I was six and a lot of stories starting with "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" when I went to school.

Vladimir' Peniakoff, a Russian Belgian, better known as Popski during World War Ⅱ, has written that even though he wasn't born there he had "loved it with a somewhat ridiculous fervor: as a boy, having loved an incredibly enchanting mistress and broken away, will go on loving her memory all his life."

The thought that maybe I have returned to another home of my long lost existence, even though I didn't much feel crazy about coming here in the first place, strikes as I slip away into sleep.