Are Burma’s Ruins the Next Disney World?

Burma (or Myanmar) has long been on my list of dream destinations. And urgings from fellow travelers to get there sooner rather than later are resonating all the louder after reading a frightening yet fascinating piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. In a country notoriously corrupt and cut off from the rest of the world, some of the greatest ruins on the planet—the temple complex at the ancient city of Bagan—are at serious risk of turning into a “temple theme park,” writes Richard C. Paddock. And this is no mousy attempt at attracting tourists.

Fueled by the greed for tourism dollars and cash donations from Burma’s elite who believe that contributing to the construction of new temples will boost their Buddhist karma, the country’s militaristic government is slowly but surely destroying one of the world’s great cultural wonders.

Writes Paddock:

The bricklayers are paid $1.35 a day to rebuild the ancient ruin: a small, 13th century temple reduced by time to little more than its foundation.

But they have no training in repairing aged monuments, and their work has nothing to do with actually restoring one of the world’s most important Buddhist sites. Instead, using modern red bricks and mortar, they are building a new temple on top of the old.

They work from a single page of drawings supplied by the government. Three simple sketches provide the design for a generic brick structure and a fanciful archway. No one knows, or seems to care, what the original temple looked like. Nearby are two piles of 700-year-old bricks that were pulled from the ruin. The bricklayers use them to fill holes in the temple.

[Snip]

The original bricks were made with clay and rice husks and, according to legend, kneaded by elephants. The mortar was made of molasses, buffalo leather, cotton and fermented peanut oil, archeologists say. The old mortar was put on as thin as superglue; the modern cement is laid on thick.

To make the new temples look more like ruins, the bricks are coated with brown paint made from ground-up ancient bricks. The idea is to have them look like old structures that have lost their stucco. It doesn’t take long, however, for the paint to wash off.

And the blight on Bagan does not stop with faux bricks.

On the eastern edge of the cultural heritage zone, the government recently built a 154-foot observation tower that resembles a grain silo and sits alongside a new resort complex and golf course. For $10—two weeks’ salary for a teacher here—visitors can take an elevator to the top, have a drink and watch the sun set over the temples.

It sure puts Disney’s ever-spreading malignancy in my adopted hometown of Orlando into perspective.

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