Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
We are only a few miles short of our proper destination for the night, but no matter, we are not in a hurry; the Burmans up-stream, waiting for their market, are not either, they will just have to camp out for the night.
The Maidan was pretty a pleasant plain of green grass, beautifully framed with distant jungle and mountains. G. and I made the audience at first, with two or three dozen Burmans and Sikhs. In the evening a delightful dinner-party, the above two deputies entertaining the aforesaid company in the Fort. 7th February.
There were blue-clad Chinese, Shans with tattooed legs, turbans of pink or white, and Burmans dressed in brilliant purple or green, Las, yellow-skinned Lisos, flat-faced Palaungs, Was, and Kachins in black and red strung about with beads or shells.
These natives have marvellous ways. We must rest a while this afternoon and have an early tea before starting out to see the palace which lies inside that brick wall. The tea is decent, the toast smoky, and the milk very poor. Ramaswamy says that it is almost impossible to get milk; the Burmans don't drink it themselves, and he thinks we shall have to fall back upon that condensed stuff.
Burman attendants wearing turbans and skirts, called lyungis, of purest mauve, and dainty white jackets, glide about with the refreshments. Burmans will seldom take service with anyone, generally they leave that to the natives of India, but they make a distinction in the case of anyone so important as the Lieutenant-Governor. "It's all rather overwhelming to me," says my friend.
Nor should I fail to mention another thing that impressed me very much in Rangoon: the graves of the English officers who were killed in the war with the Burmans many years ago, and are now buried within the walls of the picturesque old Buddhist Temple.
There are old and young; Shans, Burmans, Chinese, Kachins the young Burmese beauties vastly set off by the various northern tribes. Up the sand I see, for example, a group of three, an old lady and two young things sitting under a pink parasol, each with knees tucked up in a red purple and lemon yellow silk tamaine or tight skirt.
"It seems almost too much to believe that God has begun to manifest His grace to the Burmans," the members of the little mission band said one to another; but the sincerity of Moung Hau was such that they could not doubt it, and after a time of probation he was publicly baptized. There were signs that this convert was only the first of an abundant harvest.
It is also said that the women then adopted the same dress as the men, the panung, a garment something like the sarong but drawn up in the middle, front and back. The cutting of the hair and the peculiar garb make it difficult to tell the Siamese women from the men. The style is distinctive with the women, as all of the surrounding people the Burmans, Laos, and Malays wear the sarong.
Here was a semicircle of chairs. On our way to these, a long row of squatting Burmans was passed. As the Resident approached, the Menghyi gave the word, and they promptly stood erect in line. He explained that they were the superior officers of the army quartered in the capital generals, he called them whom he had asked to meet us.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking