Mawlamyine
or
Moulmein
is
the capital of Mon State, a seaport and the
third largest city in Myanmar.
The name
Mawlamyine
or Moulmein is derived from the words ‘ Mawya
Myine’ meaning ‘forest haunt of peacocks.’
Just 70 km south of Thaton by road or rail,
it is also linked by air with Yangon- only
forty-five minutes flight time, since the
road is not as bad it makes some sense to
drive there with the car, but not in the
night !!
Coming from
Yangon either by road or rail, the
traveler
gets off at Moattama (Martaban), the terminus for both,
and takes a ferry to Mawlamyine or Moulmain on the
opposite shore.
This city will
always be associated with Kipling’s verse
reproduced below, which made it known far
and wide:
By the old
Moulmein pagoda lookin’ lazy at the sea
.There’s a Burmese girl a-settin’ and I know
she thinks o’ me,
For the wind is in the palm trees and the
temple bells they say ‘Come you back you
British soldier, come you back to Mandalay!’
Due to its
hilltop location from the Kyaikthanlan
Pagoda there is a lovely views over the
city and harbor, the Thanlwin (Salween)
River on the West and the Taungnyo hills to
the east. Another interesting pagoda has
four life-sized figures, three - an old man,
a sick man and a dead man- depicting that
life is transitory, and a holy ascetic -
representing how one must strive to gain
freedom from the inevitability of mortal
existence.
These were the ‘Omens’
that influenced Prince Siddartha Gautama to seek
the path for enlightenment and ultimately
succeeding in becoming Gautama Buddha.
Mawlamyine Moulmein Salween river
front Myanmar
Mawlamyine or Moulmein is a
beautiful town south of Yangon on
the Gulf of Martaban.
One
of the oldest British settlements
in Myanmar or Burma.
Mawlamyine or Moulmein
is located at the mouth of the
Thanlwin or Salween river, and
timber trade is on of the main
business.
Mawlamyine or Moulmein
is a product of British colonial
times. A place to which old
pensioners of the British colonial
rule retired when their life's work
is done.
Mawlamyine Moulmein hilltop mosque
Myanmar
Mawlamyine or Moulmein
had a large colony of resident
Europeans in the 19. Century. A
friendly and unpretentious
environment with temperate climate
and cheap living, makes a special
appeal to quiet people during
colonial times.
. When Mawlamyine or Moulmein came
into British hands, it was
scarcely more than jungle. Yet was
it not unknown in the great days
when Pegu or Bago dazzled the
imaginations of men, and Martaban
across the water, was a vice-regal
city.
"
Some of the Peguans," wrote the
Jesuit Pimenta, early in the
seventeenth century, " in this
time had with the Siamese' help
brought the Castle of Murmulan into
their possession, whom the king
besieged a year together. And the
Siamese coming on them unexpected,
overthrew his army, killed his
Horses and Elephants, slew and
drowned many, took others, and so
became Lords of all that Country.
Many
Peguan fled together, wives,
children and families, the King
after his manner destroyed utterly,
with fire sword and water. And thus
the whole tract from Bago or Pegu to
Martaban and Murmulan was brought to
a wilderness." Such incidents were
common enough in Burmese history.
When the southern Myanmar
or Burma coast became a part
of the British Empire,
there was some question as
to whether its capital
should be placed at Amherst
or at Moulmein. Military
reasons decided in favor of
Moulmein, because of its
neighborhood to the Burmese
fortress at Martaban, and
the power it gave the
British garrison of
defending the left bank of
the Thanlwin or Salween
river from aggression.
But military reasons have
long ceased to have any
weight in the councils of Mawlamyine
or Moulmein ; the
British frontier has
advanced seven hundred miles
since it was founded, from
Martaban to the gates of
China, and the last soldier
has been withdrawn from its
garrison.
Mawlamyine or Moulmein is
built at the foot of a ridge
of hills, in an arm of
the Thanlwin or Salween
river. The large island of
Bilu Gyun
faces it
in the west. At its northern end the
Gyaing and the Attaran meet the
Thanlwin or Salween river, and forms
a beautiful environment. The
actual town of houses strung along
its main switchback street and for
several miles along the shore, is
not delectable. It is a hybrid of
different ethnic groups.
Approaching the great stairs up the
hillside to the pagodas and monastic
buildingsMawlamyine or Moulmein
on its summit the sentiment of
Myanmar or Burmese life is revived.
On the pagoda platform,
where golden pinnacles flame
in the sun, and light and
shadow lie in bars upon the
paved courts, one is liable
of a morning to come upon
such spectacles as this.
Under the lofty multiple
roofs of a tazoung with
golden pillars, a
company of the people is
gathered for purposes of
devotion. In the centre
under a glass dome, there is
exposed for the edification
of the pious a relic case of
gold and jewels, offered by
some ardent seeker after
merit as a gift for the
Buddhist fraternity of
Ceylon.
Above it in the shadowy
recesses, sits a figure of
the Buddha on a golden
throne. Along the walls in
its neighborhood the members
of the Sacred Order are
ranged in a double line,
their faces passionless, or
bowed in prayer.
Before the relic case of the pagoda,
a group of aged men in white muslin,
with the saintly faces that Barman's
or Myanmar's develop in old age, sit
in an inner circle, their silver
hair and white fillets of muslin
conspicuous in the midst of the
crowd that fills the rest of the
hall.
What
a crowd it is ! First the men in
white coats and silken tartans and
gaungbaungs, never worn before,
lustrous in their freshness in
colors of the dawn. Then behind
them, filling the wide outer
circles, women with coils of glossy
black hair lit with fresh flowers ;
soft silks and velvet thrown over
their shoulders, pyramids of
diamonds, on their fingers, their
small bare feet turned up to the
light behind.
A low
resonant voice repeats the holy
text, and at intervals the whole
company, with folded hands, and
fluttering paper pennons,. and bowed
heads, join in audible devotion.
Outside, across the open court of
the pagoda platform, boys race and
laugh, and no one is worried by
their laughter. The old are here to
pray and to ponder on the sadness
and the illusion of life ; the young
to play and laugh in the sunlight.
Of them these people are tolerant.
For every one, it would seem, there
is room. A few paces away, and under
the very gleam of the pagoda, large
cauldrons are set over a fire, and
rice for the assembled company of
the religious is being cooked.
Overhead the bells tinkle and
palm-leaves rustle and murmur
together in the wind. The pagoda is
built upon the summit of a hill, and
the world that expands from it is of
rare and great beauty.
From
where the people are seated at
prayer, there is unfolded
between each of the golden pillars
and the carved eaves of the tazoung
a picture of wide plains yellow with
the ripening harvest ; of green
villages under the shelter of great
trees, of winding rivers and
straight highways, and mountains
flung in fantastic forms upon the
level spaces. From the town below a
stream of worshippers flows up and
down the steep winding stairs ; old
men who laugh at each other for
getting blown ; pretty women in
silks of delicate hues ;
From the south-west angle
of the southernmost pagoda,
where a double sphinx looks
out across the spaces,
there is unfolded a picture
of a wide river making its
last progress in loops and
curves to the sea.
Enthusiastic people say that
it is as fine as the harbour
of Sydney. Since these words
were written I have seen
Sydney and I think it is
finer. Some distance from
the river a long low line of
hills runs down on the east,
and another, the nucleus of
Bilu-Gyun, runs along the
west, a rampart for the
retreating sun. The river
enfolds in its course
several large low-lying
islands, and at one point,
at Mopun, it makes a
beautiful curve ending in a
headland, where rice and
timber mills send their
smoke into the air and ships
in the harvest season wait
for their cargoes to a
distant world.
Looking more directly now to the
west, there is the river again in a
straight bar of gold under the long
town of Mawlamyine or Moulmein.
More ships lie here, and they look
to me as if they had dropped
mysteriously from the great world
outside, into this land-locked
anchorage under the swooning palms.
For as I look, the conviction is
borne in upon me of a drowsy land of
extraordinary beauty, but not of a
modern city ; and the ships that lie
here for a season form no part of
it.
Looking a little more towards the
north, my eyes are greeted by
The Limestone Caves at Mawlamyine
or Moulmein in the Zingyaik
hills, whose loftiest peak three
thousand feet in height, dominates
the wide panorama. Between these
hills and Bilu-Gyun the right branch
of the Thanlwin or Salween river
makes its way to sea. In times gone
by— in the days of the Castle of
Murmulan, when Portuguese
artillerymen manned the guns of
Martaban, and hungry adventurers
from the West swept by in their
galleons up the gulf—and even in
more recent times, this was the main
channel of the river. It is not the
channel now. It has ceased for more
than a generation to be navigable by
steamers, and the time is
approaching when it will cease to be
navigable at all.
The
low country slowly rising from the
sea ; a new world shaping into
being. The claim of this western
channel to be the main stream of the
Thanlwin or Salween river was,
however, curiously established two
hundred years ago. The Thanlwin or
Salween river had been fixed as the
boundary between British and Burmese
territory after the first English -
Burma war, and it became a question
as to which branch of it was the
real Thanlwin or Salween river.
The
island of Bilu-Gyun with an area of
one hundred and seven square miles,
was the stake at issue. The rival
diplomatists resorted to the simple
device of tying two cocoanuts
together and sending them adrift
upon the main river. At Martaban,
where the river divides, these
cocoanuts for an instant remained
stationary ; then they were caught
by an eddy and swept to sea down the
western channel, and Bilu-Gyun
became British. Turning away now
from all that lies to the west, I
see from my splendid vantage-point
how this process of transition from
water to land has been already
accomplished. For here, where
chequered rice-fields now turn up
their patterns to the sky ; where
monasteries now shelter under
clusters of drooping palms, where
villages and hamlets smile, and
rivers, the Gyaing and the Attaran,
wind across the landscape in ribbons
of silver and blue, there once
moved, if one may believe the
testimony of the earth, the
implacable sea. One feature of that
bygone day still survives, a
landmark of the past, as it is of
the present. For the fantastic
isolated hills that rise up abruptly
from the level plain, were once in
reality islands, and the sea swept
round them, and the blind waves
roared in their caves. Elephant
island is one of these.
There are two cave temples near
Mawlamyine
or Moulmein.
The Payon Cave filled with stalactites and
stalagmites contains innumerable Buddha images
installed in shrines while the Kawgaun Cave, locally
called the Cave of Ten Thousand Buddha’s, has a
great number of Buddha figures in various forms and
sizes. Kyaikmayaw Pagoda, a half hour’s drive out of
town along toddy palm -lined roads with wayside
rubber plantations, is a pleasant shrine to visit
and usually is on the visitor’s itinerary.
About 60 km south of Mawlamyine
or Moulmein, at Thanbyuzayat,
there is a large, well
maintained war cemetery for thousands of Allied
prisoners-of-war who died during World War II while
constructing the infamous ‘death railway’
and the
Bridge over the River Kwai for the
Japanese. The same is on the Thailand side near the
Bridge over the River Kwai.
Mawlamyine Moulmein houses on the Salween
river front Myanmar
Mawlamyine Moulmein roadwork Myanmar
Another 28 km southwards
brings one to Kyaikkhami (Amherst), a popular
coastal resort during British times, with its
well-known Kyaikkhami Pagoda in the sea. Setse- the
beach here is a favorite with local residents and if
properly developed has great potential to draw
tourists- is soon reached after a twenty minute
drive. Like the rest of Mon State, Mawlamyine has a
hot and wet climate with an annual rainfall of
around 482 cm, average year-round temperature of
26.6°C; the average for the hottest months (April
and May) is 29.3°C and the average for December and
January about 25°C.
Moattama terminus car
ferry to Mawlamyine or Moulmein Myanmar
It
lies in the only sizable plain in the state- the Mawlamyine plain - so it produces rice, rubber, sugar
cane, coconuts and betel nuts in addition to such
delicious fruits like mangoes, durians, mangos teens
and pumaloes.
Seafood is also plentiful and
enjoyable and one can still see timber yards and
forests in the surrounding countryside since teak
used to be one of the chief exports.
Two large natural gas
fields, the Yadana and the Yetagun,
have been developed by foreign companies.
Thailand is to be
supplied with gas and a pipeline
running 346 km offshore and 63 km
onshore for delivery to a plant in
Kanchanaburi Province.
The majority of the people here and in Mon State as
a whole are Mons, with Kayins, Bamars, Shans, Pa-Os
and Daweites (Tavoyans) making up the rest.
Mon
State people with boat near
Mawlamyine Myanmar
