Mandalay on the Irrawaddy River is the second largest city in Burma. In the nineteenth century it was briefly the capital of the country.
The city has about a hundred workshops making votive gold flakes. This job involves many hours of ponding a plate of gold, until it become a very thin flake. The prayers buy them as a votive offering and stick them onto a selected Buddha statue. For us, one of the workshops remind us of slave labour.
The harbour on the main river of Burma serving tourists, is primarily a source of daily work: fishing and transportation of clay for making pottery products.
We also visited many workshops of woodcarving, weaving, casting, and others. All of them with technology from previous centuries.
What do Burmese women and girls wear on their faces? Is this kind of makeup? Well, to protect against the sun they don’t use any emulsion or oil, only powder made from Thanaka trees (Limonia hemocyanin). This whitey-yellowy powder is mixed with water and the grease is spread onto the face with fingers or a comb, hence the drying process makes patterns on the faces. Thanaka has protective and moisturizing properties.
