Yangon, Myanmar

I am writing this at 5am in Mandalay. I was not sleeping and am being serenaded by the early morning chants from the Buddhist temple on the loudspeaker—we were astonished as we thought this was only a Muslim custom---

We arrived several days ago in Yangon at the modern airport to see a young man holding a sign with our name—our hotel had offered to pick us up.

We needed to change money first—there are as yet no ATM’s  in Myanmar and we had spent a lot of our last day in Kuala Lumpur obtaining BRAND NEW US dollars—no mean feat at money changers in Malaysia. We had been told to get mostly $100 bills as these will be inspected and only those with no folds or marks of any kind will be changed into kyats, the local currency. Furthermore hotels and airfares must be paid for in US currency and food, souvenirs and taxis in local money—what a strange system. The problem this creates is that you have to guess how much you will need for the whole of your trip up front as you cannot use visa cards and with no ATM’s—not sure how many people end up having to go home early??

We changed $300 successfully and arrived at our hotel –Winner Hotel which is a slightly upscale nice hotel near the Shwedagon Pagoda several miles from the city. Although rooms were from $50 we had booked late and had to pay $70 a night for a superior room—this turned out to be a huge modern room with air con, Wi-Fi and cable TV.

When I first started to find a room on line I realized that hotels seemed to be heavily booked so I did book the whole trip online –something as those of you who know me is quite foreign to my personality—Ken who would prefer to be a little more planned has a story of arriving in Dublin once to get a room during foot and mouth disease to find it was St Patrick’s day which had been delayed—we got the only room left for $200.

At least  this time I did have the advantage of knowing the prices of our accommodation to estimate how much cash to bring. We had also booked our internal air flights and had to bring US cash to pay for them.

It was early evening when we arrived at the hotel and we decided to walk to the huge Shwedagon Pagoda which was 10 minutes away. We were able to follow the stupa which glowed from miles away in any direction.

As we walked up the entrance we were told to remove our shoes and the “shoe ladies” would keep them for us.

The atmosphere was a little overwhelming with noises of chanting, bells gonging and hundreds of people entering and milling around. It is the major temple in all of Myanmar and people will come as a pilgrimage from far away. The colour was intense as everything is covered in gold leaf which apparently is redone every 4 years. LED lighting has arrived and is used to highlight many Buddha’s heads. The local people are dressed in long skirts—longi’s and tops all very colourful.

There are four entrances and after having climbed the stairs we walked around the outer perimeter where glistening gold spires and various Buddha are everywhere. We then walk into the inner circle where various “prayer stations?” are. As we walked there were small areas which had a Buddha under which was a pool of water.  Under that was an animal of some kind. People were coming with flowers or fruit to give and then pouring 5 cups of water over the Buddha’s head  and then 5 cups on the animal. We subsequently found that everyone has their own animal—this is the equivalent of our horoscope signs and is based on the day of the week you are born—this is somewhat complicated as there are 8 animals so Wednesday is divided into morning and afternoon. Luckily when we looked up our birthdays Ken’s was a Saturday and mine on Sunday, Ken of course was a dragon—he is a Leo in our horoscope  and a tiger in Chinese mythology so it stood to reason. I on the other hand am the mythical Garuda—maybe one step up from the goat and the dog!!!

Anyway it all meant that Ken’s was in the South East and mine in the North West—with our best directions going the opposite way—hmm does that mean we are coming together or moving apart??!!!

Anyway we were befriended by an older man who explained all of this to us and showed us and explained the various areas. He was accompanied by a young man who was a student of his and both spoke English well—not common in Myanmar outside of the hotels and tourist restaurants.

It was nice to have them help us but when at the end the older man asked for money to help for his cataract operation and we gave him the equivalent of $5 he asked for more. This soured our good feelings—as we walked a little further we were asked for $5 each for the temple fee—which turned out to be legitimate and as we left were asked for a fee to get our shoes back we were feeling a little fleeced—has the rape of the Western tourist begun?

We walked back to the hotel stopping at an excellent Thai restaurant for a $20 dinner which included 2 beers each. It is very obvious that the staff in both the hotels and restaurants have been taught how to wait on tourists. The service at both is immaculate and they are trying incredibly hard to do everything the way they have been trained. I am sure the employment opportunity is a sought after option and those who learn well and get in at this early stage of tourism in Myanmar will have bright futures. The people working in the industry are amazingly sweet and helpful and we never had to pick up a bag-there was no expectation of a tip. It was a little disconcerting at the restaurants when your plate was gone as you were chewing your last mouthful!

The next morning we got a taxi into the city with our first stop at the travel agent to pick up our internal air tickets. Our trip was only 2 weeks we had decided to fly to all destinations except the one river trip on the Irrawaddy from Mandalay to Bagan.

The inner city had more cars than we had expected and no motor cycles—it seemed the government which has dictated for many years had decreed that no motor cycles be used in Yangon and cars which had originally been a hundred thousand US dollars a few years ago were now $10,000. They use the same system as NZ and import cars from Japan which are under 5 years old with very few miles driven on them. The only issue here is that you drive on the right but the cars are built for driving on the left with the driver on the right, I found this disconcerting thinking that when we turned the corner we should be on the other side of the road!!

Cellphones have are on an increase as SIM cards used to be a thousand dollars and now are down to $200—although this is still hugely expensive more and more people are succumbing.

Government restrictions are easing as the world opens up to them. I did not sense a welcome from a lot of local people as we walked by which in our travels was so odd—we are usually greeted with great smiles. I am not sure whether they had spent a lifetime of fear of retribution or they resented us but although I looked many of them in the eye and smiled many did not smile back. Some of course did but it was a different feeling from our travels elsewhere in the world.

We followed the walking tour of the city outlined in the Lonely Planet stopping first at the downtown Payer—Pagoda. We were first deluged by flower sellers—local buy flowers to give to Buddha which  Ken felt pressured to buy a bunch—then the $2 entrance fee and after saying we would carry our own shoes we had a cheap plastic bag pressed onto us and a fee was charged for that—hmm—so far we were underwhelmed with Yangon!!

The climate at this time of year at least was great—even though the temperature was in the low 30’s it was dry and sunny. For the first time in a year we were not breaking out in a sweat as we as much as moved—the humidity of Malaysia and Thailand was killing!!

We stopped at a Western looking place for a nice lunch—we are at the stage after 1 ½ years in Asia that when the opportunity arises we opt out of rice and noodles!!

The streets were lined with sellers of all kinds of things. One area had hundreds of books—all along the sidewalk, some in English were a weird eclectic collection and we were not sure where they had come across them.

The area selling fruits and vegs was chaotic as each vendor was yelling continuously as to why you should buy his/her product, it was actually deafening as we wended our way through the seller to continue our walk. Although the population is predominately Buddhist there are a few Muslims and Christians and we walked through the Muslim area as they were going into the mosque.

We continued on our trek ending up at the huge market which had areas for various types of things for sale. After having given up trying to negotiate the narrow paths through the local wares we found the tourist area. It seems the most popular items are fabric beaded wall and cushion covers, sandalwood carvings, lacquer ware and jade of varying degrees of quality. As it is early on our travels and we are unsure how long our money will last we will wait to make our purchases.

Dinner was at a restaurant near the hotel where we had seen advertisements for all pasta’s for $6—great deal and great pasta and once again great service.

The following morning we returned to the Shwedagon Pagoda to see it in the daylight and with fewer people it was pleasant to soak in the atmosphere. We were realizing how devout many of the Myanmar people were as there is a constant flow of worshipers.

We spent the afternoon walking around the lake near the city which was a peaceful respite from the intense traffic everywhere.

We would catch an early morning flight to Mandalay for the next stop on our visit.