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Other entries in Yangon

Min-gala-ba - Hello from Myanmar

Right, guess who's got two thumbs and has been to 2 outposts of tyranny?
Thats right-THIS GUY!
First off I have to thank my friend Ben Kates for giving me the idea to go to Myanmar in the first place. That said I'll get on with the story, I arrived in Yangon as it started to absolutely pour down with rain, unbeknownst to me it was the middle of the rainy season. Nevertheless, newly minted Burmese visa in my hot little hand I joined the immigration line with the other people and in short order was speeding towards downtown Yangon (Rangoon). Rangoon heaves and is dirty and busy but still retains that feel of a typically British colonial city, broad tree lined avenue and pastel coloured grand old colonial buildings. Now the whole place looks of over use and extreme neglect - like other developing countries - ahh I'll can the political correctness - third world countries, the inhabitants haven't really worked out the concept of preventative maintenance. Things are used until they break as is plainly obvious from the number of just about derelict vehicles on the road. Anyway the place is very run down but you sense that there is just a little of that colonial charm left, such that in your minds eye you can picture pith helmeted policemen in shorts directing calm traffic. The only pith helmets now are made of wicker and all the locals seem to wear them.
I took a wander around the city to get my bearings and also to get some local currency. Being a pariah state, Kyats (pronounced chats) are not available outside of Myanmar and so they must be procured from the black market. As I walked around I was continually accosted by people asking in hushed tones whether I wanted to change money, I finally agreed and had a man named Aziz take me around to various acquaintances of his looking for the best rate - I ended up getting 1080 kyat to the dollar. Another reality of travel in the third world is the mountains of cash one must carry around and it was memories of Africa that cam flooding back as I was handed a substantial brick of currency for my three US 50's.
As I walked around everywhere I looked was unbridled commerce, anything and everything is for sale with people shouting at you from all directions to buy roadside food cooked right on the street or Longyis (a sort of tubular sarong worn by most men in the country and if Kev isn't nicer to me I may wear one to his wedding) or hardware and of course the ubiquitous bettle nut. Bettle nut is a mildly narcotic past time of most people in the country and colours the mouth and teeth like blood and eventually destroys the teeth. Everywhere you go you see little splashes of red where men spit the stuff out. Actually one of the things that really bothered bothered me about Myanmar was the way people spit constantly, it's not the expectoration itself that bothers me but the lengthy preamble as mucous is gathered from the recesses of the head with as much drama as possible.
My first evening in Yangon was spent with an American guy named Rick that I met at my hotel, after a mad dash through the streets sharing an umbrella and a fast and poor dinner at one of the numerous Indian restaurants we headed to the air conditioned serenity of a very swank bar that he had found on last trip to Myanmar. It was really weird to be on the 20^th floor of one of the few modern office buildings in the city enjoying a drink in air conditioned splendor above the appalling squalor of the street below. Out of the floor to ceiling windows I was presented with a spectacular view of the magically illuminated Shwedagon Paya presiding over the dark urban sprawl around it.
The following day I caught my bus to Inle lake, when buying my ticket I had wondered how it could possibly take 17 hours to go 750 kms. I was to find out that when the roads are clogged with 50's era Japanese goods trucks, people on bicycles, livestock and that all this must be accommodated on a road that is terribly uneven and only one and a half lanes wide (this is the country's main arterial highway) your average speed is restricted to about 60 kmph and thus 750 kms takes the full 17 hours. The air con buses  - and I use the term lightly as it was really intermittent at best - are the way many Burmese travel and I was the only foreigner on the bus. There are slightly cheaper older non air con buses that take even longer but not even I am that hard core and besides $6 is not a usurious amount to pay to go that far. On the way I spent most of my time talking to a local who I understood only in fits and starts, he was very nice if unintelligible and I may have inadvertently set up a mango import export business with him. He even looked after me at the road side food stalls on the breaks and bought me dinner - for no other reason than he wanted to practice his English. The ride was pretty much exactly as you would imagine a 17 hour bus ride crammed in a seat that's too small for a man of my stature to be, long and uncomfortable. The only bizarre bonus was the music and the TV  - in between episodes of laughably bad Burmese sitcoms they would play music and let me tell you that you haven't really experienced the full magic of Bryan Adams and Bon Jovi until you;ve heard them sung in Burmese by people who can't sing. The piece de resistance however was hearing Metallica's Unforgiven in Burmese.
I arrived at Inle tired but eager to get on with things and soon after arriving I was out on the lake in my own motorized long boat. Under an overcast sky my driver took me to the various payas and villages that support the people on the lake including a monastery built over the water where the monks have improbably trained the hordes of cats that live there to jump through hoops that they hold in the air. I actually thoroughly enjoyed myself and being driven in style smoking a freshly rolled cheroot I felt like a real colonial and fancied that I could picture Kipling or Orwell riding around in similar fashion. There were other tourists around and although some of the stops are contrived the overall sense you get out on the lake is one of overwhelming authenticity.  I didn't feel as if the whole things was being put on for my benefit, it feels as if you are just seeing life as it is and not orchestrated for tourists as it can feel in places like New Zealand. The fisherman actually paddle with their legs not because the lonely planet says so but because their arms get tired if they have to paddle all the way across the lake. They are not out there to service the visitors but to make a living and survive. The villages built on stilts over the water and amongst the floating tomato gardens are there because the gardens are there. The whole thing was very cool to my mind.
The following day I went out on another boat trip, this time in a canoe paddles by hand and had a look at one of the nearby villages down some of the canals and waterways watching the fisherman with their nets working at the banks. I also visited another big old rambling monastery presided over by only 2 monks. The senior monk was 61 and the junior one was over 80 having become a monk after his wife died. Both were characters and the older one had been born in the 1920's and educated by British missionaries. These two old guys love having visitors and took great dfelight in showing me some of their Buddha images some reputed to be over a thousand years old.
Once back in town I caught a pick up to the bus stop for my onward trip to Mandalay. On the 11km trip the locals I was sharing the back with were fascinated by my size comparing me to Arnold Schwarzengger (no I am not making this up). The fact that I was so much bigger than they were was totally baffling to them and one kept grabbing my arm and leg as if testing whether or not I was real. At the bus station I met a couple of fellow travelers from the UK, Dave was actually a Kiwi living in London and Rhian was his girlfriend. I like talking to locals but the comprehension gap can sometimes be totally exhausting and its nice to a conversation above my name and where I'm from time to time. While I was talking with them a man came and sat at our table and in horribly broken English - sounds a bit snobby doesn't it, bloody locals not talking English what! - that he was a journalist, clearly educated but frustrated by his ability to communicate clearly with us he explained the problems of press censorship in Myanmar and as if to emphasize his point would exclaim "Bush - good man. Blair - good man."  Once my friends bus had come and they went on their way my new friend stayed and talked and then began insisting that I come and visit him in Mandalay. He was keen that his son and I should become "like brothers!" I was flattered and agreed to some and that's when things began to take a turn. He kept repeating the invitation over and over again and it turned out that we were on the same bus, I prayed that we weren't sitting next to each other. Every time we would stop he would find me and repeat the invite. After hearing it 30 times (I'm not exaggerating) I had to ask him for a few minutes of peace. While on my own men would stand next to me and laugh at my height and shyer girls would come up behind me and measure themselves against me giggling when I found them out. After innumerable stops and endless police check points where details were carefully copied down for no other purpose than because they ca,n we were all ordered out for an id check. Although I felt no threat there is something slightly unnerving about a man with an assault rifle looking very complacent. Anyway on the way back to the bus  - its 2am at this point  - my friend finds me and begins his familiar refrain this time with a difference he gently placed his hand on my right ass cheek, not a casual accidental brush but a full out cheek cuppage. Now, when a strange man grabs your ass at 2am and invites you to his house while stuck at a police checkpoint in the middle of Myanmar I think you would agree that the time for being polite has passed, in no uncertain terms I told him to unhand me and leave me the expletive alone. He didn't seem to take the hint though and when we arrived in Mandaly early in the morning with Burmese dance music playing and he continued to ask me I had to be rude and tell him to leave me alone and walked away. I was rude but by this point I'd had about 12 hours sleep in the past 3 days and was NOT in the mood for bullshit.

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