The Hidden Gems of Myanmar, Part I

To cap off my travels around SE Asia, I decided to spend a week or so in Myanamar, or some of you may know it as Burma.  After decades of significant suppression and economic sanctions, against most of the Western world, Myanmar finally opened up to G7countries for official tourism in 2011.  The country is changing rapidly, but its still thought of as one of the last "undiscovered frontiers" in the region, which is exactly why I wanted to go :)

To start the trip, I took a very early flight from Bangkok to Yangon, the former capital city of
Myanmar, where I had only planned to spend one day because I had heard there wasn't that much to do.  After dropping my bags at the hostel,  I spent the morning just wandering around the streets and taking it all in - the people, the noise and the smells...boy was I completely amazed.  A few immediate, relevant realizations about Myanmar:

-Sanitation and hygiene is fairly non-existent, even compared to other SE Asian countries  There really aren't side walks and there's trash everywhere.  (This is the first place that I walked around in tennis shoes because the roads were so poor). In addition, most men and some women chew on something called Betel, a leaf grown in the region with addictive and stimulant properties.  People start chewing this quite young, and eventually, their mouths and teeth take on a reddish stain and their teeth start to rot.  In the process of chewing, every so often they have to clear their mouths with huge spits of red - if I didn't know any better it would look like splotches of blood on the sidewalk. 

-Myanmar is still very old school compared to the other Southeast Asian countries - 95% of people still wear traditional dress.  For men, it's a long, tied skirt-like piece called a 'longyis'.  Women also wear long, flowing skirts, and they cover their faces with something called 'thanaka' that they get from the bark of a tree.  At first I thought it was a cosmetic, traditional paint, but it's actually to help protect their skin from the burning hot sun.  Because of these things and the lack of other tourists, this was the first place that I opted to dress very conservatively, with a long skirt and covered shoulders all of the time.  As I'm sure you could have guessed, I am not very good at gracefully walking around in a long skirt but somehow I made it work! 

-Given that there are only ~1 million tourists that visit the country/year, and I was going in low season, tourists, and espeically westerners are still fairly novel so you're stared at all the time  (I'm pretty sure my blond hair was also another special add here...)  In an entire day in Yangon, one of the biggest cities in Myanmar, I saw 3 other westerns the whole day, so the toursists really are very few and far between, which I think adds even more charm to the country.  What this meant to me was that I needed to immediately learn basic Burmese (hello, goodbye, thank you, etc) and I had to have my A-game on as soon as I left my hostel because everyone was watching.  I know that sounds quite intense but it was amazing - as you walked down the streets, people would say hello, wave, come up and hold your hand and as where you were from...all incredibly special.

After awhile, I meandered to the Sule pagoda, the original center of Yangon when it was under British colonial rule, and had a look around.  By now, it was early afternoon and I wanted to try to find a tea house to experience the traditional midday tea.  So, I continued venturing until an elder woman who didn't speak any English greeted me in Burmese and pulled up a chair in front of her and pointed for me to sit.  I happily did, of course, and she quickly had her family bring me a cup of tea while we sat and semi communicated using hand signals, yes/no and the 3 words I knew in Burmese.  Definitely a memorable, first tea!

(Sorry for the general lack of captions on the photos below - there are so many and I have to catch a flight soon, so hopefully you still enjoy them :)! )

Scenes from around Yangon:

Sule Pagoda

After quickly stopping at the hostel for a few minutes of rest in the air conditioning, I went to the famous  Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest golden monument on earth described by my guide book as the most magnificent Buddhist pagoda in all of SE Asia - which in my opinion, it most certainly was.  I walked around the temple complex for awhile, admiring how beautiful it was in the sun.  After about 90 minutes, I was getting ready to leave when a friendly monk came up to me and started a conversation.  We had talked for about 10 minutes when he invited me to come back to his monastery (of which he was one of the lead monks) for late afternoon tea!!  I eagerly  accepted his invitation and went back to the monastery where about 40 monks lived.  When I arrived, it was apparently shower time because all of the monks were bathing themselves with huge buckets of water.  While my monk friend was showering, he had some of the English savvy novices show me around the monastery, introducing me to everyone and even bringing me up to the roof so that I could see a view of the entire city!  After a few hours of tea, fruit and biscuits and meeting lots of the monks, they offered to let me stay in the monastery that very night.  When I said I already had a place to stay, they gave me their number so that I could always come stay with them if I ever needed something in Yangon.  Eventually my monk friend walked me back to the pagoda where I figured I may as well stay for sunset since the pagoda was supposed to be beautiful at night as well.  I was unprepared for how truly magnificent it was - the gold contrast with the dark night sky was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen and I ended up staying for awhile because I was so entranced.

Shwedagon Pagoda (From day to night - yes, none of these have been edited or enhanced - its just that awesome!!!):

In addition to many people praying, many were also napping in the various side pagodas...

Me and my monk friend

On the roof of the monastery!!!

The next morning, I took a 6am flight to my next destination - Bagan.  This was also my first time in the domestic airports of Myanmar - needless to say they were quite interesting.  Sometimes they would make you go through some sort of security checkpoint, and myself and a few others had a good laugh because we were 99% sure that the wooden arch "metal detector" was either a) not on or b) not even a metal detector!

The airport!!

First, a little about Bagan...The temples of Bagan are often compared to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  While Angkor Wat certainly wins the grandeur factor, Bagan wins in sheer number and mystique as it is home to the largest and densest concentration of Buddhist temples in the world with many dating from the 11th-12th centuries.  At Angkor Wat, you're also never alone, you're constantly surrounded by other tourists and sometimes clamoring for the right photo if you're not up early enough.  Bagan is much different...there's no English describing the pagodas and it's all a very DYI experience.  While some pagodas are bigger and more popular than others, there were many times when I'd find myself completely alone, a mile off the real road on some sandy path discovering brilliant, isolated pagodas.  To get around, tourists can only rent little, dinky electronic bikes that go no more than 10 mph, but it got the job done. Finally, everyone wants to take pictures with you and I found it quite adorable and endearing when all of the kids and women would wave excitedly from the back of the big trucks they were riding in and would stop to come over to timidly ask for a photo!

Some of my group photo opps:

Not only did we do a group photo, but all of these guys wanted individual ones too!

Anyway, on my first day, I arrived in Bagan nice and early so I could start exploring right away. Before I set off, I rented my little e-bike and even picked up a beautiful, traditional (and pink!) longyis for $5 to wear for the day because my poor sarong was getting quite dirty. Of course, I was blown away by the first pagoda that I visited, but I unfortunately also had a pretty negative "shopping" experience which was a rough start to the day.  Since tourism is starting to pick up , the Burmese quickly discovered (similar to Angkor Wat), that parking their shops right in the entrance of pagodas was a pretty effective way to get business.  To make a long story short, I ended up being ripped off pretty badly and the women were actually quite rude and continually took my shoes and the items I had already purchased from my arms so I couldn't leave, but there wasn't much I could do, and at the end of the day, they needed the money more than I did.  Luckily, there were a few other great shop owners that I met throughout the rest of the day that would spend 20-30 minutes showing me the secret view points or telling me the history of a particular pagoda before gently asking if I would look at their shops (with much lower prices, and yes, I bought from these too!)

Despite being told to do most of my exploring in the early morning or after 4pm...of course I thought I could handle the afternoon heat, but I was again wrong :)  With temperatures quickly reaching 105-110 degrees by noon, I lasted until about 2pm that day when I had to go back to the air conditioning of my guest house to cool myself and take a nap.  After a few hours of rest, I set off for sunset.  There are a few "popular" pagodas where you can get up really high to see the endless landscape of pagodas and wow is it magnificant! 

On my second and final day in Bagan, I was up at 4:30am to see the sunrise from the top of a pagoda!  After that, I was planning on doing lots of exploring while it was still nice and below 95 degrees, but at about 7:30 or so, I felt a sudden change in the handling of my e-bike.  I got a flat tire!  While I was a little bit unnerved, let's just say it could have been much worse...I was luckily only about a 20 minute walk from a big pagoda where I knew there would be people, so I wheeled my bike over there and waited for one of the locals as he tried to fix it.  When his valient efforts didn't work, he called my hotel on his cell phone to get them to come and pick me up (There's absolutely no using anything but a Myanmar specific sim card, so it was really lucky that I could use the phone of a local, otherwise, I would have had a long, long walk back to the hotel).  When the hotel guys finally arrived an hour later, they had two other people and their e-bikes in the bed of the truck, so clearly I wasn't the only unlucky one!  After a lovely buffet breakfast with my fellow stranded travelers back at the hotel, I set back off on a new e-bike for another few hours of great exploring.  I just kept getting drawn into each pagoda - especially the more remote ones.  I would tell myself that I would only keep driving for another 5 minutes before I'd turn back towards the hotel, but then I'd find a brilliant spot and the next thing you know, its 20 minutes later :).  This cycle went on for quite awhile until about 2pm or so when I finally headed back to the hotel for my afternoon rest before going out for my final sunset on the roof of another, more remote pagoda.   Here are some of my favorites from the two days in Bagan...

The temples of Bagan!!

This little cutie and his sister were slingshotting birds in the trees!

Sunsets and Sunrises of Bagan

After the first 3 days in Myanmar, I was already in love, and couldn't wait for my last destination - Inle Lake.  My days spent here were full of even more surprises, so stay tuned for updates from Inle Lake and a final recap of Myanmar and Southeast Asia - they're coming very soon, promise!