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:
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| 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!!!):
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| In addition to many people praying, many were also napping in the various side pagodas... |
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| Me and my monk friend |
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| 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!
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| 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:
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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!!
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| 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!
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