Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) Day 1:
For the first time its really hitting me how far we’ve traveled away from home (dont worry moms, we are far away, but we are totally safe and are having a supremely awesome time! ) Strange what gives me a sense of being close to home— it must be Starbucks, 7-11s, white people and the english language, because there are hardly any of those things here. Their absence is also so refreshing because it means that after plodding along the tourist trail for a month that we're finally off. I also got the feeling of how far away we are when I viewed a satellite weather map of this part of the globe, and the U.S. doesn’t quite make it into the picture. The edge of the world seems to be japan and then theres just a blank horizon.
The recent history of Myanmar/Yangon is that it was colonized by the British around a century ago. They built a lot of Yangon in the 1800s, so architecturally it has what is called a “colonial style”. Around-20th century, the burmese army revolted and took the city back, but didn’t have the resources for the upkeep of its infrastructure, so its been slowly crumbling since the mid-1800s. I guess now that they have their first democratically elected prime minister (?) and a big loan from Japan (?), the place is starting to get some much needed work. Its true, there is construction and repair going on on virtually every block, so you have to watch your step because either the sidewalk is crumbling into the sewer or its in the middle of being torn up and redone. Incidentally, the sidewalk work looks like its mainly being done by men wearing sarongs and flip flops.
When we arrived, we took a walk around a nearby lake to take in some initial impressions of the place. Its hot here (in the 90s), as its been everywhere on this trip, but no smog thankfully and no scooters or motorbikes (Im told they’re illegal in Yangon). The traffic isn’t bad; its comprised of at least half taxis in which the drivers dont understand any english. Its humid and there is a lot of green- palm trees, banana trees, vines. Theres a lot of water too— big rivers and a couple large lakes. For some reason it feels a little like the Bayou.
One thing we noticed right away on our walk around the lake was that we were getting a lot of stares. They weren’t negative stares, but trance-like stares like people were somehow in awe. I then remembered that Lonely Planet warned us that people might stare and that we should just smile back. Once we started smiling back, we (mostly Penny actually) would often break their trance and they’d smile too.
Day 2
Yangon seems like prime ground for an adventure, so we decided to dive right in and, against Lonely Planet’s advice, decided to get on a bus and see if we could get lost. Everywhere we have been so far has felt safer than anywhere I have been in the U.S. I can walk around at night by myself and not have the slightest worry. I haven’t gotten so much as a dirty look anywhere in S.E. Asia.
The bus was awesome! It was the size of an oversized VW van and had benches along either side facing each other and along the back. We were lucky there were 2 seats open— I took one along the back and Penny sat on one side just a few feet away. We got the trance-like stares from the other passengers, but we just kept big smiles plastered across our faces the whole time (which wasn’t hard). We had an idea that we wanted to aim in the direction of downtown, but if we got there or not didn’t really matter. Everyone on the bus was either burmese or indian (india is right next door!) and was wearing flip flops and colorful sarongs.
Soon it became apparent that we had turned away from the downtown area and were heading to parts unknown. Every time we talked across the bus to one another, the heads of everyone on the bus would turn toward us with a blank but slightly inquisitive look. We’d just kept smiling. Eventually the man next to me started trying to talk to me in Burmese. I had no idea what he was saying but I imagine he was asking where we were going. When I turned to look at him, I noticed his teeth were completely red like he’d just eaten something really bloody. I had no idea why his teeth looked like that but I found out why the next day (read on). Then more people took an interest in where we were going and a few of them even spoke a little english. For some reason, they didn’t understand when we said we wanted to get lost, so we said “downtown”. When it got around that we wanted to go downtown, a look of alarm went around the bus and one guy who actually spoke english decently said, “you must get off here. This doesn’t go downtown”. We just smiled and said “thats ok”, which really produced some puzzled looks.
Then the bus went over a bridge and we decided it was probably time to get off. When we got off, it seemed more like we had suddenly crossed into India. There were rickshaws and people walking around barefoot on dirt lanes in somewhat of a shantytown. The burmese guy who spoke the best english got off at the same stop and came over to us. He told us we needed to catch a bus going the other way to get downtown, but if we desired, we could come to his house for lunch.
On the way to his house, Nyunt told us we shouldn’t come to this part of town because it was dangerous. We asked why it was dangerous. Nyunt said, “people here will lie to you.” We told him that where we come from, people will not only lie to you but also kill you with a gun. Nyunt said no one would hurt us here but they might lie to us to try to get money.
In about 5 minutes walking, we were at Nyunt's home, which was about the size of a garage and had the ambience of the same. His grandmother was sitting at the front counting prayer beads. His mother was in the kitchen in the back. He brought out a small table, wiped it off and put it in the middle of the floor while we tried out burmese phases on his grandmother. She was either mostly deaf or our burmese sucked. It turned out to be both. For example, “thank you” in burmese said by us sounds like “Jezoo ding ba day”. Said by the burmese, its more like “buhzah” .
We sat on the floor around the table and were each served a bowl of rice. There were about 5 burmese dishes placed in the center of the table which we took from. There were a couple that we liked— a green bean dish and a chicken dish, but the others we had a hard time with (fishy tasting or mysterious meat) Nyunt seemed to totally understand and even expect that we wouldn’t like any of it, so it was all good. We talked for about a half hour (talking was slow due to the language barrier) and found out that he works on a ship that mostly goes between Yangon and Thailand but also sometimes goes to China, India, Africa, but not the U.S. When we said we were from San Francisco he said unsurely, “yes, I think I have heard of this city”. He works in the engine room of the ship which carries stuff like rice or cement. Penny asked him all about his family and we got schooled on where we shouldn’t go around Yangon because people might lie in those places. He also said we shouldn’t ride the bus because there are no direct routes to any place important. All in all, he was one of the sweetest guys we’d ever met! When we were done, he walked us out to the main street and made sure we got a taxi going to downtown. And the day wasn’t even half over!
To be continued . . .
