Since we had such success with the bus ride of day 2, we decided to start off again the same way on day 3. This time, our pretend destination would be the Governor’s House hotel, which allegedly has the best pool in Yangon and is open to the public IF you eat lunch at their restaurant.
So the buses in Yangon aren’t like the ones that lumber sluggishly along the streets of Oakland, stopping on every other corner, sometimes even using hydraulics to “kneel” to the curb so theres less of step up. Yangon buses go careening around corners, pedal to the metal and when people exit, they often do so while the bus is still moving.
We walked to a different bus stop this morning to get the best position to aim in the direction of the Governors House. When the bus came, not only did it not “kneel” but it started driving away as soon as I touched the grab bar to pull myself up onto the first step (Penny got on first) and was careening down the street before we could even take a seat. This bus had seats like a school bus and we sat up front, where the less cool kids would sit in the US. In less than 5 minutes it was clear that we had turned and were heading off in a direction away from our pretend destination.We didn’t want to cross any bridges this time, so we got off in another 5 minutes or so at a popular stop.
It took a moment or two for us to realize that we were back in the downtown area, not too far from where we were exploring the day before. No matter, because the downtown is a pretty interesting place and we were up for a second round of explorations.
We stopped at a movie theater to see if they had any movies in english. They were all Thai movies with Burmese subtitles except for “Ghost Ship” which was in English. Sounded like an ok movie to me, but Penny wasn’t interested. Outside the theater we passed a street vendor who was making something interesting on the table top of her cart. We stopped to watch. She had several heart-shaped leaves spread out onto which she spread a white liquid. Then she took some dried herb-type things from different tin tobacco cans and sprinkled them in the center of the leaves. Then she folded the leaves up into triangles about the size of a 9v battery. They were selling like hotcakes. She had people (mostly men) waiting around her cart for her to sell them one. I asked her what they were and she smiled at me with a blood-red-toothed smile like the guy on the bus next to me had the day before. She motioned like she was putting a leaf pack in her mouth and chewing it. So I figured it was some kind of chewing tobacco and I asked if I could try one. She gave both me and Penny one for free.
We stuck it in our cheeks like chewing tobacco and just lightly gnawed on it. It tasted like toothpaste, so then I figured it must be some kind of breath freshener or something. When I spit, the spit was dark red. And I noticed then that the entire street was covered with dried red spit. In fact, everywhere you go in Yangon, sidewalks and streets are covered with this faded red dried spit. I asked Penny what she thought and she told me that she’d chewed the whole thing up and swallowed it and was now feeling kind of high! I didn’t feel anything, but my mouth felt very clean and fresh. Pennys high went away after a few minutes but my mouth tasted like toothpaste for the rest of the day even after eating a couple meals.
After asking around some more, we learned that the magic ingredient in the leaf packets is betel nut, a red and white nut that apparently is a bit of a stimulant. The white stuff that they brush on the leaves is lime and Im still not sure why thats used. They also put tobacco and other herbs in the packets, but its basically a form of chewing tobacco. An unfortunate side effect is that if you chew it as much as many Burmese do (some chew every 10 minutes allegedly), it will turn your teeth red semi-permanently. You can always tell a betel nut user by their awful smiles.
Post-betel nut adventure, we mosied around town, down interesting-looking alleyways, to local markets, sampling street eats as we went.
The coolest thing about Yangon is that it is not westernized at all. I mean, there are cars and people on cellphones, but there are no recognizable brand names anywhere. Ok, so we did see a KFC which we were told was very new and they do have Coke and Sprite which Im told just made it to town last year. But I dont think we saw a single western brand name aside from that.
There also dont seem to be many supermarkets or department stores. Instead, different alleys seem to specialize in different things. For example, we went down one alley that was all reams of different types of paper, calendars and rubber stamps. Like it was the Yangon version of Office Max.
Penny bought a longyi skirt at one of the markets which she wore later that evening to a dinner dance. While she was at the dance, I went back to the magical, mystical Shwedegon Paya to hang out and write in this blog. Unfortunately however, I forgot the bug spray and was followed around by a cloud of mosquitoes until I left.
Oh, and I should say that we did make it to the Governer’s House pool that afternoon (the place we intended to go when we got on the bus in the morning), but to eat lunch there (the prerequisite to swimming) it was around $50/person. So we grabbed a cab over to the hotel we’d done reconaissance on the night before, and spent the afternoon swimming in their glorious pool that allegedly Hillary Clinton stayed at during her visit to Yangon, whenever that was.
