Bangkok - Yangon Day 1
All Burma pictures can be found here.It all began, as the starts of holidays often do, even holidays within holidays, with a hangover. Frank Ritchie and Soi Cowboy have to accept partial blame for that. Our flight was 16:50, I managed to drag Bob out of bed at 11:30. We still had to change our money, not as straightforward as usual as there are no ATMs in Myanmar, not for non-local banks anyway, so the money you take is the money you have for your entire trip.
Not only this but the money you take in must be in pristine US dollars ( Singapore dollars and FEC, Foreign Exchange Certificates, whatever they are, are also accepted); no tears, cuts, folds or markings on the notes. Rife are tales of unwary tourists taking in $1000 and only $200 being accepted. We even heard a tale of one foolhardy tourist who made is way into Myanmar with no money. He made it as far as Mawlamyine though, so he must have been a resourceful fellow. There are three general ways to exchange your money once you get to Myanmar into the local currency, khat. Holding on to some of the US dollars is advisable, as most guesthouses seem to prefer them to khat. Number one, do it at the "official" airport exchange counter. Number two, do it a shopping market or the hotel. Number three, the black market guys in the street in the centre of town. Before we arrived the rumours were that the airport exchange gives you an almost unbelievably low 8 khat to the dollar, where exchange rate officially at the moment is about 850 (this nugget of info is also in the lonely planet). The other rumour we heard was the black marketeers offer the best rates.
Anyway,we set off on our mission to change Baht into US dollars. The first hurdle was the fact that Bob realised he had exhausted his travel funds after visits to a couple of different ATMs. A loan from big brother sorted out that problem. We walked into the first bank and asked for US dollars. No have. Time ticking away fast before we had to get to the airport. Fuck. 5 non-compliant banks and half an hour later, a bank security guard pointed us to a money exchange place. He offered us a decent rate based on what we had Googled so we handed over our brick of Baht and he disappeared for 5 minutes out the shop, to return with a paltry few $100 dollar bills in return. Dollars have changed since I last saw one so I wasnt even sure if they were real or not...watermark was there though and our time was running out so we were back to Phong tower to speed-pack our gear, a quick goodbye to Craig and we were taxi bound with a sweaty sigh of relief.
We left Bangkok in a media blaze, not for us this time, but it turns out the Thai Prime Minister was at the airport, something to do with the opening of the airport which had only been open 10 days. She walked within yelling distance as I was standing at passport control, waving at the queues of people...leaving her beloved country. She looked nice.
We arrived in Myanmar shattered and hanging after our 1 hour 15 minute flight. We spent half the flight filling out the customs declaration and arrival and destination cards, then the smell of fried Thai stuff drifted over as some of the guests who felt it necessary to pre-order food for a flight as long as a bus to Glasgow were served, and we were down. Airports are airports, although the immigrations officer was one of the grimmest puses I have seen in a long time. We saw the aforementioned exchange counter, but the rate was 848 khat to the dollar, not the paltry sum we had heard about. Ever cautious, we exchanged only $200, just to be on the safe side. Turns out later this was just about the best exchange rate available. The government must have wisened up.
We met our hotel dude (first time ever I have seen my name on piece of paper at an airport, yaas living the dream) and with a bunch of other tourists we left the airport for the bus. The first thing I saw was a massive Pepsi billboard with Messi's pus looking down at us. Strange, I thought, the West has arrived indeed.. But hey, Coke reaches the farthest corners of the planet, does it not? Edit: much much later I read in a newspaper advert that Coke and Pepsi is about the only western product to have made into Burma..very recently, so there you have it. The next thing we noticed is 90% of the men wear ankle length purple skirts. The Burmese people look somewhere between Thai and Indian, which geographically makes pretty good sense! We walked past a number of fairly luxurious looking coaches. One was filling up, and as everybody got on there was a guy taking pictures of every single passenger as they boarded. First signs of Big Brother. We continued walking past the luxurious coaches and got to the last bus, a battered indian style chankmobile, laughed, and climbed on. A dude got on and snapped a couple of photos, I thought he was government too, turns out he was just a snap happy, he stayed in the same hotel as us. He looked a bit like an Asian Jonah Lomu.
The bus journey was a good hour and a half and took us through the heart of Yangon, which was great, normally you have to pay for that stuff. It gave us a little bit of bearing. The windows were open and we sat staring into the night...and I do mean night. The streets were lit and the streetside buildings mostly had lights, but beyond the street side the city disappeared into darkness. Hard to know what was behind the brightly-lit facade. I guess it has something to do with the dodgy electricity here; some hotels advertise proudly "24 hour electricity" as a selling point...and only the expensive ones. Its alot quieter than Bangkok and it smells much better. There are patches of stink, and they mostly coincide with where the wide crumbling pavements have collapsed in upon themselves, sometimes as deep as the raw sewage channels below. There was a haze in the air we couldnt tell was dust or smog. People in the other cars were staring, laughing and smiling, we are definetly not in tourist land! We drove past two places where we saw foreigners, pocketed together in restaurants. We drove from the outskirts, through the centre where a big temple straddling the street made us all gasp, and we could see a massive golden pagoda at the top of the hill. We came out the other side of the centre and into a rundown neighbourhood on the other side of town, and lo and behold, there was the hostel. The bus had about 15 other people on it including a bunch of Chinese so we decided to sack the chaos of check-in queues for the time being and ordered and a beer and sat down outside. We got talking to a Dutch dental hygienist called Rhianna. She had been on the road for 38 hours so soon took her leave for zzzzs. Amazingly she only managed to sleep 1.5 hours that night, but still seemed to have the same energy the next day! We eventually checked in (paying half the price we originally thought, bonus), got some grub and sat down for another beer. Accomodation in Yangon (Myanmar in general so I'm told, we will know soon enough) is fairly sparse and ranges from slightly pricey guesthouse ($20-50) to astronomical luxury hotel prices ($200-1000). There is definetly a lower-mid end gap, and probably a $50-100 gap too. Accomodation is sparse because of the decade long reluctance of the government towards tourists and the trouble in Myanmar making it an undesirable destination, which are worsening as I edit this 4 weeks later; Rakhine states problems spreading far enough to cause some panic in Yangon. After the ruling junta clocked the financial benefits of tourism and squeezed the borders open, Suu Kyi immediately stood up and discouraged tourism, for exactly the reason the government wanted more; money in the coffers. Eventually she conceded a little but warned that responsible tourism was necessary to avoid filling the military's armouries any further. The government does take a cut of nearly everything, but the general (no pun intended) rule of thumb seems to be, the simpler you live, the less they receive. So buying street food for example would involve a 0 government cut, but eating at a flashy hotel is a different story. The reason for the prices I think is the immaturity of the tourist industry here. Basically at the moment it is seen as OK to fleece tourists. The high priced hotels are either owned by or are very close to members of the junta, so they offer the biggest cut to the military.
Our hostel in Yangon, Mother Land Inn 2, is a very sociable little guesthouse, mainly because we are a real little pocket of foreigners in a not-so-nice neighbourhood, so evenings everyone converges here. We noticed in contrast to Thailand, all the service/restaurant staff were boys, not girls. This proved itself the next day too when wandering about town. It's the most foreigner contact Bob and me have had. Before long, another couple of girls stopped by, one was a western botanist studying in Chiang Mai and Lucy who who had just been on a longer tour, through India and the like. She told us of how she went to an Ashram for a retreat, belonging to Amma, the hugging mother. She was there for three days and started describing it to us as being a little cult-ish and weird, but by the time she was done she conceded it was probably the most interesting thing she had done on her travels! Reiterating my maxim; all experiences are good experiences as long as you can walk in the morning. When everyone drifted off we retired to our non-airconditioned room. It didnt feel too bad, but we woke in the morning drowning in sweat because the room was south facing and on the second floor, a little suntrap. It was upwards of 35 degrees in there. Like sleeping in a tent in the open, once the sun is up, get the f**k out.
Yangon Day 2
Out of the sauna and into the blissful cold shower/toilet room (you don't mind straddling a toilet to shower after a wake-up like that), a quick included breakfast and we were out to explore the streets of Yangon. |
| This pavement gets a 7/10 for quality in Yangon |
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| Burma style - water truck leaking? No problem we'll use it to wash our dishes |
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| Same boat from the back |
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| Artistic impression of Bob |
Bob had found a little restaurant on the handdrawn map called The Guitar Man, so we hailed a taxi and went for it. The taxi driver got close, got confused and asked a couple who said it had moved. He stopped again a couple of times to ask where the new one was, and before we knew it we were back in the park (paid again!), not 200m from where we were sitting before at the house boat..anyway the menu sucked and we gave up and marched off in search of something to eat. By this time we were sweaty, tired and hungry. We hadnt seen many places to eat apart from the crappy places in the park, not even alot of street food. We hailed a taxi and he took us to the big pagoda we had been aiming for originally. He dropped us high up; the pagoda sits on a hill with four entrances; grand roofed decorative staircases with murals and massive golden pillars, filled with trinket shops, the first we had seen. At the bottom we could see the ubiquitous umbrellas of street vendors so we set off in search of grub. We came off the main drag and walked for a little bit, and although I know it's not true, it seemed like no foreigner had been here before..the stares were everywhere! Again proving you only need to come a tiny bit off the main drag and it feels like you are in a different town. We sat down on little brightly coloured kiddie stools on the street where a woman had a big pot of soup cooking. The restaurant was full of older woman, and we got a smile from each of them, they were laughing too, this obviously being something of a spectacle, these two big foreigners hunched on these tiny stools, slurping soup. We have since got used to it :)
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| Street Food. We would eat this all the time if we didnt like burgers so much :p |
Anyway, the pagoda and temple area was amazing.
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| The walk up to the temple |
temples, of course).
We headed home after, pumped and sweaty. Rhianna joined us again, and the driving idea was still in my head, so I asked to see her lonely planet. By this time I was starting slightly to regret the stubborn decision at Bangkok airport to not get the lonely planet for Myanmar. Rhianna's lonely planet revealed a key point; driving in Myanmar is only possible with a driver or a local accompanying at all times. Expenses up, freedom down, fuck that plan. At the same time a new plan started to emerge. I probably hadn't done enough research into Myanmar and had really only heard about the big four; Mandalay, Bagan, Lake Inle and Yangon. Everything is massive distances to the north by flaky public transport. Yangon fair enough, its the only realistic gateway to the country. On top of that we had only heard the other tourists in the guesthouse talking about exactly these places. Bus times this, train times that bla bla. Same conversation over and over. Its going on around me again as I write this. My stubborness, our desire to go off the beaten track a little, combined with our love of nature, not-so-much-love of cities and too many foreigners doing the same thing (Mandalay is not the Shangri-La many people think, I fear), we decided to go to the less explored south instead; mountains, trekking and beaches. Plan formed. We would head to tiny Kinpun at the base of Mt Kyaiktiyo, home of the Golden Rock. After that, although not cast in stone, probably Mawlamyine or Hpa-an, where beaches, caves and ferry rides on the Irrawaddy await. The walk to the Golden Rock is a pilgrimage and is four to six hours up a mountain in the blaaazing sun.
By this point me and Bob were sitting by ourselves and I was thinking we really need a lonely planet. I knew that there was a departure from the guesthouse to the airport about 10pm every night so I put a notice up on the board asking for lonely planet donations, and kept an eagle eye out for people leaving. A little later, I went to reception and asked them to point leaving guests towards me and Bob. She said they had a spare copy and gave it to me. Score! Lucy joined us for a while and said she had met an English guy walking through Yangon and had decided to travel on to Bagan, the classic next stop, together the next morning. We yapped for a bit then helped her back-up her photographs and she went off to bed. She told us she had booked for the next night but as she was leaving we could maybe have her room, because the hotel was booked out, meaning we would have to search around for new digs the next day, as our plan had only just blossomed and it was too late to put it into action. Turns out she only had a dorm bed booked, but another one came up the net morning, so me and Bob were destined to get out the sweatbox the following night and into something hopefully cooler. Rhianna was also about for a bit and we gave her her lonely planet back and said our thanks and goodbyes, she was meeting up with her 20 day 3000 Euro Belgian tour group the next day. Bob said she reminded him of the receptionist from the american version of "The Office". After that, it was back to the sweatbox for a sauna, Trailer Park Boys and sleep!
Yangon Day 3
The heat leaving us no choice, we were up at 9:30. The first thing we did was try to use the flaky internet. As soon as we sat down, there was another powercut, although for some strange reason Bobs PC didnt go off. Mine did. I left him to it and managed to squeeze a quick email in to Katie after, before one of the receptionists arrived and announced the internet connection was dead, come back later. Myanmar life.By this time it was almost midday and we were soaked in sweat again mainly just from moving our stuff from the sweatbox to the dorm, which thankfully, was a lot cooler. We considered going to one of the expensive hotels to use their pool to cool down. But we thought better of cooling down before exploration and set off into Yangon once more. We had thought the Shewadega Pagoda was the centre of town but the lonely planet told us otherwise. We headed for the centre and traced a rough path of a tour around the main city buildings. The Shua Pagoda, the City Hall, a Big Ben lookalike and a few other impressive governmental buildings, all in the old colonial British style, alot of them with massive Grecian-style columns outside.
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| An old man pushing his sugar cane crusher in front of Sula Pagoda. A notorious black market money exchange and rip-off spot |
Along the way we encountered what the Burmese refer to as the open-air library, booksellers lining the streets with some of the most random book selections I have seen.
Some very old English volumes on engineering, some Burmese books, some Burmese history, some English language teaching, all sorts! I bought George Orwells Burmese Days, perhaps the most famous english language book about Burma. As with alot of the books there it was a (good) photocopy. There were plenty of people just sitting about reading, I guess thats where the name came from.
We tried to walk along the river, but a wall separated us from a view, and beyond only seemed to be port and industry, so we gave up.
We walked past a police building that had 3 or 4 vans parked outside, with the riot shields hanging on the vans. They were battered and well used. I couldnt take a picture without it being obvious, so considering the circumstances, I didn't. Damn.
We found a restaurant down a narrow, high sidestreet that was recommended by lonely planet as the best burmese restaurant in Yangon.
We walked in, a basic, clean restaurant and were ushered to the back where all the curries and veg were on display. This was definetly more Indian inspired cuisine. We chose a curry each (I had mutton, lovely) and pointed at a couple of different veggies. They put a big plate of garnishes on the table for us, a la street food, brought us two plates of soup, rice and then our dishes and vegetables. I stuffed myself good n proper. It wasnt the cheapest at $7 for both of us, but it was delicious and there was loads.
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| The little crocodile clips that people use to haul small stuff up to their apartments |
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| Little Buddha lady sitting on the market corner |
Bob just showed me an article in the lonely planet talking about the censorship in Myanmar. One artist released a song called "Everythings Going To Be Good", and the censors forced him to change it to "Everything's Good", hahaha. The biggest rock band in Myanmar, Iron Cross, released a song called "Very Wild Wind", and the censors forced them to call it "Breeze". Mahahahahhaha. Myanmar is the second most corrupt country in the world, after Somalia.
After Bogyoke we returned home and booked our bus and accommodation for Kinpun. We settled down outside the hostel, me to write this and Bob to read the lonely planet. There was tables of foreigners to our left and right. They were annoying me as this was our third night, and the conversation was starting to grate. Everybody starts in Yangon, and goes to same the places already mentioned, and as the faces changed every night the same conversation would start anew every night, like an endless tape loop. Meeeh. Anyway we just kept our heads down and eventually the loudest filtered off which brought a quiet German couple to our table. They were drawing to the end of 14 months of worldwide travel and they had a slightly shell-shocked look about them. I'm not sure if it was the preceding 14 months that caused it, or the thought of going home! They were heading back to the cold of Dresden via the supercold of Moscow. Just as they left and me and Bob were heading to bed, the group to the other side of us started talking to us, so we sat down with them and had a beer. A Belgian couple, an Ozzie and a French lad. They were all in the early stages of pishdom so we pulled up stools and yapped away. We drank the hostel dry, so one of the boys went to the shop just down the road. One trip later we had drunk the shop dry too. Bob went to bed at this point, in preparation for travelling tomorrow. It was too late for me, self-control was gone, I figured i could sleep on the bus, and I could feel the drunken politics conversation coming on. Which it did, until an hour later we all agreed to disagree, and went to bed.
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