YANGON, MYANMAR

2016-02-28, 15:06, JASON

BUDGET, STAY: LIL' YANGON HOSTEL

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Second trip of the year, this time off to Myanmar! Jetstar had an end-of-year sale promotion for 2015, and we thought to capitalize on that and try our hand at a completely different country -- one of the first where we actually had to apply for a visa at the consulate. The Burmese consulate in Singapore is alright, it's more like someone's home. You drop your info off in the morning, including all of your fees and passport, and then pick up the passport at the end of the day. Pretty simple, except for the fact that you have to make time out of your day.

This post covers the first two days we spent in Myanmar in Yangon, as well as the last day of our trip, also spent in Myanmar. In between is a trip to Bagan, which Thorin will write about. There are a couple of general mentions about Myanmar:

The country operates on two currencies, the Kyat (pronounced Chiat) and USD. Most places will quote prices in Kyat, but some places will take USD if that's the only currency you have. However, be warned, sometimes the price in USD will be significantly higher than the Kyat price, or vice versa. So, for going into monuments and stuff, have both ready and be prepared to make a snap decision in either price, and get that mental math going. Exchange rates are pretty good at the airport, and are close to market value. Technically, you can't get Kyat outside of Myanmar due to its being a 'restricted currency', but, getting it outside the country is at a bad rate anyway. Wait til you're in the airport, and they'll offer you a decent price.

Most of the women here will wear a longyi (pronounced long-jee) and the men's equivalent I believe is called a paso. This is one of the few countries that we have been to that have maintained a strong sense of traditional form of dress. Most men and women will be walking around in these and sandals, and some even pair them with a business shirt. They look a bit like sarongs, and the way you put them on is you step into them as if it were tube, and then fold either right-over-left or vice versa depending on gender. It's weird to see that nearly every single one of the people were wearing them. As most of the world shifts to western wear it's hard to find a place that preserves national dress, not just for occasion but for daily use.

There is a cosmetic / sunscreen paste here called Thanaka. A lot of people wear it. I mean, a lot. You'll walk around, and see some people painting it in a more artistic fashion. There are also people that wear it as more of an overall protectant and just smear it all over their face and neck. There are small stands that paint it onto leaves and sell it to other people. Supposedly, it works wonders for your skin and protects it from the hot equatorial sun. No wonder why everyone's skin looked so smooth and tight. Get me some Thanaka, shoot. It's weird to see how much people wear this, and visibly so. So often when we think about putting stuff on our face we want it to be less visible, such is the case with sunscreen. When they put it on, you can actually see the dry residual on their face. In terms of cultural preservation and continuity, Burma really surpassed our expectations. The Thanaka and longyi, I'd say, were some of the most interesting things we saw, and was there lots of it!

Shall we get on with the actual city then?

Getting in, we are 17 km or so out of the city enter so taxi was the best bet. We negotiate a fixed rate and are in the city center within an hour, accounting for some traffic. Because there are so few hostels (labeled as 'guest houses) in Yangon, the driver knew exactly where to go. Turns out, it was one of few hostels around. When you drive in, there is a little bit of infrastructure, but it's not as developed, say, as Bangkok, but moreso along the lines of Manila. A couple of gutted buildings around and auto traffic, but not as much foot traffic, since things are more spread out. In fact, most locals would go on smaller scooter bikes or take taxis as well.

Everything is in Burmese script. OK -- that's an obvious statement. But, the cooler aspect is that not many signs are translated into English. So, when you're asking for directions and show them some text, like a road name, or a map of where you're going, they may not be able to read the Latin script. Even the numbers have Burmese equivalents. Usually this isn't so much of a problem since some countries will utilize Latin script to write national language, and Arabic numerals to signify numbers, but in Myanmar it's just another world. At one point, we required a lady to write down the name of our bus company so we could read it. That being said, their spoken English was good. Most of them could recite numbers when asking for cash, and had a grasp of communicable English. Obviously, not the best, but I'm not in a position to slag off their English when my Burmese is at zero percent.

Our hostel, Lil Yangon, graciously supplied us with a map and a small itinerary of the sights of Yangon, so we headed off. First task was food. We ended up at some random café where people looked at us strangely as if we were in the wrong place. Actually, we had no idea where we were, so we were equally confused. We sat down and they handed us a menu, and we just looked at the pictures and pointed at some local noodles. Some great local food with saltier flavors, but still similar to Thai style (a little sour, more salty). We each ordered a tea at the place, which is like the national drink of the country. You order a tea, made with condensed milk, that tastes a bit like Teh Tarik from the Malaysians/Indians, but with their own Burmese flavor. The most equivalent thing I can think of is just standard British black tea with milk and sugar, except maybe a bit more sugary flavor due to the milk variety they utilize. They will then give you a pot of hot green tea to drink, and this green tea that is all-you-can-drink. I think by the end of our trip we had drunk at least 20 cups of this milk tea.. and for every meal, because it was so hot, we would go through at least a whole jug of the green tea. It was delicious. The condensed milk did wonders.

After, we begin our trek to the first few sites. First up, a triple threat: City Hall, Sule Pagoda, as well as Bandoola Park. They're a cluster of sites about 5 minute walk from our hostel. Along the way passing in, you are inundated with just food stalls EVERYWHERE. Seriously, there is no shortage of food access in this city, for the traveler. On the road, you see people selling salads, noodles, satay-style eats where you cook it yourself, more salads, some roti, etc. It's everywhere, making it one of (in my opinion) the most exciting food places you can go to. People just plop down on small chairs and low tables, kind of like the kids tables we used to eat at, and would just order and eat. So good, and so cheap.

But anyway, onto the sites. Myanmar is pretty much pagoda land, with every major site to see either a pagoda, or something related to Buddhism. Since we got a bit bored of temples in the rest of SE Asia, pagodas were a good change in scenery. Each pagoda is decked out with some fancy plating of gold, and each shrine is also decked out. Many of the Buddhas have these weird neon lights flashing out from behind their head, almost as if installed by some 70's dive bar interior designer. Sule pagoda is one of the smaller pagodas, with a general stupa in the center and Buddha's scattered across. When you walk in, people are just chilling at the temples, using wifi. Some of them are praying, some just having lunch. Actually, given the busy-ness of the city outside (Sule is in the center of a roundabout with heavy traffic) the pagoda is a great place to just relax. It's not particularly loud, there's plenty of shade, and the ventilation is amazing. 

The City Hall building was nice to look at, but we could not go into it. As such, we just appreciated the architecture from the outside. Fair enough, we probably wouldn't have gone in anyway, especially if they were making us PAY. They did that to us at Sule, which is not bad, but they also make you check in your shoes & socks since it's a pagoda. Of course, when you pick up your shoes, they will ask for a donation. So, pagoda tip number 1 is: bring your own plastic bag to hold your shoes. All the locals do it, you can too.

Bandoola Park is nice. There is a central column in the middle and the whole park serves as a good natural space admist the busy city. It's almost out of place since the city is so busy, but the park is maintained nicely, and you can see a lot of local folk just chilling around. After the sun mostly goes down, at about 5 p.m., the park floods with locals. Glad to see another SE Asian country has parks figured out like Europe.

Another thing interesting about Yangon is the old British architecture you see here. The British, turns out, were pretty hands off with their approach to ruling Myanmar, and ruled it in conjunction with India. As such, the continued influence of British culture here is not as strong. Neither is the architectural stuff: although there are a lot of buildings that are colonial, and there's even a colonial heritage walk, most of the buildings that have been built by the British are falling in disrepair, especially after the capital was moved to Naypyidaw, and during its isolation following British invasion. Vines and weeds poured through the windows, outgrowing the architecture. Based on the scaffolding, seems like there are repairment efforts, but it still makes a very cool urban building, an apocalyptic "post civilization" look. CHIC.

Yangon, by far, has the most decay of buildings that we've seen of the Southeast Asian states. This makes an amazing landscape for photography, but probably horrible living conditions. Here's what I mean: 

Still, it makes it an interesting city to wander around. After the triple sites, we decided to head over to Bogyoke Market which is kind of just a large market with both sheltered and open-air shops. On the way there, we pass by some grungy looking streets, so we snap a few photos. It's nice that these streets have just naturally evolved to look nontraditionally picturesque. Each unit has its own small personality, and it comes together to form this cool looking street -- cool enough to snap a picture, at least.

At Bogyoke Market, most of the things being sold were old clothes or some paintings. In the middle, there is an open cafe bit where everyone is sitting on those low-rise chairs and tables I mentioned earlier sipping some of their famous milk tea (have to do another shoutout). However, pro trip number 2, if you see a bunch of white people eating at the place (esp. in Southeast Asia, for some reason), it's probably catered a bit. So, for the authentic experience, you can probably get a decent tea at any other roadside shop. One that preferably looks a bit dirtier, you know? Anyway, digressing from whtie people, Bogyoke Market was pretty good. We didn't stay around too long, since we're not into shopping, but it was a nice market. 

Continuing westward through the market, we kept on going through to Chinatown. Practically every Southeast Asia country has one, and it's pretty good . There's no central bit, or no big gate that we saw, but overall, it's nothing too special in the daytime. Actually, we bought some fruits and water at a nearby market, and when we tried to open Thorin's soymilk on the side of the street that we bought (it had a bottlecap), the nicest family told us to go sit at their table in front of their house, and gave us a bottle opener to use. They didn't even talk to us that much, but just invited us to sit on their table. Their kid was playing with us as well. Very sweet. The spirit of the Myanmari.

I'll backtrack to Chinatown in a second, since going there at night is a whole other story. But, from here, we decided to go to Botahtaung Pagoda. This one is along the more southern border, and apparently was good for a sunset. We got there, and they decided to charge us for the Pagoda again, so, being only our first day in Yangon, and trying to save some money, we did not pay to go in. Still, you can walk around the premises along the docks, and it's kind of nice. The sun set on a whole other side of the Ayeyarwaddy River though, so what we did instead was just left before the sunset and headed back to Chinatown to explore some more. We took the long route and maybe walked for 40 minutes or so back to Chinatown, just in time for the night markets to open up.

Getting a view of the Ayeyarwaddy near Botahtaung Pagoda. Cool fisherboats

Moody pagoda lookChinatown at night is absolutely mad. All along the main road, probably for a stretch of a dozen or so blocks, are just people selling fruits, and food. There is, like I said earlier, so much food around. They're all selling the same thing: oranges, strawberries, pomelo, huge watermelons, and they're lined along just the main road, so cars are buzzing by and honking -- something they do here just to notify someone they're passing or coming up to them, not as a 'rude gesture' from what we gathered. And there's people out, sitting at these food stalls, and picking through fruits. It's as if this farmer's market was there the whole time, and road infrastructure crept up around it in development, but the market still remained in the same spot. We turned down a random street that had a bunch of vegetable shops laid out on the floor in the middle, with two rows of shops lined up on your left and right, creating two aisles to walk down and explore. My god, some of the stuff we saw.. there were chickens being slaughtered in front of you, fishes just gutted, raw chicken just sitting out there, and various other meats in preparation. I've never seen a market that open and so upfront about the preparation process. You can definitely still see agrarian roots peering through in Yangon. And, these things were just laid out in the middle of this street. People were shelling shrimp, etc. I wish I had a better camera to capture the quality at night, since it was buzzing, but I only got a picture. You can see more in the video at the bottom. 

That about wraps up day one!

The next day, we had plans to go to Shwedagon Pagoda, the most famous (and, if I'm not wrong, one of the oldest) pagodas in the world. It's the main attraction in Yangon and you pretty much are obliged to go. So, we take a taxi in in the morning, and spend the longest we ever do at a site, about 1.5 hours. Just walking around and soaking in Buddha's body all over us. I've never seen so much gold in my life. Had we gone later in the afternoon I might have just gotten a tan from that reflective glory. The pagoda is structured in the middle, and there are four wings you can climb up. Each wing has a pilgrimmage of sorts, where you climb maybe 70-100 steps up to the pagoda. As such, it exists a bit isolated and you can see why it's such a peaceful place. There are Bodhi trees scattered throughout some corners, Buddhas everywhere, and so many intricate details that it's really hard to get it all in in one wander. So, we give it about 3 to explore every corner. We paid for a taxi to get there, anyway, so might as well. 

We thought we'd be a bit savvy and save some money so we tried walking back from Shwedagon to our hostel. That failed miserably. But, what we did stumble upon instead was two cool things. We stopped over a noodle popup stand and had some of the best noodles we ever had from this auntie. That was a nice memory. We kept walking, made a wrong turn, and instead of heading towards our hostel we stumbled upon this really cool floating pagoda. However, since we were in a rush to go get lunch with our friend Ricky, we decided to postpone this to when we got back from Bagan. Ricky took us to this place called 'Feel Café' which according to him was popular with locals and foreigners. It's served in a traditional Myanmar fashion: a lot of small dishes, and a shitload of rice. It's good because you get to go up and pick all the dishes that you want, and then, mix it with a bunch of rice and tea at the end. This is also our first exposure to the infamous Tea Leaf Salad that the Burmese make. Seriously, I can't even explain it. There are nuts scattered throughout the dish, at various different crunchiness levels, and the veggies are all so fresh; mixed together in creamy goodness. We ended up getting a few of these in Bagan (also a ginger salad, tomato salad) since we barely got enough this first time. Anyway, it's probably one of the more famous dishes. Also, it was good to catch up with old friends. 

That night, we were going to take an overnight bus to Bagan. The journey there was amazing, I think our taxi driver at one point ended up taking some small routes through the townships, where it was just people lying around and chilling, and of course selling food. We've not seen poverty like that before, the township looked like a favela-sort of thing, with all low rises, very little infrastructure, and just small family units in small houses. The roads were all bumpy and barely paved, and so the journey was a bit rocky.

When we arrive to the bus stop, it is just one big square with a bunch of buses around it, so we began to look for our bus: Bagan Min Thar. A couple of times I would ask people and they would just shake their head because they did not speak English. Another time, the man didn't read Latin script but asked his daughter to help us out, and she was able to direct us to the bus. Turns out we were in the wrong area, so we walk a little bit behind the bus station and the place is just absolutely mobbed with buses and people, and more food. We spend about 20 minutes asking around where our bus is, and about 20 minutes later, we find the port for our bus. One lady at some point event had to write down "Bagan Min Thar" for us in Burmese just so we could find the sign. With eased minds, we hopped on the bus to Bagan.

Getting back into Yangon after Bagan, we decided to just relax most of the day. Thorin and I realized that it's been a while since we've done a long trip like this, and we were running out of ideas. We got in at 5 in the morning, a bit groggy, and having to negotiate a taxi ride back into the city. These guys are ruthless, they'll try their best to get you into their taxi, foreigners and locals alike, as expected, so we negotiated down. But, we ended up having to share our taxi with these two other Burmese people, who got in and looked at us as if we were the strangest people ever. Yeah, after that 10 hour bus ride we were. After finally making it to the train station, we find out that the circle line only runs at 7:30, and it's about 6, so we just walk around the area. We duck into a small breakfast place and get some you tiao (literal translation: oil stick, but it tastes so much better) as well as some roti prata-ish kind of dish. And, we smash another Burmese tea. I have to take a dump so I can officially say I've had to go to a squat toilet with no toilet paper, only a hose to spray down the residue. Did it all with my travel backpack on too, I'm so proud.

We eventually get on the train, and this is the slowest riding train ever. It moves at a slow speed, making it easy for you to fall asleep. But, the people you see on the train as well as the picture of Yangon is stunning. The train makes a circle, escaping the city and entering into rural Yangon. On the train, people will jump on with various groceries and vegatables, doing things like shelling beans, or selling food. We jump off at Insein station, still on the left-part of the circle loop, and walk to go see a pagoda, but there is not much development. Most of the houses are shacks along the side of the road, lofted over a dirty river stream. We run into a Doctors without Borders clinic there, and it's packed. We get a bit lost along the way, but ask around for the Pagoda and eventually located it with the help of a nice, local Burmese woman. It's nice: this one is not touristy at all, just a few monks chilling around, and a few aunties making their daily pagoda run. You know, dat Buddhist life.

Getting back on, the train was a lot more crowded. People start shoving into the train, and the whole thing is absolutely packed, shoulder to shoulder. People are looking out the window, kids hanging off the entrances to the train since it's moving so slow. It was breathtaking in a different way, just watching their livelihoods roll by slowly in, then so quickly out of your life. It felt like one of those old school adventure journeys on a train. A hipster Trans-Siberian. Stunning views of rural life on the fields, and people just going about their daily activities. If you ever get a chance to do it, I recommend it. As the circle line opens up a bit more as a result of tourism (it's popularly advertised in Yangon to foreigners), I think some of the places along the route will lose their charm. 

The entire journey was about 3 hours long, just long enough to soak in some experience outside of the city. After we went back, we just went back to the Bandoola park and chilled for about 1.5 hours. After that, we decided to walk all the way to the floating pagoda that we missed when we were here a few days earlier. We eventually get there, and turns out, it's not even an open-access pagoda, it's just a fancy restaurant. Around it, there are small ice cream stands and cafés, and a lot of local, young Burmese kids going on dates. It was a secluded spot for them to just hang out -- youth urban expression, I guess. Again, cool that they had a big zoological/botanical garden park space for that. So much of the city is getting developed that it's nice to have a natural relaxation space. 

If you want to come to Southeast Asia, I suggest Yangon, and a trip to Bagan, or even Inle Lake or other interesting spots, tourist or not. We met an old couple at one point in Bagan who said that they were here before the military government took over, back in '88. Even now, they have only recently opened up to tourism, I believe starting 2010 or so. Countries that have done the suddenly-opening-up are fascinating, since they preserve, still, a non-infiltrated cultural bubble. As time progresses, naturally these places will change and cater to tourism, and it's possible a lot of local culture will get wiped out. Preserve this place in your head via your photos and memories. It's worth it. This blog post doesn't do the city half justice.

Check out our video compilation below, I'll work on my narration enunciation.

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