Yangon, Myanmar

KIPLING
In Letters from the East (1898) Rudyard Kipling wrote the following:

"Then, a golden mystery up-heaved itself on the horizon - a beautiful, winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire. 'There's the old Shwedagon', said my companion. The golden dome said, 'This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.'"

'There's the old Shwedagon'

Now 105 years later I am here, in part intrigued by his descriptions of the golden land and in part horrified by the human rights violations that continue to plague the country. I want to discover how one of the wealthiest countries in South East Asia could be isolated from the rest of the world and vandalised by its rulers. But further to uncover the paradox between selfless generosity and menacing greed in a country held together by love and fear.

MYANMAR OR BURMA?
At Yangon International airport I was one of the last people off the plane, which was a good thing. It meant that I was the last one on the shuttle bus and one of the first off and into the terminal. I had been warned of the bureaucratic procedures at the airport and I knew that a Thai Airways flight was due in not long after my flight so being at the front of the queue was potentially quite important. It didn't take long for the arrival hall to fill up and the foreigners queue grew alarmingly quickly behind me. It took three people to check and diligently stamp my passport but I was ushered on without much fuss. The next obstacle was the foreign exchange counter where every foreign visitor is supposed to change no less then US$200 into Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs), Myanmar's second legal currency. This system revolves around the desire of everyone in Myanmar, including the Government, to get hold of as much hard currency as possible. Because you cannot change less than 200FEC back into dollars, this practice ensures that you spend at least $200 in Myanmar, regardless of how long you intend to stay. Of course there are always ways around this and offering a small bribe to the money changers will usually mean that you can change a lower amount. This can be important as most of the meals we were to eat over the next few months would cost less than a dollar and having too much local currency would be a waste. When John landed at Yangon two days prior he gave the money changer a $5 'present' and was allowed to change $100 instead of the full amount. I wasn't quite so diligent. I asked if I could change $100 only, but when the woman asked me how long I was going to stay in the country I gulped nervously and mumbled "28 days" under my breath. "No, $200 is good for you" came the reply so I relented and ended up with the full amount of monopoly money much to my disappointment. It took a few minutes to fill out the paperwork and I made sure to count the money carefully before moving on. Two more things to do, collect my bag and pass customs. It should be easy but I was nervous because I was carrying my laptop computer with me and knowing that the Internet is illegal and journalists are frowned upon I fully expected to have my laptop confiscated and held at the airport during my stay. The baggage took a long time to arrive but when it did my bag was among the first on the belt. After collecting it I took a little time to sort my electronic gadgets out - removing the battery from the computer, hiding the adapters for the computer and my digital camera in my other bag. I wanted to make sure that if my laptop was to be held by customs it wouldn't work and hence would not be a desirable proposition should anyone contemplate stealing it. All my fears led to naught however. The customs official wrote out a small slip of paper claiming that I had declared my computer and hence would be able to remove it legally from the country. He stapled the form into my passport and sent me on my way. Euphoric, I met up with two other travelers from my flight, Pepe and Sylvia, and shared a taxi with them to the Garden Guesthouse in central Yangon - US$3 a night. John was waiting there for me and true to form he had changed his appearance to suit the new environment. The massive handlebar moustache was gone and he wore a sensible haircut but still he looked about as conspicuous as any traveler could look due mainly to his six foot three frame and shock of red hair.
"So what do we call this place, Myanmar or Burma?" I asked him.
"I don't know. I guess we should try and find out."

SUMMERS IN RANGOON
John had already been in Rangoon for two days by the time I turned up so he had already found a good place to eat and had the low down on changing money and getting up to Mandalay. The Garden Guesthouse was the choice of accommodation but our room was dark and windowless and not very appealing. It was cheap, the breakfast was pretty ordinary and I saw a rat in the hallway but the location was excellent, just a stones throw from the Sule Paya in downtown Rangoon. The days were spent out and about in the heat and dirt and in the evenings we retired to a local bar and drank Mandalay beer for 18c a glass.
More so than any other new country I had been in I discovered many unique features about either the landscape or the people and their behaviour.
The first was at the local bar - we noticed that people we making a kissing sound to attract the attention of the waiter so on my first night I puckered my lips and kissed as loudly as I could. Instantaneously a waiter appeared in front of our table so I ordered another round of 18c beers and a plate of prawn crackers. Rather than rude, it's considered polite to attract someone's attention that way so we used it a lot during our stay.
Whenever giving or receiving something, especially money, it is a mark of respect to touch the forearm or elbow of your outstretched arm with your other hand. Every waiter does this without fail when handing change back from a meal or drink. When we started doing it back we always got a laugh.
The vast majority of women and small children wear Thanakha on their faces or usually just the cheeks. Thanakha is a light yellow sandalwood-like paste that dries on the skin, protecting it from the sun but also moisturizing as well. For many it is applied very delicately to ensure the same amount on each cheek and in the same pattern. Many babies are basically dipped in the stuff and some men will wear a tiny dot under each eye.
The Longyi is the Burmese unisex sarong-style lower garment worn and constantly retied throughout the day. They have not taken to trousers very fondly but in the hill stations where the climate is cooler some may decide to wear pants or even jeans.
Most of the cars and trucks in Burma come from either China or Singapore where drivers use the left hand side of the road. Traffic in Burma travels, albeit very slowly, on the right side of the road so there is the unique situation of having the driver nearer to the curb than the middle of the road. Worse still, whenever a bus stops the passengers are let off into traffic.
As well as smoking local made cheroots, many men chew betel nut wrapped in betel leaf with lime paste and coconut. It's a bit like chewing tobacco in that a massive wad of rolled leaf is chewed and slowly spit out over the course of an hour or so. The red fluid can be seen all over the streets but the obvious sign that someone chews betel nut is the filthy red stained teeth, which at first I mistook for bleeding gums. I am told the women find the look very attractive, but thankfully Sara likes my teeth the way they are.

Yangon - Maha Wizawa

 

Me at Maha Wizawa

For two days in Yangon we busied ourselves with the various pagodas, Buddha's and city lakes that form a feature of the city. We rose early one morning to see the Shwedagon Paya at sunrise and weren't disappointed. We got there well before the sun hit the golden stupa and stayed for a few hours, mesmerized by the beauty and changing colours, stopping for tea and Burmese lessons in the shade with a friendly gentleman. He taught us how to say "I am going to Mandalay" in Burmese which ended up as our catchphrase not only for the day but for the rest of the trip, substituting Mandalay for wherever we happened to be going that day - Bagan, Hsipaw, the toilet, breakfast etc. We would tell anyone who would listen, and even others who wouldn't but the side-splitting laughter we occasionally received was the best response and often led to other conversations. John especially was keen to move conversations of future destinations subtly to those of Burma and the people, the economy and sometimes as far as the government but people were often very cautious about what they said. A number of people would just laugh and shrug, looking around nervously to see who was about. And that was the trouble with Yangon - there were too many people about and we wanted to find out more about the country and if things were improving. Ne Win, the dictator that governed from 1962 to 1988, died last December at the age of 93 so we wanted to find out what people thought about it, was this good news, were things changing? Maybe in the smaller towns things would be different.

  Chauktatgyi Paya reclining Buddha

 Getting a Tri-Shaw ride with D'Arcy riding shotgun

MYANMAR OR BURMA (REPRISE)

At first I resisted using the word Myanmar because it was a name change enforced by the military government back in 1989. Even the local people seem to mix it up a lot, sometimes using the British name Burma and sometimes the 'new' name Myanmar. The name Burma comes from British times when they had control of the Southern portion of the country in which the Bamar people were the majority and left the north largely autonomous. It's from the Bamar that the British got the name Burma, however the name Myanmar refers to the whole country and doesn't identify the nation with only one ethnic group. Linguistically the name change seems perfectly reasonable also it seems eerily similar to the 1949 change (by a dictatorship) from Siam to Thailand. The name Myanmar isn't actually new at all - it was the official name when Marco Polo wrote about the country in the 13th century.