Burmese Days

Our initial impression flying into Yangon wasn’t great.  It was a hot and sweaty grind through heavy traffic to our hotel in bustling Chinatown.  The power was out and the backup generators in front of pretty much every shop, restaurant and hotel were thumping away.  We didn’t realise it at the time, but the refuge collection the following morning caused the streets to be full of week-old putrid rubbish.

Together with our uncertainty about the security situation on the ground, that first night we kind of just tip-toed around the neighbourhood of our hotel, looking for a late-night bite before retreating to the safety and comfort of our hotel.

We both have six-month visas for Thailand, but the maximum stay at a time of just two months means that we have to periodically do visas runs to reset the clock.  I’ve wanted to visit Myanmar for some time now and we would have loved to have brought our sailing yacht Aroha up the coast from Thailand, but the cost and bureaucracy is just too onerous.  The most restrictive requirement is to have a government approved Myanmar ‘guide’ on board for the whole time.  Aroha’s our home – and a not very large one at that – and I can’t really imagine sharing it with a stranger 24-7.

I frequently use the FCO (British Foreign and Commonwealth) travel advisory when planning travel to less-visited countries.  They have quite a balanced approach – their colour coded maps are excellent, and formed the basis for planning where we could comfortably visit.  Compared to the Aotearoa New Zealand travel advice (“Don’t go!”), the British advice shows different risk levels in traffic-light colour coded simplicity.

The reality on the ground is that security is very visible – most government buildings have rickety wood and razor wire barriers around them, and travel up and down the country is frequently interrupted by army check points as you move between provinces and enter cities.  And there’s a night time curfew, but we’re happy to be back in the hotel by then anyways.  But I didn’t ever feel unsafe on the streets, like I have in Yemen, Afghanistan or the USA.

We decided to limit ourselves to visiting just Yangon, Mandalay and Bagan.  Whilst disappointed to miss huge swathes of the country, it was quite nice to be able to really relax into the stops we did chose.

Exploring Yangon in daylight the following morning revealed a buzzing, vibrant city.  Since the double-hit of Covid and the latest (of a long string of…) military coups the following year, western tourists are pretty thin on the ground and we started to become accustomed to the slightly unusual mix of welcome and curiosity that would mark the coming weeks.

Yangon feels like a city that has a place to go, that’s not slowing down for anyone.  We generally planned a route each day that would take in temples, pagodas, markets and perhaps most importantly, an air-con break around the hottest part of the day!  One day we took the local train out to the biggest wholesale food market I’ve ever seen – I did a quick calculation from google earth and worked out that the area is comparable to the world’s largest shopping mall in Dubai!  The buckets of what appears to be fermenting fish in the photos is… well, fermenting fish.  It’s used as a flavour enhancer in many dishes.  Sadly, as vegetarians, we didn’t get to try it… although you can pretty much taste it in the air, just walking past!

Another day we dropped into an art gallery and stumbled across an exhibition launch event, with a well known Myanmar artist in attendance.  Helen, being the most presentable of us, was coerced into doing an interview.

At night, it feels like the seven million inhabitants come out to either operate or patronise the street food carts.  In Thailand the food is roughly a third of the cost of an equivalent establishment in the UK – we just enjoy eating out three times more frequently!  And Myanmar is about a third of the cost of Thailand – for street food, two can dine for a total of about £1.50!

Our hotel in Yangon was situated on a busy back street full of life.  The street was quite narrow, and our small, second floor balcony made a good spot for observing everyday life.  One morning, Helen noticed our neighbours lowering alms (offerings such as rice, sometimes money) on ropes from the apartment windows to monks waiting on the street below.  The challenge seems to be negotiating the web of cables on the way down!  For money, the monks carefully release the money into their pots, touching only the clip and not the cash, as they are forbidden to do so.

A few years ago we told close friends we were planning on visiting The Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea).  I was a little embarrassed when our friend suggested that our visit was funding a rogue regime – embarrassed because I’d never even considered it, but I’m not sure that income from the annual four thousand western tourists would fund many nukes anyway.

Here’s a link to a blog I posted last year on Pondering the impact of Tourism  Pondering Tourism – Ripening Nicely

Regardless of possible parallels between North Korea and the military dictatorship again running Myanmar, I’ve always thought that travel broadens the mind – not just from seeing a place and talking to locals, but in the curiosity that travel instils to research more.  We’ve both developed substantial reading lists from our short visit to Myanmar!

After almost a week in Yangon, we were ready to take the Road To Mandalay!

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