Myanmar/Burma

I arrived in Yangon knowing the country had opened up to tourism about five years ago. The prior government did not allow any tourists to visit maybe thinking it was best to keep it’s country sheltered and preserved from the
“Western World”. My cab driver was very friendly and drove me to my hostel, which took about 1.5 hours. The road wasn’t very long but the traffic was treacherous. Yangon was hustling and bustling. I was surprised to see how wide the roads were and how newer buildings were sprouting up everywhere. I arrived at the hostel and checked in. They were so nice greeting me with a glass of orange juice-that was definitely a first. The next few days I built up a small network of friends (Emelyn, Rafi, Matt, Alicia, Lauren, Allison, Geelie, and Grace) touring the city with them any chance we got. We all realized immediately we had perhaps come to Myanmar at the wrong time. You see, there’s a major water festival during April 12^th-17^th but buses are fully booked a few days prior with locals who are on vacation and also locals
going to their home cities to celebrate the festival. I managed to get a golden ticket out of Yangon to Bagan on Sunday April 10^th and a day later another girl in my hostel got a ticket on the same bus. I was happy that Emelyn would be
travelling with me, it always makes things easier to travel with someone else. My friend Neha from Vancouver was suppose to meet up with me but some where things got lost in translation and schedules were not syncing up, especially with the bus crisis. With people from the group we visited the Shwedagon pagoda which was a stunning collection of pagodas. I like to call it the Disneyland of Pagodas, simply amazing. We also took a day trip to the city of Dala to see the Tsunami/Bamboo village, an orphanage, and a market where we bought lungi’s (a traditional wrap around skirt). The children at the orphanage immediately swarmed my “white” friends with a surge of excitement, I didn’t mind as I had gotten use to this by now. We also realized quickly that the food in this country was a hit or miss. Everything had a ton of extremely pungent fish sauce. I would stick to chicken curry and rice for most of my dishes because it’s one of the only things I could stomach.

We were sad to say good-bye to some friends we made but headed to our next stop Bagan. Bagan is the city with a million pagodas and pictured commonly with hot air balloons in the sky. We entertained the thought of a hot air balloon ride but at $300 USD per person we thought it would be too steep. We arrived in Bagan at 5am, the cabbie had scammed us an extra $10 and the bus company was in it on it since they dropped us off in the middle of nowhere instead of the bus centre. We were with a guy name Max from France who we quickly befriended. We got to our hostel Ostello Bello and couldn’t check in until 2pm so Emelyn, Max, and I rented electric bikes (e-bikes). I was terrified of the thought of riding this thing because I thought it was similar to a scooter. It was pretty simple actually so I’m lease I
didn’t chicken out. We ended up doing a tour of the more popular pagodas in the area. They were absolutely stunning to see. I was shocked that for the first time a local asked the take a picture with me at one of the pagodas. I wondered why but figured maybe I looked obviously “foreign” in this area as well? ha ha The heat in Myanmar has become unbearable registering at 45 degrees during the day. I felt like if it was any hotter, then I should be building a world cup stadium in Qatar 😉 We checked in our room and realized the air conditioner was not working. The front desk promised that it would be fixed by night and offered a free beer to apologize. We were exhausted and I decided to take a nap on the rooftop deciding between the 45 degree weather outside or a probable 60 degree weather in the room. I woke up drenched in sweat on the rooftop feeling bewildered, ha ha. We went to catch the sunset and afterwards, our e-bikes had broken down. All our e-bikes needed newly charged batteries. I called the rental company and they came with new batteries and we rode our e-bikes back to the hostel on a dark dusty road with no lights. This was scary. A lovely tuk tuk driver saw this and followed us from behind to make sure
we got to the main road safely. My e-bike’s headlight went out but good thing I carried my headlamp and Emelyn’s light went out closer to home. When we got into our room, we were told we could switch rooms since the air conditioning was not working-thank god! What a day without any adventure I’d say, ha ha

The next day the water festival began. If you stepped outside the hostel, you were definitely gonna get soaked. You’d be sprayed down by hoses or have buckets of water dumped on you by locals and fellow hostel mates. I enjoyed parts of the festival but the next few days were perhaps the worst on the trip so far. Do you know why? I had to spend 2 full days compiling all my information for tax preparation. Not good times doing your taxes from another country, ha ha. I felt great because at least I’ve been super productive. I was able to send in my medical claim form for my insect bite finger-swelling escapade. It was like filling out a manual! Last night, I felt the 6.9 earthquake that hit Myanmar. It was about 3 hours north of us. I was on the phone with my dad when I noticed everything starting to shake. All good though, no one was injured and the water festival was continuing today without a hitch. Annnnd lastly, I spent all of today updating my blog posts from 6 months ago which meant I’ve been writing all day long 🙂 I’m happy to have gotten all of this “work” out of the way because tomorrow morning Emelyn and I head to Mandalay to meet our friend Matt and catch another bus to do a small trek up north.

We headed off to Mandalay with 14 other people crammed into the back of a mini bus. We could quickly see why locals did not want to be operating buses or vans during this festival. Their cars would get soaked and sometimes the water would get inside drenching their seats or guests. Also, it’s pretty dangerous to have low visibility with so much water. We got to Mandalay terrified to get out of the van incase we would get attached by more buckets of water. We hopped into a “taxi” which was a station wagon who crammed about 10 of us girls into the back. We got to the hostel and saw our friend Matt standing outside participating in the water festivities. Emelyn and I got our own privateroom which was nice to have a break from a dorm room for a few days. We were beat and exhausted and not too many things were open in Mandalay during this water festival. We went and saw the world’s largest teak bridge and walked around the city enjoying lovely and cheap Indian street dishes. We decided to head to Pyin oo Lynn which was a couple hour “bus” ride east of Mandalay. This was no real bus but a localpick up truck which piled us in with
locals and a motorbike in between all of us. We had done some prior research as to lodgings in this new town but there were not too many options. We arrived at an old British resort called Orchid Nan Myaing which had worn down over the years. The amenities were quite basic but Emelyn and I didn’t mind so much until the shower in our room didn’t work. The staff didn’t believe us, maybe they thought we didn’t know how to use the shower so they came into investigate. Then when they realized brown/black mud was coming through the pipes they allowed us to shower in another guests room. A few of us decided to have some Indian food today at a popular restaurant called “Krishna”. The owners were very friendly and although it took a couple hours to get our food, it was indeed delicious. I was surprised to hear some of the older ladies who seemed to be relatives of the owners speak a type of Hindi that sounded similar to the Hindi my family speaks in Fiji. I have been on a bit of a quest to see what exact region of India my family originated from. These owners were from southern India originally so I wondered if my family was from the south instead of the north as other people have told us. Who knows when I’ll get to solving that mystery, but I hope I figure it out in my life time. I guess in my distraction of listening to the language, the group that I was with decided to do a “hike/wike” tomorrow to a waterfall. None of the details I listened to which presented to be a problem the following day. We were to hike to the Dattawgyaik waterfall after hitch hiking with some locals. When we got there some of the people in my group had looked at my flip flops and asked why I didn’t wear shoes. This iswhere I should have paid more attention at dinner the night before. Apparently they had mentioned shoes were needed because we’d be going up and down extremely steep dusty gravely roads down to the waterfall. Since this is all I had with me, this is what I would do the “hike” with. To get to the starting point of the hike, we needed to walk 3km in 35 plus degrees of heat with no shaded cover. Thankfully, we were able to hitch another ride with locals to the starting point or we would have been extremely tired. We walked down extremely dusty and slippery roads as I took extra care not to slip since my flip flops had no grip. We noted that locals were taking jeeps down to this waterfall but we didn’t want to pay the non local price to use the jeeps. It took us about an hour to get to the waterfalls which were extremely impressive and the surrounding water was a bright crystal aqua blue. I love that aqua blue colour in water, it just makes me happy. The guys were busy stripping off their clothes and jumping in when I realized none of the local women were taking off their clothes. They would be swimming in full t-shirts and shorts. Since we were in their country we decided it would be best to respect the local custom and follow suite. The water was ice cold but very refreshing in the heat. We took pictures while some of the group attempted to free climb up the waterfall or jump off rocks. We had to head back up this steep mountain and after a few minutes of walking everyone was pretty tired. I noticed a jeep coming down and mentioned to the group we could walk back down which would take a few minutes and grab a lift from the jeep. No one wanted to pay the extra money again so we continued to walk up the mountain thinking it wouldn’t be that difficult. In my flip flops and with the sandy gravel, it was an extremely difficult venture. I had warned the group that we would not be able to jump onto a jeep half way because the jeep wouldn’t be able to gain enough momentum to get up the steep mountain. Of course half way up, everyone said they wanted to grab a jeep and none of the jeeps could or would stop for us because it would have been impossible for them to continue up. After 1.5 hours we reached the top, sweaty, exhausted, and tired. Lesson learned. Next time listen to the group when they are talking about an activity ha ha.

Emelyn was leaving the day after to catch a train up to northern Myanmar where I heard there was excellent hiking and the ability to see some tribes. A more dangerous area which had recently opened up to tourism. Those who went told me that the military is walking around the jungles with AK 47’s in their hands but the battle is for the opium trade with surrounding countries, not tourists so they leave us alone. Although I would have loved to join Emelyn, I
knew I had to start heading south to catch my flight to Nepal. With the buses being full for multiple days at a time, I had to head back to Mandalay to catch a bus or flight to Yangon. I wanted to so desperately go to Inle Lake to hike or see that tattoo faced ladies of a dying tribe in the north west part of Myanmar but time was running out since the water festival had halted all possible travel options. Maybe I’ll come back to Myanmar another time. I ended up going back to Mandalay for one night then taking the bus to Yangon to stay at the Little Yangon hostel again. There I had met Priscilla who worked at the hostel and was a lovely young girl who spoke incredible English. I was shocked since in most places throughout the country, I had to use Google Translate a number of times to order food or get directions. Priscilla’s mom was a teacher and had taught in the U.S. and Singapore if I remember correctly. She just seemed special to me, some one who stood out above the rest. I wanted her to get ahead in life and help her start a tour company in Myanmar. I started doing some research and realized since Myanmar is so new to tourism she could definitely get this business going. I check in with her from time to time but I really need to reach out to her and help her piece this plan together with routes and a website. I realized what makes me happy is helping other people get ahead in life by making money. If I can donate my time and help people in other countries who want to be helped, why not? I left Myanmar with a new idea, some lovely friends, and something to look forward to in the future.

On a side note: Emelyn is an extremely talented writer and just published her new book “Tastes Like Chicken”. It’s a history on chicken in America and its evolution. The book is brilliant and hilarious just like Emelyn. Grab a copy on Amazon and enjoy reading all about this tasty bird!

GALLERY OF MYANMAR/BURMA PICS