Myanmar Post 1: Yangon

Well this has been a post long time in coming. Back in late April and early May Jessica and I decided to go to Burma. Why Burma? A good question. We heard stories that it was a very beautiful place to go and that the people were very nice, so we decided to give it a try. While the government is restrictive in where you can go in Burma as a tourist at least they don't give you any grief. It took us a week to get our Visas and then the next day we were on our way with a flight into Yangon.

While in Burma we basically followed the recommendations of the Lonely Planet book travel guide. However immediately after we arrived at the airport we were surrounded by people telling us that they wanted to be our tourist guide and that they could get us to the places we wanted. Jessica and I wanted nothing to do with them so we pushed our way past and found a taxi driver. This driver though was friends with one of the tour guides and called him over, and let him into the car as we left. On the way to our guest house he everyone seemed nice enough, and we said we would talk with the tour guide later in the day. Little did we know, the boat tickets we ended up buying form him for $50 US should have cost us $20. Yes, we did get ripped off, but the boat trip was still worth every penny and Jessica and I learned to be a little bit more careful.

For he couple of days we were in Yangon, the city was experiencing a massive heatwave with temperatures up to 44 Celsius. In other words, nearly 115 Fahrenheit. We didn't figure out what the exact temperature was until we came back to Yangon and talked with another tourist over a week later. While it was extremely hot, the weather was also extremely humid. Jessica and I at this point have been in Thailand for nearly six months and thought that we were used to the heat. Though after an hour and a half in this weather Jessica and I had to go back to our room because we were overheating and soaked with sweat.

The city of Yangon is old and beautiful and beautiful and the dilapidated state it is in adds greatly to its mystique. We noticed that everything in the city closes down around 8pm. We couldn't figure out why and it did cause us a few problems with getting dinner on the first night. Even the street vendors were no longer around.

Anyways there is my brief introduction to Burma and Yangon. There is quite a bit more but I can't tell you all our stories before we come home. :-)

A picture of the street from the third floor of our guest house.

The view from the top of a 15 story building in Yangon. In the background you see the old British townhall which is no longer in use.

A picture of the city with the Shwedagon temple in the background.

$100 US dollars worth Kyat, pronounced Jaht. At the time of our visit $1 US dollar was equal to 1000 Kyat. 1000 Kyat bills are the largest they have, and 100 bills of any currency is a big stack to carry around.

We met an English teacher and his students while we were at the Shwedagon temple in Yangon. They were all really nice and wanted to know if it was OK to practice their English speaking skills with us. Of couse we said OK and in the process of talking with them they showed us around the temple and told us more about the history of the place. It turned out that the teacher was an ex Monk.

Me pouring water on my birthday god, the tiger.

Jessica pouring water on her birthday animal, which is a dragon.

Gold plated iron and stone carvings filled the temple.

There were only a few of these wood carvings.

Though the temple is very beautiful and a national treasure, it is also falling apart in places.

This and the following two pictures are from around our guest house in Yangon. The area had buildings that were obviously left over from when the British first came to Burma. Most buildings at least on the outside, were in very poor shape and some had even collapsed.

Well that was our first couple of days in Burma! Soon we will post the following days.