Yangona, Yangona, Yangona

Friday, July 7, 2006

Finally made it to Burma, officially called Myanmar. I flew straight from Frisco, through Manila, then Singapore, and finally, Rangoon. I was stranded in Singapore a little bit longer than I wanted to because I didn't realize that it took one full day for the Embassy of the Union of Myanmar to process the visa application. On their website, for the embassy in Singapore at least, it says that applications received in the morning will be returned by 2:30 in the afternoon of the same day. Don't believe, it took a full 24 hours and more, so I got my visa the following day at 2 in the afternoon. It also says on their website that all individual foreign travelers will be required to exhange $200 US into local currency upon arrival at the airport. Not true, they stopped this in 2003. See Lonely Planet guide.

The airport facility in Yangon is bare, minimal, the most unmodern international airport I have ever seen. Someone in the TravelBlog community once described it as an old, run down, Greyhound station, possibly somewhere in Detriot. That's pretty close. Of course, I knew absolutely nothing about this country, othen than the Lonely Planet guide that I've been reading to pepare for this trip. Thus, I felt a little sense of trepidation as we approach the airport for the landing. As the plane came to a full stop, a truck backs towards the plane to attach the boarding/exit ladder to plane(no accordion type attachement exist in this airport yet). As we get off the plane a bus took us to the arrival terminal, through immigration, and baggage claim. The whole place looks like its been bombed and reconstructed halfway, never completed. I had no problem passing through immigration and custom. As I exited out of customs a man helped me with my baggage. Before I passed through the exit I stopped at the Ministry of Tourism and Travel booth to ask for information and in passing, mentioned to the lady in the booth that I needed to exchange some money. The lady came into full alert mode, and with some sense of urgency, pointed to another lady standing next to me. She said this lady could give me a good exchange rate but she said it in a hush, hush kind of way, eyeing about as if she were hiding something, like we were about to engage in a crimingal act. I had some US dollars but I was saving that for a better rate in the central Yangon market place. Instead, I exchanged all of the Singaporean dollars that I have, S$68 for some local currency, which turned out to be 35,000 Kyat(pronounced chat). I also paid for my taxi fair at the booth for about 6,000 Kyat, which is probably too much, but I didn't care because it's not going to break my piggy bank.

I got out of the airport, tipped the bag man, and got on my taxi. As soon as we pulled out of the airport a heavy thunderstorm hit us so hard it felt like we were at the bottom of a waterfall. It just poured like there was no tomorrow, as if I should've been on Noah's Ark instead of some rickety Burmese taxi. That was my first impression of Yangon, monsoons and rinkidink taxis ploughing through the flood.

Everything here seems outdated and in a major state of disrepair. The automobiles are at least ten years past their usuable lifetime. It coughs a lot, spews out tons of pollution, and are generally in their second or third hand of users. The buildings look dilapidated due to lack of maintenance, the traffic moves at about 25 mph max not because of congestion but because all the cars lack the horsepower to move any faster.

As I was being driven in the pouring rain a trickle of water was leaking through the driver side's window. I began to relax at that point as I chatted with the taxi driver named Lone-Lone(that's really his name, and he operates a tour company on the side). I realized after a while that their was no imminent threat to my personal safety. These people were not going to slash my throat, take all my belongings, and dump my body down the Yangon River. That element of viciousness just doesn't seem to exist here. These people are very nice and helpful, but they're poor, so naturally they have to be enterprising in order to survive. That part I don't mind. I just don't want them to kill me.

We passed through some points of interests but it was difficult to see because of the heavy downpour, which made visibility effectively about fifty feet. We passed through the enormous US Ambassador's residence, Yangon University, some hotels, and some other places which were important, but I missed them all. We passed by the gates of the Shwedagon Pagoda, which made me very happy because this is one of the reasons why I came here.

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