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Published: March 13th 2008
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Yangon
the busy street, with dirty, old buildings in the background! So much has happened in the last few weeks, I'm afraid of how long this blog is gonna turn out....I'll try to keep it brief!
In mid Feb I headed to Mynamar with Gary......I'm assuming this alone requires some explanation...Gary was a teacher at that camp I worked at in Korea (the guy all the kids thought I was dating). And for those of you who don't know, Myanmar is a small country just west of Thailand...used to be called Burma. It was in the news a couple months ago because some monks protested and got shot by the military. I know what you're all thinking...why the hell would I go there after what I just wrote, but I'm not really into protesting so I figured I'd be fine!!! Anyways, it turns out that nothing I heard about Myanmar was true. Our media is full of shit and so are most of the people who think they're helping when they tell you how stupid you are for going to a third world country. Don't believe everything you here people. They're actually gonna have a democratic election in 2010. But what we heard before coming here was that the people were so
cut off from the real of the world. They are actually not at all. They might not have as much free speech and open media as we do but they have access to the internet and get HBO and CNN, which is more than some Canadians!
Its also one of the safest countries I've been to so far. I was never worried about getting mugged or that someone was gonna try to rip my bag off my shoulder like I heard about in Vietnam. This is because the people were the nicest, most hospitable people I've ever met. They were always smiling and trying to make conversation with us, asking us where were from. They go so far out of their way to make you feel comfortable. As soon as we'd get out of the taxi at the guest house, someone would run out and carry our bags for us. I think I carried my bag once in the 3 weeks we were there. Ok it did help that Gary carried it a bit too, but most of the time they even carried them to our rooms for us.
Even the taxi drivers went above and beyond. They acted as
tour guides, and helped us buy train tickets and they didn't try to rip us off! We were so used to taxi drivers in Thailand asking for double what they really deserved it was so refreshing having someone ask us for a decent price and then still bargaining.
I'm not sure if any of the geography will mean anything to you, but here goes....we started the trip in Yangon...the capital city. It looked like any big city, with a few main roads and lots of smaller side streets. The cars just kinda drive wherever, the bigger ones passing everything else. All the "stores" were on the sidewalks, kinda like a sidewalk sale except that many of them sold things like penis rings and viagra!!! The one thing that made it hard to believe it was a big city was the non-existence nightlife. We took a nap one night and only made it out for dinner at like 10:00....big mistake. The whole city was shut down. There were no street lights, no restaurants open and no bars. We found one guy serving food on the street with little plastic stools to sit on.
After being in cold Korea for a
month, all I wanted to do was chill on the beach for a while, so we took a bus to Ngwe Saung beach....a little non-aircon bus with so many people, they were sitting in the isles and on the steps up to the drivers seat. Being the only foreigners on the bus, we got the cushioned seat! The beach was amazing. It was like our own little private island (except that it wasn't actually an island but whenever I'm at the beach it feels like one!!) There were only a few other tourists at our resort, and no one as far as we could see at any of the other resorts on the beach. We had a bungalow 20 feet from the beach. Our meals came right to our porch, so we basically went from our bungalow, to the beach, to the hammock Gary brought with him.
After the beach we took the dirtiest train to Mandalay, which itself was pretty dirty from all the car exhaust. So we didn't spend much time there. From there we opted for the bus to Bagan, which was an even bigger mistake, it was the worst bus ride I've ever been on.
There was so much dust and bags of sugar in the isles and at our feet. I can still feel the dust in my lungs. Big surprise that we flew from then on! Bagan was cool tho, just a city of temples as far as you can see. One day we rented bicycles and a local boy rode around with us to give us a tour and show us the "important" temples. There were something like 4000 of them in all. Apparently every king (or emperor...whatever the leader was called!) wanted to built more than the previous. So they all went a little crazy building as many as they could.
After 2 days there we headed to Inle Lake which was quite different from the cities. It was surrounded by trees and a lake, obviously so it was nice to be by the water again. Here we saw some more....wait for it.....temples and of course monasteries. And shockingly, monks! We took a boat tour one day ($2 per person!!) and saw the whole town built up on the water. The buildings were held up by stilts. We saw naked kids playing on them, right about the water and I'm sure
monks walking down the street
a pretty standard sight in Myanmar they had never been taught how to swim. We saw some "factories" where people were making knives, cigarettes and weaving shawls.
The food was pretty shitty, bad quality and pretty dirty meat. I ate pizza wherever I found it, which wasn't often. Aside from that, it was a great experience.
Now I'm back in Thailand. Met up with Kim, a friend from Montreal and am chilling on the beach....my favorite form of vacationing. I didn't really have a set plan to meet Kim when I got back from Myanmar so when I arrived at the Bangkok airport I just went up to the counter and asked for the cheapest ticket for that day. I ended up flying to Reilay, an island off of Krabi, and Kim came and met me there. I've always just wanted to go to an airport and say "give me a ticket wherever" So that was fun! So far we've been to 2 islands I visited last year so its cool to see how they've changed and developed. I went rock climbing the other day but mostly just chilled at the beach and hung out with some cool locals who work and live on the
Bagan
it was a city of buddhist temples, about 4000 of them right next to one another islands. Oh and of course I've been getting plenty of massages! Next we're planning on heading to Cambodia and then probably Indonesia. The plans are not so much plans but more like temporary travel ideas. They change pretty frequently. So you'll have to wait for the next blog to find out where in the Asian world I'll go to next!
Hope you're enjoying the snow!
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karol epstein
non-member comment
Sooooo Jealous!!!!
Hi Trish, So happy to hear from you as it has been so long. Your trip sounds amazing and you look so wonderful and happy!!!! I am sure you have heard about our great weather here.You have never seem such snow mounds!!!!! You must be so happy to have missed this! Everyone is fine and missing you. Continue having fun as we look foreward to thw next blog. Huga and kisses, Aunty K and Uncle S