Missive from Myanmar

Letters from Myanmar

Dear all,

I’m sure many of you are curious about my well-being in Myanmar. All you’ve seen are captioned pictures and probably would like to know my thoughts about the place, the people and their culture.

I arrived in Myanmar on 13 April,at the very start of the Thingyan festival(Myanmar New Year). It is a 5 day event where the whole conservative country let themselves loose for once and get into this whole party mood. No one, let me repeat, no one, escapes from the water throwing event. Buckets, water guns, water hoses, and free flow of water are all readily available. Some even add ice into their ammunition and make the entire ordeal torturous to endure. For the next few days, we were soaked over and over again.

We had one full day of water fight in downtown, Yangon and another full day, with the kids in the poor township of Thaketa (where Growing Together school is situated). The kids and us never had so much fun together. They were merciless and we were relentless. After tired of pouring water on each other, we stood at the roadside and waited patiently for our prey. We showered every pick up truck, taxi, trishaw, bicycle and pedestrian that passed us.

However, right after the two full days, we got tired of getting ourselves soaked and stayed at within the confines of our apartment.

Currently, I’m living with Zeya and Adam in their bachelor pad. They paid USD100 a month for the apartment. They were very kind and nice enough to let me occupy a nook in their place for free. The apartment is really basic and I rely on breeze from the window to keep cool. I sleep on a mattress under a mosquito net. We have to light mosquito coils to keep the mozzies away. My feet now look like a masterpiece of red dots. We don’t have constant water from the taps. We have to switch on the water pump for 15 minutes in order to fill up the tank. We rely on the water tank for all water activities: flushing, shower, washing of hands and brushing teeth.

They guys rented a TV and a DVD player so we had plenty of entertainment to keep us going if ever we just wanted to chill in the apartment. Pirated DVDs are extremely cheap here so we have movie sessions every weekend.

The township of Yangon is a mix of hope and tragedy. Many are very poor yet it doesn’t deter them from enjoying life. The people here are very inquisitive about foreigners. As Adam and the rest obviously stick out as foreigners, we’re constantly approached by locals. They enjoy just saying hi, asking where we were from and then inviting us for coffee or tea.

Urgh..have to run now. Will write more later!

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