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Published: June 23rd 2017
Geo: 16.7837, 96.1568
From Vietnam, we flew to Yangon (nee Rangoon), the former capital city of Myanmar. Whereas Justin had a vague sense of Vietnam based on previous trips (albeit 18+ years ago), Myanmar was a mystery, an enticing one, but one for which we had no intuition, other than from news reports. Myanmar has been a military dictatorship/junta replete with human rights abuses and accompanying US economic sanctions for decades. A democratic thaw in the junta's grip on power began in 2011 with (largely) free parliamentary elections. Also, the junta has also been fighting a series of low-intensity wars, some of the world's longest-running with 17 various ethnic, religious and and narco-terrorist (heroin production) groups for decades. Thankfully for civilians caught in the crossfire, 14 of these groups signed ceasefires by October 2015. http://bit.ly/1Os5lZH] As you may have seen in the news, Nobel Peace Prize prize winner Ang San Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in elections November 2015. http://nyti.ms/23a3eBy]
Perhaps because of these uncertainties, Myanmar has only been truly open to American tourists in just the past
few years. As such, we had to plan around factors that affected tourism: avoiding zones restricted from tourism, accessing money, booking accommodations, etc. For example, because of still-in-place US sanctions, we couldn't book directly with hotels or people in Myanmar using US-based credit cards. Our bank said our ATM card might work in Myanmar (or it might be useless). And yet, by the end of our two weeks there, we all agreed that we wanted to return...We fell in love with Myanmar.
We arrived in Yangon in the evening and immediately hit traffic akin to LA freeways. As we drove the nine miles from the airport to downtown (which took one hour), we could see the juxtaposition between the wealthy (gated compounds topped with razor wire) and the poor (a mix of crumbling colonial townhomes and hastily assembled shacks). At first we were uncertain if we would like Yangon, but with the new day (and finally some sunshine), we headed out to explore and the former capital city of 5 million people quickly grew on us. We learned two basic words: “mang-ga-laba” (hello) and chez-zupar (thank you) and those two words opened up a world of kindness. Walking down the
street, people looked at us and smiled. When we uttered Mangalaba with our horrible accents, we were greeted with the brightest smiles where kindness was reflected in their entire faces and their bright eyes. That kindness followed us for two weeks as we traversed the nation. Again, Siri was popular and drew much attention from the locals and, was the star in many of the local's photos. We felt safe and were comforted by the honesty and integrity of the people.
We headed to the local food and goods market - one of our favorite things to do in any place we go. The kids got to identify spices that were spilling out of burlap sacks and were taken by the fish, pigeon and turtle market. The market was followed by a trip to Sule pagoda, the first of what would be many Buddhist temples we visited in Myanmar. Later in the day, we went to see the sun set over the Shwedagon Pagoda, which has gold-plated domes tipped in several thousand diamonds & rubies, and rises over the city. Shwedagon, said to contain “relics” of Buddha (eight hairs) was teeming with both Buddhist monks and lay people worshipping
the scores of Buddhas. A young Buddhist monk approached us to chat and practice his English. Siri and Simon seemed impressed with the ornateness of the temples. They were also fascinated with local worshippers washing some of the statues in tribute to Buddha. Although we knew the basics of Buddhism, the kids asked some really good questions that required we do some more research to answer. It reminded us that there are things as adults we just take for granted and no longer question.
With its dusty and decrepit colonial architecture, Yangon seemed right out of Mandalay, Rudyard Kipling's poem romanticizing the British colonial experience. Yet beneath the time-warped atmosphere lay the active kindness and generosity of Burmese people, which we experienced throughout our trip. The Buddhist tenet of “making merit” (doing good) in this life so as to be reborn at higher level in the next is clearly enmeshed in how people I interact with others. It's hard to overstate how much Buddhism permeates the life of people in Myanmar. Every home (and most places of business) have an altar for worship.
Dinner one night in Yangon was at 999 Shan Noodle. Siri is a bit picky as an
eater (but don't tell her we wrote this, she will deny it) and wasn't going to eat any noodles, so we ordered a “plain” omelet. “Plain” in Myanmar still means onions and hot chilis in it. When it was placed in front of her, she knuckled down, refusing to eat any of it. One of the staff noticed this (he was not our waiter) and he came over, grabbed a pair of chopsticks, and proceed to extract every hot pepper out of her omelet for her. He tried to convince her one was chocolate in order to get her to try.
From Yangon, we moved on to Bagan, site of over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries constructed in the Pagan Empire (1044 to 1287 AD), of which 2200 still remain. Considered to be on par with Cambodia's Angkor Wat, in terms of grandeur, Bagan was a wondrous site. Not wanting to take the kids on the e-bikes that were for rent, with no helmets to be found, or take a long and uncomfortable ride on a horse cart, we opted to hire a driver to take us around. Most
drivers don't speak much English, but have just the basics.
This provided an opportunity to teach the kids that there are many ways to communicate, even without a common spoken language. We have learned through our travels around the world, that even if there is no common spoken language, communication and a common understanding can be achieved through non-verbal communications and pointing at maps or pictures. Sometimes it's like playing a game of charades. The kids learned this for themselves later when making friends with local kids on the beach.
Our driver took us to the temples he thought we should see because of their unique features. We went to one that had a monastery with caves underground, where the monks lived. We saw 900 year old paintings depicting stories from Buddha's life and more Buddhas than we could count. There was something mesmerizing about hopping from temple to temple to explore the intricacies that have survived the test of time. We had pulled the kids out of bed early to see the sunrise over Bagan, so by mid-day the kids were done with temple hopping and ready to play in the pool at the hotel. Despite it being a
sunny and warm day, the water was freezing, so Jamie and the kids sat by the pool with fruit drinks reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid while Justin went out to explore more temples. It would have taken a full week to get out to all the temples, so we saw the highlights.
From Bagan, we went to the higher-elevation town of Kalaw to take part in a once-in-a-lifetime experience: a visit to Green Hill Valley, an “elephant retirement home” for elephants who worked in the logging industry. Some background: for better or worse, since it's colonial days Myanmar has had a thriving logging industry, namely for teak wood. Elephants are used to drag logs from dense forests to waterways where they are floated to mills. Though their “working lives” are 30-40 years, elephants live upwards of 80-90 years, and as working elephants, they have become domesticated and can't just be turned loose in the forest. Enter Green Hill Valley (www.ghvelephant.com), which began taking care of seven “retired” elephants in 2011. [As Myanmar cuts back on it's logging, number of “retired” working elephants
is poised to grow. If interested, see http://ti.me/PcpGIm] This nonprofit is supported by tourists, like us, who spend a day washing and feeding them.
And feed them we did! Between them, Simon & Siri must have fed 150 pounds of freshly-chopped pumpkin and banana tree stalks cut in chunks, to the animals over several hours. The gentle giants put away enormous quantities of food, which they gently took from little hands using their nimble trunks. It was amazing to stick our hands in their mouths or have their delicate prehensile trunks, with over 40,000 muscles, wrap around our hands to gently grab the food. Looking into their big dark eyes, feeling their rough, leathery skin and bristle like hair and taking in the enormity of these animals was awe inspiring. Both kids were impressed by the size and quantity of the final steps in the pachyderm's digestive process! Siri proclaimed, “it's like a shower.”
One thing we learned on our year abroad is that there is a distinction between travel and a vacation. At this point, we'd asked a lot of the kids, travel-wise: six locations in ten days. They proved to be hardy travelers, moving from place to place without
complaint. Even so, we were all pretty traveled out. Siri was ready for a break from all that attention when we arrived at our next stop: six days on Ngapali Beach (pronounced Napoli - like in Italy). It's located on the Bay of Bengal, which is in the southwestern (and warmer) part of Myanmar. The Yoma Cherry Lodge proved to have everything we'd hoped: idyllic beach location, beautiful grounds, and kind, friendly staff. We were there to play in the sand, swim, collect shells and just relax.
Upon arrival, before heading to the beach, we took a local “bus” to the “big” town of Thandwe to find sand toys for the kids. On the bus ride, the “conductor” who was a very jovial man with betel nut stained teeth put on a show for the kids. He took a fish out of a passenger's bucket and pretended to swallow it. He pulled squid out of another bucket and pretended to make it dance. He offered a packet of "paan” to Simon along with betel nut too. He laughed a lot and had
a smile on his face for the entire 45 minute ride. Without speaking English, he communicated to us where we go to find the return bus to the fishing village where our hotel was located.
At the market, we didn't find anything that resembled beach toys, but we had fun buying cheap household items to serve that function - big serving spoons, cups and bowls. Those toys opened up the door for Simon and Siri to make friends with the local kids. After the first day there, the village kids came to the beach to play after their school was over. With very limited verbal communication, our kids were soon running around with their Burmese peers. It was quite gratifying to see. The young girls thought of Siri as their doll. She has long, differently-colored hair to play with, and every afternoon the village kids would do up her hair in different designs using their own hair clips. One girl took Siri under her wings and gave Siri her hair clips and candy. Simon and the local boys set up some goals and played soccer on the beach. We ended our time in Myanmar with a day back in
Yangon exploring more Buddhist temples before backtracking to Hanoi then home.
We decided that Myanmar is a country to which we want to return. There are more places to explore and some places that warrant a return visit. It is no longer just a place of tragic news stories for us, but vibrant country full of rich experiences memories. The incredible kindness of the people made the time there special.
In thinking about what we've seen during travels in Vietnam & other Southeast Asian countries in the 90's and early 2000's, one very clear difference we encountered, repeatedly, were Southeast Asians with disposable income. Whether they were grabbing Siri for their family photo (“Hey, look what we found in Yangon!”😉 or enjoying beers and BBQ squid (don't knock it until you try it) on downtown Hanoi street corners, it was nice to see. In talking with folks from both countries, we found optimism about the future. To be sure, in comparison to our own, people's lives are difficult here, particularly in Myanmar. But it is refreshing to visit nations where hardships and atrocities may be parts of their lives, yet the people still maintain incredible grace and kindness to
us Westerners who come and take a peek at their country. And who then get to go home to their own comforts....
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Mike Gale
non-member comment
What a fantastic trip. Such lovely vistas. So good to hear from you guys