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Published: November 26th 2015
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We were feeling sad to be leaving India - a malaise that was lightened pretty quickly by the immense amount of free gin we took advantage of on our flight out. This was one of those decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time, and less of a good idea when we arrived in Bangkok just in time for the hangover to hit, then had to spend 6 hours trying to sleep on benches in one airport followed by a very queasy bus transfer across the city to the other. Needless to say, we felt pretty rough by the time we'd got our second flight and arrived in Mandalay. All was forgotten as soon as we arrived though - we were in Burma! (Myanmar, officially, used pretty interchangeably - though Myanmar is the military junta preferred name, and almost worth not using just for that fact. The opposition parties, especially the NLD party of Aung San Suu Kyi, prefer to use Burma). This is a country I've wanted to visit for a long time, and we were very excited to see it.
From the first evening we were massively taken with this wonderful country. Coming straight from India,
particularly, it was a real breath of fresh air - no-one hassles you, the place is clean, and people even obey traffic rules (sort of). The sights of Mandalay aren't particularly inspiring - Mandalay Hill is a nice walk up through numerous Buddhist temples with a great view from the top, there're some impressive temples and monasteries dotted about, and the old city of Inwa on the outskirts is a nice day trip out - but the highlights of Mandalay for us, especially as a first introduction to the country, were just wandering around, soaking in the atmosphere, meeting the lovely Burmese people, and eating lots of delicious street food.
The Burmese people are famed for their generosity and hospitality, and rightly so - people here are amazingly friendly and helpful, and are never looking for anything in return, they just want to help. Traditional dress is very much still the norm here, so most people you see still wear
longyi, which are a kind of sarong / shorts combination, and the women all have a yellow tree bark paste called
thanaka smeared on their faces as a sunscreen / make-up (which looks very strange to Western eyes at
first, though you get used to it very quickly). Most people also chew betel-nut incessantly, which means that everywhere you look you see teeth and lips permanently stained red. All of this makes simply wandering around pleasantly exotic; it's nice to see so many aspects of traditional life here still going strong, before the inevitable Westernisation of society comes in.
Another highlight of Burma - the booze is incredibly cheap, especially after India, where we barely drank. A draught beer is 35p, and a large bottle is 90p, for pretty decent lager. Even this is expensive though, compared to the whisky. The Burmese love their whisky, and some of the better ones are definitely drinkable, if not quite comparable with a quality Scotch... This is where the pricing gets positively dangerous - for the best quality stuff, a small bottle is £1, and a 700ml bottle is just £3.25 (we were later to discover, out of a lack of other options, that the real gut-rot stuff is half that price...) You can understand why you often see Burmese men at the beer stations sipping slowly on a pint and chugging down whisky alongside it, and can also understand why
you see so many Burmese men being dragged outside the beer stations to sleep it off, utterly and helplessly horizontal. I'm afraid booze will make quite a central theme to our Burma blogs - there have been a fair few heavy nights here!
After Mandalay we headed down to Bagan, which is without doubt the must-see sight of Burma. Almost a millennium old, the whole of the huge plain of Bagan is littered with hundreds of temples and pagodas. It is incredibly atmospheric and beautiful, and despite the bus loads of tourists at the big temples, thanks to the electric scooters that are rented out across the town it's very easy to get off the beaten track and have acres of incredible scenery all to yourself. The best experience is when you climb up inside one of the larger temples and emerge at the top to breathtaking views; as far as you can see, in all directions, are hundreds of the things dotted about the lush green landscape - some big and some small, some ornate and some plain, some intact and some tumbling down. Stood up on top of one, watching the sunset over the plains, was just
an impossibly perfect sight. Unfortunately, it's very hard to capture the beauty of Bagan to it's full glory in photos or words - we've tried here, but you'll just have to visit it yourself...
Of course, when you think of Myanmar, the thought of a brutal, oppressive military junta is never far away. In 2010, there were some 'elections' - basically a sham as the main opposition, the National League for Democracy (NLD) of Aung San Suu Kyi, did not stand - a quasi-civilian government was then formed with the junta remaining the force behind it, but the country began to open up, with the West beginning to drop sanctions as the slow move towards democracy began. It was an exciting time for us to be in Burma, as while we were in Bagan the first proper, open elections in decades were held. It's not quite a democracy yet - Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from becoming president and the military retain power over a lot of aspects, as well as a quarter of seats in parliament - but the shift towards it is very tangible here. When you read anything more than a couple of years old
about Burma, it will warn you not to discuss politics with the locals, as even publicly expressing discontent with the status quo, or support for the NLD, could land them in trouble, or even prison. It couldn't be more different these days, with stickers and flyers on every local business for the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi, and everyone you meet bursting with pride and excitement for the future. You've probably seen that the NLD won a huge majority - 77% of contested seats - and now it just remains to be seen if the military abide by the result as they have promised. I hope so - the people here hugely deserve it.
After saying all that, I hate to end on a banality... But the aspect of the election that had the most personal impact on us was that sale of alcohol was banned on Election Day. We trekked around looking for a beer, and were so delighted to find somewhere surreptitiously serving that we completely forgot to have any dinner, drunk far too much and then had a horrendous seven hour bus trip the next morning to Kalaw. That's democracy and personal freedom for you
- sometimes I think I'd be better off without too much free will.
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