Of Painted Faces and Wacky Races

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Yangon Part One.



We walked out of the main entrance of our hotel and turned left; jumping over the open ditch between the paving slabs that cover the sewerage system and carefully watching where each foot fell to avoid further obstacles, holes and debris. The pavement stopped abruptly after a few metres and we took to the roadside, a mixture of gravel, mud and rapidly crumbling asphalt. A forty five year old Russian-made bus thundered past, half a dozen people hung from its windowless flanks and most of the engine cover was missing at the rear. The whirring fan belt was on show, so too much of the rear axle, which had been jacked up to accommodate both the added weight of at least a dozen passengers too many, and the oversized rear wheels. A handful of smiling faces were visible through the plume of black smoke that was pouring unchecked from the broken exhaust.

On the opposite side of the road, makeshift market stalls had been erected from bamboo and tarpaulin, selling fruit, vegetables, plastic food containers and sweeping brooms. Each stall was home to at least three rotund, middle aged local women all dressed in colourful sarongs and mismatched blouses and all with their faces smeared with pale yellow tree bark paste, which is used both as sun protection and as make up. Coming towards us along the street was an old man, possibly in his seventies, a collarless white shirt meticulously ironed and tucked into his dark green checked longyi, an ankle length sarong worn by all men. Twenty metres before we reached him he let a long stream of crimson red spittle flow from his mouth and onto the road, the by-product of chewing betel nut mixed with paan leaf and limestone paste, before bowing his head in respect and offering a silent prayer as he passed a crumbling Buddhist temple. As we passed by he smiled a toothless smile of bright red gums, his eye whites gleaming in the morning sun, and still smiling he wished us good morning in perfect English.

This was our first morning in Yangon, one of many former capitals of what is now Myanmar, and everything I have just described happened within 5 minutes and 200 metres of leaving our hotel. As Rudyard Kipling wrote over one hundred years ago, “This is Burma; it is quite unlike any land you know about”.


Myanmar has endured a turbulent history to say the least, with power passing from local tribal rulers to kings to foreign invaders and back again with the fluency of the Barcelona midfield. Of course, one of the foreign rulers was the much maligned and rarely loved British Empire.

The British, having conquered India and put most of the population to work either as soldiers, clerks or farmers, began to push east into Burma. The south, Yangon included, was quickly taken without much opposition, and in 1885 the Royal Capital of Mandalay fell in under a fortnight. The Royal Family were exiled to a sleepy coastal town in India, the Palace and all its treasures were plundered and the teak industry – the reason we were there - began to grow at an unprecedented rate. For the next sixty years or so Burma was annexed into British India, and the Empire set to work at doing what it did best, namely stripping and exploiting any natural resources that could be found. Teak, gemstones, petroleum and rice were all to be found in abundance, and the profits for the Empire were both handsome, and relatively easy to come by. The workforce was primarily made up of loyal Indian subjects, to the dismay of the locals, and as was typical with colonial rule of the period, order was kept with a firm hand and initially peace largely prevailed.

Local opposition, in the form of monks and students, began to gather pace in the 1930s, fuelled by similar rumblings in other colonies, the perceived weakness of the thinly spread Empire and a feeling among the natives that their occupiers showed a lack of respect for their beliefs and traditions. For my part, the term natives as used here is not meant as one of disrespect. In colonial times there were Europeans and there were natives. Natives could be further defined along racial lines, the most common being “Orientals” – a cover-all term applied to anyone a shade darker than an Englishman after a day in the sun at Lords Cricket Ground.

Opposition grew, and following the Second World War, when Burma was invaded and occupied by the Japanese, before returning again to British hands, independence was negotiated and achieved at break neck speed. Colonies throughout Asia and Africa were being granted independence at this time, as the tide of opinion turned against colonialism following the failed attempts at Empire building put forward by Hitler, and Britain for its part was only too keen to offload what had been seen as nothing more than a hardship posting by British officials of the time. George Orwell, in his book “Burmese Days” discusses the searing heat, terrible food, torrential monsoon and endemic corruption among native officials that made Burma such a hardship.


As is sadly so often the case however, independence was not the end of Burma’s struggle, but rather in many ways the beginning of it. For all its faults, the British Empire had provided railways, schools, prisons, hospitals, a power grid and above all an infrastructure able to support industry and growth. The swift departure of all the officials who had run these many ventures created a vacuum of opportunity for anyone prepared to seize it. Initially, the talk within the country was of reconciliation of the many ethnic groups, fair representation of minorities and a sustainable plan for the change to self-government. Unfortunately colonial history is littered with such cases of fine sounding language with little substance. Rather like Shakespeare, it all sounds very impressive, yet it means very little.

It should be remembered that at this stage Burma was not a country that was used to self-government. The arrival of the British Empire had signalled the end of a ruthless and ineffective absolute Monarchy, and as such, the power of decision making had never been in the hands of the people who now sought to free themselves of their colonial master. Unusually, independence was granted within a one-year transition period, an uncommonly short time for power to be transferred. The usual practice at the time – and one still in use in freshly liberated countries such as Afghanistan and soon, no doubt Libya – was to appoint an interim government sympathetic to the ideas of the Colonial power, who would then govern in that country’s favour for a set period of time, before true independence grew from the green shoots that had been planted along the way. In this way the British Empire would still have a controlling say in any areas they deemed important (read: profitable) before ceding power completely. In the case of Burma this period of final economic milking was skipped, and full independence granted almost immediately.

As Orwell documents in his novel, the native officials were not averse to dabbling in a spot of corruption. For the most part this went unresolved throughout the British Rule, for the simple reason that the Empire was making more than enough out of the country to worry about what was probably considered both a local problem and a native weakness. Unfortunately, following independence, corruption would again raise its ugly head, but not before the entire country descended into civil war. The bulk of the past 50 or so years have seen the country in the well-greased hands of a military junta – a council of corrupt generals and advisors who could teach the British Empire a thing or two about asset stripping and controlling their subjects. Rebellions have been brutally crushed, infrastructure woefully neglected, thousands of people relocated at the drop of a hat on the whim of the government, and as a result the majority of the 60 odd million inhabitants of this somewhat baffling land live in poverty, surviving on a couple of dollars a day. There is no opposition party to speak of, most of the would-be opponents have been killed, imprisoned or put under house arrest over the last couple of decades or so. In the meantime, the members of the military junta have all become multi-millionaires.

You may be wondering where all this is leading and the simple answer is one which I had drilled into me in 6th form. It is important to put any piece of writing in context, and as such I hope that everything that I subsequently write on the subject of Myanmar over the coming weeks will make a bit more sense, although by no means always. I will no doubt cover the more recent political and socio-economic developments (I am wary of using “changes” just yet) over coming days and weeks, but I think that is enough history for one blog!

Back to the title, and our first day in Yangon.

On that first morning of bronchial buses and longyi-clad locals we made our way slowly to the centre of Yangon, which is conveniently marked by a 2000 year old Buddhist pagoda. We took a roundabout route, partly in order to see some of the suburbs and outlying areas of the city, and partly because we went the wrong way. I think it is fair to say that on first sight, particularly from the angle we were looking from, Yangon is a hard city to fall in love with. The roads and pavements are universally crumbling, thick with dirt, mud and litter, and riddled with deep potholes. The housing is either in the form of high rise, tightly packed apartment buildings, stained grey with pollution and generally in a state of disrepair; or alternatively shanty town-esque dwellings made of reclaimed wood and metal sheets which line some of the side streets. In many ways it was as we had expected, but there was still a very strong feeling of cultural shock and disorientation. This wasn’t anything like the rest of South East Asia that we have visited so far.

The one highlight was the traffic, and the amazing array of ancient vehicles that thunder along the rutted streets. Cars are incredibly expensive in Myanmar, and as a result old vehicles are patched up, repaired, upgraded and basically kept running long beyond their best before date. Most of the cars on that first morning were from at least a decade before I was born, and some probably even older than that, although in some cases it was hard to tell given all the modifications that had been made. I am 99% certain that I saw a taxi comprising the shell of a 1960s Ford Mustang, no windows, jacked up rear suspension and a Datsun sticker and go-faster stripe along the passenger side. But I may have been mistaken, as I was busy taking a picture of a flat-bed Toyota Hilux being used as a bus with at least 25 people on board. Given the state of some of the buses though, it may well be the better option.

We made it to the Pagoda, stopping for a cup of tea along the way, and there we met a freelance tour guide who offered to show us round town the following day. Ever the cynic I asked what it would cost, but he assured us it would be his pleasure to practice his English with a native speaker. We were still a bit cynical but he sealed the deal by adding that when he takes French people around town he charges them 25$ for the day. How could we say no to a guy like that?!

We arranged to meet the following day, as the weather was closing in, and filled the rest of our morning wandering around down town Yangon and admiring the towering colonial buildings along the riverfront. The British Empire left a handful of indelible marks on the Yangon skyline, in the form of the Strand Hotel, the Customs Building, The Port Authority Building and the High Court. All of the above would not look out of place in Grosvenor Square, or at least 100 years ago they would have fit in nicely, nowadays they are somewhat weather worn. Throughout our travels so far the term “colonial era delights” has cropped up repeatedly, and has generally meant “falling down and abandoned”. Unfortunately, Yangon fits the pattern all too well. Seeking to distance themselves from the Colonial rulers of days gone by, the various rulers of Myanmar have all but neglected these once impressive buildings for over 50 years. It is a real shame, for they are stunningly imposing and would add a lot to an otherwise drab and dreary city, if only they could be maintained.

Our day finished with a visit to Botataung Pagoda, another 2000+ year old shrine to Buddhism located on the banks of the Yangon River. The highlight of the visit, besides the abundance of gold leaf within the Stupa, was a 10 minute chat with a well-informed monk. Myanmar is a predominantly closed country in terms of news and information. Little comes out and little goes in. Things are changing slightly, with access being granted to Burmese language versions of western news sources, but it is still difficult to get current news on a regular basis. As such, we were a bit taken aback with the conversation with the monk, which covered the situation in Libya, Bahrain, Egypt and even the recent elections in Thailand. Somewhat more surprisingly the monk also put forward his version of events in Dallas in 1963 when JFK was fatally shot. It was an interesting ten minutes to say the least.

We ended our first day in Yangon with a meal near our hotel and an early night, in preparation of our day with the guide. And that is where I will end this already somewhat lengthy blog, with a vague promise to be less wordy next time around!

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