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Published: January 28th 2013
street entertainment
setting up for a special occassion, the street is closed in Yangon Downtown23 Jamuary 2013
Day two in Yangon and we decide to follow the colonial route. We start with coffee at the Strand and end with lunch at the Governor's Residence, and in between take advantage of the free wifi at the part Junta owned Traders hotel. It is our most expensive day in Burma! You can really lord it here if you want to.
The Strand has a colourful history. It's faded glory is still visible in the marble floors in the foyers and the high ceilings. The coffee is proper and so is the milk. We are so tired of three-in-one by now that we will pay anything, even US$5 each, for a cup of decent coffee. The butter biscuits are yum too.
The free wifi at Traders is definitely the best in town, and so we make full use of this. Air Asia is starting to mess us around on all our Philippines flights; they have decided to discontinue this route after selling it out, and so we need to find an alternative way to get there. After getting sorted we hop into a taxi to go and see the Governor's Residence. Just a
Andrew at the Strand
Best coffee in Yangon look.
The UK owned Governor's Residence is the best hotel in Yangon. We will stay here next time we are in Yangon. I refuse to accept anything less. The princess re-emerges.... The teak guest house was previously a Kayah official guesthouse and it is beautiful. The pool blends seamlessly with the gardens, and the shady verandahs are the best place in Yangon to contemplate the unfairness of life. We get over ourselves and order lunch. The most expensive noodles in the world at US$15 each (as opposed to US$0.50 if you buy the same thing on the street!) but it is cool, quiet, and smells so nice here. I don't want to leave, ever. But the bill has reached US$75 and we have only been here for two hours, so probably time to move on.
We stroll slowly back to the craziness that is downtown. We're not really sure what to do with ourselves next. We have three more days in The city and we have seen Yangon from all sides now, including from part of the circle railway line, and are getting exhausted by the overly crowded pavements. So we go down to the jetty to see
if we can get away for a day.
The ferry over the Yangon river to Dallah seems like a cheap distraction so we hop on. On the flip side we are inundated by touts trying to sell us a taxi - something we really dislike - so we push through the crowd and try to walk into the village. This is not what foreigners are supposed to do apparently, and the taxi touts keep following and hassling us until we are well out of the village.
This area suffered really badly during Cyclone Nargis in 2008. There are still sandbags in places, propping up roads. The villages are as squalid as some in Africa, and the stray dogs are not friendly, but we still get an enthusiastic "hi!" from children and old men.
Back in Yangon at the jetty we try to buy a ticket to Twante, a small town up river where they produce clay pots. We were told that the ferry leaves early on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only, but it seems that all this is no longer true. It actually leaves on Mondays only now, so we have missed it. The ferry trip was the
main reason for wanting to go to Twante, but we have no better ideas so Andrew negotiates with a taxi to take us there anyway.
The road trip through rice paddies is quiet and lovely and our taxi driver speaks good English. Twante village is home to the pottery sheds which produce the simple clay pots used in every Burmese home for everything from water containers to cooking pots to storage jars. They are unglazed, fired pots which are made by hand. Families work together in teams of two to crush the hill sand, mix it with river clay, and then throw the pots, before they are fired for three days. A husband and wife team on a wheel ( wife turning the wheel, husband turning the pot) can produce about 60 pots in a day. They get paid about US$3 a day between them for the work. Pots sell for about a dollar each in the capital.
On the way back into Yangon the taxi driver insists on taking us on the usual tourist rounds. We have already seen most of it, but then he takes us to the white elephants, which we have subconsciously been avoiding.
protection
Yangon Downtown The two albino and one brown elephant are kept chained on a platform to show the "lucky" creatures off to tourists. It is absolutely awful. I walk away feeling sick. Elephants in Asia are too often treated so badly.
We ask to be dropped off at Monsoon, a smart restaurant in downtown Yangon which gets good reviews. There is a shop upstairs, Loft, run by an NGO called Pomelo, who work with 20 or so women's groups in Yangon to fight poverty and the usual stuff. The products, especially the hand woven fabrics are lovely. They are busy setting up to be able to sell on the Internet and accept credit card payments. Hopefully we will be able to access their goods in the UK soon. It's good to see that Burma is opening up.
We have lunch at Monsoon. It is a victim of its own success. The service is not very good, they have five coach loads of tourists to take care of so the two of us are not so important. And this is where I get sick...
After eating almost only street food for our three weeks in Burma, I get sick from
the expensive place! Within 6 hours my life is pouring out of me from every orifice and I cannot move more than a step away from the wc. My digestive system keeps us confined to our room for our last day in Yangon.... Hopefully this will translate to weight loss?!
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