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Published: April 19th 2015
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I'm going to be brief on this one for multiple reasons. One, I'm tired; sitting in the hot sun getting soaked by kids throwing water and goth/punk/hip-hop teens spraying you with hoses gets exhausting (more on it later). Two, I've been doing quite a few blogs. Three, there are rolling black outs so I'm not sure how much time I'll have before I lose the interwebs. So...
When we first got to Yangon we actually had quite a lot of administrative stuff to take care of. As I've mentioned we had to fill out a lot of paper work for our residency applications and that was made significantly harder by the power outages that are a near daily occurance in Yangon. We did manage to sneak in a few nice pagodas and checked out the downtown area. Sule Pagoda is a large temple in the middle of the downtown area with a large park, Independence Monument, City Hall and several other large colonial buildings surrounding it. We spent a few afternoons just lounging in this park and taking it all in and getting our clocks adjusted. We also made it to Battadong (sp?) Pagoda which is home to several hairs
of the Buddha (not a unique claim by pagoda standards) and this site allows you to actually walk inside the golden interior of the zedi (which is unique). Notably, there was a kid wearing a Green Bay Packers cap in front of the Buddha relics so if Buddhism is correct the Pack have some good karma coming their way.
Our second trip to Yangon was much more active. We went to Shwedagon Pagoda which is the largest and most famous temple in Myanmar. Local legend is that it started around 600 BC when several hairs of the Buddha were brought back to Myanmar (again with the hair...). Archeologists put the date much more recently. Eitherway, it has been rebuilt multiple times due to damage in wars and earthquakes. We went at 730 am and it was jam packed with people praying. It is kind of a circus with numerous vendors around, families running about, and several statues almost looking cartoonish. Darren immediately commented that it almost appeared to be a Buddhism themed Disney Land. Anyway, we checked it out. It was cool. Impressive for a temple. But damn... I'm templed out.
We also have hit the street food
scene hard. We went to a big beer tent / BBQ place our first evening in town and seriously got after it. Basically someone walks up to a buffet of raw meats (ranging from chicken and pork to tripe and chicken heads) and veggies, picks out what they want by placing into a basket, and then hands it off to the grill master. They would then cook it up and bring it to your table. We did this three or four times for our table and ate an incredible amount of meat. The mutton and sausages were a massive hit and we all put down a fair amount of beers (as we had spent 9 hours on a bus that day and were quite thirsty). It was an amazing meal and easily our favorite in the country to that point as the food was delicious and atmosphere perfect. The next night we arguably topped it by going to the 19th Street food stalls. Basically one lane in each direction of a four lane street is full of food vendors for several blocks. People are shoulder to shoulder grabbing kebobs and passing them off to the grill master. We stopped by
a few places including a seafood place that did up some nice spicy crab and a couple whole lobsters for us.
Lastly, Water Festival started on our last full day in Yangon. It is nutty. Its been built up since we arrived with people talking about how amazing it is, how busy all the busses and hotels are, and how everything shuts down. It did not disappoint in any sense. All the stores are closed and most of the streets are empty. As you drive through everything is deserted until you spot a group of teens standing on the side of the street. As you drive by they nail you with a barrage of buckets full of water and hoses spraying; experts know to keep their windows up which I did not do on our first pass. We got dropped off at City Hall to check out one of the many concert stages that are spread out across the city. While down there we wanted to get a drink at the Strand Hotel, a five star colonial hotel and the most famous hotel in Myanmar due to the number of famous previous occupants. As we walked up a few
kids snuck up on us and dumped buckets of water on our heads. Thinking no five star hotel would let us in we almost dismissed the possibility of going in, but the door man laughed and just shrugged his shoulders saying "Its water festival!" They didn't even bother giving us towels and instead layed plastic sheats over their leather chairs. So we put our super soakers on the same bar where George Orwell had gin and tonics during the colonial era, played a game of billiards while drip drying on the floor, and enjoyed the ridiculousness of it.
We finished that afternoon by hitting up a lake area with a massive number of water festival stages. People pay $30-$60 to get up onto these specially constructed stages that line the main roads. The stages are outfitted with huge DJ booths and sounds systems as well as several hundred garden hoses and a few fire hoses for spraying cars and pedestrians as they pass (e.g. one stage boasted 400 hoses, 10 fire hoses, and even a swimming pool). Several dozen teens (who for some reason in Myanmar tend to all wear black jeans, punk t-shirts, and unnaturally dyed yellow/green/red hair)
jump into the back of small pick up trucks and hold onto ropes attached to the cab as they drive around getting sprayed. Often they have garbage cans full of water in the back of the truck for tossing pail fulls of water at pedestrians. Tons of people just line the streets walking under the spray guns getting wet, dancing, eating street treats, and enjoying being mildly cooler on yet another 100 some degree day. All the foreigners are obviously the life of the party when you are dancing on the street, and the girls are of particular interest to anyone looking to spray someone. We were loving it, but then got mildly turned off after we noticed the water being used was a yellow / green color and obviously not the most hygenic...
So after a few hours of dancing in the streets getting soaked we called it a day in the mid afternoon and laid low. Darren had to catch a night flight out and we fly off Dawei and the southern beaches in the morning so we made it an early night. And this post still got longer than intended but I'll call it a wrap
with that.
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