Sizzling in Yangon

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September 22
Today I returned to Yangon, but just before I left I received an email from Suzzi saying that she had to go to Bangkok that weekend so I could only stay one night. I really didn’t want to spend my last weekend in Yangon alone, so I quickly emailed Ken, the surfer who had contacted me earlier. I said I knew it was short notice, but did he feel like a guest that weekend?
Moe Moe tried to make sure I was safely on my way to the bus stop, but the pick-up was waiting for more people. There was a young German guy there, who initially I quite liked but he was one of those people who kept going on about what he’d squeezed out of people for nothing, and how little he paid for everything. I found it offensive when most of the Burmese are so poor. To annoy him I told him how my friends at the shop gave me beer and snacks and refused to accept payment. He looked shocked.
The bus trip back took forever, and I eat some average, overpriced food on the way. At 1am we stop by the side of the road where there is … nothing. Absolutely nothing. A bit later on I see these surreally well-lit streets and substantial houses and realize we are driving past Nay Pyi Taw, the strange new capital the generals have built for themselves. There is a street leading to a stupa that is lit up like a Christmas tree. I am fascinated and a little disturbed.
The bus conductors keep screening Burmese soap operas where some kind of complicated family drama is played out in a large two storey house with beds and mattresses and floral sheets, a flat-screen TV and a Pajero parked out front. The main female characters wear lots of make-up and often different versions of the same dress.
At 4am they start playing music and I want to sleep. Shortly after that we have to get off and show our passports, and about 5.30am we reach the bus station. By some miracle I get off the bus, find a share taxi and am at Suzzi’s place before 7am. She welcomes me and goes to work. I do all my laundry and have a nap. Bliss.
Later I talk to Ken, who knows Suzzi, and arrange to stay with him. The next day is the ‘food day’ at Suzzi’s school and I sample a few Burmese delicacies. Most of the children are from very wealthy families. As the small ones sit and consume their soup, Suzzi says it’s good they’re eating, because some of them are used to being fed by nannies and can’t feed themselves. ‘Getting food into your own mouth is a useful skill to have,’ I agree.
I spend the afternoon at Zawgyi House, which Suzzi says has good juice. There I meet an American in the pharmaceutical consulting business who drinks vast amounts of beer and tells me that Yangon was pivotal in the Cold War. He says he was stationed there when the US embassy had more than 200 staff … Now he lives in china and his ex-wife is doing intelligence work in Kabul. He urges me to come to China.
At 7pm I go to find Ken who is waiting for me. He says he is so bored in Yangon that he has taught himself to cook. We make the first of many trips to the city mart for provisions. He makes chicken soup and we both get a small saucepan each. Ken says the hotel staff liked him better when he only used one fork a day. Now they complain that he has too many visitors and they make too much housekeeping work. He says the mess is because he cooks now. And why shouldn't he? The food in the hotel isn't that great, not for the price anyway.
Now Ken makes a point of making as much mess on his own as when Couchsurfers are around.
Ken doesn’t even bother going out anymore, not even to eat. He worries about cleanliness in restaurants and says even at the expensive places the food is just OK. I said my food at Zawgyi House was OK. (The American said that everything for the first time there is OK.) The next day I went to Kandawgyi Lake. How was it?, said Ken. ‘OK,’ I replied. We realized that trying not to be horrible, the best you could say about most things was that they were OK. Which gave us the giggles when we caught ourselves saying it. LP tries to make out Yangon is some kind of culinary capital. It's not - it's, well, OK.
But you don't come to Myanmar for the food anyway. There are other attractions, mostly, I'd say, the poeple and the religious architecture. And just the weird untainted nature of the place. Definitely come, but do it as an independent traveller so tourism money goes to the local people who need it.
Ken is lonely. He doesn’t like bars, and when he tried going to church he was criticized for being friendly with someone from another church, at which point he gave up.
On Saturday night he took me to the ‘red light district’, which seems to be the one thing he's found that is of interest to his visitors. You’d never know it was there unless someone told you. Ken was most excited about the prehistoric lift you use to get to this seedy club. We just walked around and left. Downstairs there was a massage parlour with a bunch of bored women caked in make-up sitting behind a curtain. Ken grimaced and we ran out of there. Ken is devoted to his girlfriend and has no interest in prostitutes, ‘but even if you did, looking at them would surely get rid of any urges,’ he commented. ‘Especially when they put that yellow thanakah make-up on. They think it makes them look better but it’s horrible,’ he shuddered.
Then we went back to his hotel and went into the bar where there was live music. It was OK. I had a pina colada and it was a bit watery but OK. Ken doesn’t really drink but he had ice cream and that was OK too.
Ken speaks three or four Asian languages and he could understand the Chinese at the next table. They were gem merchants boasting about wearing a shirt once and then throwing it away, owning 40 cars, that kind of thing.
The next day is Sunday and Ken cooks a big lunch - Singaporean chicken and rice. We stuff ourselves and he goes back to bed for a nap. ‘This is my life now,’ he shrugged. ‘Is that OK?’ I said. ‘No, but I’ve told them I’m leaving.’
Ken lived in Shanghai for four years. Unsurprisingly, he liked it there better. His girlfriend was still there, but coming to visit him in Yangon. ‘She’ll hate me for asking her here,’ he said cheerfully.
That night we dined at Monsoon, where the food is better than OK, and walked back via the Traders Hotel which has a seafood buffet. It looked OK. Ken said one of his couchsurfers, a Canadian sex tourist living in Pattaya, Thailand, ate a lot of sushi. I though the desserts were the best bit.
As I dodged the pot holes and cracks and mud of the Yangon streets for the last time I thought I would be sad to leave, because Yangon just kept going despite falling apart. A bit like Ken really, who wasn’t exactly thriving there. And I was sad to leave him too, because whether we were talking about food hygiene, looking at pictures of pigeons or discussing the horrors of that sex club we visited, we always had a good time. Better than OK, and even better than hole-dodging on the streets of the crumbling city.

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