Yangon - Our Last Night

We return to Mandalay and take our last flight on Bagan Air to Yangon . Once again we are met by Paris at the airport. This time he is wearing a PINK Longyi. This is quite shocking, as Burmese men only wear dark coloured longyi. He has paired it with a crisp white shirt, and a necklace worn outside the shirt. As we enter the arrivals lounge he is standing there with both arms outstretched, like a diva acknowledging applause. He takes our hands in his and walks us out of the airport. We feel like the Supremes flanking Diana Ross. People stop and gawp. Paris revels in it.

We are just there for the night and we tell Paris that we have heard of a restaurant called Le Planteur, which has been voted best restaurant in Myanmar for the last three years. We ask if he would take us to see it so that we can decide if we want to eat there. Paris is beside himself with excitement as he has never been there. When we arrive at the restaurant, we are ushered out of the car by two doormen and escorted to the desk where we pause to ask the Maitre'D if we can see the menu. Paris sweeps by us, chin held high, self esteem held even higher, longyi flowing behind him, and walks into the middle of the restaurant to survey the scene. Looking at his poise and his pose, no one would ever guess that he didn’t belong here. Paris lets us know that this is an entirely appropriate place for us, and for him.

We return later that evening, sadly without Paris, to have dinner. It is the most fabulous place. The building is a beautiful old home with a huge manicured lawn full of very old trees and a large assortment of fowl. There are geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl and other birds that we do not recognize wandering the grounds. There are immense fabric lanterns on the lawn lighting the way, and tiny twinkling lights hanging from the trees. The tables are all set out on the lawn. It is a magical setting. We find ourselves dining next to Lord and Lady Laxby, at least that is how they are referred to by the staff. Paris would be in heaven.


Their credentials as eccentric English aristocracy are proved when they continue to feed the birds throughout their dinner, causing the assortment of fowl to gather round their table like begging dogs. They even manage to coax a turkey to jump up onto their table. We find it most disturbing, but they are enjoying it. We wonder what Paris would make of it.

In an extraordinary show of what money can do, even in a country like Burma, the chef produces a seven course tasting menu that includes foie gras, scallops lobster and lamb chops, and we wash it down with French champagne. There is even a Burmese Brie, which is delicious. The cost of all of this is many times the cost of any other meal we have had in Myanmar , but would be considered inexpensive anywhere else in the world.

Life In Mandalay

Mandalay is a much more attractive city than Yangon. Many of the streets are lined with trees, and bustle with people who seem happier and a little more prosperous than in Yangon . Large portions of the city have good middle class houses. Downtown is more like a downtown as we know it, with many streets full of shops, and a few selling named brands that are definitely high end. There is even a small shopping mall and a few neon signs, although the latter seems rather superfluous because of the lack of power to turn them on.

There are many motorbikes and thousands of bicycles that appear to take no notice of the rules of the road.


Road junctions and cross roads often have a policeman in the middle directing traffic, but no one pays them any attention. Cross roads are quite terrifying, and we sit white knuckled in our car, clinging to the back of the seat in front of us. I try closing my eyes, but it is impossible to keep them closed with all the noise around us.

This is the first place we have seen taxis, but they are not geared to the tourists. They are Mazda pick up trucks built in the 1940’s. They are amazingly small, looking like children’s toy cars. The passengers sit in the back of the pick up truck. You could perhaps squeeze two Americans in the back, but they would be very unhappy. But up to 10 Burmese somehow manage to ride this way.


We are pleased to see that there are many more monks here than anywhere we have been so far. The Mayor of Mandalay refused the Generals orders to kill monks and so Mandalay escaped much of the crackdown. But once the uprising was crushed the Mayor was fired from his job. There are also many nuns, who wear pink robes, and, like the monks go out in the morning to collect food from the people. However nuns can only go out twice a week and can only accept rice and vegetables.

We visit several craft houses, all of them working without lighting. We watch as women stoop over their embroidery doing the most intricate work in semi darkness. Three men noisily beat gold into gold leaf. They will be deaf by the end of their worklife.


Like the rest of the country, electricity is limited. Here they receive power for three days, and then just for 6 to 12 hours on the other four days. Water too is problematical. Each household has to pay $200 for the connection, a large amount of money to most families. On top of this they pay a monthly fee based on usage, but during the dry season there will often be no water available. Few have hot water, and sometimes the mornings are too cold for them to take a shower. If they live in houses and apartments that are more than two stories high, very often the water will not pump up to the higher floors.

Poppa - Dinner and Politics

We buy a bottle of Champagne, which a Boy named Sue has never tasted before. He takes to it like a duck takes to water, and demolishes the best part of the bottle while we are still working on our first glass. We do nothing to stop him, as his reluctance to talk politics disappears with each glass he consumes. He tells us that this Hotel would normally be packed at this time of year. Last year every hotel in Bagan was filled and there weren’t enough cars, drivers, and tour guides to go round. This year the Hotels are empty, and the tour guides and drivers are struggling to find work. He goes on to say how life is getting harder every year for the people of Burma. He, and most of the educated people, are fed up and really angry. But the poor and uneducated are not interested in politics. He claims that when the demonstrations were going on, the government actually rounded up the people from the countryside and offered them food, soap and shampoo if they would gather in the streets and shout pro government slogans, which of course they did. Buddhists believe that what ever happens to them in this life is a direct result of how they behaved in their last life. So a hard life is just seen as a penalty that must be endured, and not as something that can be changed.

We revisit the discussion of education, and he tells us that University is little more than a joke. He went to University, and all he had to do was go for one month each year for 3 years and then he got his degree. He said it was really just a party for the one month a year and he gained very little from it.

If you want to be a tour guide, you have to attend another school. The exams at the end of this course were difficult tests on your language skills, history skills and knowledge of architecture as it applies to the Stuppas and Palaces. However all he was taught in the classes were the rules and regulations that the government has put in place to regulate tourism. Consequently only one in seven passes the exam.

As the bottle of champagne empties, a Boy named Sue gets more and more depressed and ends the evening by saying that if things don’t get better soon, he will try and leave Burma and live somewhere far away, where he will be able to send money home to support his family. He is a bright, intelligent and hard working young man, and one that most countries would want to keep as a valuable asset. But we have the feeling that the Generals would not be upset to see him go.

We admire what he has achieved, and are sad for him. His life is going to be hard, and the only reason for that, is that he was born in Burma.

Poppa

We leave Bagan reluctantly. The last two days have opened our eyes to the wonders of Mynamar, and the small town of Bagan is infinitely more charming than Yangon. We could, and hopefully will, return and spend much more time here.

Today we drive for an hour to the mountain town of Poppa, where there is a temple on the top of a huge rock, with fantastic views, which can only be reached by climbing 770 steps.


There is also a Spa Hotel well known in Myanmar as a wonderful place to relax. We view the sights,


and the charming town of Poppa and then get to the hotel in time for lunch, an afternoon by the pool, and a massage and body scrub.Life can’t get much better than this.

A Boy named Sue has come with us on this trip as our guide. We are just staying one night in Poppa and so we are surprised to see a Boy named Sue arrive with a suitcase nearly as big as ours. But, as the day wears on, the necessity of a large suitcase is made evident by the number of changes he makes during the day. We count no less than 4 different outfits during the one day. He also has some super cool shades that he wears, but his eye sight is so bad he can’t actually see anything with them on, so he is constantly switching back to his regular glasses.

We soon realize that we are the only people staying at the Hotel. A Boy named Sue leaves us alone during the afternoon, but we invite him to join us for dinner. This is an extremely poor country, where many people are dressed in rags, so it seems incongruous to see a Boy named Sue appear for dinner in a very trendy pair of ragged jeans with worn cuffs and manufactured holes

Yangon - We Meet The Owner of The Tour Company

Our guide in Yangon, Paris, may not want to go near the American Embassy, but the British Embassy is a different story. We are actually to meet Gary, the owner of the tour company for a drink in the British Club, which is next door to the Consulate. Paris tells us that this a great honour as Gary never asks to see his clients, and very few people are allowed into the Club. We have to be signed in and Paris is very excited to find out that the invitation has been extended to him. He preens before entering, and does his film star routine again. The club itself is almost as run down as the City, and perfectly represents Britain’s former glory. There is no one there other than Gary and his general manager. Gary is a large man in his 60’s with a bulbous nose, large ears and full lips. In fact everything about him seems to stick out. He has a glass of beer in his hand, which it soon becomes apparent is a permanent fixture. He is with his manager, a Burmese man, around 40 years old, small, olive skinned with a ready smile, and a twinkle in his eye. We discover that he is also Gary’s partner in life. His name is N.T., affectionately known by one and all as Aunty.

Gary is less affectionately known as someone who never stops talking and enjoys a drink. But, like most people who drink a lot, Gary tells a good story and we laugh a lot. He is delighted to meet up with two English people and it turns out his own home in the North of Wales is where Gordon’s mother retired to. It is a very small world.

Gary had told us prior to our arrival that very few places accept credit cards, and that dollars are not accepted in Myanmar. We must change our money into Myanmar kyats, on arrival. and we will get a better exchange rate in Yangon than anywhere else. Consequently, the first thing we do is change $1000. What Gerry has not told us is that the largest note in Myanmar currency is the 1000 kyat. And that 1000 kyat is worth 75 cents. So in return for ten $100 dollar notes we get a huge stack of over twelve thousand Myanmar notes. We need a small suitcase to carry them. Unfortunately, we find out later that Gary’s information was wrong. Everywhere we go, people want dollars, and we get a much better deal if we pay in them.

Another piece of misinformation that Gary gave us was that we could bring our laptop and although all incoming and outgoing emails were blocked by the Burmese government, there were always ways around this. Many people tried to unblock our emails, but no one succeeded.

Touring Yangon

Paris takes us to Shwedagon Temple , Myanmar ’s most famous temple with its many surrounding stuppas.


It has become even more famous over the last couple of months, as the gathering point for the monks during the recent uprising, the start of most of their marches, and the scene of many arrests. It is somewhat over the top, to say the least, and even overshadows Paris, with its many gold Stuppas and the enormous gold temple, topped with a 76 carat diamond and many precious stones. It can be seen from almost everywhere in the city.


It is obvious why it is the focal point for the Burmese, and why the Myanmar people are so proud of it. But could the money have been put to better use? It is a pointed question that probably cannot be answered.

“Where are all the monks?” is another pointed question that we do ask Paris. We have spent two hours wandering around this magnificent temple and can count on both hands the number of monks we have seen? “They have all been sent back to their home villages” he tells us.

In fact, Yangon is no longer the capital. The government has built a new capital hundreds of miles to the north, in the middle of the jungle, cut off from the rest of the nation. All personnel and offices have been moved. The existing government buildings in Yangon have simply been shuttered and surrounded by barbed wire.

Everyone we speak to is horrified at this move and the costs involved.

Similarly the University Campus in the heart of the City of Yangon, set in the middle of wonderful grounds and spreading across many acres, has been closed and surrounded by barbed wire. A brand new concrete jungle of a campus has been built outside the city, an hour’s bus journey for most of the students. Paris explains that the Government announced that they wanted to enlarge the University and that this Campus was no longer viable. But he also readily admits that it would appear that the regime wanted to make sure that the students could be monitored more easily and kept well away from the City centre.

When we say to Paris that it is a terrible waste to see these buildings all empty, and suggest that they could be turned into apartments for the people, he explains that this would cost a lot of money that the government doesn’t have. Unclear on the concept only goes so far, until you are forced to say “DUH!”.

The city will have a hard time reinventing itself after the loss of the Government Buildings and the University. Interestingly, to date none of the embassies is willing to move to the new capital, despite repeated requests from the regime.

All of this, Paris feels free to discuss with us fairly openly, albeit in English which few people around us will understand. But it is a different matter when it comes to the American Embassy. We are forewarned that we are approaching it and under no circumstances are we to take photos. We get no closer to it than the nearest corner where we are told to take a furtive look and then leave. This seems particularly strange for an American tourist, but Paris clearly wants to stay well away from the Embassy.

Yangon - Our Fabulous Guide

We have a guide to meet us at Yangon airport and show us around the city. We have arranged for him through a company we found on the Internet. The company is run by an Englishman who has lived in Asia and Burma for forty years, and who advertises his company as gay friendly. Perhaps this should have prepared us for our guide.

The International airport is only a year old and a sleek modern building, but it is almost deserted. Our guide is there with a sign with our names on it. He makes a dashing figure at 27 years old, tall, slim and remarkably handsome in a full length green longyi (similar to a sarong) and a white silk jacket. We catch his attention from across the arrival lounge and he immediately throws a beautifully manicured hand above his head and waves at us. He flows across the lounge, flashing a well practiced smile, and puts his arms around us both, as if we are long lost friends. He gushes profusely about his delight in being able to meet us. The few people in the airport all stop and stare. One passenger actually comes up to us later and asks who we are, and if we are famous, which I presume is a nice way of asking why we are being met by a flamboyant queen.

He tells us that his name is Paris. It has been his life’s ambition to be a tour guide, because it makes him feel like a movie star. Honestly, I am not making this up. We soon come to know that his entire life is built on this fantasy, but when we see how the majority of his countrymen live we can understand why he might feel this way. He gets to travel, go to fancy hotels and restaurants and rub shoulders with well to do people from all over the world. Who are we to say that this is not like being a movie star. He tells us that he can sing well and dance. He tells us all of this within minutes of meeting him and we are getting a terrible feeling that he has named himself after Paris Hilton. But he goes on to say that when he was in University he played the part of Count Paris in Romeo and Juliet, and that he was so good in the part everyone has called him Paris ever since. We are thoughtful enough not to point out Paris is a rather small part of an aged suitor for Juliet. He was certainly not suffering from being typecast. His hands are in constant motion while he talks. He has the ability to bend his fingers backwards, at exotic angles, the way Asian women are trained to do in their dances. We ask him how he learned to do that and he replies that he was taught to do those dances in school. When we ask if all the boys are taught those dances, he smiles at us and replies somewhat coyly, “well, no, just a special few”.

Unfortunately, his talent for being a tour guide is overshadowed by his love of the Hollywood life style. He tells us little of the city and instead talks endlessly of J Lo, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, and frequently breaks into one of their songs. But he most decidedly does not like Brittany! He also knows all of Marlon Brando’s early movies, and of James Dean. But he gets most excited when he talks of his all time favourite, Oprah!! We ask if they get her show on TV. He says they don’t, but he once saw a one hour tape of it and he just can’t forget her. We are surprised at how universal gay icons are!

Yangon - a Café Society

The centre of Yangon is busy with commerce, most of it done on the sidewalk.


It makes no difference whether it is clothing, books or fruit and vegetable, vendors merely lay their merchandise out on the streets, and set up shop. Stores as we know them are almost non existent, and there are no malls. What there are, are little more than holes in the wall, with no windows or doors, just metal grids that can be drawn across them at night for security, although why security is needed is unclear, as there is nothing worth stealing. Only the grandest of them have lights, and when they do it is usually just a bare bulb.

Our guide describes the city as a café society, or in this case a tea shop society. In Yangon, everyone gathers and meets at the innumerable street food establishments. Furniture, a rather grand name for an odd assortment of plastic chairs and tables, is all miniature, the type that WalMart sells (not that I have ever been in WalMart) for our kids to play with in the garden or on the beach. There are two problems with this arrangement: one, my knees won’t allow me to sit that low, and two my bum could not possibly fit into one of those tiny chairs. However the Burmese sit like this for hours, which only proves how awful their homes are, if they would rather meet here.


And if the furniture doesn’t dissuade you from frequenting these places, the service will. There are no knives and forks, and no chopsticks. In fact, no utensils of any kind. All eating is done with the fingers of your right hand. Likewise all the food is served to you by the fingers of the chef. Most Burmese still eat with their fingers in their homes. The use of knives and forks only occurs in the nicer tourist restaurants and hotels.

Yangon - the British Legacy

Yangon was a very British City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But the British left in 1948, and they took with them their grandiose dreams of a great city. Their legacy is in ruins. The boulevards they laid out are now full of potholes, and crumbling sidewalks. The few street lights that still work are dark because there is not enough power to operate them. The magnificent automobiles of the thirties and forties have been replaced by dilapidated Toyotas from the 70’s and early 80’s. There are no new, or even vaguely new, cars. As a final insult to the British, the fine British tradition of driving on the left was revoked in 1972, when the Burmese government announced that the entire country had 7 days to learn to drive on the right. But no one thought to tell Toyota, so all the cars still have the steering wheels on the right.

In a strange twist on Asian transport, there are no motorbikes. The government banned them because of the number of accidents. But they are only banned in Yangon . Presumably it is acceptable to die on a motorbike anywhere else in Myanmar. Because there are no motorbikes, everyone travels by bus. There are hundreds of buses, but they are even older than the cars, many of them strange little toy like vehicles imported from England in the 1940’s.



They are small, dirty, without air conditioning, and crammed full of people, just like in Britain, but more so. This however is the luxury form of transport. They also have small Toyota pick up trucks from the 70’s that serve as buses. They have a shell roof on the back without sides, and narrow seats running the length of the truck bed on either side. About 12 people can cram themselves onto the seats. Another 10 can sit on the roof, and half a dozen hang perilously off the back. The price is no cheaper for the pick up truck than for the buses, but they have no sides so they are cooler and often more popular. The cheapest form of transport is the train, but no one uses it unless they have to, as they are unbelievably slow and notoriously unreliable. Some British traditions couldn’t be shaken.

Mynmar (formerly Burma) - Our First Day

We fly to Yangon, until very recently the capital city of Myanmar.

OK, first and foremost, let’s get to the bottom of whether we call it Myanmar or Burma. We asked many people during our 16 days there, and basically the answer is that the people don’t care too much one way or the other, but lean towards the name Myanmar. Myanmar is the original name for the country and it means “Land of the Strong”. The name got changed to Burma by either the Portuguese or the British (some confusion over this) because they found Myanmar hard to pronounce. The Generals then changed it back to Myanmar because they didn’t want to be reminded of their colonial history. The people like the name Myanmar because of its origins, but they are used to calling it Burma . The older people find it hard to change and still call it Burma . The younger people are more inclined to call it Myanmar . But no one seems to see it as a political question, just one of preference and usage. In the interest of fairness I shall refer to it as both.


So here we are in Yangon, or Rangoon as it was called by the British, the old capital of Burma . And as English citizens we grew up knowing it as an exotic far away part of the British Empire , made mysterious by Rudyard Kipling, who back then was a favourite author of many English children.

As such we envisioned it as a wonderful, colonial city, full of romance and wicker furniture. Well, things have changed. The wicker furniture has been replaced with cheap plastic, the romance is tawdry, and the city desperately poor, depressingly dirty, and deplorably dilapidated. The once fabulous Edwardian and Colonial buildings are now derelict.



A few are still in use, but they have broken windows and black mold growing on the walls. Many are surrounded by barbed wire. Some had wonderful gardens in their heyday, but they are now all overgrown and neglected. Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham it is not. In those famous words of Bette Davis “What a dump”.