Nov 18, 2012
Flight: Bangkok, Thailand (BKK) to Yangon, Myanmar (RGN), Thai A330, business
Hotel: MayShan Hotel, $45/single
After the lounge closed I ended up wandering around the airport for awhile before parking at Starbucks for a few hours. I'd had some leftover Baht I hadn't been able to spend on a previous trip to Thailand and I did the same trick as in Korea. I'd hoped to use the CIP/Diners Club lounge but apparently I had lost/forgotten my Diners Club card, oops! Bad mistake. So I just sat around for a few hours uploading the photos from my Jeju trip. Finally the lounge reopened and I was able to head in and have a shower and rest for a few minutes in the resting room. It wasn't very quiet in there though as the cleaning ladies were banging around every few minutes.
My flight to Yangon departed at 8AM and the gate area was very crowded. Lots of tourists it seemed, most were older than me by a good number of years and I'm no spring chicken.
Boarding was via bus again. This flight was on an A330 with regional business seats. The flight ended up departing a few minutes late for the quick 1h15 flight yet they still managed to serve a breakfast meal. Some kind of noodles with egg and ketchup.. but it was pretty yummy. The flight took us out over the Andaman sea and up into Yangon. From the plane the landscape looked very flat with fields and canals.
Thai business class BKK-RGN
We disembarked via jetbridge at the new international terminal. Since I was one of the first ones off the plane immigration proceeded pretty quickly and I went to the foreign exchange booth to change money, There are no ATMs in Myanmar and credit cards are pretty much useless.. meaning you need to bring all the cash you need with you. Another potential snag is they want crispy newly minted bills, no folds, creases, writing, smudges, etc. This can be a huge problem if you are in the country for awhile and they are really serious about this. I brought some Benjamins along that looked perfect but they must have been folded at one point. Most places will take US$ cash or you can use the local currency, kyat (pronounced chat). I exchanged at a 845:1$ rate at the desk.
There were taxi touts waiting outside, offering a ride to town for $10. My hotel was in the center of town near the Sule pagoda. The drive into town gave a good impression of Yangon, it looked very clean and less chaotic than other cities (then again it was 10AM on a Sunday). Share taxis were lopsided trucks with benches in the back which held any number of people on the seats, on the roof, hanging off the back standing on bumper! I arrived at the hotel which was full of backpacker type tourists. One of my $5 bills was also old and the taxi driver wouldn't take it so I ended up paying in kyat. My el room wasn't going to be ready for a few hrs so I dunped my bag and started walking around town. I had tha latest Lonely Planet edition for Myanmar and they had a walking path through town that wandered through the India and Chinatowns and up through some of the markets.
The first stop was Sule Paya, a 1000-year old pagoda sitting right in the middle of a traffic circle. Like with most Buddhist shrines, you must remove your shoes. Entrance fee was $2 and 1000 kyat 'donation' (wasn't necessary as I found out). The pagoda is a huge golden stupa topped with precious gems. Locals were there performing devotions to the Buddha shrines.
Sule Paya
From Sule, I headed west down the chaotic main street. Blocks in this part of Yangon are very long and narrow. The sidewalks are twisted and broken concrete slabs. There are dozens of street food vendors selling fried dough, noodles and curries. Most of the advertisements and signs I had seen so far were in English but many of the signs in this part of Yangon were in the Burmese alphabet. Myanmar/Burma had been a British colony for many years and was an independent kingdom for a thousand of years. During the Briitsh perioud, many Indians migrated to Burma. There is a mix of religions here, just in a few blocks I came across a Jewish synagogue, Muslim mosque, Presbyterian church and a Hindu temple. Not all of the relgions coexist peacefully however... recently there has been Buddhist-Muslim conflict in the western state of Rakhine.
Narrow Yangon streets
market
At the Bogyoke market there were several vendors selling freshly squeezed juices. The most common is sugarcane juice, freshly pressed in a grinder and served with lime juice. It's very delicious, sort of like a light lemonade. I opted for the avocado juice... mashed avocado mixed with condensed milk and ice water. I wasn't sure about the ice.. will it cause Delhi belly later? But it looked like it was chipped from an industrial produced block, which should be purified water. I took the risk and it was delicious, creamy sweet and eat with a spoon.. I will definitely have to try this at home.
By this point it was time to head back to the hotel and rest for awhile.. I hadn't had much sleep the night before! It was also pretty steamy... just walking around I was dripping sweat. When I travel I'll usually go out in the morning, come back to the hotel for a siesta then back out again in the afternoon/evening. I planned on going to High Tea at the Strand Hotel, the old school British hotel which has hosted guests such as Prince Edward, Rudyard Kipling and Mick Jagger. It fell into disrepair for a number of years but has been beautifully renovated and now costs upwards of $500 a night (though discounts are easily availalble). It was a few minutes walk to the Strand from my hotel, passing by old crumbling British colonial buildings. There was an old Chevrolet bus sitting outside the hotel (
http://www.asiaelephantcoach.com/tra...in_style1.html). The high tea is $20 from 2:30 to 4pm and there are two choices; classic high tea or myanmar high tea. I opted for the classic style. Savory tier, sweet tier and scones with whipped cream and jam. I've had high tea at Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe, Empire Hotel in Brunei and Chateau Lake Louise and always enjoy it. I started talking with a couple of ladies from Seattle, they had been on tour for the past week and were about to head home.
Strand Hotel
I then caught a taxi to the Shwedagon pagoda (3000ks). The Shwedagon pagoda is the most sacred of Buddhist sites in Myanmar.. the central golden stupa is nearly 100 meters tall, is capped with diamonds, rubies and other precious jewels, and can be seen from nearly all parts of the city. The temple was built to house among other things hairs from the Buddha himself. There are 4 gates to the pagoda and you must take off your shoes/socks before entering. Entry fee for foreigners is $5/4500ks, you get a sticker that you must wear the whole time. The complex houses several shrines with reclining Buddhas. Many of the Buddha statues now have LED halos flashing in psychadelic patterns. I spent almost 3 hrs at the pagoda just wandering around watching locals (and lots of tourists..). The complex floor is marble tile but I'm not used to going barefoot so my feet were really in pain after awhile. Brigades of broom-wielding ladies continuously sweep the floor clean. I waited and watched as the sun set on the pagoda the lights started illuminating the stupa at night. The tourists started to disappear leaving just locals there praying and socializing. Many people were pouring water over some Buddha statues. After awhile I headed back to the hotel by taxi (2000ks).
Shwedagon pagoda at night
I was pretty hungry by this point, as all I'd had to eat today was the breakfast on the plane and high tea and now it was nearly 8pm. Yangon shuts down around 9 or 10 pm so I rushed off to a nearby restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet. The Danuphyu Daw Saw Yee restaurant serves local Burmese cuisine, mostly curries. It was about a 6 block walk from the hotel. No English menu but you go to the counter and point at what you want. I tried a fish curry, it had a slight kick to it but it wasn't too spicy. It went great washed down with a 640ml bottle of Myanmar beer! The meal was served with a plate of salad (cucumbers, some leafy green and what looked like a turnip or radish) and a bowl of soup. It looked a bit like collard greens but smelled like sewer water (and didn't taste much better..) so I mostly passed on it.
MayShan hotel room