Yangon

Yet, another early wake up at 4am - we have almost gotten used to it. This time we were to embark on an exciting trip - back to Bangkok airport to catch a flight to Yangon in Myanmar. We were sure that we are going to be the only passengers on the flight but to our surprise the Boeing 737 was full. Later on we have found out that nearly half of the plane was aid workers (had a special visa counter in Yangon) and the rest monks and a very few tourists. Passport control was very quick and our luggage did not get checked at all in a very modern airport building. We quickly found our pick-up guy from the hotel and drove to the hotel. There are not too many cars on the streets (by the way all Japanese from the 70'ties & 80'ties in the best case) and that the traffic is much more organized; no constant blowing of the horn or overtaking at most awkward places. The mystery of very light traffic quickly revealed itself to us - bicycles and motorbikes are forbidden in the city except for the monks and the military.

If we had ever complained about too many tourists Yangon proved to be almost tourists free. One could meet one or two persons who looked like tourists per day at best. We have criss-crossed the city several times on foot - especially the center and found it to be a little bit like India - perhaps because of the smell of Indian spices (although lots of Indian's fled Myanmar after several rounds of unrest one can still find living Indian districts). There are many other ethnic minorities in Myanmar resulting in an exciting "cocktail" of over a 100 different languages. Yangon at the present does not reflect what western media convey. The city is cleaned from befallen trees and damage caused by the storm and the streets are full of sellers selling tasty food, vegetables and fruits and whatever one sells in South East Asia. It seems that at least in Yangon there is more than enough food - in the Delta Region the situation must be much worse nevertheless this city has already the worst behind itself. We have tried excellent food in the ubiquitous tea houses around the town and also went to what was to be one of the nicest restaurants according to our guide book with reasonable prices and great local food. The place proved to have something of a typical Polish country side wedding atmosphere if you know what I mean. Except that again there was nobody except us and the food was just so so.

For the time being we cannot upload any pictures since Yahoo, Hotmail and Google are blocked by the government. Of course all the Internet cafe's go around it but it makes internet very slow and unreliable. We have lots of very nice pictures which will be showing up gradually in our gallery. In general the whole government versus society issue is kind of a mouse and cat game where the people openly criticize "the tiger" and black market exists with very little control.

Anyway going to Yangon as a tourist poses no threat - there is enough water & food of all sorts at VERY reasonable prices. People are extremely happy to see foreigners greeting them with blinks and smiles. It would be great of course if more tourists came and left their money there. Great choice for anyone who wants to escape the main stream tourism and see some stunningly different cultural heritage.

One may get more than enough of paya (pagoda in Burmese) and an overdose of stupas, but these golden gilded upside-down bell-shaped buildings do give a unique ambiance to the city. THE place to visit in Yangon is the Shwedagon Paya, built 2500 years ago (though archaeologists argue whether its origin dates to the 6th - 10th century) and is as much a landmark of Myanmar as the Eiffel Tower to Paris. It dome rises to 98 m enshrining some of Lord Buddha's hair. Depending on the day you were born you can choose one out of the shrines dedicated to the 8 days of the week (Wednesday is divided into morning and afternoon in order to overcome the dilemma of matching a 7 days week pattern). Sule Paya and Botatung Paya are the second and third mostly visited sites with more Buddha hair relics and an educative demonstration of varieties in pagoda and stupa architectural stiles.