Rangoon Days

On our second day in Rangoon we splurged and hired a guide - Oo (Uncle) Tin - to tour us around the city. Our friends Grace and Luke had hired him a year ago and he drove them around in his cool vintage VW van.  When I contacted him, he advised that this year his prices had gone up by 60% and he was now driving an air-conditioned Mercedes (with a racer muffler and AMG badging).  Times they are a-changing in Yangon.  (We bartered down the price by saying we didn't need the air con.  Luckily for us, Oo Tin likes to stay cool so he turned it on anyway).

Our tour was great - Oo Tin was a character, and showed us many sights, tourist and otherwise, that we wouldn't have made it to without him.  He also gave us lots of advice over tea about the importance of restraint (no eating and drinking too much!), learning to meditate, and why hip-hop is not the wave of the future.

Our first stop was along the muddy, dirty Yangon River at a set of floating barges that comprise a market that travels up and down the river as far as Mandalay, selling their wares in the little towns along the way.  It takes two months to get to Mandalay, which can also be done in an eight hour bus bus ride to give you a sense of distance.

Many bulk carriers and container ships travel up and down the river - the Indian Ocean is closer than you might think.

The shopkeepers make the barge their home.

This lady is making thanaka (painted on the faces of the kids below), which is worn by Burmese women and children as part make up, part sun protection.

Our new friends!

This woman is swinging her baby in the hammock contraption while she takes a nap in the morning heat.

Oo Tin shows Chad how to really tie a longyi.

Our next stop was the wholesale fish market - one of our special requests (thanks, Luke!).  This is not a sanitized tourist attraction - it is a smelly, sloppy, working fish wharf and processing area where you are likely to go for a slide on fish guts in the street or be shouted at to get out of the way by someone carrying a huge bucket of fish.  This is fish processing before mechanization - these people are working really hard!

Sorting and grading takes place on concrete floors

Oo Tin asked if I wanted to go down and check out inside the fishing boats.  After a quick glance at my sandaled feet it  was "no, thanks" to that offer.

We don't know what kind of fish this is, but it has pretty serious teeth.

This cat managed to snag a whole fish carcass and was off like a shot to enjoy before someone could stop him.

Next up was the wholesale fruit and veggie market, a huge section of which was for dried and fermented fish.

Watermelon heaven!!

And for Chad, papaya heaven.  Biggest, sweetest papayas in the world.

Red bananas on the vine.

Making fermented fish paste.  It smelled awful.

Lots of chilis, though Chad reports that Burmese food isn't very spicy.

Next we headed for a former artisan glass factory, which was at the end of a windy, sandy, overgrown road in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.

This glass factory was once a huge going concern - the kindly owners showed us pictures of a visit back in the late 1960s/early 1970s by astronaut John Glenn and a feature article on the factory from Yangon Airways magazine in 2004.  But in May 2008 Cyclone Nargis hit.  The delta area south of Yangon was hardest hit - over 100,000 people died and many more were rendered homeless.  But Yangon was affected as well, particularly this forested area.  The glass factory was destroyed, and all their inventory scattered throughout the forest.  Since then, the cost of gas to run the furnaces has skyrocketed and the owners haven't had the money to rebuild, so jungle has taken over and they cannot make any more glass.  The government won't assist.

I'm sure John Glenn didn't visit here by accident, and these owners were probably friendly with the government in their successful, money making, tax paying days.  But the destruction and lack of rebuilding is striking and the place has a sad aura about it.

Chad and the tiny, well spoken owner.

Also sad was our next stop to see the famous 'white elephants'.  White elephants are considered lucky, and these two were brought to Yangon about ten years ago as a good omen for the country.  The white elephants are actually tan/pink, and they are chained up for most of the day on a short leash to the front leg, during which they spend the whole time slowly trying to escape by straining at the chain over and over.  Not the most uplifting experience.  Maybe more so for the local tourists who bought lottery tickets (after seeing the lucky elephants) at the stalls outside the gates on their way out.

Happily, it was time for lunch at the well run and very popular Lucky Seven teahouse.  I gulped down a few crackers while Chad enjoyed these peanuty Shan-style noodles.  Oo Tin joined us for a tea and custard and we laughed away an hour talking about practical Buddhism before heading out again.

The Mahapasana Cave is totally artificial - it was built for the 1954-56 Sixth Buddhist Synod.  It took only 14 months to build using 63,000 labourers.  The place is enormous and can accommodate up to 10,000 people!  It's still used for religious ceremonies.

Outside, I got some help from a Burmese lady on how to channel my inner powers to sound this gong.

Inya Lake is a lovely place for a stroll, though we only lasted for about five minutes in the intensely hot afternoon sun.  Aung San Suu Kyi's house, where she was kept under house arrest, is on this lake.

This backpacker/Cambodian scarf/Burmese skirt look is probably going to be on the runways in Paris next year.

On the weird side was a visit to a women's work camp.  The women aren't prisoners, but come to this government run camp because "it is a good place for single women to stay so they aren't alone".  They live regimented lives and use ancient machines to weave cotton and make all kinds of cloth products.  The ladies were lovely and it was cool to see their fabric making process, but it felt a bit prison-like and was not our favourite place.

I would last about two minutes actually trying to do this work.

We thought the reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok was big.  We were wrong.  The Chaukhtatgyi Buddha in Yangon is shockingly huge - can you see (comparatively) tiny me standing in front of it?

Next door is a monastery, which was a peaceful place for a wander.

This dog has reached enlightenment.

I felt kind of bad for the monks - anyone can just wander through their home at will.

We hung out with this elderly monk for a while and he shared his crackers and bananas with us.  Chad tried to show him this picture, but he said (as translated by Oo Tin) - "I'm over 80 years old - I can't see that tiny picture!"

On Kandawgyi Lake sits a massive concrete reproduction of a royal barge, with a fancy restaurant inside.  Actually pretty impressive, if a bit weird.

Shwedagon Pagoda is right across the lake.

These are just the highlights of what we saw that day - what a fantastic time.  Thanks, Oo Tin!