Ocean Pearl Inn Yangon (Rangoon)

Our Burmese days have begun. Landed in Yangon International Airport, precisely on time, at 8 am on the morning of Friday, the 7th of November. Apparently the best month to be here, as Burma becomes one of the hottest countries in all of Southeast Asia at the height of its cruel summers. The skies were promisingly clear, the foliage vivid and well alive in its greenness, as is always the case in this latitude of the world. We'd reserved a midrange place called Ocean Pearl Inn online, mainly be...

Thanksgiving Day. We got back to Yangon yesterday morning at about 7 am, after a whopping 18 hour bus ride- one of those rides so painful at the time it was happening, yet in retrospect, quicker than you could've imagined. The first 6 hours of the ride from Inle Lake to Thazi was one long, tortuous, half-paved monstrosity of mountain switchbacks. The bus was the typical Burmese deathtrap with fold up seats going down the aisle, leaving passengers sitting 5 abreast. The seats were smaller even...

A popular joke around here is that George Orwell, who had lived and worked in Burma for a while, had written not one, but three novels about the country: Burmese Days, Animal Farm and 1984. Of course the sad fact is that this is not a joke, but the fact. Over here, the pigs (literally) indeed are the members of the upper ruling class.

My first and lasting impression of Yangon, the biggest and richest city of Burma, is how poor and rundown it is. The city is full of dirty and dilapidat...

With my Myanmar visa, fresh, crisp $100 bills, a 5 year old used Lonely Planet Myanmar and absolutely no plan, I stepped off the plane today into Yangon. This is the first country that I have traveled to on this trip that does not have ATM machines. None. Even if they did I wouldn't want to use one because the official rate is like 7 kyat to the dollar whereas the black market rate is about 1100 kyat to the dollar. Hard to believe the difference. Could you imagine changing $100 to 700 kyat on...

Back to Yangoon for Thanksgiving and the wait! As we left our hostel to catch a pickup truck down the road the dragon lady ran out and told us that the Bangkok airport was closed. We had a flight in 2 days and were confident that it would be no problem. The subject was on everybody's mind as their was a common theme to discuss, most were assured that it would be impossible for the airport to remain closed. It would be a disaster for Thailand and seemingly easy for the military or police to th...