Yangon (Rangoon) Hotels
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Burma
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Some of you may have heard that I was headed to Myanmar last week, so here is a little update to let those of you who didn't have the embassy track me down (cough cough) know that I'm back in Bangkok safe and sound. I wish I had more pictures to share but my camera was on the fritz so I couldn't capture half of the things that I wanted to! I realize this entry is a bit on the long side but Myanmar is probably my favorite place and I have so much to say about it! Also, I'm proctoring exams this week where I'm supposed to sit and stare at the students for three consecutive hours and look for cheaters but I've strategically placed my computer under the podium so I can sit here and type! No hard feelings if you don't make it all the way through!
Our 12 day adventure started very early on a very rainy morning and after almost missing our flight, we joked that the torrential down pour and close call with the flight were ominous signs about what the trip had in store for us. How right we were! Not knowing that the political situation would escalate as it did while we roamed around the country side; we decided to head out of the city right away and save Yangon for last. When we got to the Yangon bus station we learned that there was a local bus leaving in thirty minutes and an air-conditioned bus leaving in four hours. Since the torrential downpour had followed us to Myanmar and the "bus station" wasn't much more than a small garage with a few plastic chairs and a tin roof, we opted for the local bus. The local bus made for a LONG 8 hour ride! To say that it was dirty, hot and crowded would be quite an understatement. There were people with babies on their laps crammed into the aisles on preschool sized plastic stools along with crates of hay and eggs. Due to the rain, most people kept their windows shut so there was no air circulation whatsoever. Tourists generally steer clear of these busses so you can imagine the stares I attracted with my blonde hair and IPOD!
Our first stop was a town called Taungoo, where there were very few tourists. There may have been other tourists around but in the day and a half we spent there we didn't see any other westerners. Taungoo is like a completely different world: no movie theaters, malls, grocery stores, gas stations, and very few cars. Food is bought from the local markets and gas is poured into motorbikes using a metal pitcher and funnel. We were fortunate enough to meet a very nice man who spoke very good English and offered to show us around the town. Expecting nothing in return, he and two of his friends gave us a tour of the villages of Taungoo on their motorbikes. If I can say one thing about the Burmese people it is that they are very genuine and kind. Unlike in Bangkok, where it is safe to assume that people who stop you on the street are trying to sell you something you don't need or rip you off, the people of Myanmar have your best interests at heart. You can't stop on the street and look at a map for more than a minute without five people asking if you need their help, and not because they want to overcharge you for a taxi ride. Spending time with locals in a non-tourist destination was very telling of how these people live their lives in a state of fear and oppression. Our guide (Maung) and his two friends brought us to a monastery, a school in a village on the outskirts of town and finally to his aunt's house for tea and snacks. He told us that the government does not allow foreigners to visit schools so we would have to go to a village away from any military posts. When we arrived, we had to wait on the street while Maung asked around to find out if there was any police around. Once he was assured that the coast was clear we went into the school. Burmese children are absolutely adorable and they all said welcome in unison when we arrived. The school was made of three tiny but open rooms that were connected. There were three teachers for five grades and the students sat quietly on the floor around low tables writing on lined paper. I was amazed at how well-behaved they were. I think my students in Bangkok could learn a thing or two from those kids! On the road out of the village, the military waved us down and questioned Maung about what he was doing with us. He told them were visiting a pottery shop. Our afternoon ended at Maung's aunt's house where he finally felt comfortable enough to open up about the lives of the Burmese people. Since we had met him, he remained reluctant to answer many of the questions that we asked him. He reasoned that many people don't want to talk about the government or other issues they consider risky due to a constant ingrained fear that they will get in trouble. One person likened this to the reason that we stop at red lights in the middle of the night when there is clearly no one around. You don't sit there impatiently tapping your foot because you have the utmost respect for traffic laws or you think a car might materialize out of thin air and crash into you. You sit there because there is always a little voice in the back of your head saying that you might get caught. What if there is one of those new little cameras in the light? What if there is a cop car waiting down the road with its lights off? Once Maung opened up he told us about how he lives in fear for his family every day. According to him, the situation is getting worse and worse for the Burmese people. Three years ago there was barely any military presence in his town and now there are truck loads of armed guards and an abundance of military camps. He said a few years ago he could buy four bags of rice for 10$ US and now it costs him 20$ US for one bag. As one of the wealthier residents of this town even he wonders if he will be unable to feed his family soon. Spending time in this environment you can't help but feel saddened that people are living under these conditions, frustrated that there is not much you can do to help and ashamed that without a second thought you spend more money on a new pair of shoes then some of these families see in months. The disparity was so apparent to me when Maung was telling me about how he was very lucky to be able to save enough in three years so that he could attend one year of distance learning from the government run university. When I asked if he minded my asking how much it cost, he told me 200$ US. I got a knot in my stomach when I thought about how just hours earlier my friends and I each nonchalantly plucked 100$ (300$ total) out of our wads of cash for him to exchange.
Bus ride number two to Inle Lake was just as long but a lot more pleasant. That isn't to say however that it went off without a hitch. For some reason, we were under the impression that we needed to get off the bus at Kalaw, when in reality it is two to three hours west of where we needed to be in Nyaungshwe. When the bus passed through Kalaw at around 4:30 AM, the bus driver woke us up and told us it was our stop. Half delirious, we stumbled off the bus and were greeted by frigid mountain temperatures and a complete ghost town. We were fortunate that there was an English speaking woman at the bus stop who was waiting to pick up some Australians to go trekking or else who knows what would have become of us! She told us that we were a few hours from where we wanted to be and would have to wait another hour or more for a bus. Everything was closed and we were extremely frustrated, tired and cold. After waiting for about fifteen minutes the woman flagged down a passing bus that happened to be heading toward Nyaungshwe as well. They were kind enough to make room for us, so we hopped on. We stopped at a rest stop about thirty minutes later and coincidentally our first bus was there too. After asking if we could get back on our original bus, the two drivers had a little exchange in Burmese that ended in them laughing at the stupid Americans who got off in the middle of the mountains. We got our bags back from the interim bus and reclaimed our original seats.
After a serious nap at our hostel at Inle Lake, we hired a boat to show us around. On Inle Lake, the people have a very simple way of life. They bathe in the river and live in huts that pop out of the water on stilts. The people survive by the dollars they get from tourism, fishing and growing vegetables in floating gardens. The lake itself is absolutely beautiful and peaceful and I loved spending time there. The second day, we rented bicycles for a whopping 1000k (less than a dollar) and explored the villages surrounding the lake. After our ride, a delicious Burmese meal, and some Tylenol PM we were good and tired for the 12 hour over night bus to Mandalay.
As soon as we woke up from our second post-bus ride nap, we rented bicycles again to explore Mandalay. It is a relatively small hectic city and the traffic is completely overwhelming. People drive in a sort of organized chaos; with two or three traffic lights at most dictate right of way. Busses with passengers perched on the roof, pedestrians, bicycles, trishaws, and motorbikes navigate the roads honking their horns constantly and weaving in and out of traffic. Mandalay has the highest concentration of monks in Myanmar, so we started out our day by driving to the area where the majority of the monasteries are located. As we rode down one of the streets, the traffic stopped to allow hundreds of monks to pour out of the gates. We were aware that there had been some recent protesting so we asked around trying to determine if this was a protest or some sort of religious practice, but the people were very reluctant to answer us. Finally one person mumbled that they were marching because the government had killed a monk and promptly walked away from us. This was before the violence had escalated and we were very intrigued so we decided to trail the protesters on our bicycles (in retrospect, this was not the smartest move). People stood on the sidewalks watching the monks and many came up to us asking where we were from and making comments such as "very bad, Buddhas on strike".
When I'm traveling with girls everywhere we go we always prioritize finding the markets. Now that I have been primarily traveling with boys, I've learned to change my mind set to everywhere we go we must rent motorbikes; whether they are available for rent or not. In Mandalay it is actually illegal to rent motorbikes to foreigners, but we found a guy who was willing to get some of his friends to
give up their bikes for the day so we could take them around and see some of the sights. Mom, close your eyes for this part, but yes they eventually talked me into driving a motorbike through the chaotic streets of Mandalay that I was initially intimidated to ride the bicycle on. We were under the impression that they were going to allow us to try and find the sights that we wanted to see on our own with the help of our lonely planet map but one of the bike owners ended up leading us around all day. This was lucky for all parties involved because without his help we probably would not have found any of the sights and they probably would not have gotten their bikes back in one piece, if we even found our hostel again that is! After driving along the river and visiting some temples we went to bed early in preparation for the 14 hour boat trip that would bring us to Bagan the next morning.
At this point, monks in various cities had been staging protests similar to one we had seen in Mandalay. As we drove to boat at 5 AM our taxi driver told us how the monks were uniting and starting at noon monks in every city across Myanmar would be marching. This was the first time that we got the idea that the situation was really starting to escalate. While protesters were invading the streets throughout Burma, we were enjoying a boat ride down the Irrawaddy River. The boat was a two story wooden barge carrying sacks of rice and fruit on the first floor and passengers on the second. The local people sat on blankets on the floor while the thirty or so tourists were given plastic chairs. While I'm sure that the Burmese people did not pay 10$ for the trip as we had, it was unnerving that someone had decided that I was worthy of a chair while these other people had to crowd on the floor. As it was still before 6 AM, I soon found myself longing to stretch out and take a nap so I laid out my sarong slept on the floor for a good four hours. When I woke up, the sun was pounding down on me and boat's obnoxious horn was blowing. We pulled up to the shore and women and children from the village we stopped at rushed aboard to sell everything from fruit to fried bugs, while men from the town unloaded some of the goods stored below. When they finished unloading their share of the fruit and rice, the horn blew again and all the women and children scattered off the boat. Every hour or so the horn would blow it would happen all over again. Later in the afternoon, when the boat had cleared out some I went to lay out my sarong for round two of my nap and a woman gave me her thick blanket to put under my thin sheet. She woke me up when it was time for her to get off and I ended up giving her my sarong. When the sun was at its hottest and I was uncomfortably sweating in my plastic chair, I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't wishing we had opted for the 8 hour air-conditioned tourist boat; but overall it was an interesting and enjoyable experience.
Later that night we arrived at our guest house in Bagan which had CNN and we learned that a few monks had been killed while protesting and the government was threatening to use force if the demonstrations did not come to an end.
Bagan is a quiet town with thousands of temples and more horse carts and bicycles than cars. On our first day we hired a horse cart to bring us around to see the temples.
Some of them were closed for preservation reasons but others allowed you to climb to the top where there were amazing views.
When we got back to the guest house there was a small crowd around the television. Apparently protesters did not stand down and the government had stayed true to their word, using guns and violence to quiet the people. It was at around this time that the entire country's internet was disabled and a strict curfew was imposed. We already had a flight scheduled for Yangon for the following afternoon and we were very curious to find out what we would be walking into. We had no way of knowing how much coverage the issue was getting back home in the United States and no way of contacting our parents to tell them that we were okay.
The next morning we woke up early and traveled about an hour outside of Bagan in the back of a pick-up truck to a place called Mt. Popa.
Surrounding the mountain was a bustling little town and once you made the small hike up to the top of the hill there was a beautiful panoramic view of the countryside. Once we were back in Bagan (fully aware of the irony), we hopped in a horse cart and headed to the airport.
When we arrived in Yangon it was early evening and the protests had already subsided. The streets were eerily quiet and it felt as though we were entering some sort of war zone. When we arrived at the hostel, the owner was very welcoming, but made it very clear that the situation was very bad and we had to be very careful. It was getting close to curfew at this point so he gave us directions to a restaurant down the street and told us to go there, eat, and come right back. Apparently, someone had been shot on the corner near our hostel earlier in the afternoon. The vacant streets and nervousness exuded by the hostel staff made the danger feel a lot more authentic then it had on CNN.
The streets were pretty much safe in the mornings before the protests started so we woke up early the next morning to take a look around. There wasn't much to see because most of the shops were closed and all of the temples and pagodas had been shut down. There were however barricades of barbed wire in the streets where people had been demonstrating and truck loads of soldiers standing by with large guns. There were lots of rumors swirling about what was happening but I don't know how many of them hold merit. Apparently the night before, under the cover of darkness and the curfew, the government had raided the largest monasteries beating and carting the monks off to jail. They had stationed troops outside every monastery in some cases to keep the monks inside and in others to keep people from seeing what was inside. The Junta is good at keeping its secrets: shutting off the internet, murdering media reporters, detaining those seen as threats and searching hotel rooms. I have a feeling that the actual death toll far exceeds the number that we are being fed by the media. I don't think anybody but the Junta themselves knows the actual extent of the damage. We returned to hostel around the time that the protests were starting up and stayed holed up in our "bunker" until they died down again. Our hostel had a rooftop with hammocks and chairs so we sat up there with the other travelers from our hostel and waited until it was safe to go out on the streets again.
By this point most of the Burmese people were terrified and in recognizing that the soldiers were not shy about shooting to kill, the number of demonstrators began to taper off. The next day the UN envoy arrived and although there were still some people marching there were no reports of violence. It appeared as though everything was settling down but we still proceeded with caution. The strong military presence remained in the streets as if to threaten the people not to act out again. It was a completely surreal environment.
I know my Mom doesn't want to hear this (she already threatened to rip up my passport), but despite all that happened while I was there I wouldn't hesitate to go back again. Many people are against tourism in Myanmar because they believe that by bringing money into Myanmar tourists are supporting the Junta. While I cannot deny that between my visa fee, airport departure tax and various park entrance fees I paid almost 100$ to the government, a lot of my money also went to the Burmese people. Since the rise of political instability and Aung San Suu Kyi's denouncement of tourism, there have been fewer visitors to Burma. From speaking to the locals it is obvious how much this affects them directly. Many Burmese people depend on tourist dollars for survival and many restaurants and small businesses have been forced to close due to lack of revenue. The Burmese people also related to us that they want people from other parts of the world to come to their country and see what is going on. The Junta keeps the people isolated from the West and by refusing to visit their country we are helping to keep it this way. The government makes millions of dollars in the oil, teak, and illicit drug industries and I promise that the high ranking officials will continue to live in gated mansions with in ground pools and tennis courts whether we visit or not. The more small actions we make to take money away from the Junta, the more they oppress the people to maintain the lifestyle that they are accustomed to. As long as China, India and other countries continue to pump money into the economy, the government will continue to thrive and the people will continue to suffer. This being said, if you ever find yourself in Southeast Asia, I highly recommend that you visit this amazing country.
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