Friday, March 29, 2013

Mingalarbar from Myanmar (part 1)

Day 1 - Sight seeing around Yangon, Myanmar

Mingalarbar!

Over Easter break, I went to Yangon, Myanmar for a 6 day trip, did a bit of sight seeing, tried some Myanmar food and also taught English to local students. It was a really fun trip, and learnt a lot about Myanmar. I'm looking forward to the next time I can go back, I'm sure it will have changed a lot by then.

Mingalarbar ("ming-la-ba"), is "Good morning", "Good afternoon", "Good night", a general greeting that one uses to greet another.

Before going to Myanmar, my impressions of it was really from my own imagination and the few articles/movies that I've had a chance to read/see, I thought it would be very quiet, very few cars and people on the road. The roads would be unpaved and there would be large trees along the road providing shade.

We arrived on March 28th at 2:00am and quickly got onto our tour bus - our luggage was quickly lifted onto the tour bus through the back window of the bus. We made reservations at Grand Palace Hotel, which is only 10-15 mins away from the airport. When we saw the sign for Grand Palace Hotel, we all were surprised at the sight of this:
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But actually our hotel was behind it and we had to go through an alley on the side. Although we weren't expecting a lot for our trip (we were prepared for mosquitoes, frequent power outages, not the cleanest bed sheets and comforts in the hotel), but we were pleasantly surprised with our hotel.

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Very quickly, we were able to check-in to our hotel rooms and when we entered our hotel room, the air con was already on. And everything was very clean and all in good working order. Although the power did fail a few times we were there, they never lasted for very long.

After a few hours of sleep, we made our way downstairs for breakfast, which was a small buffet of fresh fruits, some asian breakfast items, a cooked egg station (fried eggs, omelet, scrambled eggs, eggs benedict, poached eggs), and a noodle station (each day had a different noodle dish). This was the first time that I saw eggs benedicts and poached eggs, so I ordered eggs benedict..... but it turned out like this instead:

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And the poached eggs was cooked in a frying pan filled with water with the water boiling - instead of in a deep pot of boiling water, so it looked like they were cooking a sunny-side up egg in water. :P

Oh well! So for the rest of my trip, I had a normal fried egg in the morning.

Not only was our hotel quite good (it's only 2 stars, but definitely better than some of the 3 or 4 stars that I've stayed at in other countries), our tour bus was comfortable as well, very clean, and the air con worked (which is very important, because it's SOOOO hot in Yangon).

We started to make our way to downtown Yangon, which is not very far, but as Yangon only has 3 main roads and they are also building a new bridge, there is ALWAYS a lot of traffic. We were stuck in traffic for a lot of the time, and we found that traffic was worse on weekdays rather than on weekends. Our first stop was at Summit Parkview hotel, to exchange USD for local currencies.



Then we made our way to the house of Aung San Suu Kyi. On the way, we passed through their IT Park - where their IT companies and research and development is concentrated. You can also see that the roads are actually quite nicely done. There are areas that are very under developed, however, there are also some very big and nicely built houses and buildings - they even have a yatching club, university (however the university's been closed since 1988 after the 8888 Uprising).

Eventually, we made it down the road towards Aung San Suu Kyi's house. This was the house that she lived in during her house arrest, and it's the house that her father lived in as well. The road outside her house is very wide, and newly paved. There are HUGE trees lining the road on both sides. She has a gate to block out visitors and tourists, but it has a photo of her father on top and the symbol of her party NLD displayed prominently.


After a quick stop outside of The Lady's house (everyone refers to her as "The Lady" very respectful when they speak of her), we continued with a tour of the city of Yangon by tour bus. It was so hot we were all quite reluctant to spend too much time outside. It does take a while to acclimatise.

Along the way, we waited in more traffic, and noticed that there were lots of Korean company logos along the road. Seems like the Koreans have started to invest in Myanmar and they are everywhere! Samsung had air purifiers on each of the immigration officer's desk when we landed in Yangon, There are LG signs along the road, there are Hyundai cars on the road.



We made it to the city centre and got down to take a photo in front of city hall and the post office. In April they have their New Year, and it's a water festival like the one in Thailand. They also block off the roads and everyone comes out and splash water on each other. In front of city hall they will also have the water festival during the day and cultural and music performances at night.





Then we made our way to lunch. The tour guide - Kyaw Kyaw (pronounced "Jo Jo") took us to a restaurant that served Myanmar food and they had different food stations. We just went around and selected food from other people's tables. :) That's the best way to choose.... only we asked for less spicy or not spicy....






We also saw that there was an italian ice cream store! And that was the best dessert, it tasted soooo good in the heat!


After lunch, we went to the National Museum of Myanmar, unfortunately we're not allowed to bring our cameras or phones in! They were very strict and made us bring our phones back to the tour bus! :( There was an exhibit on their alphabet - looks very funny, like links in a chain....

Then there was a very nice throne room. I've seen quite a few thrones (in India, China, England, France, Poland, Russia etc.), but this one had a very interesting story. It goes something like this...

"the elephant spirit and the lion spirit were fighting and causing great damage to earth, so an angel (celestial spirit) came and danced for them in the sky, causing them to stop fighting."

This is a very vague impression of the story, but it was interesting, because it explained the lion, and why this throne was called the lion throne. The Lion = The King, the throne has the lion and elephant and the celestial spirit carved in various places. This throne is a reminder to the King that the king is the arbiter of disputes and will bring peace to the land.

The museum has loads of interesting exhibits on the different cultures, clothings, music of Myanmar, the only downfall is that as you go up the floors, the hotter and dimmer it gets! The air conditioning does not work very well, and as the sun heats up the building, only the first floor is cool.

In the gift shop, they sell a certain wood that when ground with water becomes like a paste, and the people of Myanmar use this on their face as sunscreen. You'll see many women and children with face painted in circles, squares, stripes, they use this to block out the harmful sun's rays. My mom also tried some... hehe....

The last stop of the day was Shwedagon Pagoda, it's probably the most famous landmark of Myanmar and Yangon. This buddhist temple is all covered in Gold!

We had to walk through the temple in our bare feet, which I would have enjoyed, but the marble floor was burning hot from the Sun..... but it was still a pretty awesome sight. I wish we had a higher vantage point to take photos from.




 








And then we went for dinner. Our tour guide gave us a choice for dinner, apparently Yangon had many different cuisines available (French, Japanese, Chinese, Myanmar, Thai, Balinese etc.) - we decided to give Chinese a try, and we ended up at a restaurant called Oriental House.

It was very quiet at 7pm, but that's because their dinner service starts at 4:30pm! So we were late for dinner. The food was not amazing, but it was pretty good for a foreign country cooking Chinese food. Similar to the ones you would find in the states - all the dishes were swimming in think dark sauce, but the taste was actually not that bad.

And this restaurant started playing music, and they were playing Christian hymns! It was such a surprise the staff and owner are Christians!

After dinner, we quickly made our way back to the hotel (well not that fast, because there was.... traffic!), so tired from the heat, each night we were exhausted and fell asleep very quickly.


Day 2: Sight seeing around Myanmar

First stop was at a Jewish Synagogue in Yangon, this is the only one left and they only have 25 congregation members now. We were also given access to see their Torah (The Five Book of Moses), which is locked in a room. We were allowed to take photos, but not allowed to speak.






After visiting the Synagogue, we went to the local bazaar - Bogyoke Market (aka Scott Market). There you will find lacquered trays and plates, pearls and gems, beaded pillow cases, traditional clothes etc. The cost is not that cheap, so you'll definitely have to bargain a bit.


We also happened to see a group of REALLY pretty girls, and they had a camera crew following them around. They were filming their trip as part of the Miss Thailand beauty pageant.

For lunch, we went to another Chinese restaurant: Golden Duck, this is very famous in Yangon, they have dishes that are quite similar to the ones in Hong Kong - Steamed fish, stir-fry veggies, steamed spare rib with garlic etc.



After that, we made a quick stop at another temple, but after seeing Shwedagon, this one didn't compare.... :P Then we went to see the White Elephant - it looks like it has a layer of powder, but it's not powder. The white elephant is very rare and a revered animal in Myanmar.

Then we decided to go for an early dinner for seafood. It was quite simple, mostly grilled, but it was very fresh. We had grilled jumbo prawns, grilled lobsters, steamed fish.






We went back to the hotel to rest and get ready for the next few days of teaching English.

There are probably other things to do in Yangon as well, but with the heat and short time we were there, our tour guide also didn't give us many options for interesting things to see.... I'll have to do some research next time instead of relying on others to do it for me.

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