Burma or modernly known as Myanmar has been one of the less commercialized country from South East Asia. It’s still an unusual tourist destination with the military unrest and shadow of cyclone Nargis that took place in 2008.
I travelled with a regular travel buddy and his friends. It was quite a last minute decision when I joined the group but it’s not everyday chance that I can travel to this country, with at least a great travel companion that I know. The rest, I could adjust.
So four of us, two guys, two girls, consists of me and my colleague, and the other two are each other colleague. Each pair found our own time to apply for Visa. Everyone needs Visa to enter Myanmar.
Nowadays they have to the option to get visa on arrival, as you pay for the visa by the time of landing.
I was still trying to get visa on embassy beforehand though, because I always weary about going to foreign destinations. Although it never really gave me any problem with other country (except Singapore, ironically),
I’m worried that Indonesian passport procedure might not be as smooth as others. My travelling companions consist of two Singaporeans and one Australian.
To apply the visa we had to go down to the embassy together with all necessary documents, plus a letter that stated our particulars and request for visa. I haven’t done any handwriting letter for a long time. Luckily all of us managed to make time and apply for the visa, because VOA (Visa On Arrival) was suspended close to their election early November.
Anyway, Myanmar, or specifically Yangoon, is much more modern and developed than what I thought it would be. It probably got to do with Yangoon used to be the capital of Myanmar. It’s a nice introduction to Myanmar though, but if I ever had a chance to go again, I’d prefer somewhere more remote of Myanmar.
The airport was modern looking, clean and there were no hassles like what others had told us. Checking and forcing you to change currency, confiscation of handphones, none of those. We had the smoothest process in airport. In fact, even the airport cab is very organized and straight forward. We just grabbed one and headed to hotel, the taxi trip took about half an hour and err.. I forgot how much we paid for it.
Along the way we saw the light traffic, smooth road, as the matter of fact, like every other South East Asian countries, I found a lot of similarities with my own country Indonesia. Hell well, I was excited to be in Myanmar, never thought I can be here earlier that I thought. It is in my list, but somewhere out there, not at the top three.
Anyway, group of four is always an ideal number for travelling. As the time went by, even for the short period, I found the other two travelling companions are pleasant to be with. I’m not a very social person. I’d prefer travelling alone than being stuck with people I’m not comfortable with. This time, banking on my friend, and few short encounters with the rest, I thought I would fit and I think I did.
We had nice apartment hotel with two bedrooms, two gigantic bathrooms, long balcony, gigantic living and dining room, kitchen and laundry room. Well, that is much much more than the hotels I normally stay. The rate is good also. We were jumping around happily and testing the slidable parquet floor.
We are few years apart (I’m the oldest-gasp) but four of us shared something in common, we are playful and kind of young at heart even though we are all in mature ages.
As usual, we took quick shower and decided it’s time to try to explore Myanmar. The time was around noon I guess. Not very good in time keeping especially for trips that I had postponed writing the journal for. Lazy bum! Anyway, we had our lunch on the plane, we took Jetstar, which is supposed to be budget airline with no food, but it was a shared venture so we actually on board with Myanmar Airlines (?memory testing?), so we got lunch on board!
Anyway, we quickly geared up. Sorry, that’s my term I normally used for diving. For this gear-up, just means usual travel drill among friends. We chipped in for common fund, which came in handy for all common expenses like meals, transports, entry fees and other miscellaneous stuffs. Putting our valuables like passport and handphone (there is no signal for every kind of phone/phone operator), grabbed other things we needed along the day in our light bag and there we were off venturing.
Unusual, we all wore jeans and shoes, because we read that we are not supposed to wear slipper for our first destination, Swedagon Paya.
Swedagon Paya is jewel of Yangoon, also known as Golden Pagoda with 98 meter stupa at the west of Kandawgyi Lake. It dominates skyline of the city and rumoured to be visible from almost anywhere quite high up, like from example, our hotel too.
There are four entrances to the Paya, but to be honest, once we got inside, we were quite confused as the temple is huge with many courtyards and we almost couldn’t differentiate the head and tails of everywhere. There are many small temples and shrines inside, with a lot of courtyards. Swedagon Pagoda itself consists of many layers all the way up; Turban band, inverted alms bowl, lotus petals, banana bud, umbrella crown, vane and diamond bud. Wiki and other online source got a lot of interesting info if you want to read up about it furthermore.
The umbrella crown itself consists of 5,448 diamonds and 2,317 rubies (gasp!), the pagoda itself is covered with genuine gold plates. During the dusk, on certain angle, we should be able to see diamond blinking but unfortunately, regardless how four of us turned our head left and right, up and down, we couldn’t see it. We saw some blinking but it’s more like reflection on the golden tangling decorations.
Giant Buddha statue. We can pay good gesture by pulling the rope connected to the fan on top of the statue.
This boy spent minutes and one whole box of match trying to light up the candle.
Some of the decorations for offerings.
Some ceremony of showering the statue.
The temple is more colorful than the rest.
As mentioned, we are not supposed to wear slipper, so we wore shoes. Wrong. We are not supposed to wear any foot wear at all. So barefooting was the way to go. We wandered around the courtyard, which surprisingly was very windy and cosy.
My friend brought a lonely planet book. From there, I learned a bit a bout the numbering. All numbers are in Myanmar language, and we needed to navigate around because all the temples around were quite confusing, which and which. The temple conditions varied from newer to older look. There were heavy lighting equipment here and there and some used fluorescent lights inside the shrine. This place definitely much more commercialized than other temples in Myanmar, which was a lot.
They dressed up water tank with temple theme. The customary in Myanmar, and I believe in Thailand as well, is to offer drinking water to passerby and visitors. Many places, temples, shops, entrances of the houses had pot of water for that purpose.
Huge courtyard inside Swedagon Paya.
Rows and rows of place for candles.
Water tank dressed up with temple theme
Some crafted decoration that remind me of Javanese art.
We walked around, lazed around, took pictures or just chit chatting enjoying the afternoon. I only brought my old compact camera for this trip. Because I didn’t want the burden of big camera, and because my traveling companion were not really interested in photography, so I don’t want to make them wait when I take pictures. There are many interesting features and objects that would be nice for photography, but no regrets.
Sometimes we were approached by monks who spoke English quite fluently for chit chatting. We went around and found a boundary of the temple overlooking villager house. They were gathering to cook beehon and four of us stuck our head through the trellis to look at them. It was interesting, they cook and they eat together like good old village days. I think it would scare the crap out of them if they look up and found four people sticking their heads watching them like that. Soon we realized that we had grumpy stomachs requested to be filled.
Before we left the temple, we witnessed very interesting culture. Suddenly we saw a row of female holding broom. It’s cleaning time. Upon instruction, the row moved, and everyone started sweeping the floor. There were at least five tiers consists of all females or all males rows. There were also tourists participating. We were wondering whether they would do the mopping, and soon after, they did.
Sweeping ceremony before the night falls.
Golden Pagoda, with genuine gold plates, diamonds and rubies.
Inside one of the temples.
Some uses small mosaic of mirrors to decorate the interior and exterior.
We walked out from the temple and roamed around. It is supposed to be walk-able to our hotel, although our ‘walkable’ might not fit into everyone category, because we simply love to walk around in foreign country where we could feel safe enough. So we walked and walked, through the streets. Big street, busy street, small street and suddenly we realized and quite alarmed that for quite a long distance we didn’t see any… eating place.
Luckily, after a while, we found one café, a very western like café and it was very cozy inside. We got the place in the corner with one table and eight pillows, what a nice place. They played soft pop music, the ambience was good and the waiter was super friendly, spoke fluent English and very helpful in pointing out destination for the hotel and of course, mart where we could buy something for supper later.
We ordered some food to be shared and also individual food. The food was good, the price was reasonable, and soon four of us got the meal we were longing for. My friend swore, from now on, we shouldn’t go hungry again! Ha…
We walked back passing the hotel, found a small mall with supermarket where we could buy instant noodle, eggs, bread and gigantic watermelon. Ah yes, we always stock up eventhough our trip is just a four day trip. We found 24 hours café and bought some cake. Too bad the cakes were not good so we fortified the plan to visit the café for supper.
So we went back to hotel, cleaned up and apparently my friend want to introduce our scrabble culture to the other two friends. You see, me and my friend and two other colleagues from office are travelling buddies. We always played Scrabble at night times until dawn, it was our must-do culture. (It’s difficult to find Scrabble kakis, how lucky I am to find three of them!) The other two are my friend’s other traveling companions who never play Scrabble. We played for a while, as usual, the TV attracted our attention more even though we were looking at crappy show.
It’s watermelon time! The gigantic watermelon was slaughtered in weird way. Me and my friend got both ends, we found out both of us have the same preference in way of eating watermelon; grab half circle, hold it on your lap and use spoon. The other two prefer them to be chopped in triangle. Each of us got very generous serving and there were still a lot left in the fridge. We made coffee and tea.
Unlike our usual Scrabble competition, this one didn’t last long and all of us slept around 1 plus. Time for big day tomorrow.
16 October 2010
We had our breakfast in the hotel, tried the Myanmar noodle (ouch I have forgotten the name, clue: next time write it down or don’t be lazy writing the journal! Aiyoh!).
Today ittenary was to visit Sule Paya, another temple. However, we got a good fix of temple yesterday, so this time we only took the picture s from outside. We did went to a temple at Chinatown for awhile, luckily it was okay, because we were back to our usual attire, T-shirts, shorts and slippers.
We went to Boyoke Aung San Market, again, walkable from our hotel. It was a busy street side market. We could see busses, motorcycle, bicycle taxi, people moving things, small stalls, everything that kind of remind me of Indo. Anyway, we roamed through stalls, bought what we wanted to buy. I bought fresh lotus seed, something I can’t find anywhere but my home town way way way back then.
We decided to try the street food, not knowing what they sold, but it looked delicious. So we pointed here and there and got a bowl and very good mixture of vegetable and noodle. Each two of us shared a bowl, sitting on wooden stool overlooking bus stop. The bus looked like Kopaja, once in a while passengers would alight with their belonging, sometimes too many. We saw an old auntie alighting with a huge sack of dry coconut, the sack broke and the coconuts were scattered all over the road. Few men rushed to help her gathering the coconuts so the road can be cleared as the traffic already queued up.
The menu.
The food. Delicious!
We tried some other fried stuffs before proceeding to another market inside the building. They had everything, from clothing to souvenirs, food to entertainment center like casino (yes casino), arcade game and wholesale market. It was quite chaotic but four of us had similar shopping style. If we like we’d buy, if not we moved on, no hassle or wishy washy so all of us managed to stay together all the time.
Jetty near Aung San market.After exploring almost everything, we walked back to the hotel and found street artist just outside our hotel. He is probably 11-12 years old boy, sell handmade painting and he actually painted them before our eyes, using only wood paint (yes, those that comes in can, big brush, yes, those 2 inch thick brush used to paint wood or whatever, some sponge, satay stick and his own bare hands) to create scenery painting. The color mixtures and the depth of the landscapes are quite amazing, thinking of how limited his source was. We stayed there watching how he painted and bought some for souvenirs.
Young street artist.We went back to the hotel and three of them went down to massage room. I don’t like massage, so I enjoyed my own relax time, it was so shiok after the hot chaotic morning and afternoon on busy street. Less than one hour, they all came back with my friend cursing and swearing that the massage girls (S) were trying to give him extra service. It was hilarious especially he had been ‘molested’ but the third time, either it’s accidental or not since we started the journey. We suggested that he stayed there; he might have some unusual appeal to Burmese.
After relaxing for a little bit more, we walked down to try to find our City Mart and also to have nice dinner near Kandawgyi Lake. City Mart was a mysterious mart suggested by the café waiter we visited on the first night, we couldn’t seem to find it but always stumble to another mart.
Along the way there was a dog following us. Literally followed us along the way. Once or twice he stopped but hesitant to cross the street, stopped for a pee or two, but ended up following us again until we had to cross the street. We actually tried to help him cross, but he didn’t seem to trust our judgments.
Bad news, apparently Kadawgyi lake was closed at 6 pm, together with all the riverside restaurant. We were quite surprised because we thought it’s a place to have dinner while enjoying the scenery of the lake. Too bad. We walked around and found a lot of modest restaurant including one seafood restaurant. We sat down around round table and had a very satisfying six-course dinner.
One thing we noticed in Myanmar, there are no obese people. If there are, they must be some tourists. The meal was good and we walked around again trying to locate City mart, to no avail. In fact, we found another shopping area where they have TV on the street with live football program. Not bad at all, we went through a train station, I think the train station goes through the back of our hotel. Our room overlooking the train track and we also seen or heard train every half an hour or so.
Empty carriage on the train track.Calling it a day, we went back to hotel, I believe we had supper that night with our instant noodle. It was quite a tiring day and we reached hotel quite late.
Soon after some watching and chit chatting, we resigned to our beds.
17 October 2010
We woke up slightly later today, destination is Thanlyin, a major port city of Myanmar. We took taxi ride and it was quite a loooooong ride. At his own initiative, the taxi driver brought us to a cultural village where we could climb the watch tower, looking at the skyline of Myanmar where we could see Swedagon Paya again, and experiencing different cultural houses and tribes in Myanmar, probably something like Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, in smaller and less elaborate scale.
View from the watch tower overlooking the park.
Inside one of the traditional house.
A long the way we saw field like savannah, we thought it’s a cotton plantation because there are some in Yangoon. We stopped by for photo taking for a while and continued to Thanlyin to visit Kyaikkauk Pagoda, a pagoda on the river.
We had our lunch first before crossing the river. There was a riverside local eatery with a motormouth auntie heading the waiters. She shouted her order so loud that we believe people in the Pagoda across the river could hear her. But she was the romantic kind, she had all kind of portraits and pictures on the wall, those we could see on the 80-s calendar, posing on the grass field, holding flower etc. Every picture was blow-up to giant size to decorate the wall. The aunty was very efficient and could understand sign languages very well.
We had fried rice and fried noodle; it tasted quite nice despite the appearance. Afterward we walked by some locals selling rice balls to feed the fish. We went directly to the boat and crossed the river to the pagoda.
The pagoda used to be very crowded, as we could see from the historical picture from the wall. The interesting thing was that the locals are able to feed the river catfish that resemble shark on the side of the pagoda. We were there for a while and saw the hungry fish savored the rice balls until most of them looked very full.
On our way back, the boat driver brought us around for a while to see the other side of the temple. I always like boat ride, it feels like uncompleted holiday without one. So even a short distance was sufficient. : )
We went back to the town using the same cab but couldn’t find the so called cotton plantation. According to the driver, the one that we saw was only ordinary tall grass. Anyway, we dropped by Inya Lake, near the downtown of Yangoon. Inya lake a famous recreational area for relaxing, just sight seeing, and romantic getaway. Along the stretch of the lake we saw couple sitting together, some brought umbrella for a little bit of privacy. There was an event from Yangoon sailing club, as we could see from afar.
There is also a huge park nearby, and according to the source that I read, one of the lakefront properties include the residences of Aung San Suu Kyi, the very famous political figure of Myanmar.
We sat by the riverside for another light meal and light snack. After that we took cab to a supermarket and shopped for our midnight supper. On the way, while sitting on the cab, few distances before we reached our destination, we saw.. can you believe it? City Mart!!! But we missed it and it will remained a mystery, we swore we actually walked by that area before.
On the other mart, we decided to shop for ingredients to make vegetable soup, with potato, tomato, onion. We also bought mayonnaise, bread, eggs and baked beans for breakfast. Too much for the last night? A little bit, but believe it or not, we managed to finish everything and of course had enough for supper and breakfast on the last day, together with the left-over-but-so-much watermelon.
Before supper, ah well, we went down for a nice dinner nearby hotel. Our main purpose was to steal some salt and pepper for our soup. We ended up eating quite a lot, and also laughed a lot cracking jokes until the waiters gave us suspicious look. We emptied half of the seasoning bottles.
Next to the hotel, still in the hotel territory, there was a spooky looking building that I believe was something left from historical time. We did mention that we wanted to explore it at night, but somehow all of us conveniently forgot about it. 
18 October 2010
Last day!
We woke up, prepare everything that we had and served mixed but delicious breakfast
We ate almost everything, then three of us went out for the market to get some last minute shopping. The two guys also wanted to buy some lotus seed. We wandered through the market, once upon a time it was drizzling so we ended up with dirty pants because our slippers sent the dirt sparkles. For those who had lived in rural area before, encountered with dirt or earth road, with slipper as favorite attire, this should be familiar.
We found the lotus seed seller (there were only two for the whole market and they sit side by side), kudos to the two guys who are good navigator always. She was very happy to see us again, and she gave us extra for uhm.. repeated customers.
We also found the delicious fried banana and brought some back for last snack before heading to the airport. But it was not the last; of course we visited some coffee shop in the airport to finish our last money.
Anyway, in every source of reading we found, we were told that they don’t receive Kyat for airport tax. It was not true, Kyat was acceptable. Also, beware with the restriction of US dollar. Similar with Indonesia, they only receive perfect condition of US dollar. No wrinkle, chip or torn.
Overall, it was a good trip. Myanmar is not like what I imagined, perhaps I should visit somewhere much more remote in the future. Maybe a bit far in the future. For now, my Myanmar fix is done and I can cross it from my list. South East Asia, three more to go!
I’m grateful to have good traveling companions and both my new friends are pleasant to be with.
