We felt it’s time to expand our Southeast Asia experiences by adding Myanmar to the list since it shares a border and millennia of history with Thailand.  And being somewhat reactionary to the trend of changing country names with new regimes, I have more commonly referred to Myanmar as Burma, but we were chagrined to learn that the Bama people came to the region in the 9th century and called themselves Mranma and the r sounds like y in later dialects.  That kingdom was destroyed by the British in the 19th century and was replaced by Burma which only referred to the main tribe of Myanmar’s multicultural population.  So how far should you go back, my prejudice was with the current regime and maybe Myanmar refers to all the tribes still constituting the “Republic of Myanmar”.

We chose to fly in and around the country, which is a precedent (I hope we don’t make a habit of it – you miss too much of the country and it’s people), because we really only wanted to be away 10 days from Trang, getting back before the Chinese New Year and we had to stage the trip exactly at the half-way point so as not to impact our two 60-days visas for Thailand.

The first thing we noticed on arrival was that the traffic drives on the right (as we do in the States), but the vehicles, 99% of them, are right-hand drive (only a few ancient trucks and a couple of NGO vehicles with left-hand steering).  You can imagine how hard this is for traffic that has a propensity for passing when the driver has to lean to the left or ask the passenger if it is clear to pass.  I think they compensate for this handicap by honking.  Stanna tells me that they still don’t honk as much as India, but most of the horns are anemic from overuse.  We tried to deduce where the vehicles came from, saw some from India and they share a common border, but we were told there is no legal land crossing so they must arrive by ship, as do vehicles from Japan.

The second most noticeable change from Thailand was that both the men and women of Myanmar wear their traditional clothing, albeit the men wear a Western dress shirt with the longyi skirt.  It was easy to be noticed as a foreigner not just because of our white faces but because of our shorts & capris when everyone else was wearing long skirts.  This is probably a good place for a brief rant on the average Western millennial traveler wearing their beach-appropriate and sloppy clothing reminiscent of the viral Walmart photos on the internet.  “Being yourself” at the beach or at a recreation area is probably acceptable but it makes us feel conservative when we see these folks in the airport or walking around the central city.  And we should mention that, other than at our hotel, we only saw about a dozen foreign tourists walking around in Yangon, while our second stop at Inle Lake was Tourist Central.

We chose to walk around Yangon, a city of 5 million (which didn’t feel like that many people), just so we could see how people live, peer into shops, and see the basic culture without having a windshield or glass between us and the locals.  We noted right away the prevalence of pedestals with several water jugs just along the streets.  After a lot of guessing Stanna finally lifted the lid to learn that they were water stops for people who need to quench their thirst along their walk.  Lots of street vendors & small shaded alley markets with what seemed to be a lot more colorful vegetables and flowers (and we later leaned the flowers are imported from China).

TG got busted for wearing long shorts halfway into the most famous shrine in Yangon, Shwedagon Pagoda, known for having 27 metric tons of gold leaf in its upper chedi dome (our Thai friends say it is the gold stolen from Thailand), along with thousands of diamonds and other jewels at the pinnacle 325′ up. Yangon as well as the entire Burmese country is well known for its temples, chedi and higher percentage of the population who are monks and nuns.  Although we were quickly reminded that after a while all the glitter begins to look the same to us.  So rather than go to the famous plain of pagodas at Bagan in the dry country, we went to see Inle Lake, which will be our next post.

Fascinating how thing are done in countries where labor is so cheap. They hand dig trenches and use bricks 5 courses thick to make storm sewers.  And a wood carver was crafting ornate window shutters with only one chisel and mallet on the city side walk. Or farmers hand watering a field with matching watering cans.