I'm finally rectifying an oversight I've had for the past five years: our mini-excursion to Burma. Just to clarify, the country has been officially called Myanmar since 1989 , but the term is still rarely used by most people, who stick to "Burma," especially since some countries simply haven't recognized the name change as legitimate, including Thailand... and France!
I could say a lot about this country, whose name Burma comes from its main ethnic group, the Bama. I'll just add that it gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1948, but I'll leave the rest to Wikipedia.
The circumstances of the stay were far too short!!
This trip was a bit last minute, as I was getting married a few days later... Travel is our shared passion, so we said why not take advantage of the current promotions (as we always do) to take a little trip to the area.
Originally we were supposed to go for at least 4 or 5 days, unfortunately it was in 2008, and by that year politics had already deteriorated (since the ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin in 2006).
The fact remains that the demonstrators at the time had this "superb" idea of blocking and occupying the airport... If we could have changed the dates of our plane tickets given the events, it would have been ok, but not possible and so the number of possible days was reduced to two poor days...
And as a side note, just before leaving, Jitima had just fallen ill, and as I was leaving, it was my turn to start feeling unwell… So, I spent one of the worst nights of my life there… So , I remember Burma very well and only want one thing: to go back!!
- which we will actually do a few years later, see my report of our back to Yangon
Two days express in Yangon
So we were just going to discover Yangon , formerly known as Rangoon (name also changed in 1989), which was the capital until 2006 when the government decided to move (because the stars were "favorable", yes, that's the "official" reason, astrology).
So they created a capital from scratch; Naypyidaw, in the middle of nowhere. In just 3 years, it became the 3rd largest city in the country (after Yangon and Mandalay) in terms of population, already more than 900,000 inhabitants in 2009, making it one of the fastest developing cities in the world.
Still with this aim of "listening to the stars" they changed the national anthem as well as the flag (which surprised more than one person because it looks like a flag in the colours of Africa rather than Asia, this new flag notably resembling that of Ghana)
Yangon was founded over a thousand years ago under the name of Dagon, around the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. Today, it is a chaotic city, due to the lack of maintenance, vegetation grows everywhere. This is where most of the remains of buildings from the colonial era are located.
I would add that the Burmese generally speak English quite well and are above all very welcoming.
I can't help but think that there has been a huge leap in the opening of the country (one of the most closed in the world with North Korea, until not so long ago).
At the time in 2008, it was still the junta in power (although they are more or less still in control), with very few tourists, and really cheap prices.
For a little over a year now, reforms described as "spectacular" have taken place, while the junta has "officially" handed over power to a President of the Republic (although he is himself a former general...)
Since then, prices, especially for hotels, have tripled ; for example, the hotel where we stayed, the Mother Land Inn 2, was $12 a night compared to $30 now…
At the time, besides not being too much of a photo-phage (or rather a photovore, even if I was starting to get itchy to press the shutter), I was afraid that people would take me for a journalist/spy and so, I didn't dare take too many photos... Yeah, because at that time, it was still frowned upon...
Day 1: Stroll between temples and lively streets
A quick aside: the official currency is called the Kyat (pronounced almost like "chee-at"), the exchange rate at the time was €1 = 1100 MMK (approximately 28 MMK for 1 baht). Note that the dollar is widely accepted (perhaps even more so than the Kyat…), however, the bills must be new or in very good condition. Forget about using crumpled or worn bills, and believe me, it's quite frustrating… whereas with Kyats in everyday use, we saw some real rags, all patched up…
Dinner at Karaweik Hall: A Cultural Evening in Yangon
As I mentioned earlier, I was feeling pretty bad that day, but so far so good. That evening, we had planned to go to the chic restaurant in Yangon, located on the Karaweik Hall, which is basically a 1972-story palace built in 2 (construction that took 2 years).
It is a barge whose design by Burmese architect U Ngwe Hlaing is inspired by a royal barge (the Pyigyimon).
This one contains in addition to the buffet restaurant, a conference room and 2 reception rooms. The restaurant is located on the shore of Kandawgyi Lake, not far north of our hotel (a little more than 2km anyway)
So dinner is an all-you-can-eat buffet with a little show thrown in. This is the place where you'll see the most foreigners at the same time.
There wasn't much light and I don't like flash, but as a result, most of the photos are ruined...
After a short digestive stroll, we will return home wisely, before I spend a horrible night like I haven't had for a long time, I assure you, nothing to do with the hotel or even the food in the restaurants of the day, but rather the junk that Jitima had given me.
I spent the night with a high fever and a good part of it vomiting, the kind of night where you really feel like you're going to die... The next day, it's not that I seemed almost as if nothing had happened, but I was in any case much better, enough in any case to go and visit the pagoda.
Day 2: a city a little out of time
What characterizes Yangon is a bit of what makes Asia so typical. A city teeming with people, alive. The streets are like a kind of traveling department store where you can find and buy everything.
Electric cables hang down in abundance, but what is most striking here is the dilapidated appearance of the buildings. But not only that, of the few cars that circulate, we see taxis, which we will take, and the least we can say is that they have kilometers on the meter.
The city has a bit of a ghostly feel to it when it comes to housing, no wonder people hang out outside rather than inside as it gives the impression that everything could collapse at any moment. Vegetation even covers some of the facades, so much so that it's hard to imagine people living there, and yet, you can clearly see the inhabitants through the open windows. You meet a few people there, and you still give away a few clothes.
It is not uncommon here to be approached just to chat, even if at first, we were wary after the monk's trick. And our next encounter was with a charming old lady very happy to speak in English (there were really very few tourists at that time). She proudly showed us her little notebook filled with little notes from the travelers she had met so far, all while vaping a kind of cigarette/cigar in her own style. Seeing words in French, I decided to leave our mark there too.
