by Scott Coates

Last week I wrote about my coming trip to Yangon, Myanmar. The trip turned out to be insightful, fun and exciting.

A 1:10 flight took me from one world to another – Bangkok to Yangon. Hard

Typical street in downtown Yangon

to believe in such a short time you can be transported from one world to a totally different one. Arrival at a modern airport was followed by a line to get my visa on arrival, but all in all it was a fairly painless process. You need a travel agent to help you get the visa on arrival, but it’s much less hassle than visiting a Myanmar Embassy and acquiring one before arrival. I was also told by a fellow traveler that the airport is the most modern building in the nation. In the country I waited a bit over an hour for my girlfriend Erika to arrive from Singapore. Erika in-hand we joined our host and jumped in a van to Trader’s Hotel which was graciously arranged for me by a local agent.

Ice melting for cool drinking water

I was struck immediately with how much more modern things were than I expected. Roads were well paved, there were a good number of cars and businesses abound. This wasn’t the dirt road, third world place I thought it would be. Checked-in it was time for food and we elected to walk to a nearby place, Monsoon, recommended in the Lonely Planet. The walk there, as almost all walks in new cities are, started to shed light on the reality. We came upon a massive stupa that serves as a traffic circle. Sule Paya is about 2,000 years old and definitely gets the prize as most interesting traffic circle I have ever seen. The immediate area features colonial buildings, a church and mosque, truly showing that religions mesh well here. We opted for small side-streets, saw that locals use microwave phones on the side of the road for making calls, palm reading is huge with fortune tellers on most city streets, and a chew mixture of Betel Nut with other spices is very popular and sold at little stands.

Full stomachs we took a different route back to the hotel and I tried some Betel Nut chew. It was really tasty with all kinds of magical flavors colliding. You have to continually spit out your saliva while chewing and I got a big thumbs-up from a man on my technique. The downside, if you chew it for a while your teeth turn permanently red. Due to this I only tried once while in the country. I like my pearly whites! We passed on having our fortunes told while walking by Independence Monument where those with the skill to see into your future were everywhere. Another interesting site were little stands selling cool water for drinking. They have a large block of ice that melts and drips into a bucket giving you cool water. I’m adventurous but not that adventurous and gave it a miss.

While all seemed well and peaceful on the surface dinner with a few different

Having a good look at the pagoda

contacts shed light on the real situation. Names are not mentioned to protect my gracious hosts, but it turns out everything we have read about the oppressive Myanmar regime is true. A SIM card for a mobile phone costs $1,500US to keep people from having them, bicycles and motorbikes are banned in the downtown core to limit people’s ability to move around quickly and to offset the ruling generals’ fears of assassination. You cannot send sms messages out of the country to limit communications and most staggering, if a local resident is going to spend the night sleeping anywhere other than their registered dwelling they must inform their community supervisor who works for the government and the supervisor in the area they will be sleeping. So, my contact has to report before staying at his uncle’s house, each and every time. He also told me that government forces do random late night checks about three times/month at most houses to ensure all registered occupants are there. Wild! But on the surface you would never know these things.

Despite being one of the most oppressed people on earth for roughly 40 years, Yangon residents were some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Smiles were everywhere, English was generally quite good and the city is extremely safe. Taking taxis around town was affordable, the drivers honest and there were no offers to go shopping or to other places as often happens in Bangkok. Just a nice, quick drive where we wanted to go – truly refreshing and impressive!

Having tea at the market

Other activities and sites visited include a train ride around the city on their ancient railway, a great way to see real daily city life. A nice run around Kandawgyi Lake, the Bogyoke Aung San Market, a great place to shop, people watch and drink tea. The highlight, aside from chatting with locals was our visit to Shwedagon Pagoda. I was rather nervous about the visit after reading so many glowing reviews of it and being wary that it wouldn’t live up to the hype – I was wrong. From the outside it looks like a massive golden pagoda, but inside it’s so much, much more. Stupa after stupa, statue after statue, gleaming gold and more and more gold made this one of the most impressive/overwhelming sites I’ve ever visited – truly awesome. Much like the Grand Palace in Bangkok in that one visit is not enough, I can’t wait to return one day (hopefully soon) and sit for a while, watch people pass by and take it in again. This is without a doubt a site to be seen once in your lifetime.

Four days later, some great meals had, interesting drinks enjoyed and a half-full memory card, it was time to leave. I’ve obviously only scratched the surface of Myanmar and many people noted that everything outside of Yangon is another world. There’s so much to explore in this vast nation with more than 130 ethnic groups and languages, Himalayan peaks, sandy beaches and UNESCO World Heritage sites. I can’t wait to return and really get into the country.

by Scott Coates

Enjoy these photos from a recent trip to Yangon, Myanmar. You can see the full gallery here: http://photos.smilingalbino.com/Other-Places/Yangon-Myanmar/10349042_68ytj#716028274_pRGUL

See the full gallery here: http://photos.smilingalbino.com/Other-Places/Yangon-Myanmar/10349042_68ytj#716028274_pRGUL

by Scott Coates

I’ve been living in Thailand and the region for 10 years and have never properly been to Myanmar. What’s up with that?!
It’s always been a place I’ve really wanted to go but always wanted to wait

A balancing act in a Karen refugee camp just inside Myanmar

until I had a couple weeks so I could see the must-sees in one go: Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan & Inle Lake. A couple years went by, then a few more, trips back to Canada happened regularly then mountain biking in Tibet to Mt. Everest, Nepal across the Annapurna’s, Switzerland, Cambodia, Vietnam and on it went.

So, about nine months ago, a regional no-frills airline Air Asia had a Free Ticket Sale, where you only pay the taxes. I looked around and ended up with a ticket to Yangon, Myanmar for four nights for 1,200B ($35US) all-up. If I could go, great, if I couldn’t, no big deal, only 1,200B down the drain. So here we are, November 13 is just two days away and Yangon is going to happen!

Bought the latest Lonely Planet yesterday after years of avoiding it as the edition we have in our office library was written by our friend and longtime Lonely Planet guidebook author Joe Cummings, and he stopped writing for them a while ago. I couldn’t face replacing Joe’s edition. But when I started reading the book and realized it was drafted in 2000 and things have changed (and not changed) drastically in that country since then, the latest edition was required.

Back at home last night I put on relaxing lights, sat on my bed and dove into the book. Next thing I knew I had read the first 100 pages, blazing through the History, People, Food, Where to Drink (big surprise there), Money, To Go or Not to Go? Sections and I’m super pumped now.

One of the incredible things about living in this region is how close you are to so many exotic destinations that are completely different from one another. Travel from Bangkok to Yangon (575km) and you’ve gone just 17km further than San Francisco to Los Angeles (558km). But the language, culture, cuisine, architecture, government and alphabet are totally different. The same can be said for traveling to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Hanoi, Vietnam or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from Bangkok. Different, different, different.

Thakeylek just across the Thai border town of Mae Sai has seen my feet before, but it’s just a quick dash to see a couple touristy temples and pick up

Kids in a Karen refugee camp just inside Myanmar

some duty free wine. It’s hardly Myanmar. And I walked across a wooden plank over a small stream about 40km southeast of Mae Sod while staying at Highland Farm and was in an unofficially Karen refugee camp, which was wild, but didn’t really feel I was in Myanmar and truthfully wouldn’t want to go too much further in there.

So, into this city of six million I go and I’m truly excited. After traveling and living in this area for quite some time you grow accustom to going neat places often and probably don’t appreciate it as much as you really should. This is like traveling eight years ago, into the unknown, a new place, I don’t speak the language, don’t have a mental picture in my head and there are so many interesting people and sights I’m about to see. Wow – travel is still exciting!

Myanmar’s largest Paya (pagoda) Shwedagon is here in the former capital. With 53 metric tonnes of gold covering it and rising 98 meters every account I read of this site indicate it’s borderline life changing. Six million people, with a GDP $1,900US apparently live an incredibly peaceful life (when not harassed by the powers that be), 87% are devote Buddhists (4% are Muslim, 4.5%Christian, 5% are animist and 1.5% are Hindu) and dazzle the visitor’s senses.

Recommendations from former residents, colleagues that have been there,

A girl in a longneck village near the Mae Hong Song, Thailand and Myanmar border

authors and hoteliers see me taking a three hour circular route on a rickety train around the city for a look and feel of things, walking all over the place, meeting a veteran in the travel industry, a semi-underground writer/activist and a digital artist. Drinks have been recommended at a bar likely to have had James Bond in it in the early eighties and nooks and crannies in between.

Despite having blazed through a lot of pages and words about Myanmar I’ve still got a pretty blank canvas in my head about Yangon. Invigorating it feels to be this excited to the road and into somewhere new and unknown. A good thing for someone in the business of designing and leading world class adventures.

Next week, the story of how the trip was!