The flight to Yangon was good. Once you reach the point where you can see the ground something really cool can be viewed. Every once in a while there are these grand silver pagodas ringed in green gardens that just stand out in the country land. Its just not something you see any where else, they really just seem so out of place.
Exiting the airport was a 33 degree 96 percent humidity wall of welcome. Its hot. Damn hot. I had a driver organised to pick me up, and once we left the airport and hit the insanely chaotic highway, he wound up the windows and with a huge grin press the A/C button. Putting his hands over the air blower as icey cool air jetted out – ahhhh, he said grinning at the wonder of air conditioning.
You’d be insane to drive here. It’s a kill or be killed mentality, cars are all over the place, and even insaner are the pedestrians trying to cross six lane traffic intensive roads. And it’s not like in say Cambodian were the drivers will slow down and there’s this benevolent awareness of each other. The only awareness Yangon drivers have is to beep their horn at a pedestrian attempting to cross and not slow down.
One time on my way to the Nation Museum I hear some girls cry out, and I looked over to see one young girl helping her friend up from the road. I couldn’t tell if the car had hit her or she took a fall racing to the other side. With no crossings and a stupid amount of crazed motorist, I’ve been pretty okay so far getting across. There was only been one time so far when I must have waited a good 20mins to find a break and run across. I need to look up the fatality rate for pedestrians in Yangon, it can’t be pretty.
Old and New versions of Myanmar are in your face. The new Myanmar has built nice apartment blocks and air conditioned shopping centres, while across the road or next door are ramshackle homes from a bygone era, or block after block of street food sellers.
It’s a strange mix to see, when normally we’d already have seen poorer countries far down the path of modernisation, while Myanmar – or Yangon at least – has only just started to tread down that path and the New is slowly chipping away at the Old, but the Old is so very much the dominant. It would be interesting to see Yangon in 10 years to see how far it has come.
This leads me to noticing them seeing foreigners as still a fairy new thing. I’m getting a lot of looks in downtown, and interestingly its the older ones that seems look and smile, so happy to see you (having lived though the non-foreigners allow Junta). The other look I was receiving was stares at my feet, or more the point I was wearing shoes. No one here wears shoes (well maybe the policy). Everyone wears thongs/flip-flops, or slippers as they call them. So first day here I went hunting to buy some slippers (so strange to call them slippers!).
On leaving the airport I noticed a girl with what looked like mud smeared on her face. I just figured she had some skin condition and stopped staring at her. But after arriving in downtown Yangon just about all the girls have various smears of mud on their faces. Either there was some skin disease epidemic sweeping Yangon, or some traditional thing was going on.
Googling “myanmar girls with dirt of their faces” surprisingly didn’t come up with fetish porn, instead a link to the Wikipedia about the practice of Thanaka. It turns out it’s not mud by a paste made from the thanaka tree. Some girls just have light dashes of it on their face, whilst others use it as a kind of blush, covering their cheeks. I’m not sure if the style in which it’s applied means anything, it seems more like a fashion statement much the same as any other makeup is across the world.
After an hour and a half of traffic form the airport we finally arrive at the Bed and Breakfast in west downtime. I check in, go to my room, and go to sleep. Having practically no sleep I was exhausted. And the point of staying 4 nights in Yangon wasn’t to go insane sight seeing straight away (most people will recommend only 1 day in Yangon, then get the hell out), but to just chill out and relax a bit first.