Myanmar – Yangon, city of contrasts.

Yangon – a city of contrasts in a country of contrasts – all of it fascinating and quite delightful. Yangon was the country’s capital until 2006 when a wholly new purpose built capital opened its doors – Naypyidaw is now the capital of Myanmar.  I will not get a chance to visit but please click on Naypyidaw and read all about it.  Yangon is experiencing rapid modernisation but infrastructure development lags considerably.  So you’ll find traditional shops, restaurants and markets cheek-by-jowl with the shiny new shopping malls sporting the latest international brands.

I stayed in a great hostel in downtown Yangon called “Once in Yangon”.  One of the best hostels of my trip.  Lovely owner, Tania, and her staff take pains to ensure the guests are well looked after.  The hostel, undoubtedly, has the most comfortable beds with thick inner spring mattresses and real duvets!  Breakfast is included in the very reasonable price and is delicious.  The building is well-preserved and maintained – dating back to the ’50’s (Just like me!)

Once in Yangon Hostel

There is so much do do and see in Yangon and I was privileged to meet people who looked after me and showed me around.  I met Oliver, Hollie and Luisa while diving at Koh Phi Phi Don in Thailand.  When I arrived in Yangon, Oliver invited me to watch touch rugby followed by a full rugby game club challenge between the Yangon Dragons and the Hong Kong Pot-bellied Pigs.  The Dragons won 45 – 20 after an enthralling match.  The party afterwards was hilarious with much beer consumption.

Oliver, Luisa and Hollie also took me out to dinner at the Rangoon Tea House, a very upmarket restaurant.  One dish I enjoyed was Tea-leaf Salad.  Pickled green tea-leaves with peanuts, chili, tomato and onion.  Unusual and very rich but so tasty and crunchy.

Tea-leaf salad

At the rugby I met Peggy who invited me to lunch on the Tuesday and who then booked at the Savoy Hotel – one of the oldest and poshest in Yangon – and bought me a fine lunch.  Great company and conversation at a restaurant I would certainly not have considered visiting otherwise.  Thanks Peggy!

Peggy and Me

View over the pool area of Savoy Hotel

Mark Hendrikse is a missionary from Cape Town who has been in Yangon for around 13 years.  That really makes him a pioneer!  I was put in touch with him by Sue Gie from Cape Town who, I know, is an avid supporter of my ride and my blog.  Thanks Sue, I enjoyed meeting Mark.  We went to a pub on the Saturday night to watch the Bokke play England (it was a day filled with rugby for me).  Later in the week, Mark asked if I wanted to accompany him across the river to Dala as he had to visit a family there.  I leaped at the opportunity.  We caught the ferry across the river and motorbike taxi to the village of the family.  Once again the contrast is dramatically apparent.  Dala people are desperately poor and have very little in the way of the infrastructure and of the opportunities that are visible just across the river in Yangon.  Very humbling and the similarity to conditions in South Africa was not lost on me

I spent a few days just walking and cycling around Yangon, mostly in the downtown area.  I visited the famous Bogyoke Street market – known for sales of gold, jade and emeralds as well as clothing.  I was tempted to buy a Longyi,  (and I may still buy one) the skirt that the Myanmar men wear.  It is comfortable and practical in this weather.  The locals wear them effortlessly and with elegance, I saw a European man about my age in the market sporting one and it looked so awful that I changed my mind instantly!

One of the most interesting activities in Yangon is to catch the train that runs on a circular route around greater Yangon.  When someone says, “catch the train on the circular route” and you have traveled in places like Tokyo, Paris, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore, you envisage a high-tech fast slim train that whips you around the city in no time.   Yangon’s circle route train is spectacularly different and so much more fun than the others.  It is a very old train going slowly (the whole journey takes 3.5 hours), stations are crumbling and overgrown, train carriages are pretty basic, when it poured with rain the windows were found not to close so we all sat in the train with umbrellas up.  Vendors of all sorts of food, drink and the ubiquitous betel nut parcels ply their trade up and down the aisles, luggage can be anything from furniture to live chickens.  People are friendly and gentle.  It is a microcosm of Myanmar life.  I enjoyed it so much I forgot to take pics but here is one of the station where I caught the train.

Yangon train in Lanmadaw station

Random views of Yangon – you will gather from all of this that I like Yangon and I had a very good time there – I stayed longer than I planned to but it was worth it.

Yangon view from Sakura Towers

View of the old and the new – the contrasts never end

Downtown Yangon

Gotta be half price beers surely!

I joined a free walking tour of Yangon which is run as a marketing exercise by a company called Beyond Boundaries.  #freeyangonwalks  An excellent tour, guided by Myo Thet Khaing.  We visited the old colonial buildings and Myo related the history of Yangon through the history of the buildings.  It is a very informative and interesting tour.  One building hosts a restaurant called Gecko where the floor tiles are original and that were imported from Manchester in 1940, they are still looking perfect.  Gecko is a good Japanese restaurant – I could just about afford the edamame beans and gyoza when I had supper there after the tour. I went on to eat a bowl of noodles elsewhere afterwards!

Walking Tour – Gecko Restaurant in this building

Walking Tour – Floor tiles from Manchester

Note no beer just tea!

Walking Tour – Colonial bank

Walking Tour – Night Market

Walking Tour Yangon River

Walking Tour Group in front of Stock Exchange

Walking tour – Myo and Me

No visit to Yangon is complete without spending time at the Shwe Dagon Temple.  This is an incredible place, religiously, spiritually, historically, legendary, artistically and architecturally.  The Golden Rock, featured in this blog earlier, is the third most respected pagoda in Myanmar, this is the first.  Legend and reality interweave in the stories told about the origins of the temple but that only adds to its mystique.  It is beautiful and spectacular. Once again, the contrast with ordinary society is starkly apparent.  The pagoda itself is covered in more than 45 tons of gold.  For once I hired a guide and he walked me around the temple and explained the myths, the legends, the beliefs, the activities and the effort that volunteer organisations put in to maintain the temple.  It is very impressive.  My pictures cannot do it justice. (apologies for the raindrop on the lens that is obvious in some pictures – it was pouring with rain when I visited)  The Pagoda, seen at sunset, is breathtaking.

My next blog post is of a real adventure – I still have not managed to internalise everything I learned, saw and did.  I’ll work on it over the next few days.