Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
We arrived at the airport just one hour after we had left Bangkok. It was quite a small airport but everyone was so sweet and lovely and really helpful.
We booked a taxi from airport to take us to our hotel and our cheeky chappy driver acted as tour guide too as we drove through the city. He offered to drive us all over Myanmar for $US100 a day - I don't think so sunshine!
We arrived at our hotel and first things first - Bryan needed to sleep. He was on his last legs as he had left England the day before and hadn't had much sleep at all since the night before he left. He was shattered.
By the time Bryan woke up it was dark. Our hotel room isn't all that nice and the hotel itself is in quite a dark area
Faded Rangoon charm
. It didn't feel dangerous or unsafe or anything like that, it just makes it hard to get a feel for a place when you don't get a chance to explore it in daylight first.
The area is quite on the edge of China Town so again we struggled at first with the vegetarian thing. The locals here really don't speak much English and they all eat plenty of meat and fish so there wasn't much choice on the menus either. Even the things we thought may be ok we were not too sure about and wanted to check. So we reverted to our favourite trick to get us around it. We went back to the hotel (where they do speak good English) and explained what we wanted them to do.
We came away with a beautifully written piece of Myanmar language that explained what we wanted and could show at all restaurant we visit. We tried this in China first and it worked perfectly!
During our time in Yangon we did visit the ferry port but it was a really busy working port and not very picturesque. We also visited their famous market here which was quite a walk away but it was good to stretch our legs.
In the market there were young children going around selling little hand painted cards and postcards. As that day was a public holiday the children were all off school so making themselves useful and practising their English with the tourists at the same time. Some of them were real characters and one little boy insisted we go and visit his shop. As we were in no rush we said ok to humour him and followed him into the market
A cocktail? don't mind if I do
. He wove his way through it and stopped and proudly announced "this is my mother's shop". She sold the traditional Myanmar long skirts for ladies which was unfortunate as they were of no interest to us and we apologised and said as much. We think the mother understood though as she laughed and apologised to us too. She seemed quite used to him turning up with tourists.
As it is so hot here, we decided to find "The Raffles of Myanmar" a hotel called The Strand and have a nice cup of tea. and maybe a cocktail or two. Some reports we had read said they thought the Strand was much nicer than Raffles, but I'm afraid we disagree. The Strand is probably more original (but to be honest felt more like being in Browns) but Raffles still gets our vote. Cocktails are cheaper here though!
The highlight of our time in Yangon was definitely the Swhe Dagon Pagoda but you can read about that in a separate entry.
Yangon does not have a great deal to offer tourists but its people are so friendly, sincere and just so sweet that we think we are going to love the rest of this country too.
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