Early thoughts on Yangon - and how my views had changed by the time we came back...

Both this little guy's parents are fruit-sellers, working the streets with their wares in baskets on a bamboo pole. That would be a hard life.

Arriving for the first time in Yangon was a shock. Tired and jet lagged I walked out of our guesthouse the first morning in search of bottled water and it was, well... overwhelming. Chaotic. Dirty. Busy. Poor.

I wondered if one reason for the seeming chaos when you first arrive is that mostly there's no clear delineation between road, and pedestrian and shop life. I hadn't realised before quite how useful pavements, but here the edge of the road and the beginning of the shop/house is unclear.

Street or shop?

Pavement or market?

Walking from A to B involves pushing around stalls on the street, avoiding motorbikes weaving in and out - or parked randomly, and stepping around piles of rubbish. There are women on tiny stools with charcoal burners and a wok selling fried things, or with a sack or basket on the ground selling fruit or meat.

The vegetables in the middle of this market street are strategically placed so that when a vehicle comes along, it passes over the top without damaging them

For some reason, that first day in Yangon all the street food appeared to be offal or crickets, and while I can eat the latter, I draw the line at the former. As you walked along in your flipflops/jandals, keeping a close eye on where you were treading, the inevitable breaks in the roadside drains released foul smells, the litter was depressing, the mud unavoidable. The houses were crowded and blackened. It was hot and oppressively humid.

Kids who looked eight and were possibly 12, but anyway should have been in school, were working in tea shops, and skinny, undersized guys peddled heavy sacks around on dilapidated cycle rickshaws. There were lame, mangy, flea-ridden dogs scratching themselves everywhere. We headed down country as soon as we could.

In some ways, city streets in Cuba and Myanmar are similar in terms of the poverty and the dirt. But in some ways they are very different. While Myanmar trumps Cuba in terms of the wonderful range of food (raw and cooked) available, Fidel Castro in Cuba achieved a socialist ideal the Burmese could only dream of. All kids go to school and healthcare is plentiful and free. Not so in Myanmar, where impoverished village families often send young children to work in the town - anything from tea shops to factories to massage parlours. In June last year, the Burmese government promised to clamp down on child labour, but I suspect nothing much has happened - certainly working kids are highly visible, so who knows what's happening behind the scenes. According to human rights groups, children can work 12 hours a day, seven days a week and may only get back to see their families once a year. 

Of course, by the time we came back a couple of weeks later, everything seemed subtly different. The chaos was still there, but normal, the fear of the street food was gone (and funnily enough it wasn't all offal and crickets), there was even a certain sophistication in some of Yangon's faded edifices. The weather was just slightly cooler and clear. Still, poverty is more noticeable in a big city - the tiny, dark rooms where whole families sleep on the floor, the open drains, the working kids, the blackened crumbling buildings, the dirt and rubbish.

Putting a whole new meaning on living behind the shop

But, sadly (or perhaps inevitably), after a while the poverty becomes unexceptionable. Instead of being overwhelming, my overriding thought on returning to Yangon was amazement at the resilience and remarkable cheerfulness and friendliness of people living in a way that seems unbearable to a spoilt westerner.

Two women selling breakfast have an early morning chat

These strange (and relatively unpleasant-tasting) fruits cost less than 50 cents a piece. Even if this woman sold them all (and it's hard to imagine why you would buy one - perhaps they are medicinal?), she was hardly going to be able to feed herself or her family. Yet she was so lovely, so chatty and smiling.

Look at the flowers in this street seller's hair. Just fabulous

Cycle rickshaw drivers are always skinny and poor, and it must be a shit job, particularly in Myanmar's heat. And feeding his two children on what this guy earns must be a nightmare. But look how smiley he is, showing off his kids.

The Shwedagon Pagoda

Lots of countries have a signature tourist site - Eiffel Tower, Harbour Bridge, Great Wall, Taj Mahal etc - something that everyone (except the most insular American) would recognise. Myanmar, like New Zealand, doesn't have one, but if it did, it would be the Shwedagon Paya (Pagoda). Sitting on a small hill in Yangon, its 100 metre-tall central zedi (stupa) is covered with 27 tonnes of gold leaf and thousands of diamonds and other precious stones.

It seems incongruous to have such wealth in such a poor country, but Burma is hugely rich in natural resources, including gems. It also has lots of fertile land - in fact it was at one stage the world's largest exporter of rice. For the military government under Ne Win to reduce the country to one of the 10 poorest in the world in just a couple of decades was quite an achievement. 

Very early in the morning there are candles all around the main zedi - later they all get cleared away. Health and safety? Probably not!

The Shwedagon zedi is also said to contain eight hairs of the Gautama Buddha and some other relics from three other Buddhas - a washing robe and a water filter, among other things. Elsewhere in the complex there is a tooth relic - a slightly gross thought, although not as bad as toenails. However holy, I don't think I could worship a toenail. 

But I digress.

The legend of the Shwedagon Paya is that back in the mists of time when the Gautama Buddha has just attained enlightenment, he met two Burmese merchants who were travelling overseas. They offered him alms food and were rewarded with eight strands of hair as a blessing. Back in Myanmar, the merchants gave the hairs to the king, who built a zedi to put them in. Over the next 1500 years or so, various rulers made improvements. The fifteenth century Queen Shinsawbu, for example, offered her weight in gold leaf to cover the stupa. Unfortunately, she was a petite lady, weighing less than 40kg, but her son-in-law took up the challenge, offering four times the combined weight of both himself and his wife.

Young nuns eating rice and veges before starting on their day's chanting

These days it's not just the one zedi on the site - there are two other large gold-plated stupa, plus lots of prayer halls, sacred wells, Bodhi trees, Buddha footprints, a medicated pond (cures all diseases), and hundreds and hundreds of Buddha images, many adorned with gold. I'm not sure how the faithful choose which Buddha to pray to - there are just so many. Do you share your favours around, or do different images listen to different requests?

Just one of hundreds of Buddha images. I love the psychedelic lights on the halo. There are all sorts of permutations of colours and patterns around. 

The guide book suggested going to Shwedagon at dawn or dusk, and we initially chose the latter. Bad move. Every tourist in Yangon was there, many of them scantily clad, despite the many signs urging respectful clothing. It made me cross. 

So we tried again early the following morning. The place was already busy at 6am, but this time it was full of Buddhists - local and foreign - doing their Buddhist thing. Pink-robed child nuns ate breakfast and then chanted from prayer books. Monks sat in niches in front of Buddha statues and also chanted; lay devotees sat on the ground in front of the pagoda, bowing and chanting. People rang the prayer bells, offered flowers and fruit, and poured water on the Buddha image representing the day of the week they were born. 

It was very moving.

Starting young

In one corner there was a large group of what looked like local business people whose prayers were led by a monk. Perhaps a business deal successfully completed, or in need of divine assistance?

You pull a cord and it fans the top of the Buddha's head. The fan is the curtain-looking thing.

Pathetic attempts at speaking Burmese

For a few months before we left New Zealand I tried to learn Burmese. I bought a book which came with online spoken exercises, and I practiced with my friend San San. "Mingalaba" (Hi), I said. And "Ne kaun ye la" (How are you), and "Da paya ba" (That's a pagoda). Every week I was meant to go over to San San's house to practise, but I was slack and busy and she was tied up with work too, and I didn't do nearly as much homework as I should have.

As I suspected, it's a hard, hard language for an English speaker - even if you decide, as I did, not to worry about the writing, which is curly and beautiful and impossible (see examples of the writing in the photo above of me attempting to speak Burmese). 

There aren't many photos that go with this blog topic, so I've used it as an excuse to put in some of Geoff's market and other random food-related shots that won't necessarily fit in anywhere else... There is a vague link - markets are where I do most of my talking - and a bit of asking directions elsewhere. BTW, don't miss the monk in this shot, buying some extra food at the market in Ye, south of Yangon.

Let me give four examples of the complications learning Burmese for an English speaker, if only to show just how heroic it is that Burmese native speakers manage to master English:

• First, spoken Burmese has "plain" and "aspirated" consonants, which have quite different pronunciations - for a Burmese person, but cause some problems for others. Unfortunately, confusing the two could be awkward. For example,  "āpaq" (plain p) means "quarter, whereas "ā'paq" (aspirate p) means "poison". 
• Second, there are three tones (plain, high and creeky), with similar problems. For example, "da than-ba" (plain tone) means "that's iron"' but "da thàn-ba" (high tone) means "that's a louse". Meanwhile "Yá-ba-deh" (creeky tone) means "That's all right", but "Yà-ba-deh" (high tone) means "It's itching". 
• Third, Burmese is utterly different grammatically from anything I've ever known. The sentence "Nikki Mandow comes from New Zealand" would be structured: "Nikki Mandow + New Zealand + a word meaning country + from + come + a word expressing politeness  person you are talking to + a word saying that the verb is in present or past". So... "Nikki Mandow New Zealand Naing-gan gá la-ba deh." 
• And lastly, Burmese has a bundle of sounds that I find hard to say and harder to differentiate. The words "k'un" ("seven" - under certain circumstances) and "kò" (nine) sound just the same to me, no matter how often a Burmese person points out they are totally different.  

Dried fish seller in Dawei market. Still haven't tried any of that. Can't imagine why...

I also don't put ice in drinks. You never know when it has been cut up with a chainsaw in a not very clean riverside area!

Anyway, I did a bit more Burmese language learning while we were in Greece - to the detriment of my Greek, which remained at "hello" and "grapes", the latter being a word I learnt and used often during childhood holidays and have for some reason retained. But my Burmese gradually reached the dizzy heights of "Where did U May Nyunt go?" and "Tin Htway went to the museum at three o'clock." I learned to read and write numbers up to several thousand, which is handy, since the smallest Burmese note is 50 kyat (pronounced "chat"), but that denomination is almost worthless. Most things you buy are 1000 kyat or more.

Buying sugar cane juice from a roadside stall

And then we came to Burma. Where most of what I have learnt isn't much use, and where people struggle to understand what I'm saying, even when I think I know the right words. But also where having any sort of language is kind of exciting. While I am totally incapable of holding a conversation, knowing a tiny bit more than the ubiquitous "mingalaba" (which actually means "auspiciousness", but used as hello) that every foreigner knows, has been brilliant. Walking through the market in Dawei during my first week I practised "How are you" and everyone grinned and I could hear people saying "She said 'Ne kaùn yéh là'" as I walked away. I could say "Is that OK?" when I wanted to take a photo, and understand the price of mandarins when I wanted to buy some. My pièce de resistance is "keiq-sá mashi-ba-bù", which means "No problem ". I use that whenever I can and it always gets a laugh.

Putting on my best "I can't find my wallet" gormless look buying some yummy fried things at a lakeside stall in Ye.

And I know it's pathetic. I know that we expect visitors to our country to be able to speak English, good English, so they can get around. Actually, we expect Burmese to be able to speak English here so we can get around. But still, I'm happy.

I'm just waiting for when someone asks me about Tin Htway and when he went to the museum. Nirvana.

A rather classy drying fish shot taken at a small fishing village near Ye.

Dawei blog part 5: Code red

We were sitting chatting to Peter and his family after breakfast the next morning when the call came. Code Red. The police were in the village; we had to clear out. We ran to the cabin to grab water and a book, and to remove drying towels, swimming togs etc off the deck, close all the shutters and lock the door. No one staying in this cabin, officer. Then we ran to the beach and hurried the kilometre or so to the far end. The owners did the same - it was much easier not to be around when the police came, Peter said. No awkward questions to answer about why they were living at a closed resort.

The others sat behind a rock on the sand, but the intrepid NZ party ventured into the trees where we found a mighty fine covered bamboo platform - maybe something used by fishermen during the hot part of the day. There were enough discarded bottles and bags lying underneath to know it served some local purpose. We stayed there for a couple of hours, reading and snoozing. Then we saw one of the local staff cycling slowly down the beach with the All Clear. The police hadn't found anything untoward and had gone back through the village. We were free to head back. A big sigh of relief, particularly for the owners, who could face big fines or even jail for operating without a licence. However, I have to admit that not being any real danger ourselves, our brush with the law was all rather exciting.

Post script: Just to add to the drama, that afternoon, a group of half-a-dozen tourism officials turned up to stay at the bungalows, accompanied by one of Peter's Burmese joint venture partners. Peter was decidedly nervous and called them "police" too, only not the same ones as those sent the day before by the (according to Peter) "anti-foreigner local bureaucrat that wants the guesthouse gone". The general view here is that all officials in Burma are police or military.

The men were friendly but asked awkward, if understandable, questions about why we were here and how did we knew about this place, since it was closed because it hadn't got a licence. They also quizzed us about why we liked the beach and the area, allowing us to stress the lack of development, the peaceful atmosphere and the pristine beach. One bespectacled man who was something to do with tourism development for an airline in faraway Bagan, talked about eco-tourism and picked up rubbish from the sand and put it in the bin. It was all very odd and a bit encouraging. 

Still, we worried about what we would do if the local police decided to sneak back and do a second raid. We could hardly all scarper down the beach with the national tourism officials watching. We shall never know. The police didn't come back and the next day we left too.