Welcome to Yangon!!!!!!

 (I'm singing it to the tune of "Welcome to New York" by Taylor Swift)

It's been five months since I started my trip and in a way I didn't really think much about what was going to happen after Sri Lanka since all my excitement focused on that one country.

Now SL is part of the past and although I loved it, the last couple of days there stressed me out and once I was dropped off at the airport I was glad to be leaving.

After SL I spent two days back in KL doing absolutely nothing (other than laundry and repairing my cracked iPhone screen) and then took a plane to Yangon, Myanmar (previously Burma.)

Without much information about Myanmar I got on the airplane and wished for the best. No plans, no direction, no reservations other than my first night at a hostel... I have grown so much! Haha the super planner Andrea has disappeared and now is more of a believer that everything will just happen at its own time.

I sat on my window seat and soon after came an Australian couple, Zarina and Jayden, and chatted the whole way. When we got off the plane I got my backpack and walked in front of them and Zarina said to me: "I saw your backpack at the airport but didn't see your face and said 'I want to be friends with that girl' " and funny enough destiny sat us next to each other.

At the airport I waited for them to get a bag and looked at the people waiting outside; I noticed that so many of them had mud on their face. Zarina mentioned that she had read something about it and later I learned that it is called thanaka, a face paint like liquid from a branch and that women (and sometimes men) put it on their face daily!

After getting money (and having a mini heart attack after the ATM was unresponsive for good 20 seconds with my card inside it) we went to the taxi stand and got a ticket for shared a taxi to central Yangon. At this point in my travels I have gotten used to switching between left and right side for driving but I wasn't prepared for Myanmar... they drive on the right side of the road, BUT the steering wheel is on the left side!!! WHAAAAAAAT?!?! SO CONFUSING!!! It's the strangest thing ever and it takes a little time to get used to it. The weirdest thing is when people get off the bus and they are not by the sidewalk but getting off right next to the incoming traffic!!!!!!

I think that probably what happened is that they used to drive on the left and now they drive on the right but they are still using the same cars with the driver on the right side.

My first day in Yangon was spent at the Shwedagon pagoda, I think the most massive temple complex I have ever seen in my life!

One of the entrances

The walk up to the pagoda

Ladies selling flowers to take up.

Guess what? Foreigners have a high fee!

The main pagoda is 326 feet and very shiny! It is surrounded by many many many small temples all around!
The amount of people visiting the pagoda is also quite incredible! I noticed that most people were nicely dressed and looking sharp! haha 

School children visiting the pagoda

This girl is just too cute!

While walking I noticed people pouring water over  Buddha statues that had a day of the week in them. It turns out that the day you were born is very important to Burmese people and they go to the temple to pay homage to Buddha  and they offer him water, flowers, decorations, and food.

One can spend hours at this temple watching people do the rituals, looking at all the different pagodas, examining the buddhas, listening to the monks chant or simply taking in the view of such wonderful place and see how the locals gather in the pagodas and have their lunch or gather to hang out! Such a special place!

Monk doing some "lying meditation"

I call this... sleeping!

I did find the pagoda a little too “chilled” (for a lack of a better word.) I felt as if now the pagoda is a place to go and hang out with friends and have lunch. I saw so many people just hanging out and chatting inside many of the buildings in front of the Buddhas, people (specially monks) taking naps, and I even saw a woman cutting her boyfriend’s toe nails! Very strange scene!

Really?

Many of the Buddhas have colored lights blinking around it’s head like you are in a night club! I have never seen such thing but it made me feel like I was not in a very serious place of worship. I liked it, it was just… different.

Blinking lights buddha!

Some of the rules for some of the pagodas!

Selfie with Zarina, Jayden, Constanza, and Magdalena.

After visiting Shwedagon Zarina, Jayden, and myself quickly stopped at Maha wizaya pagoda but I think we were already templed out.

People cleaning and repairing the pagoda!

Fruit stand by the pagoda. I got some green mangoes and chili! Yum

Children playing spinning top with a string

Once we were done looking at the pagoda we decided it was time for lunch so we stopped at a stall on the street. When we arrived near the stalls we were bombarded by children wanting to sell us a plastic bag for our shoes. These little 10 year olds were very aggressive pushing the bags into our hands. I said no and one boy kept insisting so I just stared at him, he quickly smiled and ran away.

Lady making noodle salad!

Lunch was quick and tasty and I prayed not to get sick since cleanliness didn't seem to be a priority on the street. We then walked over to kandawgyi lake and walked around it in one of the most unstable bridges I have ever seen! 

We ended the day exhausted by city hall sitting on the green grass overlooking the beautiful red building in front of us and doing some people watching.

The badass monk! HE is everything we don't think a monk is!

At one point we were hungry so I quickly decided to look up what are good Burmese foods to try and found a highly recommended dish found just outside of where we were sitting so we decided to give it a try. We passed so many good stalls with all sorts of food and somehow we couldn't find the one we wanted but after some time we did and we were excited to try the famous samosa salad. The salad turned out to be more like a soup and it wasn't as good as I hoped for. Being a huge fan of samosas I was hoping to get something that would blow my mind. Unfortunately we left disappointed.

That night we went out for dinner on 19th street, where one can find so many restaurants and stalls all around the street. I was super excited for Burmese food and for a good tea leaf salad but once again I wasn't really impressed with the food.

The next day I took the circular train around Yangon for 200kyats ($0.15) The train was probably the slowest train I have ever taken! It took 3 hours to do a loop but it was great!

There were all kinds of vendors coming into the train and selling snacks, quail eggs, water, flip flops, fruit, junk food, betel nut, and even SIM cards for your cell phone!

The ride was very slow but you could see a lot of the real Yangon, a very poor, very basic living kind of country. As the train past through towns I was able to see the side streets made of dirt, complete villages with houses made out of materials that probably fall with the heavy rain. It was heart breaking to see the amount of garbage pilled up by the train tracks and the entrances of many villages. I also noticed that, like in many Asian countries, it is customary to just throw the garbage out the window. Do these people know that no one will pick up their garbage? Do they care that they are contributing to endless piles of garbage around their villages? Do they even know how bad plastic is for the environment? Or the fact that the plastic bag that they just threw out the window will take more than 450 years to degrade and that the one water bottle made of plastic will outlive them and the next 15 generations?!? It's so sad to see but it's sadder to think that it's happening all over the world and because we have garbage collection we see less of it and therefore we aren't as impacted by it (and don't get me started with people who don't recycle or compost!)

Garbage all over!

Anyway, other than garbage the ride was nice. My favorite part was when we stopped at Danyingon station! It was crazy! The train station was pretty much an outdoor fruit and vegetable market and when we stopped farmers quickly put hundreds of bags with produce in the train. It all happened so fast! These people are pros, and these women are strong! 

The ladies who sat next and in front of me immediately pushed their huge produce bags under the seats and around the train and started to cut leaves and put bunches of leaves together. I was fascinated by them!

Getting on the train

The crazy market at the station!

She spent at least an hour cutting the leaves.

The ride was long but just perfect to see so much of the Burmese life style and life outside the busy Yangon.

After the full Yangon loop I decided to get off at Pagoda street station and visit the Bogyoke Aung San Market. The market had many stalls selling absolutely everything that you can imagine! Part of the market is for the tourists so the prices are very very high and one has to negotiate a lot to get a fair price so I would rather go to the streets and shop where the locals shop.

After the market I walked around and found many streets full of tiny tables with stools and people having tea. Since I knew that tea drinking on the streets is very common I decided to sit down and pretend to be a Burmese.

As I sat there I observed what was going and realized that about 80% (if not 99%) of the people sitting there were either buying of selling jewelry!

At one point I was so curious from seeing people take stones from fanny packs and backpacks that I asked the guys sitting next to me what this was all about. With broken English a local told me that some people were "brokers or stone dealers" and were dealing while having tea. Most of the stones I saw were rubies and jade; such an interesting way of doing business!

Red lips from Bettel nut

Checking out some Jade

Another thing that I noticed while sitting and sipping some tea was that Burmese people call servers by making a kissing noise, two kisses to be exact. They also do the same when they want people to move out of their way on the sidewalk.

Before coming to Myanmar I had heard about the bettel nut leaf that people chew and how disgusting it is to see people spitting red spit all over the streets. To be honest it is less in your face than the Chinese spitting and making the horrible sound. It is interesting to see how many people are addicted to it and in Yangon you can see Bettel nut leaf stands every 10 steps you take, it's insane! 

The bettel nut that they chew is a bettel vine leaf coated with slaked lime and sprinkled with Areca nut and sometimes some aroma or even tabaco! It gets to be addictive and also totally kills your smile! As a result lots of people in Myanmar have red/blackish stains all over their teeth and it looks to me like their teeth get really small, probably because they rotten! It's definitely not pretty to look at!

Sweet Bettel ... with flies!

On my way to Bagan  I took a mini bus to aung mingala bus station to catch a VIP night bus  and the guy next to me was chewing on bettel nut leaf, as we started going he rolled down his window and started spitting red bettel "juice", immediately he was handed a little plastic bag so he could spit into it. He spit in it the whole way and when he was done he rolled down the window and threw the plastic bag out the window! Nooooo!!! I wanted him to get off, pick it up and dispose of it correctly!

After almost 3 weeks traveling around Myanmar I went back to Yangon before flying to KL and spent 3 days walking the streets. The more I walked the more impressed and in love I was with the city! 

It’s extremely dirty and chaotic but it somehow has it’s charm! As you walk around the busy streets you realize that absolutely everything happens on the streets! They do not have shopping centers so people just go from street to street to get whatever they need. 
The Burmese have repair shops for absolutely everything! I saw people fixing A/Cs, old tv’s, broken bags, shoes, glasses, if you need anything to be repaired I think the streets of Yangon is the place to go! I even got all my flags sawn on my backpack for 5,000kyats ($3)!

My bag getting stitched!

Everybody who stopped by read the flags and asked "Myanmar"?

I loved loved loved the craziness of the city! The thousands of TV antennas, the hundreds of cables, and the gazillion pigeons!

View from the 2nd floor of Boyoke Aung

Pigeons everywhere!!! Be careful!

Bicycle ride anyone?

Walking the streets, taking in the view and the craziness!

Monks taking pictures of Sule Pagoda

 This moment was... interesting. It looked to me like mother and child were inside a cage, mom was asleep and the child seemed to be picking something out of her head (hopefully not lice!)


As I walked I was surprised to see clothes drying pretty much anywhere! Here they are on top of a pile of debris! When I took the train clothes were driving on the tracks!!!


 The streets were filled with people playing games!!!

Bingo

Fresh fruit stand

The enjoyed taking pictures of people in Yangonl!

Lady selling tea

Bettel anyone?

Workers riding on top of a truck... Glad he is wearing his helmet just in case!

Boys playing ball in the middle of the street

I was curious as to what this was and never figured it out. They were being sold  everywhere for Chinese New Year

Monk Waiting

 This is one of my favorites just because it totally caught me off guard... Your eye doctor is in the middle of the street!!!! hahaha How can that be? I walked by and was doing an eye exam! so funny!

I never dared to try one of these drinks!

One morning I was brushing my teeth and I just happened to go to the window and look down. I saw a beautiful scene of a traditional Burmese morning, people prepping for the day, chopping vegetables, frying tofu sticks etc Don't ask me why but I thought it was beautiful!


Walking and looking up at the old building around Yangon was also fun.





So... Yangon does not allowed motorbikes... Is that good? Is that bad? I have no idea! I just know that traffic here Is CRAZY!!!!!

Typical traffic on any street of Yangon!

Make way for the people!

Chicken for dinner?

A typical food stand on the streets of Yangon.

The watermelon lady! Huge piece of watermelon for 500 kyats ($0.40)

They even had tennis rackets repair shops!

A worker cleaning the drains full of garbage!!!

Boo! Even on the streets of Yangon I could see Trump!

It's disgusting... Don't do it!

In a word... AMAZING! I would come back to Yangon any time!!! <3