Yangon, Myanmar (Part 1)

In the queue for check-in at Singapore airport I was approached by a suited young man and two girls. The man, called Htoo,  could obviously see I was travelling light and wondered if I had any spare luggage allowance. At the desk I had a good spare 6kg and they said it was fine for him to have it (I can't somehow imagine this scenario on a western budget airline). On the plane Htoo came and sat next to me and he told me that he'd been living, studying and working in Singapore for two years, and now he's going to make a business back in Myanmar. He gave me his email address and told me to call him in a few weeks before I fly out.

I had $700 in brand new, unmarked sequential notes stashed in my laptop to keep them from bending or folding. This kitty had to last me 22 days as there's no western ATM's here. I was told that you shouldn't change money in the airport, as you'll get an abysmal rate; as little as 100 Kyat (pronounced "Chat") to the dollar. I checked the rate and it was fine at 867 Kyat so I changed one of my sparkling $100 bills (which they thouroughly checked over). Two people I later met didn't even look at the options in the airport as their guidebooks told them not to. They went to the black-market sellers in Yangon. One guy was promised 900 Kyat to $1 and the changer "mis-counted" the cash back to him and, deal done, quickly ushered him away. Refusing to be ushered until cash counted he reasised he'd been dramatically short-changed. The changer refused to give him the extra cash and the man threatened to get the police involved. The police are under government instruction to "warmly welcome" tourists and won't tolerate anti-tourist behaviour (someone told me a man got 7 years for stealing some flip-flops?!). With this the changer decided to give him some cash back, working out at a normal exchange rate. They other guy I met simply didn't realise he'd been ripped-off until later. For an extra 40 Kyat (5 cents) per $1 your risking losing a lot more, and if you go to the police you're potentially putting the changer forward for some inhumane punishment, considering the crime. There's no need to go to a black-market changer, there's banks everywhere changing money at reasonable rates, and with sanctions now lifted it won't be long before western ATM's start springing up all over the place, making the country much more tourist-friendly.

I get a pre-paid airport taxi to Yangon centre for $10. A very friendly, English speaking driver gave me a big welcome and a mini sight-seeing tour on the 30 minute journey. His taxi was stylish, in the 1980's. It had deep, plush burgendy seats covered with doily and brown plastic trim. The Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon is in the centre of a traffic island and its huge golden dome can be seen from a long way. Thanking the driver I consult the little map someone had drawn me (I wish I could remember who this was) and head to the Okinawa guest house. I curious little wooden building, unlike anything else on the street. Inside the wooden panelled theme continued. I didn't pre-book (I'm not sure if you can?) but manage to get (one of four) $7 dorm beds in the loft. I'm a little damp from humidity, sweat and rain. Everything is a little damp, not wet, just that hint of moisture. It rains most of the time in Yangon in the rainy season. There was so much rain that when I awoke from a small kip the road outside the guest house was now a shin-deep river. Realising my canvas shoes and socks were completely inappropriate (and not wanting to get them wetter as they would never dry) me and a French journalist, also in the dorm, waded against the torrent, barefoot, to a welcoming Indian cafe with lots of men gathered around a TV showing Manchester United vs a Chinese team. We sat there for hours while it poured outside. I can't think how much rice, curry, sauces and sweet tea we consumed.

Rivers of roads

Next day wandering about the city (still in light rain) a came across a little noodle stall, but it wasn't the food that attracted me (although I did have some noodles), it was the t-shirt that a girl working there was wearing.

For the next evening I'd booked an overnight bus to Inle lake. I was going to come back to Yangon at the end of my trip. Obviously the swastika 

Kolkata, India

Howrah station in Kolkata reminds me of a dirty London Paddington, you could feel the Englishness as soon as stepping off the train. So this is it: the last stop in India. I'll spend a few days here, still travelling with Bryan, then he'll catch a flight back to the states while I head out to Vietnam. Out of the station we notice there's no tuk-tuk's, just classic Hindustan "Ambassador" taxi's. Agreeing a price and jumping in one seemed to annoy a policeman who repeatedly banged the roof with a stick and shouted as we zipped off. A couple of minutes later the cost of the journey came up in conversation (I forget why) with the driver deciding on a completely new inflated price for us to pay. We complain and in mid-traffic open the doors to exit - the driver hastily pulls over and we leave the taxi in the middle of a main road. Very VERY annoying. Turns out we'd jumped out of the taxi near to the entrance to the ferry, which could take us deliciously close to where we need to be, for the fraction of a cost of the taxi - bonus!

Although saving money in the taxi incident we splurged on a nice hotel called the Sapphire Suites, with an amazing shower to wash away the Indian colouring and fast wi-fi catch up with photo uploads. The shower was so good, with big drops of hot water and fragrant fresh soap! The dirt that came off is indescribable, leaving the water running brown to the drain. Drying myself on the pure white hotel towel seemed to take another dirt / tan layer from the skin. There's a link with dirt depth and tanning speed, I'm utterly convinced. I'd not really caught the sun on my arms for weeks, they were as brown as they could get, but after that shower they almost instantly burned. Bryan noticed the same effect. *Top tanning tip - wash regularly*

On a food mission we decide to hit a top rated Bengali restaurant east from the hotel. Thinking they would be quicker (and of course for the experience) we hopped on one of the old British city trams, dating back from 1902 - and they look like it. Trams are a great idea: move people around the city in your own lane, skimming past road traffic and having traffic light priority. But this is not quite how it works in India. Everyone and their dog can go into the tramway, whenever they like, meaning you don't go any faster that anything else on the road. I love old, quirky, pointless stuff like this though, and they're great to ride - after all, I'm not in a rush to go anywhere. At the Bengali restaurant there's a queue of locals and a security guard making sure no one jumps the queue. Inside there's three (maybe four) tables - that's it. Thinking we're going to queue for a while we start to walk off when we're called in. The restaurant is called Bhojohori Manna and has branches all over Kolkata. It gets its name from a famous Bengali song. We share a kind of taster menu with six or seven dishes, and they are all fabulous. I recommend!

some prawns

After food we start a mission to find Bryan a new charger (of which he'd dropped the old one) for his laptop. We ended up in a swish, empty Dell dealership which, strangely, didn't have anything useful. That's a mere side-story for the moment though as on the TV in the Dell shop an Indian news channel were showing extremely inaccurate computer renderings of an under-sea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, which had apparently just happened while we were at lunch. The shop-keepers said there's rumours of possible six meter waves hitting Kolkata. The walk back to the hotel was mostly talk of tsunami's and how the hell high is six meters exactly??

We tried some paan from a roadside stall. All through India you see red spit up walls and on floors - at first it you imagine it to be blood. Paan is a crushed areca nut, chewing tobacco and some paste rolled in a betel leaf. It tastes unlike anything I've ever tasted, not bad, just odd. It's a stimulant. Your mouth fills with red saliva and forces you to spit. I was brought up with "spitting is wrong" so spitting in the street every five minutes I just couldn't do! I had to take it out and dispose of it. Besides the spitting, having red teeth / no teeth is never a good look!

That evening we continue the charger mission with a trip around the market. A commission based market guide latches onto us asking what we're looking for. We tell him we need electronics and off we zip - through the underwear section, sculptures, incense, tables, hats, trousers, then finally electronics, where there's nothing remotely resembling a charger. The man deserts us, and we're pointed to the second floor, and a curious electronic repair man bent over a dim-lit table. He intensely looks at the broken charger - maybe it can be fixed. Twenty minutes later, a cup of chai and five separate tools he breaks into the sealed unit, frowning while moving his circuit testing gadget over the board. After another ten minutes poking about it's decided that the charger cannot be fixed. Ah well, worth a try, and interesting to see him at work, surrounded by a million tools and circuit boards. I can't imagine this is something I'd ever see again in England. We then go and get drunk in a rooftop bar.

Next day we're hazy, and up late, just in time for the breakfast in the super-clean and very empty hotel restaurant. I'm convinced we're the only guests. An over-attentive waiter brings us local papers with Tsunami news plastered all over the front and images of people evacuating buildings around Kolkata. Gladly the earthquake turned out to be of the horizontal kind, causing minimal water displacement.

Kolkata's cute. It has huge sweeping boulevards, tree lined roads and massive green areas. It feels very different to most other Indian cities. On the way to the Victoria memorial we walked past some antique shops with old gramophones, music shops with classic CD's and vinyl and bookshops selling everything from Orwell to Mills & Boon. We walked through the parks, packed with hundreds of people playing all manner of sports, mainly cricket. The memorial's impressive, complete with an awful statue of Victoria, slumped on the throne. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Victoria statue that I liked.

 

Our last evening and we checked out of the hotel and said our goodbyes. Bryan will soon be back in Philadelphia living the dreams of home cooked food. I had to wait for a few hours before I could even consider going to the airport so I headed back up to the rooftop cafe and had a couple of beers and some food. At 9pm I spoke to a taxi driver and agreed 350 rupees to the airport. He kept looking at me in the mirror, then at some traffic lights turned around and said 500 rupees. I said that we'd agreed on 350 and that was all I was going to pay, but he kept saying 500 (and kept driving). I kept shaking my head and saying 350, all the way to the airport, and he kept saying 500. On arrival I gave him 350 and he loudly said something in Bengali. I left the cab and entered the airport. What is it with taxi drivers here??