Asia trip - July 2015

Yangon, Myanmar, July 19, 2015

A long but most interesting half-day city tour with our personal taxi driver Kyi. Readers will know that people in continental Europe and in the US drive on the right and the steering wheel is on the left.  In the UK (and Japan and Thailand) it's the other way round; they drive on the left and the steering wheel is on the right hand side. People in Myanmar have their own solution: they drive on the right like in Europe and the US but the steering wheel is also on the right, like in the UK. It doesn't really make sense but it's only gradually changing I learned today. 

Well, the day was full of Pagodas: we went by some local pagoda at a very busy intersection and visited the Sule pagoda - which is right at the center of Yangon, though there is not really a center in a traditional sense to speak of. Afterwards we went to the impressive Batataung pagoda.  

When we were there music from a nearby building, part of the monastery, commenced: wedding music as my taxi driver explained. Where I wanted to go there afterwards? Sure, I said, of course. So we did. We cautiously looked into the room where the festivities took place and the wedding party, in particular the bride and the groom, immediately asked us in. They made a big spiel about us, asked us to sit down (on carpets on the floor at one of these very low tables), served us very nice ice cream and cakes and soon we were introduced to their parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, various siblings and anyone else in the room who had interest to say hello to us.

It was really very nice and pleasant. It was a low-budget wedding someone explained to us. The wedding took place in the monastery room to save on the cost for renting a room in a restaurant (and their homes were not large enough). Still, people were very hosptiable indeed. We left a little present in an envelope and tried to chat a bit which was difficult. Some relative who worked on a cruise ship in Thailand and thus had good English came to the rescue. Initially I had felt like gate crashing but people were genuinely pleased that we had looked in (in contrast to when I had done something similar in Bavaria a number of years ago with some friends, the bride and the groom had not been pleased at all and we didn't stay too long and no food had been offered).

Then we stopped at the former government building in which Burma's nationalist leader Prime Minister General Aung San and six of his colleagues had been assasinated on 19 July 1947.  Aung San was the father of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The building had been closed and in disrepair for the last few decades or so as everything conneced with General Aung San was meant to be wiped out from history. Only recently, with the cautious liberalization introduced by the military government since 2012, this has changed and now the building is meant to be turned into a History museum. But for the next 5 years major reconstrution and renovation will have to take place.  

We arrived on the first and only day when after decades the building was re-opened to the public for just one day. There were throngs of people who wanted to see the building where Aung San worked and in particular the committee room in which he was assasinated. After all Aung San was the architect of Burma's independence from Britain (he signed the treaty with British PM Attlee) and the founder of the Union of Burma. I wonder if the authorities expected that so many people wanted to see the building - though after all this years in view of the popularity of his daughter (a future President perhaps if the constitutions gets changed - which is overdue of course). It's a huge building and will make a formidable history museum.

Next on the agenda was St. Mary's, Yagon's formidable and quite large Catholic church. (I later also noticed other Christian churches, though much smaller ones, such as an Anglican church). Then back to visiting various pagodas: Ngarhtatgyi pagoda, Chaukdat pagoda (probably spelled wrongly), Kyaukdawgyi Pagoda (with its marble buddha), Myat Pagoda, Sueto and Buddha Two Pagoda. And in between we even found time to push open a little and squeeze into the already shut gates of the zoological garden to have a quick look at some of its famous white elephants - though they aren't really white, more like a rosy pink. The guards tolerated our rather late short visit.

China town beckoned in the evening. But after quite a tiring Pagoda-full day and a wedding reception and the commemoration of General Aung San's achievements, bustling China town was almost too much. Still the food was excellent.

Yagon is of course quite a poor city - at first sight one would not think so, in view of all the pomp of the many golden pagodas. But most of the people of Yagon live in great poverty. They often work by running a small restaurant or mini shop or business along the some of the main roads (and along many of the minor ones too) and whole families live in the back of their shops. And there are supposed to be real slums in Yangon, which I didn't see, that are supposed to be much worse. Things have become better and there are many employment opportunities since international investment has arrived in Myanmar for the last few years - but the country has a long way to go unfortunately.