Our First Days in Yangon

After having slept for so long, we received a wonderful breakfast at the guesthouse. You can always choose between a traditional breakfast (which varies every day, e.g. fried rice with beans, noodle soup, vegetable soup etc.). The only disadvantage: The eating place is outside… Which means, already 35 degrees in the morning with an incredible humidity. And it only gets worse during the day… 

Still eating breakfast, we already received a phone call from our university partner here in Yangon, who invited us to come to his office for meeting him. We did so. It was fantastic to meet Dr. Win Myint and Nwe Nwe, very nice people! Dr. Win Myint is the senior researcher of EERi and Nwe Nwe assists him. They were the ones helping us so much for getting into Myanmar with a Business Visa. Especially Lara will spend a lot of time in their office. We had a very friendly talk and were served coffee with sugar and condensed milk (seems to be the usual coffee type).

With our wonderful partners

One day later, we also met with Joan and Heini from CDE at CDE Office Myanmar, where both of us will also spend a lot of time. Joan will be our main contact here in Yangon, as he is the country representative of CDE.

 At the door of CDE office in Yangon

The road to CDE office (dusty dead end road) :-)

We also already spent some hours in the old town of Yangon. As in many cities, old town and new town are totally different. Old town of Yangon has been influenced a lot by the British and the Indians. You can still see the ancient British buildings everywhere. And nowadays, this area is very crowded and lively. There are many market stands, a lot of traffic, little shops etc. We started with the big market hall in the North of old town and then strolled down to the Yangon river. When walking through the narrow streets of old town, we felt like in India, although we’ve never been to India. But this is a little bit how we would imagine it (just with more people, we guess). Crazy old town, a very interesting and dynamic mixture of different Asian cultures such as Burmese, Indian, Chinese and probably more.

In the market hall: the cloth section

One of the many little stalls: a girl sewing with a very old sewing machine (with pedal)

In the jewelry section

In this city, there are so many contrasting buildings! Old and new... One wonders what happened to the old buildings and residents when the new sky scrapers were built...?!

Nice electricity... :-)

Have a close look at the bus: they need to open the cover of the engine, otherwise it gets to hot

Pretty much everywhere you can see the roof of a pagoda. There are pagodas everywhere!

We’ve seen some tourists, but there are not many yet. Or it is probably not the tourist season anymore. So we already became an attraction to Burmese people, some of which wanted to take a picture with us. As we are new, we friendly agreed and in return insisted in also taking a picture with everybody. They were happy to do so. :-) We had a little rest in the park and then continued to the harbor, where we enjoyed a creepy snack, which was a fantastic end of our little tour through old town.

 Group selfie :-)

 In the parc: sports for urban people

 The city of contrasts and incredibly fast development

 One of the old colonial buildings (British), and in front of it the rumbling traffic

Also one of the British buildings, but in a pretty bad shape... With broken windows and growing trees on the roof... (in the middle of old town)

 

 Evening rush hour for pedestrians: catching the ferry to the other side of Yangon river

Below: boys jumping from the peer into the dark brown and stinky water of the Yangon river harbour

We ordered a deep fried chicken. And we really got a entire chicken, including head, feet and wings.

What else is there to say about Yangon after the first few days? The people are really very, very nice and warm. No aggression, no impatience. Always friendly. If we smile at them, we always get a smile back. The traffic is crazy. Making a u-turn in the middle of the street is very normal. Changing the line every 10 seconds is also very normal, because you want to drive as fast as possible and choose the easiest line out of the three (on the highway). Traffic lights exist. And in some places they work well. In other places they don’t and traffic gets a mess. Mosquitos are around, but not so many. Cats and dogs as well are around, but also not so many. But we have so far not seen any fat animals :-) They are all very skinny. Poverty and wealth can be found very close to each other. But apparently, it does not bother the people too much (as far as we perceive it). And the monks pass our street every day to collect food from the neighborhood. 

 At a junction: one video with sound, one in time-lapse-mode. Also watch out for the pedestrians...