MInd wobbling Yangon

Day 10
8:30 - Yangoon - Chinatown

Street market in Chinatown

Life is different here in Myanmar. Different from what we know and mainly different from what it was in the past years.

Following the Buddhist path

Streets in Yangon are a mix of the Beauty and the Ugly. The people being the beautiful ones  and the living conditions being the ugly ones.

Tough life on the slum street

5000 head crowd praying as One

 I should not generalize, there definitely are people with enough money to afford good living conditions, but these guys are not walking down the road, but are hidden behind tinted glasses of their brand new air conditioned SUVs stuck in traffic jam and polluting local air.

Street sellers seem to have pretty tough life, some not even leaving premises of their vegetable street stall overnight. They cover their products with sheet of plastic and sleep on the side of the stall. Sometimes you can spot 2 months old baby sleeping on their side, looking not worried or uncomfortable at all. Hard to grasp for western mind.

Choose the part of the pig you like

Communication and commercial revolution are well under way. Smart phones are being sold on the main roads by many vendors and prices are well below European rates. Access to the online world couldn't be easier for Burmese people.

There are supermarkets, there are western style shopping malls, however these seem to be targeted only for the richest 1 % of population.

We've arrived in very busy time. Festival of Lights and alm giving has just started and the streets got very crowded through all days and nights.

Weaving monk's robe using a bike as weaver 

Trucks full of people and sound systems driving around busy streets, cul-de-sacs converted to little stages with huge speakers playing way too loud "westernised" music :) around them mainly kids jumping in and out of rhythm.

Street food is amazing. Vegetarian or meaty, up to your choice. Most of the food is cooked directly on the street in front of you and served from buffet style containers based on your choice. Expect to pay around 0.50 Eur (600 Kyats) for small single dish up to 2 E (2500 Kyats) for huge feast on many dishes.

Chinese tea is widely available on each table either cold or warm for free.

2000 years old Sule Pagoda in the heart of Downtown

As I mentioned on the beginning the most beautiful are the people. Staring with open mouth, keen to say Hello ( Men-ga-la-ba), touch your hair and share smiles :)

I'll describe Buddhist spirit in a separate post as it deserves full readers attention.

Shwedagon Pagoda in full moon night glory

Light a candle for good spirits

There is much more to write about, but it's getting very hot now and we need to get moving to catch local transport to the city of umbrellas - Pathein.

As we're heading to rural lands we don't know what will be the Internet connection like, so don't worry we'll stay on the safe side and let you know as soon as we can about the progress of our journey.