Our gateway to the mysterious, secluded world of Myanmar (yes, we used to know it as Burma) was Yangon (yes, we used to know it as Rangoon), the now-former capital but still biggest city. We arrived with plenty of excitement and an even greater amount of US Dollars, as they are the only currency that can be exchanged in this country and there are no such things as ATMs or facilities that accept credit cards. It's also worth noting the curiosities of the exchange rates here. If you go to any bank in the world, or online to any currency exchange website, you'll find that US$1 will officially get you about 6.20 Kyat (the local currency of Myanmar, pronounced chat). Never, ever do this. When you get in-country and exchange money the same way everybody else does, on the black market, you will get between 900 and 1000 Kyat to the dollar. No, that's not a misprint and I haven't forgotten any decimal points - the "official" exchange rate undervalues the currency by a factor of roughly 150. Crazily, the 1000 Kyat note is the most common one handed out, and so Sean found that exchanging 100 US dollars left him with some logistical problems:
We only intended to stay in Yangon for one day. But a small bout of illness from Sean extended this to 3. The first day we spent wandering around the city center taking in the old Colonnial architecture mixed with the shiny Pagodas and temples. The streets were filled with markets (the Indian quarter, the Chinese quarter etc) and they reminded me a little bit of India but without all the dirt. Yangon has clearly suffered since the government decided on a whim five years ago that it was no longer Myanmar's capital city (Sean has more to say about this later) and took away all that government funding to its infrastructure and paintwork. But it remains the commercial and economic heart of Myanmar.
The massive Shwedagon Pagoda is the central sight to visit here. The entrance fee is 10 USD. Well, it's advertised in USD, but would they take our dollars? Would they heck! It's a problem here that if you have even the slightest mark on your "must be completely flat and not an old serial number" note that they won't accept them. So she asked us instead to pay in 10,000 Kyat, which is a bit of a rip off when the dollar is so low that 10,000 kyat is actually more like 11 USD. But what choice do you have when there aren't any ATMs and you can only use the notes you brought with you? Watching the sunset over Shwedagon though was worth it in the end (sorry for partly funding the government here, but we had no choice).
They do like their Buddha images to be lit up like Vegas here though:
So a nice day wandering around, we got a really good feel for Yangon and an intro to Myanmar (common sights like men in skirts called 'longyi' and beetlenut chewing folks with vampire red teeth), then poor Sean got sick and spent most of the next two days in bed. I caught up on some reading and played nurse-maid (no, not in that way).
PS: Did you know that the reason they changed the name to Myanmar was by way of distancing the country from its British Colonial days? The brits adopted the name 'Burma' as a bastardization of the word Bamar, which was the name of the dominant local people. And I think that Myanmar has mores roots in the country's original history. That being said, we should probably start dropping the bracketed "(Burma)" after this country's name now I reckon.
Here are the photos:
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