Old buses, new cars, golden pagodas, moldy end of rainy season buildings, construction and cranes, people wearing lungyis, and trees…
Billboards and cranes, construction hoardings, lethal pavements and open drains…
Street food under an umbrella sitting on pink plastic midget chairs – pork intestines on sticks with oily dips… yum-o?
The old and dilapidated but oh so beautiful… and the new and shiny Parkson department store.
The old and dilapidated is one of my most favourite Yangon buildings. The old railway offices. There are plans to return it to its former glory. I am glad about that. The new is is very small (we are still a long way from Bangkok mega malls with Rolls Royce's in the foyer)… more an escalator with mini shops either side of it. BUT it does have a genuine Quicksilver shop (should we ever decide to take up surfing) and the coffee in the dutch café outside is London prices… crazy expensive.
Typical Yangon, barefoot boy monks crossing the road outside Traders Hotel. Cups of tea on plastic chairs next to a nat shrine on a golden tree (Myanmar is not called Golden Land for nothing).
This place is going to look so so soooo very different in the not so different future. Am sure many changes will be good, but I am also sure some of the lovely things about this city will be lost. Long live the plastic stool… and the golden trees… and the lungyis…
