Yesterday was Ant’s birthday. He started off the day with cherry poptarts with some luminous sweets on the side. Lucky boy.
I bought him a Burma Railways clock. Made in England in 1944, but presumably spent the last 70 years at a station somewhere in Myanmar.
For his birthday “treat”?? we went to the National Drug Elimination Museum. For anyone visiting Yangon this is highly recommended. Why didn’t we visit before? As you can see it is a large and grand museum, and they seem to be cultivating something out the front. Presumably not narcotics. The whole place was empty. I don’t imagine it ever being busy.
We learnt about cocaine trafficking routes, cannabis trafficking routes, heroin trafficking routes…
We learnt that “smoking opium is not a Myanmar tradition, it was introduced into the country by foreigners from aboard”. We learnt that the air force and entire Myanmar military were engaged ceaselessly in combatting the scourge of drugs. We did not learn about the people in this country who are exceedingly rich because of the drug trade. This perhaps is the missing link between the drug eradication messages and the statistics they had on display which show drug production on the increase.
They had a lot of photos of people who had been arrested for dealing drugs… and photos of drugs being “ceremoniously” burnt as per photo below.
We learnt about the “horrors” of drug abuse and the “stairway to insanity” and “from insanity to death”. Beware.
The museum was quite interactive. On the right is Ant getting ready to “destroy and set fire to narcotic drugs the endanger the lives of human being by pressing this button”. Sadly nothing happened. The best/ most random part of the museum was when two lovely sweet ladies ushered us into a dark side room, called the results of drug abuse or something like this. It was pitch black and classical music was playing. There were poorly lit models of people doing drugs, followed by a glass floor (which the lovely ladies were very keen for us to walk on – oh the wonders of modern technology), underneath the glass floor were small cells about the width of a person, with models of half dead looking people in them. Charming. We then got to the end of the room and the ladies got even more excited and pointed towards a white button, indicating that we MUST press it. Press it we did and the result was the photo on the right, a claw like hand appeared and started moving backwards and forwards towards us. I have no idea what this represented.
After all that excitement it was time for more e-numbers. Happy birthday Ant!
