Ant’s birthday and narcotic elimination

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!

 

A wander downtown

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…

Sule

Sule Paya on a lovely evening... Cool and no monsoon rain.

Never has such a beautiful golden roundabout been seen. Milton Keynes has a lot to learn.

12 months

We have been in Yangon 12 months. It has been a great year, but where did the time go? It has gone by so fast.

We celebrated in a dodgy club. There is a reason we haven’t been there before and won’t be rushing back. It was fun to watch Yangon’s super rich youth partying - there was some serious money parked in the car park!

Hash

This weekend we did the hash. A nice little outing to the countryside was had, although I remain to be convinced by the strange hash rituals at the end of each run/ walk!

Using buffalo to plough the beautiful green rice fields.

Strange white people walking through the village cause a bit of a stir. Especially when there was a bleeding leech wound to observe (not mine) and to try and assist by washing it down with  dirty pond water.

It was filthy dirty. The beard and his mud splattered legs can be seen in the distance. We did the walk but I have no idea how the runners managed to stay upright!

Cleaning off at the end with a celebratory rum and sprite.

They found me…

Look who sent me mail today. Direct to my home address in Myanmar.

Although at first glance this may appear to indicate amazing powers of the British government to track down its overseas citizens, I did actually give them my address. Along with express instructions not to contact me in Myanmar by mail given that the postal system here is reportedly worse than unreliable. I was clearly very wrong about that.

… or perhaps not. Ant is still waiting for his letter from the tax man.

Bangkok 3

I love Asian food markets. Everything is always arranged so beautifully, and is usually super fresh! This fish and seafood looked tasty.

  

This market was a little bit different as it is held on a railway line. So 8x per day a train comes through (very slowly) and everyone pulls up their awnings and moves some of the produce out of the way. Produce on the ground is left there as the train is quite high so can travel over it without causing any damage. It seems a bit strange to hold a market on the railway line, but apparently there are no rental fees for stallholders and now it has developed into a bit of a tourist attraction!

You can just about make out the train tracks in the left hand photo. The right hand photo was taken just before the train came past, so all the awnings have been pinned back against the walls. The crazy tourist are all dangling phones and cameras out.

 

Train passing through. In the right hand photo you can see the train just in the distance. It had just passed through and the stall holders were already pulling over their awnings and getting back to business.

 

Bangkok 2

We did a night bike ride through deserted temples and a huge flower market. Much street food was eaten. Many pictures of the King of Thailand were observed. We even cycled through the grounds of the very swanky hospital where he now lives.

 

The guide insisted on taking everyone’s photo in front of the creepy sword wheedling ogre.

  

The wholesale flower market was HUGE, and so beautiful. The majority of the flowers are sold every night – very little wastage, and they are almost all for use as offerings in Bangkok’s many temples. Which, when you actually see just how many flowers there are, is quite hard to imagine. Some of the flowers are sold loose, and some are braided into ready made offerings.