Bangkok

The Bangkok minibreak started at 7am on Saturday when I met friends from Nepal who now live in Bangkok for their Saturday morning run. This was possibly rather ambitious on my part as I haven’t run anywhere for at least a year… and have generally been fairly lazy since arriving in Yangon. Whilst D&J easily notched up 10km I managed 2.5km (1 loop of the park) before I had to collapse have a rest and watch a crocodile creature crawling from the lake… I then managed to walk-run another loop… it was so hot! Anyway, I guess I wont be entering the Yangon marathon any time soon. 

  

After breakfast D&J showed me the sights… we did a river cruise (ooooo the buildings were so tall… the lights so bright… the skytrain so swish…), after that we went into a random shop selling weird and wonderful potions and pills, climbed some stairs and into a back room with mattresses. We then lay down and had rather nice Thai massages whilst the masseuses chatted amongst themselves and watched Thai TV. Spa it was not… but the massage was very nice. Then it was time for lunch and HUGE ice-cream Sundays (I guess there are some advantages to moderate levels of exercise in the early morning).

   

I then ambled back to China Town, via Tesco Lotus (a big disappointment – I think City Mart in Yangon is heaps better than Tesco Lotus in China Town). Ant arrived from the UK at around 4ish and we then spent far too long trying to work out what we were going to eat without going too far from the hotel (Ant was feeling ill – English illness) and without eating something Asian. This turns out to be rather a problem when you are staying in China Town. We ended up walking to the Indian quarter and eating Thali. Yum. Yes still Asian… but not Chinese Asian… and definitely not Shark Fin Soup.

  

Out hotel was quite fun… and Chinese… but lacking daylight in the rooms. That was more than made up for by the fact you could order a pet fish for the bedroom. Of course I had to try this out, so called reception and ordered a fish. 10 minutes later 3 fish and some fish food arrived, along with complimentary fruit and flowers… which were perhaps related to the fact I also asked to move rooms as the first room was noisy. This morning at breakfast there were many glamorous Thai types wandering around, this was later explained by a red carpet and photos and decorations in the lifts and lobby – I think a couple were getting married in the hotel.

  

Tuk-Tuking around town

  

Jo and Simon would be proud… we went to an exciting shopping mall with Starbucks (and all sorts of other fancy stuff in it)… see how provincial we have become… amazed by Starbucks of all places.

Made it home this afternoon to be greeted by Pepsi and Coke. They have apparently arrived. Not sure if they are producing bottles of fizzy stuff yet, but it surely wont be long now before Yangon is awash with locally made Coke. You can buy Coke now, either from Singapore or Thailand… but with the lifting of US sanctions Coke and Pepsi are moving back in. The rose was given to me at the airport. A cunning marketing plan by an Indian restaurant. A welcome rose and a voucher for a free glass of wine at their restaurant. Genius idea!

 

We have spent the evening unpacking the bags Ant bought. This involved me eating a crunchie bar (yum), and putting 3 chorizos in the mini fridge. Ant seemed to think chorizo was an essential import. As we have no cooking facilities perhaps we will just be taking a nibble of chorizo whenever we feel hungry???

Bangkok was fun, but also huge, dazzling and crazy. I think I am happy we live here not there… but it is nice to know we are only a 1 hour flight from the bright lights if we need them.

Home

I was pondering whether to post some photos of our new home… I don’t really want to tempt fate and for it all to go wrong and not work out… but I suppose it is part of the story so it might as well go on here.

I then got to thinking about “home”. I think it takes on a different meaning when you are living overseas. On the one hand our home is in Wolverton, but if that is where our home is then are we going to be home-less for the next 2 years? … and anyway our house is inhabited by random strangers so it can’t be our home anymore. Anthony has gone back to the UK right now… in my mind he has not gone home, but he is coming home to Myanmar on Sunday. Perhaps it is just semantics, but I think (as Janice the cleaner said) home is where the two of us are… and for now that is Yangon, Myanmar.

Ramblings over…

Accommodation in Yangon is very very expensive and in high demand. We spent a few days when we first arrived looking around for somewhere to live, and on the whole it was hard to find somewhere that was:

• Not in an expat enclave, like some sort of leisure resort for pasty faces (mostly these were far too expensive anyway).
• Not mouldy,
• Not entirely purple, and I mean entirely purple, purple rooms, purple hallways, purple exterior. Various other people we have met that have been house hunting recently have also seen THE purple house… it is clearly of some renown. Along with purple we have also seen houses with rooms painted in various other garish, psychedelic, nightmare inducing colours,
• Not within touching distance of neighbouring apartment blocks (from almost all exterior windows),
• Not dark during daylight hours,
• Not with a 4 ft wall right outside every window obscuring what might be a nice view,
• Not a health and safety nightmare – think along the lines of a shower head right next to electric sockets which are used to power the electric heater for those occasions when a hot shower is preferred to a cold one,
• Not so big we would need to sublet to several families/ acquire a large number of children/ start up a hotel/ go into some sort of business which involved keeping a lot of stock on the premises…
• Not a miniature palace with an over the top front porch - see photo – we took one look at this place and decided not to go in…

Anyway, our current home does not feel like a home… and we can’t wait to move out! Room 526 is quite nice, as is the view… but it is still a hotel and institutionalisation is setting in… if we don’t escape soon we may never be able to make a bed or change the bins again ourselves.

  

The apartment we hope to move into was found quite by chance. One of my colleagues was driving past and noticed it was a new construction and decided to ask the owner whether there were any apartments available. Although initially the owners were not interested in renting in the end they decided the apartment wasn’t safe for their own 2 small children to live in, and so were happy to rent it out to us.

The downside is that the apartment is very much a construction site… and is extortionately priced – it will be the most expensive place we have ever lived by a long long way. The upside is that it has heaps of natural light, is spacious but not a mansion, and was basically the only place we could imagine living in after seeing many many many places. We wondered if we were overly fussy or we had bad agents, but speaking to others in the same situation our experience is pretty much the same most new expats face and we are probably super lucky to get this place… which is why I am mildly anxious it might all fall through and we end up having to start again!

The first time we visited (and the 2nd time) the floor was more pond than floor, due to the lack of window fittings and internal ceilings/ floors. Perhaps it gives you an idea of how desperate we were that this was our first choice?!

  

Actually it was the view that sold it… a bedroom balcony overlooking golden Shwedagon… what more could we want?

  

There is another balcony in the lounge and that overlooks green playing fields and green = good… but how long it will stay that way I don’t know, there is a lot of construction happening in Yangon. The pictures below are from today… so it is coming along. The layout is split over 2 floors. Downstairs there is an open plan living-dining area, master bedroom with attached toilet/ shower room, kitchen and second toilet/ shower room. Upstairs there are 2 spare bedrooms. So do come and visit… failing that the mountain bikes will have a bedroom each.

The photos below show the view from (a) living area patio doors, (b) the patio doors and then (c) panning round to the right from the patio doors to the rest of the living area and the stair case.

  

Photos below show progress (a) upstairs, (b) in the kitchen and (c) in the toilet/ shower room. As you can see kitchen surfaces are a little lacking.. but less will be more in this apartment as financially it makes no sense to rent it furnished (would be an extra US$500/ month)… so we will probably collect a few bits and pieces but see how we go being minimalists hahaha… that will probably last about a week…

  

As for the facilities they are second to none. As featured below it seems to be possible to climb out onto the roof to enjoy the satellite dishes and water tanks… plus there is a simply gorgeous swimming pool. The water really was as green as in this photo. I discussed the water colour with the landlord. He claims it is perfectly clean, and that it is green because it contains salt and iodine to keep it clean. I am not convinced. Iodine is yellow not green. But who knows. I don’t think I will be dashing in for a dip… other conversations with the landlord today involved the curtains. He is thinking pink. I am thinking not pink. He asked what colour. I said white. He looked shocked and declared white would be terrible because but the whole apartment is white (on our insistence)… he suggested green… I suggested cream. I do not know what colour curtains we will get. I fear something highly spangely and not to our tastes… but we will see. There are a lot of windows so fingers crossed the curtains will be wonderful… and even more finger crossing that this will be our new home come October 1st.

 

Disappointment update

Further to my previous post about the major disappointment of mouldy “Carr’s water biscuits” I managed to swap them for an un-mouldy pack. However this only brought about more disappointment because although they still claim to be “biscuits of distinction” and are “manufactured in England” it is clear after only the smallest of bites that exported Carr’s Water biscuits are (a) very different to ones for sale in the UK. The packaging belies the fact that they are slightly sweetened. Urgh. Totally disgusting… and (b) the packaging is not sufficient to keep them fresh in transit. Along with being sweet they were also slightly soggy.

Anyway, clearly this is no major tragedy, and I can’t say they formed a significant part of my diet before coming here… On the up up upside we found this for desert the other night… fabulous rainbow stripy jelly (tasted OK but weird texture)… and the less colourful, but far more delicious sticky coconut rice mmmmm this stuff is AMAZING.

Yangon Circle Line

Another post from last weekend. Our trip round the Yangon circle line. It costs $1 and takes about 3 hours. A super good value tourist attraction?! Here is Yangon Central train station, brooms were on sale in case anyone was interested. In the photo on the left you can see a man wearing a “longyi” the traditional sarong that most men wear here as opposed to trousers.

  

As the train poodled its slow way round there was lots to see. People ambled across the lines. I guess there are no fast trains and no electric rails. Plenty more brooms for sale… and monks… and girls carrying huge sacks on their heads… and most strangely many people drying their washing on the railway lines. Perhaps not all of the tracks are in use, and perhaps the track-sleeper combination makes for quick drying?

  

There were no window panes or doors… made it nice and easy to jump on and off.

  

Lots of interesting people to observe and be observed by. The train conductor is sitting in the far left of the left hand photo below. He had the honour of sitting on a newspaper, which was laid out on the bench. This seemed to be an indication that no one else should sit there. Sometimes he got up and waved his little green flag, other times he just sat on the bench and leant out of the window and waved it. The two fancily made up girls in the right hand photo were hilarious. They got on the train and were clearly trying to discretely take photos of us using their mobile phone. From time to time they would giggle as they looked at the photos. This went on and on for quite some time. I guess they needed a lot of photos of the pasty white faces. In the end we started taking photos of them, which they seemed bemused about. I think they were a little embarrassed that we had caught on to their plan!

 

For the first half of the journey the carriage was quite quiet. The train made many stops and people came and went. However as the train creaked into the station at the top of the line there was a clamour of voices and a scrum of vegetable sellers. There were huge sacks of cabbages, cauliflowers, onions, green beans, random green veg, aubergines, fresh noodles… you name it they had it. The sacks were hauled up through the door and into the carriage (this would clearly never work in the UK… the automatic carriage doors would make a right mess of the green veg…), more sacks were lifted up and rolled in through the windows. Everything was a-buzz. Eventually the train started on its slow way again, and the veg sellers got busy trimming their greens (any excess slung out of the window) and tying them up into little bunches ready for sale in the city. Was fun to watch!

  

Disappointment

Today I am disappointed. I went out to seek food with a heavy dairy emphasis. I was so excited about slicing(?!) French butter (mmmm) onto Carr’s biscuits and then eating them with cheese and cucumber. FYI – on the whole food here is cheaper than in the UK, and eating out is definitely cheaper. There is a wide range of imported products for sale in the supermarkets… although decent (i.e. not Chinese) biscuits seem hard to come by as does chocolate. I am trying to think if this is the only place I have lived where you cant buy Mars bars… cant think I have seen them… but I could be wrong. I have been looking in vain for Crunchie bars and Cadbury chocolate that is not made in Australia (and therefore not half as nice as British Cadbury chocolate due to the anti melting stuff they put in it). It is possible to buy Lindt Milk chocolate, but for £2.50 a bar it would have to be an extra special treat.

Anyway, I digress… the wonder food below cost £9… yes £9. Tres tres expensive, and this is partly why I was sooooo sad when I opened up the Carr’s biscuit box to find the inside plastic wrapper torn and the biscuits MOULDY. I guess tomorrow will involve testing the Myanmar Supermarket refund system? In the mean time would it be very bad to eat cucumber with butter on it?

An evening at Shwedagon

Am still catching up with some photos from last weekend’s adventures. Am sure the number of posts and photos will drop off when things become more normal. Due to the fact that “Ice World” is apparently shut until October we changed our original plans for an evening of ice and went up to Shwedagon instead. It was a lot hotter than Ice World would have been… and probably less random… but it was the perfect evening for wandering around (no rain), and it was so much nicer than visiting in the day. A lot more peaceful. I think at some point we will get a Shwedagon pass which means we will only have to pay 40p to visit as opposed to £3.

We went up there when it was still light. You can see there is a busy market on the road up to the entrance. Many people are selling offerings such as flowers and fruits, along with Buddhist icons and statues of Buddha. The tower to the far left of Shwedagon is one of the lifts (it must be the most accessible place in Yangon), the stair entrance is between the lions, and is lined with even more stalls.

 

As we walked around the pagoda we watched the sky change colour, and as it did Shwedagon turned increasingly golden – if that is possible. From certain points it was possible to see the diamonds and jewels that are on the top glistening and changing colour with the changes in the light.

     

We met a very friendly (but relatively small compared to Mel and Ant) monk called Varasami, who was far more knowledgeable than the guide we had the first time we visited, and we enjoyed wandering around with him whilst he chatted about what various things meant, what life is like for a monk in Yangon… and why monks have shaven heads! In return Ant attempted to teach him how to pronounce words beginning with “f”… a bizarre conversation where Ant probably talked about “football” more than any other occasion in his life.