Yangon

We flew into Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma) on the morning of the 26th of March. I’d been looking forward to seeing this country since my last trip to SE Asia almost a couple of years earlier.

The arrivals section of the airport, despite being very small and simple, looked surprisingly modern. Not at all what I expected in a country with awful poverty. Little did I know that this was the government’s way of trying to impress new arrivals. I discovered when I left the country that the departures section had none of the niceties. By contrast it looked like and old scout hall, had no air-con and was full of people sweating profusely. Lovely.

After checking into a guesthouse just outside the center of town and downing some of the free crap breaky on offer I headed off to explore the city. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much too see. It all looked very same same. Not particularly enticing to the eye. And it was very hot and dusty. The only thing of intrest was a stupa in the centre of town but that was about it.

Since Yangon didn’t have much to offer I started making plans for moving on to other parts of the country.

Lunch was a highlight. Peach and I were walking down the street and found a restaurant filled with locals – a sure sign of quality. There was no English menu and the staff didn’t speak English either. Luckily Peach had her SE Asia phrasebook handy and we found the phrase for “what is the best dish you are serving today?”. The waiter smiled immediately, said something we didn’t understand then walked off. We’d ordered something. Moments later food began arriving and it didn’t stop until we could eat no more. The restaurant served vegetarian Indian fare and it was bloody brilliant. There were samosas, curry puffs and other deep fried delights. Then came two huge plates each with a serving of rice and three different meals which we deduced to be variations on a veg curry, a chickpea puree and a tomato chutney. Two or three types of bread were also served. Each time we came close to finishing one dish it would be refilled. The whole lot including a drink each came to about $US1.50. I couldn’t believe it and asked the waiter if he was sure. He was. A generous tip was left. I never again had such a good meal in Myanmar nor at such a low low price.

That evening we headed to the city’s major attraction Swedagon Paya. It was awseome. Easily the best religious site I’ve seen this trip.

A friendly monk showed us around and through broken English explained the significance of many of the various Buddhas and sections of the site. If I recall correctly the stupa itself is around 90-odd metres high and has a 76 carot diamond at the very top. This diamond changes color depending on the angle you are looking at it from. There are loads of other diamonds near the top of the structure which is about 1000 years old. I spent most of the couple of hours I was there with my jaw open just marvelling at the beauty of the place. Strangley though many of the Buddha images had been updated so they had coloured lights radiating out of their heads. This looked extremely tacky IMHO but it seems to be a trend throughout Myanmar – not just at religious sights but also on Buddha images that bus drivers carry around. I didn’t air my thoughts about the radiating coloured lights since Swedagon Paya was full of locals praying and performing other rituals for good luck.

After the monk had finished showing us around we got a trusty ‘85 Corolla taxi back to our guesthouse and called it a night. The electricity supply goes off all the time in Myanmar. Not even Yangon has 24 hour power. So it was a sticky night sleeping without a fan after the heat of the day.

Visa Dance

After a few rancho relaxo days on Koh Phayam I had to head back to Bangers to meet up with Peach and sort out where to go next.

I got the overnight bus from Ranong and got to the guesthouse I assumed Peach would check into around 6am in the morning. She was flying in from Samui and by my reckoning should be there around 8:30am. After a refreshing shower and some breaky of street cart soup I waited in the guesthouse resourant. No sign of Peach and it was now after 9am and I needed to catch up on some sleep. So I hit the sack for a few hours.

When I woke up in the early arvo I checked email but still no word from Peach. So I hung out a while exploring the surrounding area. As I was heading back to my room a while later I bumped into Peach in the lobby. She was just about to email me.

It turns out she’d been on an all night bender the night before and had had a massive argument with Tess about whether to catch the flight pretty much straight from the bar or waiting and catching a later one. With out going into the details after a lot of taxis (to and from bars, bungalows and the airport), changing of flights, re-changing of flights and screaming at each other they ended up missing the flight they were suppose to catch and had to pay an upgrade to get the next one, otherwise they’d be stuck there for another few days. Luckily I missed all this drama. They eventually got to the guesthouse around 11am, apparently still drunk, and collapsed into a slumber as soon as they checked in. Obviously the girls were in no state to get a plan of attack together regarding travel plans so we took it easy until the next day.

It turned out that our Thai tourist visas were going to expire the following Monday and it was now a Thursday. The options were extend our Thai visas for a while and check out more of Thailand or leave the country for somewhere else.

Extending the Thai visas was going to cost 1900 baht (about $AU70) and one week was the maximum extension allowed. Given that this was going to be fairly restrictive regarding what we could squeeze into a week and that we thought it a rip off since we could probably fly out of the country for less and come back later and get another month long tourist visa we decided to head to Myanmar (Burma).

To get a visa to Burma via a travel agent was also going to cost a small fortune in Thai terms so we decided to head to the embassy ourselves and got there 10 minutes before they closed for the day at 3pm.

The visa office at the Myanmar embassy looked like a waiting room for peope that had died and were waiting to be reborn. (Think of that scene from Beetle Juice). It had the ambience of a herion shooting gallery. Regardless we were happy to discover that the price for getting a next day visa was more than half that offered by travel agents. The problem was that due to someone on staff being unavailable for reasons I couldn’t determine the quickest they could process our visas was two business days. Being a Thursday this meant we couldn’t get our visas until Monday – the same day our Thai visas expired.

What followed was a couple of hours huddled around a computer at an internet cafe canvassing options. It turns out the cheapest Air Asia flight to Myanmar on Monday left prior to the time we could get our passports. There were later flights but they were 3-4 times more expensive. The girls were pissed at the amount of money they’d sunk on Samui so a cheap option had to be found.

We could get a cheap flight the morning after our Thai visas expired but what would happen if we showed up at the airport with expired visas. We assumed we’d just pay a 500 baht fine and be on our way. That would be heaps cheaper than extending our visas, especially since we were only going to be 7 hours overdue when we left the country. A quick internet search showed multiple reports from other travellers that there was a very real likelihood we’d be arrested and detained. Regardless of what this meant legally it would also mean we’d miss our flight and eventually have to get another one. We decided to go ahead with the plan anyway and figure out the Thai visa stuff later.

So we piss farted around in Bangers for a few days but which felt like a few months and finally Monday came around. After collecting our passports from the Myanmar embassy I told the others I intended to go to Thai immigration and get an extension on my Thai visa. I didn’t want any hassles and I generally prefer to do the right thing. I don’t even jay walk. The girls had earlier decided to save the pennies, forget the extension and try their luck at the airport. By telling them my plans they started feeling guilty and freaking out about what might happen if the Thai authorities were having a bad day. My comments regarding paying for additional flights, paying fines, getting bags searched and the inevitable rubber glove treatment probably didn’t help.

At Thai immigration we were told that there’d be no arrests and all we’d have to do was pay the fine which as he pointed out was a better option than paying for the extension. His exact words were “One day overstay no problem Thailand. Pay fine is better.”. Happy with this development we headed to the airport the next morning. After all the messing about imagine my disappointment when I pointed out to the customs official that my visa had expired and she told me that since it was less than 1 day over there was no fine to pay!