Japanese Weekend (and other stuff)

It's been so long since I've talked about daily life here in Bangkok. Lately I've been writing about my recent trip to Myanmar and my family's visit, and I haven't posted any updates about goings-on at Chitralada School or in my life in Thailand.

We are coming up on the end of the semester. M6 (senior) classes will be finished next week; they get extra time off at the end of each semester to prepare for and take university entrance exams. We've got about a month left in the rest of our classes before finals, department mark checks, and our big term holiday in October.

It's really a relief, because lately things haven't been going perfectly smoothly. At Mathayom we lost one teacher this week due to a "family emergency." She left Bangkok quite abruptly with one week's notice, leaving me, James, Ryan, and Geoffrey to handle the fallout and restructure the schedule. I think it's obvious that I'm not happy about this. 

My plan of doing something new and fun each weekend hasn't stayed quite on track lately, although I have been doing some things. The weekend after returning from Yangon I didn't feel well and stayed in to rest. The next weekend I found a Chinese bookstore in town and went there to look for resources to help with my language study (I am currently learning Mandarin). 

This weekend I went to Central World Mall downtown to browse for travel guides to help me plan my October holiday. I've got a few ideas, but nothing is certain yet. At Central World I discovered a new Japanese tea shop. They were handing out tiny samples of hot matcha tea, and I decided to sit down and have a cup. It was very interesting to watch them grinding the tea. Matcha is a type of green tea from Japan that is ground into a powder. It's supposed to be very healthy as the entire leaf is ingested. If you've tried green tea flavored things, they were probably made with matcha powder. This store (Chaho) had just opened up, and in addition to the samples they were putting on a Japanese tea ceremony to attract attention.

Leaving the mall, I somehow stumbled into a "Japan Expo." Besides the stalls selling lots of Japanese foods and advertising Japanese brands beneath paper lanterns, the plaza was filled with cosplayers - people who dress up in colorful costumes. It's really popular in modern Japanese culture. It was loud, crazy, and too much for me!

Tea House Tour

Not many cities have a street plan built around a two-thousand year-old golden pagoda, but Yangon's oldest paya sits downtown surrounded by a busy traffic circle, from which the meticulously gridded British-designed street system radiates. My Lonely Planet book listed a self-guided walking tour of Yangon's colonial treasures, so the next morning Xin and I decided to head out together again and check out downtown. It turns out that we were good traveling companions. After breakfast and a short taxi ride, our morning started more or less at the lilac-colored Rangoon City Hall, the first building in town to combine European colonial architecture with traditional Burmese elements. After visiting our first Burmese teahouse, we began our tour.

Rangoon City Hall

The Sule Paya is smaller but supposedly older than Shwedagon. It stands in the center of a busy intersection at the heart of downtown Yangon. Like Shwedagon, it guards a Buddhist relic.

Sule Paya

Despite the constant drizzle, we circled Sule. It was very similar to Shwedagon, but much smaller and quieter. At one point, a small dragon boat waited, attached to pulleys. Make a wish on a card, place it in the back of the boat, and turn the crank handle to send it to the top of the paya.

sending up a wish

After leaving Sule we stuck to the map. Most of the sites in downtown Yangon are located around the city center. Following the map, we turned past the City Hall to the well-preserved former Immigration Department. Yangon is really unique in Southeast Asia, as it has kept most of the old colonial buildings intact after gaining independence in the late 1940s.

Immigration Department

Some of the buildings still serve their original purpose, some have been given new life, and some have been left to crumble forgotten beneath tropical rot. In downtown, you can't miss the golden Sule Paya standing at the center of everything.

Yangon's Main Traffic Circle

It was Sunday, and our walking tour took us past the old Immanuel Baptist Church, just as the bells were ringing signaling the end of the morning service.

Immanuel Baptist Church

Past Immanuel and just a short ways down the street we came to the High Court. While not as well preserved as some of the other buildings, I believe it still holds its original function. Even on a Sunday morning there were people waiting there, and it proudly flew Myanmar's new flag from its tower.

The High Court

In the center of downtown's square is a public green space called Mahabandoola Garden. Formerly home to a statue of Queen Victoria, the park now is the location of a tall Independence Monument, and was the site of many clashes between the military and protesters in Burma's recent, bloodier decades.

Sule Paya, City Hall, and the Immigration Department as seen from Mahabandoola Garden

Leaving the park, we turned a corner and passed the former Reserve Bank of India building. In the past, Burma was the easternmost territory in the British Raj (British Empire of India), and at one time Rangoon was, due to immigration under British Rule, much more an Indian, Chinese, and European city than it was a Burmese one.

the former Reserve Bank of India

Past the old customs house and its two-hundred year old clock, the rain picked up. I had brought an umbrella with me, but it was a small one issued by my bank - The Siam Commercial Bank. We tried to stay dry under my small umbrella, while following the map in the book, by this time decently soaked.

Customs House

Not all of the buildings had been as well preserved as the City Hall or the Customs House. Some had been forgotten to the passage of time. One can almost hear the ghosts of the Raj. I'm not superstitious, but I wouldn't like to spend the night in this old building.

The Port Authority building still serves an important role. Yangon sits at the banks of the Yangon River, just across the street from the Port Authority building. It is still an important shipping port, since trade is beginning to pick up in the country once again.

Port Authority

Completely soaked by the cool rain, the next stop on our walking tour was a warm dry oasis from the rain and the busy dirty city around us. The Strand is one of Asia's great hotels. With rates over $600 per night, The Strand Hotel was laughably out of my price range (for comparison I spent $20 per night during my stay). Still, we could afford to stop in out of the rain, take a look around the elegant colonial-style lobby, and have a drink while we warmed up and waited for the rain to slack off.

the legendary Strand Hotel

The Strand Hotel is one relic of colonial Rangoon which hasn't faded away with time. Sitting in the padded wicker furniture in the cool, dimly lit lobby puts you back in another time.

After a rest in comfortable lobby, a hot drink, and a snack of shelled peanuts, we headed back out into the city as the rain lessened up.

We carried on our walk past the Port Authority building again to Yangon's "open air library" - the book seller's street. Every day early in the morning vendors arrive on this street and set up shelves stocked with books - in Burmese and English. Many of the books were missing covers, and had the title written in sharpie marker on makeshift brown paper covers. The stalls were quite busy. It's great to see that as the government is allowing more freedom of expression, the people seem hungry to read and learn.

the book seller's street

Down the street we found one of the most hauntingly abandoned buildings in the city; The Secratariat. Also known as the Minister's Office, this was the seat of power during British rule. Now the crumbling red fortress with its brick walls and towers sits behind a jungle of growth and two fences. I was too far away to get a decent picture, but just close enough to see what an imposing building it once was.

 the abandoned Secretariat (The Minister's Office)

Back at the Sule Pagoda traffic circle, the Mogul Shiah Mosque was a reminder of Yangon's strong Muslim community. The mosque, the ancient pagoda, and the Baptist church in such close proximity serve a reminder that Myanmar, despite being heavily Theravada Buddhist, is a very culturally diverse country.

Mogul Shiah Mosque

Myanmar has a unique teahouse culture. People sit at common tables in the small shops drinking tiny cups of strong sweet tea, chatting, reading the newspaper, and eating light snacks like cakes or samosas, or even full meals like noodles or soup.

one of Yangon's better known teahouses

We had been going strong all morning, so we stopped at one of the highly recommended tea houses for a cup of tea and a hot bowl of Shan noodles. Burmese food is notoriously oily, and known for being much less spicy than the cuisine of most other Southeast Asian countries. Myanmar consumes the most onions per capita of any country in the world (I've been told), and their food is heavy in both onions and garlic.

enjoying a bowl of noodles and a cup of sweet Burmese tea

Following this walking tour of downtown Yangon really gave me the chance to briefly glimpse into the city's everyday life. Yangon is still not used to tourists, although there were a few kids trying to sell postcards. I can only imagine that there will be more in the coming years. Most of the kids weren't too pushy, and they were happy just to say hello. Maybe due to its colonial past, Myanmar has a really decent level of English proficiency overall.

meeting a friend

It's not Bangkok by any means, but Yangon is a city back on the rise. Only time will tell how Napiadaw (Myanmar's new capital) will work out, but Yangon still seems to be the heart of the country. Although there really aren't any skyscrapers, LED screens, or mega luxury malls, Yangon is developing fairly quickly considering its past. I think it will be interesting to see what its like once business truly returns here and the country is fully opened up.

modern Yangon

Of course we had to end our walking tour with another tiny cup of strong Burmese tea at one of the local teahouses. 

a well-earned cup of tea at Golden Tea

Burmese Days part 2

From the Aung San House, it was a short walk through some winding backstreets to Ngahtatgyi Paya, a giant seated Buddha. It's a really impressive Buddha, but not a lot of people who visit know about it.

By this time my traveling companions Xin, Helen, and I were getting hungry. We bought some vegetable samosas from a lady who was selling them on the street for k50 apiece, and ate them as we continued on our way.

While not as large as Wat Pho in Bangkok, Chaukhtgyi Paya is an impressively ornate reclining Buddha. Again, there weren't many people here. I think most people visit Yangon to see Schwedagon, and miss the other smaller temples in the area.

The ornate Buddha

We were wet and tired, and ready for a rest. After taking a taxi back to the hotel, Xin and I planned our evening. Helen was getting ready to leave for her next adventure in the north, but my Chinese friend and I decided to stick together for a while. She had not been to Schwedagon yet and my ticket was good for the entire day, so we planned to return that evening and see the famous pagoda at dusk and by night.

me with my longyi (traditional Burmese garb)

We got to the pagoda around 5:00 while it was still light. There are two small but interesting (and free) museums on the site; one is about the history of Buddhism, and the other is a collection of photographs of Shwedagon from the past to the present including photos of the jewel-encrusted crown which you can't see from the ground.

In Burmese (and Thai) culture, one's birthday is extremely important. Surrounding the main pagoda are eight stations representing the days of the week (Wednesday is split into AM and PM in Burmese tradition) and the corresponding animal according to Burmese culture. To make merit, one can light candles and incense at their respective corner and wash the Buddha image with cups of water from the fountain at the base of each statue. I was born on a Monday so my Thai color is yellow and my Burmese animal is the tiger.

Monday Buddha

As the sky grew darker, the lights went on at the golden zedi, reflecting dully at first off the golden dome. We circled the main pagoda several times, trying to see it from the best angle.

Soon, Shwedagon was glowing brilliantly under the dark sky. From what I had seen of Yangon, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this was the best-lit place in the whole city.

Suddenly the monsoons arrived again, pouring cold rain from the dark sky. We hoped this would be a short one, as it had seemed that the heavy rains were usually over relatively quickly (whereas light rain went on for hours). Taking shelter in the covered alleys of surrounding shrines, we saw an old monk meditating. Two novices nearby said that it was alright to take his photograph and that he was the head monk and abbot of Shwedagon. He meditated every evening for four hours, from 4:00-8:00, moving amongst some of his favorite spots.

Whilst the rain was falling, we sheltered in the surrounding shrines and took in the beautiful architecture  and stunning decoration of the smaller temples. Previously we hadn't gotten a very close look at these shrines because our focus was turned to the main pagoda. The rain forced us to turn our attention to some of the lesser pagodas and temples, and the intricate architecture was quite stunning.

As the rain slacked off nearly as quickly as it had appeared, we looked down from the pagoda hill. There are four entrenches, one in each of the cardinal directions. Each one was ornate, and while all of them had a long hall of stairs leading up, only the west entrance (where most foreigners are encouraged to enter) has an escalator to the top. Looking down past the east entrance, we could see the lake we visited earlier off in the far distance,

the east enterence

Waterlogged and cold, we walked back down the quiet street to our hotel. At the front desk we asked for a recommendation for a good place to eat dinner, and the staff directed us to a place down the street called Finger's Food Garden. It was a quiet, colorful, trendy little place with wifi and English newspapers and magazines to read. After a hot bowl of Burmese dry noodles, a hot shower and a warm bed awaited me. My first full day in Myanmar had tired me out.

Burmese Days part 1

My first full day in Yangon began and ended at Shwedagon Paya, Myanmar's biggest, most famous, most impressively golden zedi (What the Thai call a chedi) - a massive monument housing a holy relic.

Despite getting to my hotel very late the night before, I arose early and after showering headed downstairs in my flip-flop sandals. That was my first mistake, because the wet sandals had very little traction, causing me to slip on the stairs and fall hard, injuring my tailbone and back. This injury would set me back a bit for the rest of my stay, and wasn't the most auspicious start to my time in Myanmar. 

After a simple breakfast of scones, hot tea, and fresh papaya, I changed into proper shoes and left my hotel. The hotel had a great location within walking distance of Yangon's - if not Myanmar's biggest attraction.

Overcast skies at Schwedagon

Walking down the street to the pagoda was my first real experience with Myanmar. This is the only place I've ever been where the majority of the people still wear the traditional outfits. One of the first things I noticed was that probably eighty percent of the people I saw - men, women, and children - were wearing the longyi, a long skirt-like wrap. Some businessmen I saw wore slacks, and a very few teenagers had jeans, but for the most part nearly everyone wore the longyi.

Admission to the Schwedagon Paya for a foreigner costs 8000 Myanmar Kyat (pronounced "chat"), equal to about eight dollars. I had foolishly not learned my lesson at the Grand Palace, and had only packed shorts. At the foreign admission desk, they also sold me a longyi for k7000 and provided me with an excellent map to the pagoda and a cubby in which to store my shoes and socks. This was the most expensive thing I did during my stay in Myanmar, but it was completely worth every kyat of the admission price.

I circled the pagoda on the slick, wet marble floor several times, gazing in absolute awe at the amazing golden behemoth before me. The legends say that the first pagoda was built on this site nearly 2600 years ago to house a holy relic- the bell-shaped zedi supposedly holds a hair from the Buddha brought to Burma from India by two merchants. At three hundred twenty-five feet tall, covered in twenty-seven metric tons of gold, countless jewels, and topped by a seventy-six carat diamond, the central pagoda and the sixty-four smaller pagodas surrounding it make Shwedagon the most important religious site in the country. It is a goal of most Burmese to visit at least once in their lifetime.

I spent over two hours walking around and taking in my gilded surroundings, but it was starting to rain a bit, so I walked back to my hotel to look at my guidebook and make a plan for the afternoon. Actually, after having seen Shwedagon, I wasn't really sure what I was going to do next.

Just as I was walking back to my room I was greeted by a Chinese girl who was staying there as well. After talking for a minute, she said that she had just met a British girl downstairs at breakfast, and they were planning on seeing a lake and some temples, and that I was welcome to come along if I'd like.

First we visited Kandawagyi Lake, a former British reservoir, now a recreational area. There is a an excellent view of the pagoda and the surrounding jungle vegetation from a wooden boardwalk that circles the green water. Xin, Helen, and I walked along the tranquil boardwalk, enjoying the stillness of the Burmese afternoon, and talked about our travels. For a city of five million people (admittedly only half the size of Bangkok), parts of Yangon often felt quite rural and sleepy.

One of the big attractions at the lake is Karaweik Palace, the giant concrete recreation of an old royal Burmese barge.

It was raining steadily, but not heavily enough to deter us. In fact, I didn't mind the rain at all as it kept the temperature fairly cool. At the end of the boardwalk on the other side of the lake, we came across a muddy piece of ground and an unexpected old military tank. This seemed to be a real reminder of Myanmar's recent history.

After leaving the lake, we followed the map in our Lonely Planet guidebook to the Bogyoke Aung San Museum. Bogyoke (General) Aung San was a Burmese leader who helped fight against Japanese occupation during the Second World War, and brokered a deal with the British for independence in the late 1940's. Sadly, his assassination by his political rivals in 1947 threw the country into chaos and led to much of the current political situation as the military junta seized control. His daughter, British-educated Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is currently an opposition parliament member and champion for Burmese democracy, despite her nearly twenty years of house arrest and the laws barring her from gaining any real power.

General Aung San's House

The house where General Aung San and his family lived for just a few years until his death (when Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old) is now open to the public for a k300 ($0.30) admission price - worth way more than that. The house still has much of its original furniture, as well as several old family photos and articles explaining about the family's life there.

In fact, in the rainy grey afternoon, the house was a bit spooky. It seemed almost like something from a Hitchcock film, and a really dark somber mood hung over over the colonial estate that didn't really have anything to do with the dreary weather.

the General's official car

Leaving the Aung San House, we walked down a dirt street past a Buddhist monastery where the crimson robes of the Burmese monks were hanging to dry. Next we planned on visiting two stunning, but mostly unknown temples.

A City of Blood, Dreams, and Gold

Burma (also known as Myanmar) might seem like a strange choice for a vacation. After all, the country was isolated from the rest of the world for half a century, and has only just begun to allow visitors. Until just a few years ago, it was one of two places on Earth (the other being North Korea) where even Coca-Cola was not sold. Even now, while it appears that the country is slowly beginning to open up, and the powerful ruling military junta is considering relinquishing some of its power in parliament, freedom of travel is incredibly restricted. While foreign trade has slowly begun once again, the government still gets terrible press for its poor human-rights record. It is democratizing slowly, but has a long way to go. The 2015 elections will be a critical moment for the nation, although its future is unclear.

So why did I choose to visit Myanmar? I was curious. I wanted to see for myself what this mysterious country was really like. I feel very lucky to have had the chance to be a part of the first small wave of foreigners allowed to visit before the country officially opens up to visitors (supposedly in 2015, although I'm not sure about that date).

I spent the last day of my previous holiday at the small, hot, crowded, and generally unpleasant Burmese embassy in Bangkok. It took all day to file the necessary paperwork, and the staff were quite unhelpful. All this aside, Bangkok is the one place to get a Burmese visa processed in one day, no questions asked.

I left Bangkok's Don Muang Airport on Friday night flying Nok Air. I was fortunate to get a window seat, and as we took off I couldn't help thinking how impressive the city looked far below. The bright lights and busy streets made Bangkok look like a beautiful golden spiderweb.

I was struck by the opposite while we were landing in Yangon just over an hour later. My first impression was of how dark everything looked. There were very few lights below us, and the streets seemed more or less empty. We appeared to be flying over dense dark jungle, and the few dim lights I saw below made Yangon look more like a small rural suburb than the country's biggest city. I quickly realized that this trip would be very different from anywhere I'd been before.

Yangon (formerly Rangoon) once served as the capital of ancient Burmese kingdoms, British Burma (the easternmost territory of the British Raj), the Union of Burma, and the current Union of the Republic of Myanmar before the capital was unexpectedly moved to the newly constructed and eerily empty Napiadaw in 2011. In its time Rangoon was home to the likes of Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who called it "a city of blood, dreams, and gold." I was curious to see with my own eyes what this legendary city held for me.

Happy (Thai) Mother's Day 2014

Today is the birthday of HM Queen Sirikit of Thailand. As such, it's Mother's Day and a national holiday. Last week, we had a special assembly in the morning, and the students performed a traditional dance in honor of the occasion. Happy Mother's Day! In honor of her birthday, we teachers wear blue throughout the month of August.