On Friday morning we made it to Yangon, Myanmar. We met up
with our other friends we are traveling with (there are 9 of us in total – me,
Matt, Jen from Kellogg, then Kate, Marsh, Matt and Kristina from UNC, then
Aaron and Carlos, 2 of Matt’s friends from his time in NYC.) Really fun group
of folks altogether. We spent about 24 hours touring around Yangon, which is
the biggest and most developed city in Myanmar. We saw temples, a big lake, and
spent some time just wandering around the city looking at the wide mix of
architecture… Myanmar is an interesting place. Very very old with much of their own history, but it was
also occupied by the British from the 1880s until WW2 (the result of Burma losing the third of three Burmese-Anglo wars in the 1800s.) During WW2 it was
actually a sizeable battleground where Japan fought against Brits and
Americans, and much of the main city was destroyed. It is quite a poor country, so it seems they didn’t have the resources to repair a lot of the damage. Therefore, when you
are walking around Yangon you still see a lot of old buildings that are
partially destroyed and crumbling, but partially occupied either as apartments
or office buildings.
After a long day of touring we did dinner at a “very
authentic, non-touristy Myanmar restaurant” which is exactly what we requested…
e.g. we had no idea what we were ordering, and we were the only white people in
the restaurant. Everything tasted delicious – lots of noodle bowls, delicious
sauces, etc. Amazing!
Duh duh duh…. The next morning we took an early morning
flight to Bagan, checked into our hotel, took some naps, and proceeded to fall
like dominoes…. One by one we all came down with some major food poisoning, and
were pretty much out for the count for the following 36 hours. Let’s just say
it was a sad day and a half in Bagan. 8 out of 9 of us were totally done for,
with Aaron being the sole survivor (also coincidentally the sole person to
order fried rice instead of a noodle bowl at the restaurant the night before…)
However, today we are back in action! WOOHOO. Today has been
an incredible day. As a bit of background, Bagan is a tiny town in central
Myanmar, that has very little by way of infrastructure (e.g. only half a dozen
total restaurants, no chains or brands or anything you would recognize, rolling
black-outs throughout the day, a handful of small guesthouses, etc.) However,
at one point in the history of Burma, Bagan was home to over 10,000 temples. Today
close to 2,000 still stand. Most of the entire area is just giant desert fields
dotted with temples everywhere. The temples are mostly all connected with dirt
roads or paths, and you can just wander into any of them at your leisure. (No
one is there at most of them. They are just remains of years ago… most were
built between 1000-1200 AD). For $3, we each rented a bike for the day and
spent the whole day cruising around, checking out temples, walking up to the
top of some of them to get views of the area, etc. A very relaxed day – we ran
into a few other tourists, but mostly we encountered only stray dogs, herds of
cattle, and local farmers and ranchers. By 2pm we were all pretty templed-out
and starting to get hungry (which was exciting, considering that was the first
time we had been hungry in close to 3 days.) We found an awesome restaurant
called “Be kind to animals The Moon” (something was probably lost in
translation) -- a vegetarian restaurant that promised to use all fresh veggies
and purified water for everything. Also, it had been recommended by friends who
had been here last year, so we felt pretty excited about it. It did not
disappoint! We even got amazing guacamole, which was the first time I’ve seen
that offered anywhere we’ve been!
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