Momo's World: Welcome to Yangon

My second holiday season spent in Asia, things went... way Asian.

Whoever "Santacross" is...

December at school, as the temperature in Nan dropped to a FRIGID 50 degrees in the mornings (teeheeeeee), the four ajarn farangs and I did everything possible to get into the holiday spirit. Babyface's "Christmas With Babyface" (circa 1998) played on repeat in the English office; the aluminum Christmas trees and silky Chinese-style St. Nick costumes were taken out and dusted off from Ajarn Prakop's closet; class gifts were exchanged with glee (a Doreamon bath towel! A box of cereal!); and a pillow-stuffed cotton-ball-bearded Santa Claus (played beautifully this year by Steph) visited each and every classroom to sing carols... including Kindergarten, where one student, Meepoo, immediately burst into tears and now, in late January, still looks on in horror every time I come to teach his class.

And then, 'twas the Friday before Christmas, and Liza and I bussed off to sweaty, steamy Bangkok. We did our usual BKK routine: indulged in light-festooned shopping malls, luxury movie theaters, and 7-11s bigger than all of Nan's combined. We spent Christmas Day bopping around tourist-filled temples, eating Indian food in Chinatown, and the next day, commiserating with a friend who'd awoken from a night out with a large bloody gash above his eye (apparently a bar girl hit him with beer can... CLASSIC Bangkok).

First Hilary, then me. Burma's where it's at!

The REAL purpose of being in the big city, however, was to arrange our visas for a weeklong trip to Myanmar. Traveling to that neighboring country proved to be anything but simple. On Monday, we woke at some ungodly hour to beat a line of 50+ people, all trying to get a limited number of visas issued each day by the Burmese Embassy. I had to cross my fingers all day that the grumpy staff would overlook the fact that I technically had no more Visa pages in my passport (Oops!!) and give me my stamp on the Endorsements pages at the back. After that, it was budgeting and and exchanging all our Thai baht into crisp, blemish-free US dollars; there are no ATMs in Burma, no credit cards accepted, and dollars with the smallest tear can be flatly denied.

Finally, Tuesday arrived, and by 10am Burma-time, we'd landed in Yangon.

From the taxi window, Burma was immediately a fascinating, and utterly exotic place. Yangon is bustling, the pot-holed streets chaotic with mismatched taxi cabs coming apart at the seams, and plying red city buses that never come to a full stop to pick up and drop off passengers. The broken sidewalks are lined with grey buildings partly new and partly crumbling, interrupted by occasional glimmering golden pagodas, standing tall and proud above the mess. Almost every male at every age wears a traditional lungi skirt tied at their waist and a button-up shirt, while women and babies paint their faces with tanaka (sandalwood paste), cream-colored lines and large circles streaking their cheeks, noses and foreheads. Men chew and suck on betel nuts, spitting red juices out indiscriminately, so that walls and sidewalks and car doors across the city are stained in it. (At first I thought everybody had some kind of horrible gum disease and was constantly bleeding from their mouths; it's a really unattractive habit).

Liza and I settled into a cheap room at the Golden Smiles Inn - one of a handful of dingy, windowless, bathroomless, dimly-lit guesthouse rooms that we looked at, at a price far higher than what we'd find in Thailand. We then set out, taking on Yangon by foot.

Streets of central Yangon

Sule Pagoda

Mini nuns, returning from gathering morning alms

All afternoon, we walked along and across barely-pedestrian-friendly streets, past strong-smelling food carts and paint-stripped British colonial buildings. We exchanged our dollars into Myanmar kyat with a fanny-pack-wearing Indian man at the Bogyoke Aung San market... trying to avoid the banks and find a decent rate on the black market. We bought overpriced coffee at a restaurant atop Sakura Tower, the city's only "skyscraper," for an air-conditioned view that felt miles away from the streets below. The city center of Yangon is small enough that a barefoot toothless man wandering the same intersection crossed paths with us several times throughout the day, each time smiling and holding out his hand for one of the oranges we were carrying around from the market; each time we obliged, and he peeled and ate it on the spot. We stepped barefoot inside the Sule Pagoda, beside young maroon-robed monks and pink-and-orange nuns, no older than eight or nine years old; it seems like a quarter of the population, young and old, dons a robe and a shaved head in this country.

At sunset, we took a taxi across town to the 2,500 year old Shwedagon Pagoda - which is truly enormous, and whose glittering towering stupa can be seen from almost any open space in Yangon. We hired a guide, Win, who told me he'd been giving tours there for almost 15 years - though he looked no older than 30. He was incredibly friendly, and knew every detail of the pagoda and surrounding temples, about Yangon itself, about his country; by the end of the tour it was dark, and the entire gold-guilded grounds were brilliantly lit up, and we were exhausted.

Shwedagon Pagoda. BAM.

The following day we chowed down on free breakfast at Golden Smiles, arranged our bus tickets to Bagan that night, and then went wandering again. For the third time in our 36 hours in Yangon, we ran into Momo, an older Burmese man whom we'd met and chatted with at the first guesthouse we'd checked out, and whom we had since seen in various spots all over the city. He was probably in his sixties, wore a checkered button-up shirt and jeans (though he still carried a woven satchel that every Burmese man dons), had dark skin and Coke bottle glasses, and had his hair died almost a yellow blond color. He spoke perfect English, and was accompanied by a young backpacker guy from Mexico City, Jose, who'd apparently befriended him and was letting Momo show him around the city.

Momo asked us what we were up to, and since we had no plans, took Liza, Jose and I to the closest cafe and ordered us tea and coffee. Momo started teaching us phrases in Burmese - all sounding like no words I'd ever learned before - so many that it filled whole pages of my notebook and my hand and head ached by the end of the lesson. Momo paid for our drinks, making us practice "Thank you," and then walked us back downstairs to the bustling street below.

Momo parted ways with us as bizarrely as he met us - asking Liza if he could have a souvenir from America, perhaps a pen (which she gave him), then shaking our hands and saying goodbye. He wished us good luck on the rest of our trip, and told us to find him next time we were in Yangon. It was the warmest welcome we could have asked for.