7/12 Day 2 in Yangon

7/12/2013: I was woken up in the morning when the cleaning crew came into the 8 bed dorm room I was sleeping in and didn't notice me, the only one remaining, sleeping in the corner. Eventually they saw me and scampered out but it was too late and I was awake.

I wandered through Shrimp Hell Market again, looking for a big poncho for my upcoming trek, but was unsuccessful. I passed by my umbrella guy, then up and over the train tracks, where I actually got a double-take from a girl coming out of an office. It's a bit odd being such an unusual sight, but also it's pretty amusing.

A guy around my age followed me for about 15 minutes trying to tell me something in Burmese which I didn't understand. I finally handed him 1,000 kyat and told him to leave me alone. I was meeting Toki and Naing at Shwedagon Pagoda at 11am, so I eventually caught a cab so I could get there in time. I paid the $5 foreigner fee, and we took the escalator up to the pagoda. This is a very important Buddhist site in Myanmar, and many make the pilgrimage to the pagoda at some point in their life. We got off the escalator and were blinded by the bright white tiles and the shimmering huge golden pagoda. The area was a lot more involved than I expected, with lots of smaller shrines off to the side. The main attraction, though, towers over everything else and is much more impressive than I was expecting. 

There are all sorts of smaller sculptures and features at the base of the pagoda, and people pay their respects to these different smaller deities as they circle the pagoda. One series of figures encircling the pagoda is different animals representing different days of the week. So if you were born on a Wednesday, you go to the animal that represents Wednesday and say your prayers there. I thought the animals were funny:

Monday=Tiger, Tuesday=Lion, Wednesday=Elephant, Thursday=Hamster, Friday=Mouse, Saturday=Dragon, Sunday=Dragon Slayer.

Unfortunately, I was born on a Thursday.

Shwedagon Pagoda

The diminutive yet powerful dragon slayer

My hamster deity, barely visible but getting lots of attention

After taking lots of pictures, we drove to a nearby mall and enjoyed some ramen-like soup and air conditioning. I learned that Toki is from the Karen ethnic minority, also from Shan state, and that he actually spent the first few years of his life in Chiang Mai, with Thai being his first language. He eventually forgot most of that, but he can still speak Karen as well as Burmese and English. There are some Karen people in Thailand, too, and I often saw tuk-tuk drivers in Chiang Mai trying to sell trips to tourists to go see the Karen hill-tribe villages with "longneck ladies."

Naing, on the other hand, is of Chinese descent - his grandparents emigrated to Myanmar from China. He speaks Mandarin and Burmese, and understands English well but struggles speaking it. His parents run a snackfood company, and he works there as well.

We didn't have enough time to go to the National Museum before I had to catch my bus, so they generously drove me back to my guesthouse where I picked up my backpack, and then they drove me outside of town to the bus station. On the bus, my seat was right next to a guy that was on my flight from Phnom Penh to Yangon. At the visa counter at the airport, one of the immigration officials gave me his passport, thinking I was him because we look pretty similar. We also have the same first name, so it was a little creepy that in addition to looking similar and having the same first name, we were also doing the same exact itinerary in Myanmar and sitting next to each other on the bus. He's from South Carolina but lives in Phoenix and was on a long vacation traveling through Cambodia and Myanmar. His plan was actually to take  the bus all the way to Inle Lake, whereas my plan was to get off a little sooner and then "trek" the rest of the way to the lake over two days. The bus ride allowed us to get some nice views of the countryside before the sun went down, then it was a dark, bumpy ride. It seems that roads in Myanmar were built to be wide enough only for one bus and maybe a motorbike, so oncoming traffic has to get out of the way. The road was bumpy the whole time and it was difficult to sleep. After around nine hours, I was woken up and we had arrived in Kalaw. I stumbled out and was greeted by a guy who led me to the hotel I had booked, and I slept for four hours before having to wake up to start my trek.

Photo album: https://picasaweb.google.com/108933817613007660268/20130712YangonDay2?authuser=0&feat=directlink