Myanmar for the tourist

[Nikom]

 

Sorry fellows that I did not answer some of your questions about the storm in Myanmar. I was in Bangkok when the storm hit Myanmar and went in the following week. Will write a short report later but have some new tourist data to share.

 

There is a new meeting place for local boys in Yangon. Every evening, but especially on the weekends the local gay boys gather on Sule Paya Road starting about 4:20/5:00 at an outside tea shop. Facing the front of Cafe Aroma there are two cinemas to your right, or south. Next to the second cinema there is an outside tea shop with a blue awning. That’s it! Go up take a seat and smile at one!

 

This is a expansion of the restaurant list posted in Part I:

 

The Ritz Cafe is a short walking distance over the rail lines from downtown Yangon. Address: No. 296/1 Shwedagon Pagoda Road, Dagon Twp. Tel: 253680 and 243934. This is a small quiet place for food, drink, and talk. Western and Asian food. Part of the Cafe is rather dark and you can see friends meeting there. If you are with a local person turn right when you enter as there is a nice room there.

 

365 is a new 24 hour cafe next door to Thamada Hotel within sight from the front of the Rail Station. Western and Asian food and drink. In fact this is the breakfast cafe for the hotel too. A good place to grab something to eat before heading back to your hotel. This place is always busy as you will see the teenages of the new Myanmar middle class here in numbers. You will also see many gay couples including local/frarang. Some of the waiters are gay!

 

Contacting Local boys before you go:

The best place to contact Myanmar gay boys is on Manjam.com. The local Yangon boys use this site to find local lovers but are open to contacts with tourist. This is the only site that also has contacts in Mandalay.

 

 

 

[Nikom]

 

Myanmar Trip Report, 2008

 

Sorry this is late. Jet lag and getting back into the swing of work has taken some time!

 

I originally was due in Yangon in the same week that the hurricane / cyclone Nargis hit. A week later my driver/guide emailed me that the main part of the storm hit the delta region and not Yangon, and that the electricity and water was turned back on in the city. I left a couple of days later.

 

Yangon: I located all of my friends, including the one on the other side of the river that I was concerned about. Yangon did not suffer from floods, but instead high winds. Very few buildings were damaged but the city lost many of the beautiful old hardwood trees probably planted during British colonial occupation. These trees, which lined almost every street and the University of Yangon campus, are mostly gone. Just toppled straight down towards the north across roads, streets, sidewalks, and walls.

 

The University of Yangon was the hardest hit as the campus has many trees. Here some of the buildings, especially the older faculty houses, were damaged because of falling trees. The other parts of the campus had little damage as these buildings are much newer. On the drive in from the new airport there were hundreds of workmen and the National Guard out clearing roads, streets, and sidewalks. In summary, Yangon now looks much different with so many of the trees gone. There are still many tropical trees as they were not damaged.

 

The worst hit part of Yangon was New Township where the working class of the city lives. Most of their houses were of thatch and most lost their roofs. Mostly repaired now as the citizens of the city all went out to help repair and rebuild the houses. The day we went out to this area many of the businesses, companies and wealthy families had sent money, supplies and workers out to repair the whole area. The National Guard was there helping to cut and remove trees and clear roads. The whole day was almost like a festival as there were so many people there building roofs and making repairs, and local groups served free food and water to everyone.

 

All over the city there were cleanup crews. Some Army, some private. The falling trees also broke many of the stone fences so these are being repaired also. Many new jobs opened up for clean up crews! Wood from all of the trees was stacked along the road and people come by and pick up to use for cooking.

 

All of my student friends were involved in the relief effort. The university and high school students formed themselves into teams and went around their neighborhoods collecting food, clothes, tools, building supplies, money and rice. When they had a load they would charter a truck and head south. Reaching their destination they distributed what they had brought and then stayed a couple of days helping with repairs.

 

I got a special permit to go across the river to my friend’s village. We spent two days re-roofing his family home and helping repair several others. We bought the zinc and had it delivered and many in the village came to help with the work.

 

Consequences of the storm: Because so many trees blew over the price of wood to make charcoal for cooking and the price of charcoal itself all dropped drastically. As so many trees had toppled over on walls and fences around property and as these trees had to be removed and repairs made hundreds of workman were employed to do the work and make repairs.

 

Many of the satellite dishes in the city blew away. Those merchants who had a stock of dishes were making a pile of money! On our way to Bago we saw three truckloads of dishes heading towards Yangon, probably from Thailand.

 

Previously I had taken the train or flew to Mandalay. This time we went by car for a long two-day journey. Saw parts of the country I had never seen before, went past the new Capital of Myanmar, before we reached Mandalay. Stayed overnight about halfway at Mother’s House Hotel in Taung Ngu. My driver knows all the good local restaurants and tea shops along the way, which added a plus to the trip.

 

Mandalay: It seemed that everyone in the city was in someway involved in storm relief. There were collection centers for money, rice, clothes, tools, etc. all over the city. Much of the collecting, as in Yangon, was being done by the university students. I checked out a couple of new restaurants and went across the Ayeyarwada River to Mingun to pay school fees for my student. Because Mandalay Royal Hotel was still closed we stayed at Mandalay View Inn. A very nice hotel with great services. We were made to ‘feel at home’! Stopped by and chatted with the girl at Mandalay Royal and was told that they would be opening ‘within a few days’.

 

I had never been to Monywa before and while I was not impressed with the city nor their hotels [nor being attacked by huge gangs of monkeys at the caves] the visit to the Thanboddhay Paya was very much worth the visit and should not be missed. Lonely Planet guidebook says, “There are 845 small stupas that surround and rise up to the richly decorated central stupa reportedly containing 582,357 images”!

 

On the way back from Mandalay, at Bago, we headed east to Hpa-an, an ancient capital in Kayin State. This area of the country, next to the border with Thailand, has some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the country. Tall jagged mountain peaks in a tropical flowering forest with plants which seems moist, growing, and blossoming. We drove on into Mon State to Mawlamyaing, one of my favorite cities in Myanmar. Located on a wide river at the mouth of the Gulf of Mottama, the city has great seafood, many very old temples, and is near the beach. All along the river is a wide sidewalk and street which in the evening becomes a walk way for the city residents. Kids run up and down on their motorbikes, lovers meet here, and many people exercise here.

 

This year Setse Beach, south of the city, was almost deserted. Many folks from Mawlamyaing have stopped visiting on the weekend as many bodies have washed up from the delta region. Those bodies that could be moved were taken for cremation at a nearby cemetery but some were in such bad shape that they had to be cremated right on the beach and then the remains taken back to the cemetery. I walked only about one km on the beach and counted 29 spots where bodies had been burned.

 

The area around Bago is a large palm tree area and the area where a lot of thatch for houses is made. Both on our way to Mandalay, going to Mawlamyaing, and returning to Yangon we saw hundreds of people making thatch in the yards of houses and loading the sheets of thatch onto hundreds of huge trucks. The trucks, many private and many army, all were headed for the Delta Region. In almost every loading area we saw a military person with a bag of money who was paying on-the-spot for the thatch and also paying the truck drivers.

 

Back in Yangon the city still seemed so different without all the trees!

 

~~~~

During the Cyclone Nargis relief some ‘misinformation’ was published in the West. [Many political opinions too but I will not go into those.]

 

- Nargis hit the Delta Region of Myanmar only. Not the whole country. This region comprises less than 8% of the whole country.

 

- Yangon is the commercial capital of the country. It has doubled in size every two years, both outward and upward, since ca. 1997. Anyone who took the circle train around Yangon five years ago went through forests and rice fields. Now you go through sprawling suburbs and new factory areas.

 

- The current political capital of Myanmar is Naypyidaw. It is located in central Myanmar on the vast Mandalay plains in a rice and corn farming area. It is not, as BBC claims, in the jungle in the mountains. Yangon was never the capital before British occupation and colonization. It remains the business and commercial capital.

 

- Over 2000 international visas were issued for relief work following Nargis. [Published by Asean]

 

[Nikom]

 

Another new restaurant in Yangon:

 

DEE DEE THAI RESTAURANT

The best Thai food in Yangon! Not expensive! Not in the tourist area. Menu not in English - ask for Tun the manager. He speaks good English and is MORE than happy to help. Located near Dagon Centre and near the Myaynigone bus stop [everyone knows this stop] No. 152/A, San Choung Street, Shinsaw Pu Quarter. Tel: 510898 [Located about ten steps off of Paya Road, the main street.]

 

Many cute waiters and friend staff!

 

 

[Guest]

Thank you SO much for these reports. It really does give me a great feel about what the place is like. It is much appreciated!