Yangon is in a time warp stuck somewhere in the late 50s or early 60s. It's very green and lowrise. Cars are generally in excess of 20 years old on account of astronomical government tax on new cars and understandably mostly held together by string and sealing wax. Buses look like the odd jalopy that used to carry us to the boat house when I was at school. (Never did understand why in the mid-1980s the school bought a prop from a Miss Marple film.) The thing that stands out, quite literally from wherever you are in the city, is the Shewdagon Paya - a h-u-u-u-g-e pagoda in the bling-est gold.
Trust me, it's massive. Pagodas (a.k.a. payas or stupas) feature in mind boggling numbers throughout Myanmar.
Here's something that tickled me: a list of things from my hotel room that were 'for sale' (in other words how much you'd get charged in US$ if they went missing from the room). What on earth is a Happy Coat? I looked through my room and there were few items that could be described as 'happy' and even fewer that were coat like.
Bagan, Myanmar, 10-13 June 07
Bagan is on a broad floodplain of the Irrawaddy River and is famed for its incredible number (and size) of pagodas that are scattered across the plain. I on the other hand was more amazed by the size of this snail!
More, as ever, laters...
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