Yangon Riffs -- Volume 1

“Stay in your lane” does not mean what we think it means. . .in the city, there are no defined lanes for cars.  There may be markings on the street, but no one pays any attention to them.  Because the government recently banned motorbikes, the roads aren’t as standstill bad as cities in Vietnam or China (or so I’ve been told, not having been either place yet), but they aren’t good.

I like and despise the countdown tickers at the lights – you can see how much longer you have a red light (or green).  The problem is, it’s depressing when the ticker is over 100 seconds long!

The food here is fine.  Faithful readers will note that I’m not raving about the food like I did in Cuba.  Carol is not a food adventurous person, and she has me concerned about getting sick.  We have had Burmese food – with the most interesting food at our lunch at the monastery (more on that later).

Having billboards and signs in English is surprising – even some of the traffic signs are in English.  I keep seeing this sign with the word “Slow” on it – but it seems superfluous as we creep along.

Sad to see so much litter and pollution.  At one point we went past a small inlet that was covered in floating trash, reinforced by trash along the banks.

At the airport upon arrival, we waited with Aye Aye for the car.  Next to us were four guys smoking coffin nails.  That disappointed me, but beyond those guys, I’ve only seen a handful of people smoking, so the initial sighting was an anomaly and not a trend.

Both guides whom we have had in the two days in Yangon did not hesitate to talk politics.  They also said that, until 2010, you could be thrown in jail for political activities, which included just talking about politics.

An acre of land in Yangon sells for $20 million dollars US.  We did not look at property here.

I have a very difficult time pronouncing words – my facility for foreign language is terrible, and Myanmar pronunciations escape me (well, except for Aye Aye and Ye Ye. . .haven’t yet met a “Jar Jar”).  The good news is, the Burmese people butcher my name as well, so I don’t feel so bad!  One person called me Mr. Blogger, which is a pretty good nickname for me if you are one of my loyal readers.  I do accept the mispronunciations with grace and good humor, and have yet to correct anyone – it doesn’t really matter.

The fun part is, they don’t even try to pronounce Carol’s name – Farquhar.  They look at the name on their list, say “Carol” and then look at her beseechingly.  They must love that!