Yangon Part One - I Got Yer Culture Shock Right Here
Yangon, Myanmar
After enduring a metaphoric hernia of Ugly Tourists in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, I naively presumed that my time in an off-the-beaten-path, still emerging tourist destination like Myanmar would be a welcome reprieve from weeks of dipshit overload, but this delusion was squashed before I even left Bangkok. Twelve seconds before the shuttle bus to my Bangkok Airways plane to Yangon was going to pull away from the gate, two loud, swearing, rambunctious Aussies blasted into the area like sticks of unwashed, hungover, foul mouthed TNT. After holding all of us up on the boiling bus, while they searched for tickets and flirted with the check-in girls, they slogged onto the bus and insincerely apologized to anyone who would listen, explaining that they pride themselves on being late for, or better yet missing, all of their flights, proudly adding that they had managed to only suffer through an average of three hours of sobriety per day since they arrived in Asia. Then, in eerie unison, the pair looked at each other as similar dim light bulbs flickered on in their heads at the realization that they were about to board an international flight and, fuck oth!, they would probably get free booze!!! (Note: for the non-Aussies, that wasn’t a typo, for some reason “fuck oth” is akin to “fuck yeah!” in the cannon of Aussie slang)
Shwedagon Paya – Sweeping up at the end of the day A few blocks later I was accosted by a young man with excellent English skills. At the time I was standing on a street corner in near darkness squinting at the writing on both my map and the soot covered street sign written in 10 point font to make sure I hadn’t missed my turn. Soe-Win-Naing was at my side in seconds asking me if I was looking for Motherland and assured me I was on the right track, after which we fell into a pleasant conversation. It turns out that he had tried to speak to me earlier in the day while Wrong Way Singaporean Guy and I were hustling to the black market before close of business. Considering I was burdened with babysitting Wrong Way and another delay would have meant spending a night with no local currency, I curtly blew off Soe-Win-Naing at the time. He led me over to his tea and soup stall and fed me some Chinese tea as we chatted. At one point he went a little overboard extolling how handsome I was. I would learn later that Myanmar men regularly and honestly lavish other men with compliments about their looks, even if they aren’t trying to get money out of them. Moreover they are also much more affectionate with each other than (sober) western men. In Muslim countries it’s common to see guys walking down the street holding hands, but in Myanmar they also put arms around each other and idly hug one another, meanwhile the same public display of affection between a man and woman would be hugely uncool. Strange, but true.
Soe-Win-Naing invited me to attend his English class the following day. As much as I would have relished in this bonding with the locals I already had a full schedule with Toe and our race through Yangon’s widespread, most gnarly tourist sights. In his excitement to talk about his English class, Soe-Win-Naing showed me two of the books his class was reading at the moment; “Duty” by some Scottish author, which was mainly about self-reliance - probably required reading, dictated by the Myanmar government so people don’t go crazy and expect any form of assistance - and “Beautiful Myanmar” by native Khin Myo Chit, which dealt with general Burmese cultural, social and religious facts and stories. I eventually excused myself saying I needed to hoard sleep for the action of the coming day, but I promised to stop and visit him the following evening on my way back from the city. I was heartened to see that Motherland had one mother of a diesel generator pumping away when I arrived. It was the only illuminated building on the entire street and even better, the air conditioning was blowing away like nothing was wrong. The desk clerk assured me that blackouts were very uncommon and the juice supplied by the city would probably be back on by morning.
