Yangon - not recommended?
For July, Yangon was marked as "not recommended" on one of the sites I'd looked at before leaving on this trip, in addition to this there weren't many bloggs that really talked positive about the city.
There were however some reasons why I wanted to go there anyway. Main reasons being; hadn't been there before, and that we needed to go to a city with an international airport if we were to reach Siem Reap, and I'd rather go to a new place than back to a city I'd already seen during this trip. Yangon was, at least in the centre, very crowded and people really didn't pay much attention to you as a tourist as they did in some of the other cities we'd seen. There were however the quite obvious tourist traps and trappers around the pagodas. It kind of annoys me that part of me has turned into such a cynical that I look for the faults in peoples stories. Close to one of the pagodas we were approached by a guy who did the same as all scams like this, first give us a lot of information about the place, then slip in some sobstory that tourists usually eats up and then towards the end find a spot where we really can't move past him without pushing him aside where he asks for money. This time it was for helping orfants.
We did however choose to give him some as the story could have been true, and no matter what he did offer us some decent guiding and understanding of the pagoda and city. Among the facts we were told which I did not know of was that the calendar in Myanmar has 8 days per week since Wednesday is one day before noon and one after. All days have their own animal and as in many of the other countries in this region it's depending on what day of the week you are born. Going into China-town at night offered an overload of impressions, both good and not so good. All the smells, all the people and all that was happening everywhere could be a lot to take in for some, but it just takes some getting used to. There was however a very skinny, and probably quite mad, guy walking up and down the street mostly looking for tourist women he'd try to kick. His aim was however lousy, and from the look of him he'd probably taken a few punches for doing something similar earlier. There was also this disgusting guy with his small gang of younger boy who suddenly sat down at the table next to us. He never did anything to us, but the general feeling of him just made our skin crawl. The food was however excellent.
Shwedagon pagoda also got a visit, and that was very well worth the trip. Apparently over 14 tons of pure gold was used on the main stupa. No real point in writing to much about it, the pictures speak for themselves.
After a good look at the numerous minor stupas we went out and found a small indoor amusement park with an enterance cost of 200 kyats (less than NOK 2 / USD 0,2) Wasn't the freshest place, but they had some fun games, and they did have bumper cars where they played "Snow - Informer" to everyones great joy.
