Awesome Myanmar (Part 3): Kandawgyi Lake and the Yangon Train!

The majestic Shwedagon viewed from Kandawgyi Lake

The 1.5 hour difference between Manila and Yangon made me wake up very early on Day 2 of my Myanmar trip. Breakfast was to be served at 7:30 so I had a good hour to do a morning walk around the block where my hotel is. I was hoping to see the monks in their maroon robes walking in a single file and beg for alms-food, but I was disappointed, I think they went even earlier than I thought. But still, it was nice to see Bahan township wake up. Like I said in my previous post, my hotel was located in an upper-middle class neighbourhood, just around the block is the Embassy of the Republic of Singapore, a mini-mall and a primary school. On my way back to the hotel I bought a sampling of Myanmar street food, they were Myanma-versions of turon, lumpia and empanada. 

I was still tired from the previous day's tour of the Swedagon and People's park that I decided to stay in the hotel until check-out. But by 10-am, the now infamous Yangon black-outs began. Yes, Myanmar faces power outages even more frequently than the Philippines. They still do not have reliable sources of energy so black-outs are part of daily life in Yangon. So with the black-out, I got myself moving and packed my bag because that day I was leaving for Bagan.

Kandawgyi Lake

After checking out, I went to Kandawgyi Lake. This lake provides a stunning view of the Shwedagon Pagoda and is also home to the Karaweik Palace, an iconic landmark of Myanmar. The Karaweik is in fact the main element of the label on Myanmar Beer. This landmark is a concrete structure but was patterned after the Pyigyimon Royal Barge, a boat that was exclusively for the Kings of Myanmar.

Benches with the Karaweik Palace in the background.

Entrance to the Karaweik Palace.

The Karaweik Palace, a national icon of Myanmar.

A label of Myanmar Beer. photo courtesy: http://rangoon-birma.de/

The Karaweik now is a restaurant and around it are other smaller restaurants and a small playground. Entry into this are costs 300 Kyats. Do note that this part of the Kandawgyi Lake where the Karaweik Palace can be found is separate from the bigger Kandawgyi Nature Park. I came to know this distinction because I attempted to go the Nature Park but to no avail, they are separated by the lake itself and one needs a boat to cross them. In my last day in Myanmar I returned to Kandawgyi Lake this time entering the Nature Park, but that would be for another post.

A little off the lake, about 10-min walk is Mingalar Zay, a dry goods market. This was not in my itinerary, but I was happy to have found the place which was Divisoria-ish. I thought I would come back here in my last day to look and shop for pasalubong.

Yangon Central Station and the Circular Train

After going around the vicinity of the market, I took a cab and went downtown to Yangon Central Station. This was the main attraction for the day. Yangon Central Station is the central station of Myanmar's railway line. It was built during the British Raj and it's a huge complex. One could easily get lost inside. Two railway lines operate circling the city of Yangon, one going clockwise and the other anti-clockwise, these services are generally called the Yangon Circular Train. Due to reviews of tourists in TripAdvisor, these two lines are gaining popularity as a tourist attraction on its own. The trip which begins and ends in platform 6 or 7 of the Central Station takes 2.5 to 3-hrs. and passes through 39 stations. Being Yangon's single most extensive commuter train, it offers a wonderful glimpse of daily life in Yangon both from the outside and from the inside of the train. Before, tourists were asked to pay 1 USD for the ride, but beginning 1 April 2014 locals and foreigners alike pay the same 300 Kyats.

Yangon Central Station

Platform 6 where the Yangon Circular Train parks.

Market scenery in one of the stops of the Circular Train.

Men and Women alike in Myanmar wear their traditional longyi.The "make-up" on the girls wearing red in front is called Thanaka.

Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary

My train left central station at about 13:39 so it went back at around 16:10. After alighting from the train, I went out of Yangon Central Station and walked through downtown Yangon until suddenly I saw a bell tower. So I followed it and whoa, I found St. Mary's Cathedral, the Catholic Cathedral of Yangon. It had a very outstanding facade and interior. For a country that's anything but Catholic, this church was grand.

St. Mary's Cathedral, Yangon, Myanmar

The interior of the church.

After my brief stop at the church, I took the cab to Aung Mingalar Bus Station. It was a good thing I hailed a cab early, I didn't expect the trip to take 1-hr due to the crazy traffic jam within Yangon.

My taxi driver took time also looking for the gate of JJ Bus Express at Aung Mingalar. But eventually he found it. After paying for my reserved ticket, I went out to look for a restaurant, it was only then that I realized I haven't had food since the breakfast in the hotel.

About 30-min more and I boarded my VIP Bus bound for Bagan, it was a 9-hr sleeper-ride from Yangon. The bus, filled practically with tourists, slowly began its journey and thus ended my second day in Myanmar.

Awesome Myanmar (Part 2): Destination Yangon!

 
Our AirAsia flight to Yangon was on time. The flight was filled with many Myanma overseas workers who were returning home, there were just about 15 of us who were tourists. I realised Myanmar was just like the Philippines in terms of overseas workers because when I reached the airport, they had special counters and lanes for returning overseas foreign workers, just like in NAIA. These counters and lanes virtually did not exist in Changgi, KLIA and Dubai (the other airports I have been to so far).

AirAsia markets its destinations by putting catchy posters of them on their overhead bins and tray tables. The aircraft I boarded offered a last minute of humour to me on my way to Yangon because it carried the poster to Cebu, Philippines! It gave me a piece of home on my way to a very foreign country!

AirAsia ad for its destination - Cebu, a little piece of home on my tray-table on my flight to Yangon.

Arrival at Yangon International Airport

Arriving 9-min earlier than scheduled, entry-formalities was very swift because PH passport holders are exempt from getting a visa. The immigration officer asked me only one question, "how many days will you be staying?" I lazily answered, "6 days only ma'am." After that, oh what joy there is hearing the stamping by an immigration officer on my passport! I was given 14-days, but heck, I'd be in Myanmar for only 6.

Because I did not have check-in luggage, and of course I had nothing to declare at customs, so exit was easy for me. At the ground level of Yangon Airport there are several money changers, I immediately exchanged my USDs to Myanma Kyats (pronounced "chats"). 

Tip: Believe it when travel blogs say exchange your money at Yangon Airport. The rate at the airport is as good as those in downtown, the difference is only about 0.4%, but the airport is safer and there is virtually no chance you'll be ripped off by sleight of hand. 

I was happy because at the time I arrived in Yangon the exchange rate was 994 kyats against the dollar. This was a better rate than the 960 kyats against the dollar (prevailing rate around August) I used to make my budget, this immediately translated to a 3.5% buffer for incidental expenses. 

10, 000 Myanmar Kyats.

Hearing an English Mass in Myanmar

After I got my Kyats, I immediately got-off the airport and looked for a taxicab. It wasn't too difficult. I got a taxicab to St. Augustine Church in Inya Road. The driver could speak English so it wasn't really difficult, I just handed him the card containing the address of the Church and he quoted me 7000 MMK for the trip. I wasn't in the mood to bargain, I just acquiesced. My first destination was St. Augustine because I arrived in Myanmar on a Sunday. Of the few Catholic churches in Yangon, only St. Augustine offered an English Mass at 10-am. Fortunately, it was also way uptown and nearer my hotel. I arrived very early, there was still a Korean Mass going on, I just stayed in one of the back pews and prayed and gave thanks that I arrived safely in my destination.

Interior of the Church of St. Augustine, Inya Rd., Kamayut Township, Yangon.

As the church slowly filled up for the English Mass, I noticed many Filipinos coming in. I began to hear chatters in Tagalog and oh well, after being out on foreign travel for a few times, I think I already have developed the radar to spot Filipinos whenever they're near.

After Mass, I immediately looked for a taxicab to bring me to my hotel. It was only then that I experienced how difficult it was because even if I had my hotel's address, it was written in English! The drivers I spoke with could not read English. I brought out my iPad where I stored a map to my hotel from the church, but the driver could not read the map as well because it was in English. Finally one driver let me in, even though he only understood half of the address. Luckily the address card I brought contained the telephone number of the hotel, so my driver made a phone call to the hotel to ask for direction. After less than 20-min I arrived at my hotel safely.

The hotel was in an upper-middle class neighbourhood located on the same block as the Embassy of Singapore. It was quiet and it had a good view of the Shwedagon Pagoda. There were only a few guests, so I was able to check-in earlier than scheduled.

My hotel room on my first night in Yangon.

A view of the Shwedagon from my hotel.

I rested for a while and checked the TV stations on the "cable" TV. Apparently, there weren't any International channels available. So I just imbibed the culture and watched a comedic-looking Myanma sitcom.

The National Museum

After an hour of resting, I once again went out and rode a taxicab to the National Museum. Not learning from my earlier experience, I stepped of the hotel without asking them to write my destination in Myanma script on a piece of paper. So I had to hail 3 taxis before I got a helpful lady on the street to talk to the driver and explain where I was going. Gladly I was able to get to the Museum. The Museum is situated near the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it's at the end of an "Embassy Row" which are on their own, nice attractions, some notable ones are the Embassies of Thailand and Pakistan.

The National Museum of Myanmar was a good starting point for me because it was there that I got to learn the proud history of this nation. The museum offers a bird's eye view of the land, the heritage and the culture called Myanmar, this foreign land I was in. The artefacts on display were absolutely amazing. It was just unfortunate that cameras are not allowed inside the museum.

The facade of the National Museum of Myanmar.

Statues of Notable Myanma Kings

A cannon replica on display in the People's Park.

Peoples Park and the Shwedagon Pagoda

After viewing the final exhibit room in the museum and having had my comprehensive introduction into Myanma history and culture, I left for the Shwedagon Pagoda. On my way to the museum earlier I actually passed by the Shwedagon and People's Park already. However, I purposely just passed over them because the museum was open only until 4:30pm, besides I followed the advice I got from TripAdvisor that one of the most spectacular view of the Shwedagon is seen at sunset. Because I had so much time before the Yangon sunset of around 5:50pm that day, I just walked my way though "Embassy Row" and back to the People's Park, it was quite a walk of about 20-min.

I entered People's Park through a very small gate and I didn't see any signage that says as a foreigner I had to pay an attraction fee. I simply went in and blended with the locals. The park contained an old Fokker plane (I didn't know why it was on display there), a playground for children and lots of shade from trees. It was the perfect spot to rest after the walk from the museum. After surveying the more important parts of the park I chanced upon a small restaurant within; because it was high-tea time, there were a lot of locals taking their afternoon beverage. I was quite pleased to know I was the only foreigner in that restaurant. It was then that I remembered I haven't taken anything since my arrival in Yangon, not even a drink of water! So I sat down and asked for the menu. Lo and behold, the menu was written all in Myanma script except for the beverages! (So this place was rarely visited by tourists after all because their menu didn't even try to accommodate foreigners who couldn't read a single word written in Myanma) Even more, the menu didn't also contain pictures! Here, again the friendliness of the people made things a lot easier, I was brought to the counter which had a good view of the kitchen. I saw the noodles and other prepped food stuff and the lady in the counter in her broken English politely asked which one I wanted. So explained to her I just want fried rice with some vegetables on it. Whew, I returned to my place and waited anxiously on what concoction she'd give me with that instruction I gave her. Fair enough, I got what I ordered, I just motioned to the waiter that I'd want a tin of Coca-Cola too and a bottle of water (most of the people on the other tables had these so I pointed at these items on their table hoping the waiter will understand what I said and pointed at at the same time). I was very satisfied with my first meal in Myanmar, it was a plateful and for only 2,000 MMK, mind you it was way more, in terms of quantity and better, in terms of quality, than the average Chowking Yangchow Fried Rice. I got free soup and side dish as well! A few minutes later, two French couples I recognised back from the museum came in and ordered up a bottle of Myanmar beer each. Too bad I'm allergic to brewer's yeast and I didn't want to take the risk of getting an allergy attack in Myanmar, so I simply passed trying the Myanmar Beer.

Menu of the Restaurant inside People's Park, all written in Myanma.

My first meal in Myanmar, stir-fried rice.

After getting refreshed, I paid my bill and then started walking again, this time already heading towards the Shwedagon Pagoda. I noticed that the couple I saw earlier were questioned by the guards of the park, it was only then that I realised they were made to pay for the park fee. Ah, it was one of the times I felt so proud of my brown skin, I easily passed as a local, so the guards never bothered asking me to pay the park fee!

From the People's Park the Shwedagon Pagoda shone brightly. I walked another 5-min towards the West gate, it was around 4:20pm, a full hour and a half before sunset. The Shwedagaon, like most of the Buddhist pagodas throughout Myanmar, have entrances on the four main directions of the North, South, East and West. In the case of the Shwedagon, these entrances are filled with vendors in market-like fashion with people selling flowers and incense for the devout and souvenir items for the tourists. Because the Shwedagon is seated on a hill, getting inside involves climbing up the stairs that are strewn with these little shops. From what I observed, service-elevators were available in the North, South and East Entrances. The West gate stands unique in that, there are virtually no vendors and no service-elevators. Instead it has about 3-flights of escalators. Entering through the West gate was way better than entering the other three gates because using the escalators provided a good view of the Shwedagon complex (compare this to the box-like closed service-elevators) and there were no vendors to mind.

View of the Shwedagon from the People's Park.

Getting nearer the Shwedagon.

In Myanmar, whenever anyone enters a pagoda, one must remove his/her footwear, including the socks. In Shwedagon this is most true. There are lockers provided at the foot of the entrances to the pagoda, but I followed the tip of bringing a bag to put one's shoes and carry them throughout the pagoda. This tip is particularly good if one decides to enter through one gate and exit through another one.

The West Gate of the Shwedagon with one of its two Burmese Lion Guard.

Tip: When going inside pagodas in Myanmar bring a handbag that could hold your shoes or whatever footwear you're wearing and carry them with you inside the temple.

At the top of the escalator are the booths where tickets to the pagoda are bought. Going inside the Shwedagon is free for the locals but a foreigner has to pay 8,000 MMK, this fee is good for 1-visit only and includes a map of the entire Shwedagon complex. I was very lucky because when I entered the Swedagon a group of about 30 women were chanting Buddhist prayers. The chant made the entire experience more mystical.

The Shwedagon Pagoda is considered to be Myanmar's holiest site. It houses two of the Buddha's hair which were given to two brother-merchants who met Gotama Buddha in his wanderings after he attained enlightenment. These two brothers returned to the land of Okkalapa (the ancient name of Yangon) and housed these relics within a pagoda, thus the Shwedagon!

There are other sites to see on the pagoda grounds because Buddhist countries like Korea, and China etc. would send gifts to the Pagoda, these gifts come in forms like a statue of the Buddha in jade, or prayer bells and so on. There are also many mini-pagodas and in general the atmosphere in the pagoda is that of one big social hall. I spent about two-hours wandering round and round the pagoda waiting for the sunset to come. Finally it did and I got a very wonderful view. The last rays of the sun provided glow to the golden pagoda and it shone brightly! The view was absolutely stunning!    

View of the Main Pagoda upon entry through the West gate.

Pagoda grounds with people circumambulating.

Little Buddhist nuns having a little bit of fun on the pagoda grounds.

The main pagoda at sunset.

Two local visitors mesmerized by the gleaming of the main pagoda after sunset.

I stayed for about 30-min more to wait for the crowd to get smaller and to take photos of the smaller pagodas at nightfall.

Other pagodas can be found throughout the pagoda complex.

Having had my fill of the photos, I left the Shwedagon through the East gate passing through the shops about to close and monks going back to their monastery within the pagoda complex. When I returned back to my hotel, I was hungry after almost 3 hours of going around the Shwedagon. It was a good thing my hotel had an in-house restaurant, so I ordered up a simple dinner of fried noodles, which they happily obliged to serve me.

Before I retired for the night, I recollected on how wonderful the entire day was, my first full day in Myanmar was over!

Awesome Myanmar (Part 1): Getting There!

This year has been a year of travel for me. After years of hesitating to get a passport, I finally was forced to get one last January. So what do you do with a passport? Why, travel of course!

This last trip was made very special because it was my first time to travel solo. Before I did solo-travel, like going to Puerto Princesa for the first time, or going to Manila from time to time, but with these I get consoled by the fact that when I got there I had friends and acquaintances to go to. Myanmar was different: I went there, knowing not a single soul in that blessed land! Months before my travel I was excited, but weeks into it made me nervous by the day, until I even decided not to go. But reason got the better of my feelings, and the trip went through. 

In a certain sense, I see my Myanmar trip as a personal odyssey, sort of a test of my limits, and boy am I just glad it came out great!

The Air Tickets and Preparation

One thing I learned from this trip is that nothing can beat a well-planned and prepared trip. Going to Yangon, Myanmar from Iloilo, Philippines was a 39-hour journey! You may ask, why that long? (1) As of writing time, there are no direct flights to Yangon from Manila (this may change in a year's time if Cebu Pacific will launch it's Manila-Yangon route which has been in the rumour mill since June this year), (2) I flew using different carriers, I took Cebu Pacific from Iloilo to Manila and Manila to Kuala Lumpur but I used AirAsia from Kuala Lumpur to Yangon. Finally, (3) all my tickets were on promo, so I had to add buffer-hours (I felt the standard 4-hour between-flight stop-over was not enough) to ensure the continuity of my flights.

Getting my tickets was epic on it's own, I booked my Iloilo-Manila-Iloilo tickets way back in February when I didn't have any plan going to Myanmar at all; at that time, I bought the tickets only for our Fall Break. My Manila-Kuala Lumpur flight was booked 3-months after. I just came from my Abu Dhabi vacation and stumbled upon a piso-fare promo by Cebu Pacific. I bought the ticket because I was still raring to go to Nepal, and thought anytime AirAsia offered promotional offers for Kathmandu I'd grab it! Barely 5-days after, AirAsia did offer promo fares but Kathmandu was not on the list, so the choice was cut-down to Colombo, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Yangon, Myanmar. The biggest plus for Yangon was the visa-free entry for Philippine passport holders, this greatly decreased chances of set-backs like denial of entry etc., noting that I would travel solo. Once the choice was made in favour of Myanmar, the trip began to take form, as early as the second week of June.

Fears and Second-Thoughts

School began, and I was back in the daily grind, and then it felt like one by one things were not going my way. Just barely a week after classes officially began our school calendar was changed, now the Fall Break was set a week later which meant all the bookings I got for the trip were a week ahead of school break and I could not possibly be allowed by my bosses to leave! Then in August, I used my travel fund to purchase a luxury item at this time my travel fund was now close to zero. Plus somewhere in the middle of August, a second Malaysian Airline flight was shot down over the Ukraine (the likelihood of this happening was so improbable noting that the same airline suffered a mysterious disaster just 3 months before) and another plane overshot the runway at Taipei, both events occurred just days from each other. It really felt 2014 was not such a good year for flights. By the end of August, I was no longer in the mood to fly and to go on with my trip to Myanmar.

When the Seasons Change our Minds Change Too

When the wet months were over, and September came in the view, it felt also like the clouds of doubt that were on my mind gradually went away. It came out that even though the Fall Break was moved, the week when my Myanmar Travel fell was Sports Week, so I could still request for a leave because I don't have classes to give during those days. My financial problem was solved because I worked part-time giving lectures in a university here. And well, I dealt with my irrational fears with good economic sense. I told myself that if I didn't push through with the trip, it would be like throwing away all the money I spent for my tickets (they were all non-refundable because they were on promo).

A month after I decided not to pursue my trip, my decision changed, and now what was left was to plan the details of the trip.

The Power of the Internet and Travel Blogs

Planning for a trip these days have become democratised thanks heavily to the internet. Gone are the days when travel itineraries were the exclusive game of travel and tour agents. Today one can build a travel itinerary from the ground-up with only an internet access and a credit-card. Here is a sampling of the travel blogs I read to plan my trip: 

• Small World
• IronWulf
• Rica's RuckSack
• Ambot-ah 

These are on top, of course, of TripAdvisor, Booking.com and Agoda. The travel season to Myanmar is between November through April. I went on the last week of October which is pre-season, so I booked all my hotels ahead of time to avoid the stress of knocking at the doorsteps of inns looking for a place to lay my head for the night. It made my trip more convenient also because I didn't have to carry cash to pay for my hotels. I generally don't feel comfortable carrying lots of cash and prefer to pay my purchases through ATM or credit card. However, as many travel blogs and websites point out, Myanmar has a long way to go in terms of cashless transactions, which was still true during my trip. Paying through Booking.com and Agoda reduced the cash I had to carry by about 30%. But I'll say more about these in a separate post.  

Because I only had 5-days in Myanmar I had to content myself with Yangon and Bagan. I really wanted to include Mandalay, but it really couldn't fit anymore in my very abridged introductory tour of Myanmar. I say introductory because I am really going to go back to Myanmar, if only to be able to go and see Mandalay and Lake Inye.

Final Preparations

As the days of the trip approached, I had to also make my final preparation. One of the limitation I had to work with was luggage. I am not a backpack person, I have rarely traveled by air without a suitcase, and suddenly I am faced with the problem of 0-kg checked-in luggage? Solutions, I had to purchase a new backpack that was within the cabin-bag limitation. Here I had a little strike of luck because I was able to get my bag with a 50% discount from a mall sale here in Iloilo.

My final preparation also involved getting my pristine US Dollars. But, this was not really a problem because here in Iloilo there is big currency-exchange house (Narita) that provide pristine US Dollars at no extra cost. Well, actually I have never encountered getting US Dollars from them that were not crisp.

On the day that I left Iloilo, the last preparations were the following:

• e-mailing myself scanned copies of my passport, Identification Card, credit card, tickets and hotel vouchers; on top of having 3 copies of each of these scattered throughout my bag.
• printing out my personal calling card in case I met new people (I learned this from my first foreign trip when people I came to know shared their calling cards and I didn't have mine to give back, it was so awkward writing again and again my addresses and numbers on pieces of paper);
• making small cards containing the address of the hotels where I am going to stay, they are handy and can easily be shown to the taxicab than pulling out my hotel vouchers from my sheaf of documents. The only flaw in this was that, written in English, they are equally no good in Yangon where majority of taxicab drivers understand Myanma script only. But good thing these cards I made were empty at the back so what I did was, in Yangon, I asked the hotel staff to write at the back flap the Myanma script of whatever was written in front. This made things a lot easier!

Address Cards (in English) of my hotels and places to go to in Myanmar.

Back-flap of the cards above written with corresponding Myanma scripts.

Finally, after these the time had come. I had to say good bye to the Philippines for a while and say hello to Myanmar!

My view of Andrews Air Base from NAIA-3 before leaving for Kuala Lumpur.

The Journey to Myanmar ( ~ 39-hrs)

24-October, Friday (1855-2000, 1hr 05min travel + 18hr lay-over)
Flew from IIA (Iloilo International Airport) to NAIA-3. Stayed at my cousin's condominium for the 18-hour lay-over in Manila.

25-October, Saturday (1410-1750, 3hrs 40min travel + 13-hr lay-over)
Flew from NAIA-3 to KLIA-2 (Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2). Stayed at the Capsule Hotel by Container for my 13-hour lay-over in Kuala Lumpur.

26-October, Sunday (0655-0800, 2hrs 35min travel)
Flew from KLIA-2 to Yangon International Airport.

One of my first glimpses of Myanmar - the Myanma plains seen from the aircraft as it was making its final descent to Yangon International Airport.

Facade of Yangon's Domestic Terminal, the typical Burmese elements in this structure welcomes all tourists to the Golden Land of Myanmar.