Smile!

When traveling I am always super hesitant to take photographs of people. Maybe they think I'm stealing their soul, maybe they are undercover police who will destroy my camera, maybe they just got their picture taken by 50 other white people and I add to their growing resentment of these strange outsiders, maybe someday they sue me for posting it to a weird blog. Anyway, I typically do not take any photos of people (unless they're friends or performers).

Now I get a somewhat easy out because I generally don't take many pictures at all and mostly mooch off of other people that do...

But that doesn't mean people don't take pictures of me. In Ghana a whole group of dudes took a picture with me and my friends, presumably to use on a visa application. At pretty much every conference I attend, the organizers take pictures with me, sometimes so that they can bring the photo to a tailor and get by clothes copied. Yesterday two people I have never seen, in matching pink outfits, interrupted my business meeting in the lobby of my hotel to ask if they could take a picture with me. Maybe they mistook me for someone else? Today, there was a canoodling couple on the boardwalk by the lake who stopped their snuggling to ask if the could take a picture with me. "This is my girlfriend!" is the only explanation I got as the dude shoved us together and snapped three pictures.

I can't wait for one of these weird pictures to surface somewhere 20 years from now. For all I know I'm on the Burmese version of Perez Hilton.

Breaking Dawn 2 in Myanmar

Extra day in Myanmar with nothing to do? Obvious choice is to see a teen vampire movie (or more accurately, the fourth in a series of teen vampire movies) in a grand theater. I love movie-going in different places!  Noah and I saw SkyFall in India and were struck by:

1.       The rigidly enforced assigned seating, despite being 2 of 10 people in a 200 person theater
2. The national anthem movie that played before the show- it took us a really long time to figure out that it was supposed to be a touching scene of deaf and mentally retarded kids at a school singing the national anthem.
3.   During every scene in which a character had a cigarette, a big warning on the bottom of the screen appeared, -- the hazards of tobacco.
4.  People not only do not silence their phones, they answer their phones and hold entire conversations on their phones during the movie.

In Myanmar the theater was this grand building with a heavy golden curtain that dramatically parted right before the projection. When everyone rose to sing the national anthem, several people rose right in front of the projection so you got to see the national flag as well as the silhouettes of several people’s heads.

The advertisements before the previews were literally on a Powerpoint presentation, complete with swipes in between each one. They were mostly written in Burmese which is a language that looks like curls going in many different directions. However, occasionally, they must have run into a word that doesn’t translate well so the ad looked like this “Curly curly curly vibration mode curly curly curly “ (guessing this was the ‘silence your phone’ message which was of course, totally disregarded). Another one read “curly curly curly, personal responsibility, curly curly curly”.

Playlist of my life

The Bossanova version of the playlist of my life is playing in this coffee shop. Lady Gaga "Bad Romance" and "Poker Face", Madonna "Like a Virgin" and "Like a Prayer", Michael Jackson’s "Beat It", and then whoever sings “I wanna be a millionaire” “nothing on you” “suicidal” and “shorty got it burning on the dance floor”. Remember, bossa nova versions here- so soothing and soft.

I asked the waitress if it was the radio or a CD and she said the radio which meant she didn’t know what I was asking. Then I asked a waiter and told him I liked the music so he pulled out the CD and wrote down the name for me : Dance Bossa Chill. Unfortunately it does not seem to exist on the world wide web. I looked immediately.

The best part of this is that I went to this coffee shop every day of my trip and each time they put in this CD shortly after I walked in.  Sweet.

Power Struggle

I am in a literal power struggle with my hotel. Every time I leave the room I turn off the AC and turn off the lights. Every time I return, all the lights are on and the AC is set at 15 degrees. When I first checked in, the tv was on (as if to prove to me it works). This cannot be good for their profits. It does not make me like them more. I don’t feel more at home (at home I ration AC and only use lights in the room I’m in). What is going on here!

Disco Buddha

Given the thousands and thousands of people at the Shwedagon Pagoda on Buddhist Lent, despite our height advantage, there was the very real possibility that my colleague and I might get separated and never find each other again. My Frye training compelled me to designate an emergency meeting spot and clearly I selected what I like to call "The Disco Buddhas".

Buddhist Lent

This is not the first time that I have meticulously planned a business trip only to learn after arrival that a public holiday falls during my brief stay. Now I'm not dumb, I have every holiday I can think of for the countries I visit entered into my Outlook calendar (Malian Independence Day? Ethiopian New Year?). This helps with scheduling trips, understanding why colleagues are unresponsive, and getting brownie point by sending a holiday greeting. However Lunar Holidays always evade me! 

During my trip to Myanmar, the moon was such that Buddhist Lent fell during our trip. It ended up being fine- we had no meetings previously scheduled, so tourism day it was.

We took advantage of a full hour of sunlight and went to visit the Shwedagon Pagoda. If you're going to visit a giant pagoda, you might as well do it on the same day that the entire country is visiting. 

Navigating the pagoda made me think of swimming in a school of fish. Turning to the left or right wasn't something you got to decide to do on your own, you had to hope for an opportunity. Cutting across the rows of people entailed a fair amount of swimming upstream and then waiting for your chance, crossing, and then swimming back.

Even more fun was that there were almost no tourists. We were swimming in a sea of Burmese grandmas, babies, and entire families on a picnic. 

Where's Laura?

Monsoon Rains

The hours of sunlight I experienced during my one week visit to Myanmar total 3. I am entirely confident in this number because my jetlag was such that I woke up before the sun was presumably rising and fell asleep after it had presumably set. However, I never saw a sunrise or a sunset through the dark monsoon rain clouds.

This was a little disappointing because the big thing to see in Yangon is the Shwedagon Pagoda which apparently is beautiful at sunset. So we waited for a day when there was a sunset to see it, and such a day never arrived (we went on our last day instead).

Every time I left the hotel, I was handed an umbrella. I think there was someone employed by the hotel whose only job was to hand out umbrellas to everyone. I brought a rain coat but it was so humid I couldn't imagine putting anything long sleeved on. So umbrellas it was- everywhere.

The nice thing about a rainy rainy place, is that foot fashion just cannot matter. Everyone must wear flip flops at all times- that is simply the only reasonable option. You are constantly stepping in mud and puddles- so you step in mud and your feet get gross, and then you step in a puddle and they're clean again. No squeaky wet shoes- boots would be filled with sweat moments after putting them on- so flip flops it is.

According to my colleagues, it rains for about 5 months of the year- and the rain is particularly heavy for two months (July-August). Sometimes colleagues in monsoon climates ask me when it rains in the US and I never have an adequate answer. I guess according to poem there are showers in Aprils that bring flowers in May (and then Pilgrims!) but by no stretch of the imagination could we call April a rainy season. It rains in a totally unpredictable fashion in the US. Sometimes I try to explain "maybe it rains on Monday and Thursday but not any other day that week" and that usually doesn't work, and then I try "you have to watch the weather channel every morning to know if it's going to rain or not". Again, not a ton of success. One nice thing about the monsoon rains in Myanmar is that you never have to wonder- it will most certainly rain multiple times every day.

I think that in rainy places, people are much more aware of the skies. It is entirely possible that I am abnormally oblivious to my environment but I almost never know when it's going to rain. However, people in Myanmar seem to get some sort of signal for a five minute warning. Change in wind? Pressure shift? Sky color? I don't know what it is but you really don't see people "caught in the rain without an umbrella".

There was a pool boy at my hotel- and as far as I could tell, his job consisted of sweeping the pool deck and then putting out and removing the lounge chair cushions 100 times a day. If there was a small period of no rain, the cushions all went out, and then magically, 30 seconds before the rain began to fall again, he would put them all back. I started taking my cues for impending downpours from him.

Rain Rain Go Away
Come Again Another Day (season)
(Not so) Little Laura Wants To Play (or just walk in dry shoes)
Rain Rain Go Away

No Motorcycles

Rumor has it that once upon a time a high-ranking official in Yangon was hit by a motorcycle and subsequently outlawed them. Another rumor contends that in a fit of paranoia regarding the ease of attack on caravans via motorcycles, the government outlawed them.  Which ever, if any, is true- one thing is for sure, there are no motorcycles in Yangon.

This may not seem so weird in the US where there are so few motorcycles anyway (possibly owing to our climate and relative wealth). But elsewhere in the developing world, motorcycles are ubiquitous.

I love a motorcycle free city! The pollution seems noticeably less, I don't have to contend with motorcycle taxis for transit (scary!), I don't have to see accidents nearly every day, and it feels safer to cross the street when people aren't zipping between lanes and around vehicles. I could get used to this lovely, if weird, policy.

Ladies or Gents

As is the cutesy custom all over the world,  instead of a sign at my hotel, they have a piece of art to distinguish the men's room from the women's room. Only problem is that it was entirely unclear to me which of these dolls was the man and which was the woman. I stared for an awkward amount of time until a staff person pointed me in the right direction.

Rock the skirt

So Myanmar has officially been "opened up" for like 32 seconds and here I am. I made the mistake the first time someone asked me "is this your first time in Myanmar?" admitting that no, I crossed the border from Thailand once to renew my visa. Decidedly not a good thing to share.

Anyway, I'm in Yangon, the capital. Formerly Rangoon, like the crab.

My first and most salient impression is that all the men still wear traditional skirts. I love this. They are called "longyi" which I haven't heard pronounced yet but would like to think sounds like "longy" as opposed to "shorty". These are long, ankle length skirts.

It seems like a pretty practical get-up. One-size-fits-all, tied-around-the-waist long cotton skirts. Businessmen with pressed white collared shirts tucked in to skirts, teenagers in baggy tee-shirts with skirts, soccer players shirtless with a shortened skirt.  This may be one of the last places on earth where Western dress has not taken over (yet).

(wish I could take credit for this picture but haven't taken my camera out yet, thanks google images)

Not Africa

This blog is called Laura in Africa -- some day I will merge this blog with Laura in Thailand Laura in Morocco and Laura in Guyana and just call it "Laura in Places". However, until that time I'm breaking the rules and blogging from Asia.


(while I'm breaking geographic rules, someone just reminded me that once upon a time I guest-blogged on a brilliant friend's blog from Palestine: check it out)