Vijay and Shefali's TAtW

We came with full intentions of going elsewhere for one more trip. But… Like I mentioned earlier, travel in Myanmar is hard – especially if you’re prone to motion sickness and a generally slothful person. I am at least two of those things. So we hung around in the big city (Yangon) for our last few days here. It was a lot of fun – partly as a respite from constant traveling and the limitations of rural touristing and also because we had skipped a few things in Yangon the first time around. We settled into a nice groove here, seeing the sights (mostly larger temples, markets and stupas) in the day and chowing into some cheap beer and satay at night. Also we ran into a friendly Australian named Alex during one of our swill and satay sessions. He’s an enormous economics nerd, and by that I mean he’s pursuing a graduate degree in economics and he’s physically enormous – when he stood up I thought it was actually two people standing foot to shoulder trying to sneak into an R-rated movie. Either way, it’s pretty easy to run into Australians while traveling and we eventually figured out we were staying at the same hotel, the Hyatt Regency in Yangon city center. No affiliation to the actual Hyatt Regency chain of hotels – that’s just how they do business here. And how did the magic green spirulina algae beer saga end? With empty glasses, and not in the good way. We searched high and low, and though we found clues and even ended up at the former brewery of it (the sign was still up, however faded), we had to throw in the towel on our way out. It just wasn’t meant to be. I guess you could say our fruitless search for green beer left us feeling a little blue. True story. We left in high spirits, grateful for the experience of going somewhere a little untouched and out of the way, for seeing a culture to which we may have never been exposed. That’s the biggest thing that stood out to me – how sincerely welcoming the people were. Irrespective of age or class, the single unifying thread was that we were always treated with warmth and friendly curiosity. It’s a far cry from the increasingly insular data-saturated west and a welcome change from feeling like walking dollar signs in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’m not sure if we’ll ever make it back, but there’s ample reason to for sure. And we still have to find that mythical green beer…

[1] Yangon Angain
[2] Bagan
[3] Inle Lake Boat Trip
[4] Inle Lake
[5] Mandalay
[6] Night Train to Mandalay
[7] Yangon