Our taxi was waiting at the back of the resort, and we piled in for our last long taxi ride in Burma. The roads were choked with schoolchildren on their way to school on scooters, bikes, and on foot. Once through Nyaungshwe and the crossroads to Taunggyi, things picked up, and we were back at the airport in Heho.
An uneventful if slightly delayed flight—our only one of the trip—brought us back to Yangon, where a cabbie took all of us to our hotels for $12: a lot better than the $30 we had paid and the $50 Andrew had paid on arrival! We were really ready to just stay at the airport and head home, but back into the Yangon cauldron we went. Our impressions this time couldn’t have been more different than those from just two weeks before: what had then seemed ramshackle, impoverished, and chaotic now appeared modern, prosperous, and highly structured. That’s what a few days in Kyaing Teng and the hills will do for you!
We were back in the same room at the Winner, so everything was familiar. After settling back in and doing a preliminary pack (all the puppets went into the two rolling carryons), we grabbed a taxi on the street and went downtown to Pomelo, a well-known craft store above Monsoon Restaurant. The store was perhaps slightly disappointing. There were lots of beautiful woven things (wallhangings) and silk things (Longyis and pillowcases), but also lots of fake paper mache doodads; the store is run as a charity, and underemployed hill tribespeople create “modern” folk art for sale. We bought some Christmas ornaments (felt elephant, shan bag) and a wallhanging for Ariel. We then set off in search of tea. The proprietor had pointed us to a modern mall (air con, luxury items, etc.) with a small grocery, and we found both the Royal Tea Mix (which already includes evaporated / dehydrated milk) and some Burmese highland black tea, so we stocked up.
A cab took us to the Governor’s Residence, where we had a drink by the pool while we waited for Andrew. Once reassembled, we hopped a cab for Shwedagon—which was a slight mistake. It couldn’t possibly have been as magical as the first time.
We did see some new things, though, including the actual lighting of the lamps.
A reward will be given for the best description of the emotion expressed below!
As the sun set, though, the old magic returned. There is nowhere like Shwedagon at twilight.
And the pagoda took on new meaning for us as we discussed it in relation to what we had seen.
Had it been an incredible, life changing trip? You be the judge.
We had a bit of trouble finding a cab going in the right direction, so we were late meeting Lois, and Sue was in a state: we reminded her that we were in Myanmar, where nothing ran on time. Lois was waiting for us at the hotel, so we had yet another drink (by the time I had a beer at dinner I was feeling a bit out of it: the heat in Yangon is unbearable, and it was now noticeably hotter than it had been before).
We took a cab to Pandonmar, where we had eaten the first time and has such a miserable experience. The hotel really hadn’t had good alternatives close by (they only recommend Feel Myanmar for lunch), so we bit the bullet. This meal was actually better, there was only one tour group, and the conversation with Lois was lively and interesting.
Andrew elected to walk to his hotel, so we said our goodbyes and took a cab with Lois. Which led to a surprising situation. She was staying with Gill and Kevin, and had the address, but only in English. And Lois couldn’t make the cabbie understand where she wanted to go. She acted like colonials the world over: when the driver didn’t understand her English, she just talked louder. This was turning into a disaster—she thought she could get him there with hand signals—so I convinced her to have him take us to the Winner Inn first, so that I could run into the hotel and have them write out the address in Burmese! This apparently worked, because we continue to get emails from her, or at least from her address.
Exhausted…not just from exertion, but from the sense that the trip was at an end…we slept the sleep of the dead.