Politics and the Falang

Except for red white and blue bunting, the occasional Thai flag, and massive traffic snarls, falangs are kept, delicately, away from any political rally or march in the King's city of Bangkok.  In Banglampu, where we stay, tourists and revelers go about their business of dressing inappropriately, careening through the evening with bottles of Leo Beer and Beer Chang with nary a thought to marches and riots.  The tourist spots are open and welcoming and there doesn't seem to be any lack of commerce or crowds.  No one talks about what is going on, and that is probably as it should be.  As an American, our own political knots are complicated enough without trying to armchair quarterback what is going on in Thailand.  I can't even begin to explain it and won't try.  Ultimately, I am Switzerland, it's none of my business.

These funny little tubs
ferry you across the Chao Phraya
all day long, back and forth from one pier to another.
Bangkok

Where Chinatown
and Little India meet
Bangkok

Sampaeng Lane
Bangkok

Street Food
Yangon

The view across Sule Paya
Blvd from our hotel
Yangon

Sule Paya Yangon

Barbershop Yangon

And then there is Yangon.  Even moldier and more abject than last year, or perhaps I notice it more?  I don't know. Mildew coats the once whitewashed colonial buildings and I am reminded of that first visit in 2006, before the government fled Yangon, before the devastation of Nargis, when I looked out the tiny balcony at the back of our guest house and saw wires hanging precariously, peeling paint and the smell of mold.  There is lots of new building, lots of tearing down of other buildings, but still plenty of beautiful old buildings with festoons of laundry strung across balconies where I wonder if there is electricity and what must it be like inside.  How lucky I am to be born where I was and be able to travel here.  Amidst the decay and obvious poverty the people are warm and welcoming and their vitality is reflected in the energy of the city.  Laughter rings out from the sidewalks as men continuously readjust their longyi and clap their hands loudly to summon the tea boy down the street.  There is still an atmosphere of hope. I do my part as a traveler, supporting street vendors, patronizing new small businesses, much like I try to do at home.  There is still something vital about this country and I wish it well with all my heart.

Market Day in Yangon

One of the joys we have traveling is visiting markets. Yangon is home to the Bogyoke Aung San, or "Scott's Market" as the English dubbed it, but we were determined to find the market where the locals shop.  The Theingyi Zei is huge.  It comprises a vast area between three major cross streets with numbered, alley-like streets on either side of a huge ornate market building.  26th Street is the morning produce, fish and meat market. As usual, these markets are noisy and crowded, bustling with energy as people bargain for fresh food.  No plasric wrapped meat in trays here.  No pre-cut and cleaned veggies.  People call their wares in sing-song voices that rise above the din.  Housewives stop to visit amidst streams of shoppers jostling one another.  As we wandered from the vegetable section into the land of protein, the landscape changed from bucolic heads of cauliflower and broccoli, baskets of garlic, tiny potatoes, chilis, multi-colored eggplants, long beans and okra, to a bloody trail of headless chickens, rows of fish heads and live eels trying to escape their fates by diving over the sides of shallow pans to the muddy pavement, only to be scooped and returned to await their inevitable fate.  I watched a woman clean a fish using a shell scraper and weigh out the purchase on a hand held brass scale.  We were the only foreigners in the market this morning.  Shoppers stopped to talk to us, vendors laughed when we asked to take a photograph and one woman offered me a taste from a basket of what I thought might be tamarind.

Chilis and watermelon

Fish heads

Sweetheart of the market

Muslim man

Inside the recently re-painted colonial market building proper, locked tall wooden cabinets lined narrow rows.  The building itself has an arched ceiling that soared into the gloom while light streamed in through high windows and bounced off festoons of cobwebs.  Vendors unfastened oversized brass locks and stacked cloth on top of four foot high enclosed platforms that jutted out from the cabinets behind. This is an odd arrangement for selling.  The seller sits atop this platform surrounded by longyis in every color and pattern, roll printed sarongs in plastic bags exactly the right size, and folded bolts of cottons and synthetics.  As you walk the rows, looking at wares, they lean down or stand up to bring out more merchandise from the cupboards behind them, then lean over and offer it to you.  There are stools for the customer to sit on on ground level, and somtimes I've seen the buyer climb onto the platform to sit with the seller.  The stalls stretch from one end of the bulding to the other and I wonder how all this merchandise will get sold?  Who buys it? And this building is massive!  The aisles are narrow and the amount of cloth is mind boggling!  How do you choose just one or two pieces from this veritable barn?

Early morning at the cloth market
Yangon

Closed stalls

Opening up

The bakery

Old man on the street

Street tailor - Yangon

I love best the parts of travel that I understand the least.

Call to Prayer

4:30 pm, the mosque next door broadcasts the call to prayer.  Doves cooing outside the wall to our room.  The afternoon traffic rumbles underneath it all.  I lie back on the bed in the damp air conditioned room, trying to concentrate on "Cloud Atlas".

The Sule Paya on the left
The mosque on the right

Tell me my fortune

In Burmese

Or in English

The fortune teller in his shop below the
Sule Paya

The Daw Saw Yee
29th Street Yangon

Yangon

We made it to Yangon.  A month hotter than last year and still as crazy as it was the first time.  It was nice to be remembered by the management at the May Shan, and the building is a little taller...they added a floor of rooms. This year there is a bright shiny "Visa" sticker in the window.  No credit cards at all last year anywhere in the country.  They also accept Mastercard, the owner hastily added.  Tourism is down but prices are still high although the dollar is stronger this year.  The traffic is crazy crazy crazy, as it was in Bangkok.  I am over it and am looking forward to getting out of the cities for a while.

Dinner at Jok Pochana in Bangkok was the very best on Monday night.  It wasn't as crowded as it is on the weekend and the crispy basil duck was extra succulent.  As a speical we had tod mun pla, fish cakes, served with a side of special sweet sauce. I guess we'll have to order it again so I can figure out the ingredients.  We washed it all down with litres of cold Leo beer and finished by splitting a Singha.  Then we wobbled back down Pra Atit to our room.  I am looking forward to the Daw Saw Yee tonight in Yangon, and my tea boys tomorrow morning.

Phra Atit, Bangkok

Jok Pochana - Lek

Daw Saw Yee, Yangon

999 Shan Noodles for lunch

It seems to be a trip of revisiting, and remembering.  It's different this time, familiar and yet foreign.  We are older, a little less tolerant of roughing it, although not stupid about wasting money on things we don't need.  We are looking at Southeast Asia with a different eye this time.  How would it be to live here part of the year?  Can we see ourselves fitting into this culture, as ex-pats?

So...we have a room at the May Shan on the third floor in the back, with two small windows and the sound of cooing doves.  The aircon works, thank god, and so does the wifi, for free.  The Sule Paya gleams in the center of the city, right outside our door, and the mosque issues it's call to prayer.  What adventures await this time?

It's Only Bangkok

We made it!  2014, Thailand and Myanmar, Korean Air to Seoul and from Seoul to Bangkok, about 19 hours that somewhere in there you completely lose track of and are just in limbo, hoping the flight will magically pass and the family with the two crying babies won't be on your final flight.  But they are, in almost the exact same proximity, only now there are 2 more tiny ones added into the equation and all of them are about as tired and unhappy as you are.  The only difference is that they can just cry and cry and you have to suck it up and try to find a position in which to sleep, pretty much sitting up.  And of course, just as you do settle in and doze, they come around to serve yet another dinner or lunch or whatever.  I gave up at meal three and just drank juice.

I know, poor us.

So, Bangkok at 11:30pm, hotter than it is in January, well, maybe not hotter, but stickier and damper, and quiet until the cab driver turns up Phra Atit.  And it is familiar, finally, after all these trips.  Phra Atit is alive with Friday night jazz, food carts, strings of pennants across the street, young Thais enjoying themselves, farangs meandering in inappropriate clothing, the spill over from Kaosan Road, lurking just behind the trendy edge of Banglamphu, the ubiquitous hang out for back packers, now a place to visit for cheap clothing and avoid the rest of the time.  And we drag our weary asses out of the cab, check in, head to the 5th floor of the New Siam II, turn on the air con and the fan, turn around in circles trying to figure out what we are supposed to do now, take showers, decant our luggage and are convinced we will never sleep.  After a cockroach siting, a first for me at the New Siam...I know they lurk, the devils, but we manage to avoid one another and even this one is as startled by me as I am by him...he scurries away while I have visions of  him looking for my chocolate stash in my suitcase.  I know he doesn't want to be seen, so I hope the nervous truce we share will last until I leave.   We do sleep, hard, gratefully, and morning comes.

And of course we are too early for Ricky's, which has the same staff, sort of, but maybe a new manager/owner?  When we finally do sit down to eat, the food is as nice as I remember, not remarkable, but just what we wanted and the girl who brings our coffee smiles as she remembers that this is the woman who wants sweetened condensed milk.  We decide to make a foray to Chatchuk.  The traffic is horrendous and it takes nearly an hour to get there.  We shop, the rhythm catching up with us easily.  We sit and sip Thai iced coffee in the little bar in the market, and we catch an icy cab back to the New Siam.  After a light lunch of khao mun gai, chicken and rice, we head down Phra Atit to see the Starbung's guy.  Unfortunately Starbuck's has caught up with him.  His new name is Bungstar and the logo of the skinny yogi with a cup of coffee in one of his many hands is now the same yogi rubbing his eyes while tears stream out either side.  Our  Starbung entrepreneur takes it philosophically and his business is as brisk as ever.  God I love Thailand!  We finish the afternoon with massages and as I lay there, cooling off while my masseuse finds every knot and arthritic pain, I wonder why I don't do this every day...oh, wait a minute, I remember now...this massage will cost me about one sixth of the cost at home.  And after all, I am on vacation.

Ricky's

Also "Bungstar"

Burma Bound

As I nervously watch the news from Bangkok, knowing full well that we will be fine, we will be fine, my one overwhelming concern is that I won't be able to get to Chatuchak for the weekend market. Is that real crass selfishness? Yes, because the government in Thailand is really messed up, kind of like ours. However, the passports came back yesterday complete with Myanmar visas, and we actually have reservations in Sittwe and Mrauk U! We didn't get to go last year because of fighting in the area. This year we're goin' for it. A day to get to Sittwe, an overnight, a boat early the next morning for a 6 hour journey to Mrauk U, the site of a 15th century capitol littered with temple ruins, up the Kaladan river on the alluvial plain that empties into the Bay of Bengal. We have 3 days in Mrauk U that will include another boat ride to visit a Chin village. Then we reverse this, a day to get back to Sittwe, over night, and the plane back to Yangon. A big part of the adventure for me is seeing if all of this works as planned, how it works, and several days of wonder that it does! It looks so chaotic to me, an organized American who speaks no Burmese. I am addicted to the thrill of not knowing.
Our short stays in Bangkok will include a visit to Sampeng Lane, the Mecca of seamstresses and fabric junkies world wide. This year I finally figured out how to get there. Before this it has kind of been hit and miss. I intend to put a dent in the endless supplies of embroidery thread, pre-constructed frog closures, exotic buttons and Thai manufactured cottons. I have my sources, my secret places. And, of course, a trip to the classiest contemporary shop in Chatuchak, which happens to be just down the aisle from my favorite antique silver stall.

Ahhhhhh....tickets to Bangkok, Feb 6th, 2014. The May Shan, Yangon, Myanmar, Feb. 11th, 2014.