Check­ing in to our guest­house in Yan­gon was like no other recep­tion we’ve had.  The owner and man­ager and staff were warm and incred­i­bly accom­mo­dat­ing — insist­ing we eat first because “Air Asia no food, no water” and rest and shower in a spare room since we were hours early for check in.  Every­one was so pleas­ant that we laughed rather than scowled when we real­ized that the pedestal sink in our bath­room was not con­nected to a drainage pipe and that any­thing intended for the sink ulti­mately ended up stream­ing over our feet on the way to a hole in the cor­ner of the room.  (N.B. — Dur­ing the writ­ing of this post, one of us dis­cov­ered that while one of us later bypassed the sink in favor of the hole, the other one of us felt the hole was just too far.)

Other things to get used to included sev­eral daily elec­tric­ity ‘inter­rup­tions’.  There isn’t enough elec­tric­ity to keep the coun­try lit 24/7 so the gov­ern­ment flips the switch on whole city grids at will.  And some­how worse is the Yan­gon cacoph­ony of alms calls, bam­boo sell­ers, food ven­dors, run-over wild dogs, tem­ple verse reciters and bats that start at 4am.  Lis­ten for yourselves:

Also, the cur­rency sit­u­a­tion is dif­fi­cult.  We had to antic­i­pate our entire bud­get before leav­ing Bangkok and bring in large denom­i­na­tions of healthy-looking US dol­lars.  There are no ATMs in Myan­mar, credit card usage is risky, lim­ited and expen­sive and cold hard cash is a pain in the ass.  Lit­er­ally.  We stuffed mad wads into every pocket: 1000 Kyat is equal to just under a dol­lar and that’s the largest bill.

But our large bulges were not what peo­ple were star­ing at.  All eyes were on Chan like she was a walk­ing National Geo­graphic cover.  Kids would ask their par­ents what exotic crea­ture this was.  It was ter­ri­ble at times and a lot of pres­sure to rep­re­sent an entire race of peo­ple, not want­ing to come off as unfriendly or rude and hav­ing to con­stantly smile — there was always an audi­ence and no per­sonal or pri­vate moment to be had.  It took time but we came to terms that it was a nov­elty to a coun­try shut off from the rest of the world.  And what’s funny in this sit­u­a­tion is what we’ve dubbed our ‘dou­ble stare’ moments, like if a pen­guin came face-to-face with a rhino, when we were equally cap­ti­vated by their thanaka faces and betel nut smiles.  Betel nut is this whickety-whack ever-popular chew­ing stim­u­lant that stains your lips, gums and teeth a blackish-red and jump­starts your head.  Yan was later to try it.

The streets of Yan­gon reminded us of Dead­wood (with cars): muddy pot-holed dirt roads and prospec­tors and sun umbrel­las and chaos minus the broth­els.  Through­out the coun­try we felt the pio­neer poten­tial in a peo­ple and cul­ture held firmly under thumb.  No one knows who to trust and there’s always a fear of being fol­lowed or mon­i­tored or recorded or rat­ted out, and much worse (see: Burma VJ).  And we were para­noid too.  The sit­u­a­tion is dire.  Emo­tions run high even if buried deeply beneath a neu­tral front.  Con­ver­sa­tions about any­thing polit­i­cal are rare, cal­cu­lated and guarded.  But you always get the feel­ing that they want you to know and give them a voice beyond the bor­ders, to what­ever extent pos­si­ble.  There are many com­par­isons to Iron Cur­tain Soviet Union regard­less of polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy.  The first ques­tion asked in almost every sit­u­a­tion was what coun­try are you from and then “Your coun­try strong.  You can do any­thing.”  On a lighter note, there was the 10 years out-of-date Bill­board top 100 all sung in Burmese.  Even lac­quer­ware is a com­mon denom­i­na­tor with the USSR.

In need of a sun­downer on our first day in Myan­mar we headed for some west­ern com­fort in a happy hour at The Strand Hotel where we read Mick Jag­ger was a one-time patron.  We weren’t the only ones look­ing for Mick and to take the edge off.  Like clock­work, two pas­sen­gers from our morn­ing flight hur­ried in, one at a time, min­utes after 5pm.  Six 2-for-1 drinks later, we picked up another New Yorker and the five of us piled into Yangon’s only mini­van taxi that just hap­pened to be right out­side and headed to Mr. Gui­tar for a bite and an acoustic set where the only poster on the wall was of the Stones.  Over a deli­cious, shock­ingly unspicy, non­fishy tast­ing meal (did we ever men­tion the food in Bangkok is hot enough to set your uvula ablaze?) we dared dis­cuss pol­i­tics and the upcom­ing ver­dict.  And Tim told us that by strange coin­ci­dence he kept run­ning into the same locals through­out Yan­gon and on one occa­sion some plain-clothed offi­cial smacked his cam­era out of his hand even though he wasn’t shoot­ing any­thing gov­ern­ment or mil­i­tary related.

It was a spon­ta­neous and wild, unre­strained first night.  In ret­ro­spect, we all needed an escape from the anx­i­ety and antic­i­pa­tion of the jour­ney to Myanmar.

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