From Phuket to Myanmar

We flew from Phuket to Bangkok to Yangon, which used to be the capital of Myanmar until the government decided to literally build a new city (Naypyitaw) from scratch and move the capital in 2005. 

Until 1989 Myanmar was known as Burma, but in that year the military decided to change the name to Myanmar which the UN officially recognizes, but most opposition groups including the UK, Canada, and the US continue to use Burma.  

The government recognizes 135 distinct ethnic groups in this country of approximately 61 million people.  The majority are Buddhist.  You may have heard of Aung San Suu Kyi, also known as The Lady in Myanmar, who is the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and has been under house arrest off and on for the better part of 15 years.  She was most recently released in 2010.  She also calls her country Burma and not Myanmar, but every person we encountered in the country called it Myanmar.  

In a lot of the photos you can see the men all wear skirt-like longyi and the women's faces are covered in thankakha, which is the ground up bark of a tree by the same name.  They say this is for sunblock and to keep the skin beautiful.

Internet was almost non-existent except in Yangon and the same was true for cell phones.  Until very recently there were no ATMs in country.  Merchants will accept new and PRISTINE US dollars, and when I say pristine I mean if there is a folded edge or rip you need a microscope to see, they will not take it and tell you it's "broken."

I'm going to divide the posts up because we have so many pictures.  This one is from our first and last day in Myanmar; both spent in Yangon.

Shwedagon Temple:

 Pouring water on the animal representing the day of the week you were born.  I guess for good luck or something.  LOTS of superstition in this culture.  A whole section is devoted to it in our guidebook.

Here you can see our guide's longyi:

This is outside Aung San Suu Kyi's house where she was under house arrest and still lives.  Of course, we didn't really understand this until clarifying later in the van because our guide was a bit hard to understand.  We just knew he was hustling us in front of some gate that he seemed to think was important and that we couldn't dawdle in front for too long.  Glad it wasn't more nefarious and probably not our finest travel moment given we weren't sure what we were dragging our kids into.

Examples of Thanakha paste: