The biggest Fire Balloon Festival in Myanmar is located in the mountain town of Taunggyi which is about a 12 hour drive north of Yangon. I took an over-night bus up for an impromptu weekend getaway with my friend Ashley to see the festival. Being the biggest, I knew it was going to be a lot of people at the festival but I have not been anywhere in Myanmar with quite that amount of people all in one place before. If I were to guess I would say that there were probably a couple thousand people all gathered for the festivities. As we walked up to the festival grounds we were greeted by our first sighting of a fire balloon - and this one had fireworks on it! It was quite the site shooting up in the sky. (If you are impatient and just want to get to the action scroll all the way down for the video) It was probably about a half a mile walk up to the main area of the festival and all the way up was lined with booths with vendors selling all sorts of things like clothing (traditional and modern), trinkets, gadgets, more clothing, accessories (purses and wallets), to name a few. There were a lot of warm clothing for sale especially hats and scarfs, although it was only about 50* or so people were dressed like it was freezing. I guess they are not quite as used to the cold as I am. Of course there was food, all sorts of food. Mostly traditional barbecue (below), noodle dishes, lots of greasy fried things, and don't forget the rice! Along with the food were the beer stands. You could get beer just about anywhere and walk around with it. Or you could pop into one of the clubs that the beer/alcohol booths had set up behind. These closed in spaces had private DJs and lots of flashy lights. There were lots of game booths also. There were the traditional prizes I was used to like stuffed animals or cheep plastic toys, but then there were the booths where you could win beer or cigarettes (above) or you could go straight for the bottles of liquor (below). Just make 2 baskets and it's yours! Temporary tattoo anyone? This man had all sorts of stamps that he lines with thick black ink that supposedly lasts for about 5 days. I almost got one but I couldn't find a design I liked. Two other types of booths were the monkey booth and the photo booths. When I peeked into the monkey booth I saw two monkeys sitting on hanging loops with a string attached to their legs. Ashley said that it was set up for people to pay money to see the monkeys to various tricks. The photo booth was kind of like glamor shots, where they dress you up in fancy or funny clothing, do your hair and makeup, then take your photo to be printed out and sent home with you. And then there was the ride section. This looked like most carnivals that I knew, with kiddy rides, jumping houses, and a few bigger power rides. What was not so normal was the fact that the ferris wheels (there were three of them) were all human powered. By that I mean that there was no motor, instead amazingly skillful men would climb up the wheel and, when aligned, would all power it by leaning to one side and using their weight to spin it. To stop it they would jump back on to the bench parts of the wheel and use their weight to pull it the other way. It was quite the sight to see these men nimbly making their way all around the beams of the wheel and swinging around like acrobats. Check out the video below for the full effect. Now off to the field to see some of the Fire Balloons up close. Fire Balloons are similar to Chinese lanterns in the way that they are lit using the hot air from fire and let off in the sky to burn. Yet this is like Fire Balloons to the extreme because these balloons were GIGANTIC!!! If I were to guess I would say they were somewhere between 10 and 20 feet in diameter. Each balloon is sponsored by a different village, organization, or company and these are represented on the sides of the balloon in writing or symbols. Besides just good fun the general idea is that you send a wish or good thoughts out into the world to get the universe to fulfill. But the balloons are not the only things that are lit, they are also adorned with hundreds of small candles. These mini lanterns are colored so when arranged they reveal an image of sorts. They are hooked onto specific spots on the balloon, this has to be done very quickly as the balloon is filling but before it gets too full. Lots of helpers are needed for this part. Fire is slowly built up below the balloon and fills it with hot air to make it inflate. Many skilled people are needed to help with this part as to not burn the balloon itself. After it gets filled enough one main fire is lit under it and the sticks are removed, these are just placed aside within the crowd. The process of filling the whole balloon up takes only 10-20 minutes. While this is happening there is also a whole other section of the balloon being worked on. This section is completed by taping wooden frames together then placing more of the colored mini lanterns on it to show another symbol of sorts. The rows of lights here were quite stunning. Finally the sections are attached together and lifted off. Sometimes instead of the mini lanterns, the balloons are decorated. These specially decorated balloons are always accompanied by a box of fireworks underneath them (instead of the wooden frame with mini lanterns). The fireworks start shooting off almost immediately and stretch right above the heads of the crowd. As you can imagine this is extremely dangerous. I later found out that the night before there was a huge accident where one of the balloons fell back into the crowd. Apparently somewhere between 1 and 3 people died and somewhere between 15 and 30 people got injured. The news is all hearsay here so it is difficult to get the specifics. Luckily all was well and good the night I was there. Here is the video of the full process:
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It was another Friday night which means Friday festivities! A bit of a change from our usual scene, Kim and I headed to 50th Street Bar & Grill for a teachers event. 50th Street is a very well known expat establishment downtown. It has a very classy feel like that of a fancy NY pub. As I have come to learn here in Yangon, the nicer looking the establishment the higher the prices. This is the only place in town that you will pay $30 for a steak. In their defense though, this is probably the only place in town to get a decent steak. You could probably put every restaurant here in two categories: local and expat. As we tell our couchsurfers, with the local places you pay local prices and with expat places you pay expat prices. Plus the extra tax and service charges. Not trying to complain here, it is just a fascinating separation between the classes. All in all it was a fun evening meeting other teachers from around the city. There were two other international schools there: International School of Yangon and Yangon International School - people are not very creative with their school names here (if you are keeping track you will know that my school is called International School of Myanmar and yes, there is a Myanmar International School in town also). It is strange to be in an environment (outside of school) where you can understand all of the conversations going on around you. As I circulated the room and meet new people we had the same exchange of conversation over and over again: What school are you with? How long have you been here? Where are you from originally? Do you like it here? How long do you plan on staying? And so on and so forth. I did get to get to know some pretty cool people and am looking forward to seeing them again soon!
Art Show openings are held a little differently here. Unlike the evening openings that they have in the States, almost all openings here are morning events - often on weekends. With the opening there are a slew of treats available to munch on and tables to hang out at while drinking tea and talking about the artwork. There were a variety of food items at this opening including some sort of fried noodles, hot dog type things, and lots of little fried foods.
When we went grocery shopping this weekend we realized after we arrived at the store that we were getting hungry. Everyone knows that it is a bad idea to shop on an empty stomach so we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading in. We just wanted a snack so we decided to share one of these Hot & Roll. It turned out to be a crepe with a choice of toppings. We went for the BBQ chicken one which included cheese. It was actually quite tasty.
In the weeks leading up to the move there were many times I would be just going about my normal day-to-day business when all of a sudden the fact would hit me that we were moving to Asia. We, normal, simple, easy-goers from no-where Maine, were moving to Asia. It just seemed preposterous that a change that ginormous was about to happen. A change that would make the world as we knew it seem like a distant dream. I remember those moments vividly now, especially the strangeness of the feeling that accompanied them. The other day I was just walking down the street coming back from eating lunch at a street stall near the school and, just as sudden as it had come before, I had the realization that I am here. Here. In this place. I am living in Myanmar. I am walking down the street, with all of these strange but friendly people staring and smiling at me. As I crunched one of the giant tree leaves that had fallen on the ground in front of me, a deep feeling of gratitude set inside my chest. This is what it must feel like when you succeed in finally achieving a goal that you have been dreaming about for so long, and that was so big it seemed more like a crazy dream than any sort of reality. And I smiled as I began to come to terms with the fact that this, this messy, beautiful, exotic, frustrating, peaceful, loud, confusing place is where I live. This is my life. I let that thought rest inside of me and it stills me. It wraps around me like a big comfy blanket on a cold night saying, “Shhhh, you can rest now, you did good.” It is asking me to take time to enjoy this place and all it has to offer, to be appreciative and to slow down. Since I got here I have felt like I was going 100 miles an hour, trying to see all the sights, help our apartment feel like a home, plan enough for school to get me through the next day, and begin to make sense of this wild place. I’m finally here and there is so much, so much to see, so much to do, so much to experience. The words from my yoga teacher, Heidi, creeps up into my mind, “Be kind to yourself,” she would tell us. Just because you are capable doesn’t mean you need to. I take a breath and let those words sink in a bit further and remind myself that I am not just here for a week or a month, but rather years. I hold on to the weight of gratitude that settled into my chest and notice the lady feeding the lunch leftovers to the stray cat who was meowing at her ankles. And I am thankful, thankful for cats, thankful for only ladies that feed them, thankful for the rice and unknown type of meat that I just ate for lunch, but mostly I am thankful just for being. Here. In this place. Finally. *These were taken by Kim on our recent trip to Inle Lake, be on the lookout for that post because it was epic!!*
Kim and I have a Korean Grocery Store right across the street from us that is just filled with strange food items. We picked up a few of them today and gave them a try. How did it turn out? Let's just leave that to the video.
It was Friday night and you know what that means . . . 19th street here we come!!!!! We grabbed a group of our friends and headed downtown to enjoy an evening of festivities which started with 80 cent mojitos and ended with Kim making a slew of new local friends. Another epic night on 19th street.
As is usual with our nightly wanderings, we had some unusual finds one of which was another Myanmar delicacy. My students called these tree warms. The are available fresh and deep fried. We were going to try some but they were surprisingly expensive - I think they gave us the foreigner price increase.
On Saturday we went on a much-awaited adventure of going across the river to the neighboring town of Dala. We took the ferry over after managing to find the dock and got some traditional Myanmar lunch on the other side (yes, Kim ate on the street). The we each got a trishaw to take us around town to the different sites. This defiantly needed it’s own post so: Look how crazy adorable this little guy was!!!!!
Back on our side of the bay we lead our couchsurfers through a little tour of downtown in search of Dim Sum. We had heard that Chinatown has the BEST Dim Sum in Yangon (makes sense). But unfortunately we didn't actually know where Chinatown was to be found. It did show the area on the map but it was stretched over about 6 blocks. At least the walk was interesting. Although we didn't find any Dim Sum we did find some tasty doughnuts off the street. Kim really enjoyed them.
Sunday we continued our usual tradition of grocery shopping but instead of taking our usual route we decided to take the long way around and explore our neighborhood a little more. One thing I love about walking around is admiring all of the colors that were once brilliant and vibrant used on the houses, now crumbling, peeling, and fading away. After walking down a random road for a good 15-20 minutes we turned out to a road that we knew but the surprises didn’t end there, we found a genuine ramen noodle house down a random side ally. Although we had already had a meal we know we will be back to try it soon. The week held a run of work, me at school and Kim building her menu for the restaurant. We hosted a new couchsurfing couple from Spain in the middle of the week and had a blast with them sharing our love of homemade sangria and delicious food.
We can’t go through a week without having a fun new food adventure. We popped over to the Korean Mart across the street in search of some ice cream and found an interesting treat, check out this video to see what we found: I'm not sure what to say after that so I will just leave it there. See you all next week!
It was time to get out of the city. Although we really do like our new city, Yangon, the constant rush of people, lack of nature, and beyond annoying horn honking from all sorts of vehicles was taking it's tole on us. Luckily it doesn't take much to find a rural area in Myanmar since the country is more that than anything else. We happily took a break from the hustle and bustle to cross the river docking in the nearby town of Dala. A traditional Myanmar village town held an afternoon of dirt roads, local eats, and lots of staring locals. The day started with a ferry ride across the river after grabbing our current couchsurfers and our friend Ashley. We knew the general location of the dock which we were to leave from but not exactly what we were looking for. Luckily a local pointed us to the building where we were to buy our tickets. There was a long queue of people lined up at the counter but we were quickly directed around all of the locals waiting into a special room. We were greeted by a man who's smile filled up his whole face. He wrote out our tickets as he asked us about where we were from and what we were doing in Yangon. A trip across the river and back cost us $4 each (4000 kyat) which is significantly more than the local price of $0.40 but by now we are pretty used to getting the foreigner price increase. Tickets in hand we only waited a few minutes before the ferry pulled up to the dock and started unloading it's passengers and goods. We waited until the coast was clear and joined the mass of people swarming onto the boat. The boat itself was two stories high with rows and rows of hard plastic benches. There was also more open spaces for those who needed room for their baskets of produce or, ya know, the regular ol' chicken bike. Yes, it is literally how it sounds, a bicycle with partially alive chickens tied to it. This apparently is quite the hot commodity because when we got off the boat the chicken bike man was swarmed with people offering to buy numerous amounts of said chickens. There were a number of ladies selling snacks on the boat, these ranged from steamed corn-on-the-cob to hard boiled quail eggs (which were an obvious popular commodity due to the evidence of egg shells scattered all over the floor of the ferry). It took us less than 15 minutes to get to the other side of the river and before we knew it we were following the crowd to the busy street of Dala. Although Dala is a small village town, since it hosts the dock that receives the ferries it's first impression was pretty overwhelming as it was filled with touts (people trying to sell us stuff), taxis, people rushing around, lots of rickshaws, and the first motorbikes we have seen since up close since we arrived in country. A rickshaw driver that was talking to us on the ferry showed us a nice place to get some traditional Myanmar food for lunch, he even helped us figure out what the different meats and vegetables were (since he spoke a bit of english and the restaurant people didn't speak any). Our couchsurfers were famished and this was their first taste of Myanmar. I think they enjoyed it. I had a difficult time because just about everything was beyond my spice tolerance but everyone else thought the dishes were pretty tasty. Even though we all should have known better than to accept the first offer of a rickshaw that was presented to us, we decided to go with the guy we met on the ferry (who helped us with lunch) because he had been so nice to us so far and he seemed to know the area well enough to show us what there was to see. We came out from lunch to find a rickshaw waiting for each one of us. They provided us with umbrellas and hats to shade us from the sun and before we knew it we were off. Just down the road we stopped at a glittering golden pagoda. I don't recall the name of this one but it was pretty typical of Myanmar pagodas with tall stupas, intricate carvings, bright colored buildings, and lion/gargoyle things placed about. I do have to say though that the best part was the adorable puppy that was hanging out at the pagoda. Often monks who reside near pagodas will provide shelter and food for stray animals. It was so cute and playful! It -almost- ended up in one of our bags ; ) The town of Dala was lush and green - typical tropical vegetation - with dirt roads lined with simple houses. Laundry was hung on lines and wooden planks made up the paths leading to house doorways. It was quite and peaceful. As we passed by we caught the stares from each and every local milling about. I didn't mind the attention because after a smile and a chipper "mingalaba" (hello) it was always returned with the same. We made a trip up to the fishing part of the village. This section was right on a smaller inlet of the river where long fishing boats lined the coast. It was calming to see the day to day life of the rural folks, feeding chickens, putting around on their moterbikes, walking their goats, and so on. My rickshaw driver told us that he would take us to the orphanage next. I had heard that there was an amazing orphanage program on this side of the river due to the necessity since the natural disaster that killed an outstanding amount of people just a couple years ago, so I was inclined to go. He mentioned that the children would be selling snacks that we could buy to help them. When we arrived to the small village I was a little confused because I was expecting to see a large building that would house the orphanage, instead my driver lead on on a bath of sandbags and across bamboo pipe bridges that felt like they were sure to break beneath our feet. As our driver called out to the village the children came running from all directions. The laughed and giggled as they ran past us to meet at a destination that was obviously known. When the 5 of us got to the front of the line forming with children we were presented with two large bags of filled with packaged snacks and told the prices between the two. After a very confusing conversation which was greatly inhibited by the language barrier we found out the true situation. Our driver wanted us to buy snacks to give to the children. Ashley was hesitant about this as she quickly shared her experience from another country where the same sort of set up was presented but when the snacks were passed out to the children they were shortly taken away from them to be "sold" again. Although we had an uncomfortable feeling about the situation what were we to do? The children were lined up anxiously waiting with their smiles and wide eyes. As a group we decided to just pay for the less expensive snacks and ask that the children open them after they were handed out. We gave over the $10 and began handing out the small bags of chip-like snacks to each of the roughly 50 kids. Uneasy after the "orphanage" situation we unanimously decided to head back to the jetty to catch the ferry back. Unfortunately when we arrived and went to pay the drivers we found another important piece of information that got "lost in translation." We were told when we hired the drivers that it would be 3500 kyats each ($3.50) but now they insisted that the price was 3500 for 30 minutes, meaning that since we were gone for nearly 2 hours it would be 14000 kyats for each of us ($14). Although this does not sound like a lot, it is quite a hefty sum in Myanmar. Since I do remember him saying something about 30 minutes (although I didn't understand quite what he was saying at the time) I decided to just pay what they asked and take it as a learning experience. Mainly it was disappointing since it soured the wonderful day we had. Lesson learned about clarifying certain things with the driver/guide before setting off. All in all it was a lovely day away from the city and one that I would be happy to repeat again.
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