On October 8th I joined a group of photographers to capture some snap shots of our city. Every year Scott Kelby, a world famous photographer, hosts his annual World Wide Photo Walk. It is a time for photographers to get together and take photos of their neighborhood. It is labeled as the "social photography event of the year," as one of the main goals is to bring together a community of people with this common interest. On the single day hundreds of Photo Walks are held across the world with thousands of photographers participating. 

I joined in my first Photo Walk when I lived in Auburn (Maine, USA) two or three years ago and was thrilled when I saw the announcement for the Yangon walk. Taking my camera out to the streets is one of my favorite things to do but it was made even better by the great company. More than a few of these photographs have gone in my "favorite photographs I have ever taken" folder. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them! 

Legend has it that two Mon princess saw a female Hinthar standing on the back of a male Hinthar on an island in a huge lake. A Hinthar is a kind of bird like a goose that is a mythical creature similar to a phoenix. They took this as a sign to settle here and thereafter built the town of Bago. Bago is a town about two hours outside of Yangon. Well actually it is only around an hour outside but with all of the Yangon traffic it takes twice as long to get out of the city itself. Kim and I took a trip to Bago a couple weekends ago with our friends MeMe and Alex. Lucky for us, Meme knew what there was to do and see in Bago so I didn't have to do any planning. We just hopped in the car we rented for the day and set off! 

Our first stop was more by happenstance, I spotted an awesome looking temple on the side of the road and we wandered around what turned out to be a Chinese temple. There were golden dragons on every inch of it, lots of Buddhas, an eccentric old woman who took to following us around, and ornate detailing on every surface. 

As we walked in Alex spotted this tube of sticks and got very excited. "You wanna? You wanna?" He asked us giddy as a little kid. Meme, who was just as enthusiastic, replied with a bubbly "Yes!" Then they both turned to us with expectant looks. Kim and I turned to each other a confirmed that neither of us had any idea what was going on and finally Alex began explaining. 

The tube of sticks turned out to be Kau Cim, Chinese Fortune Sticks. It is a chance for you to ask God or Buddha or the Universe (whichever suits you) a question and get an answer. Alex demonstrated the process for us. You first have to think of a really good question that is not too broad or too specific then you kneel and you concentrate on that question with all your attention. When you are ready you begin shaking the tube of sticks back and forth in a steady motion. If you are holding it at the right angle then the sticks will jump around and at some point one stick will come all the way out. You pick up the stick and before checking it you have to make sure it is the right one. You do this by taking these two rounded blocks of wood (I think they were wood) and dropping them on the ground like dice. If they fall in opposite ways (one face up and one face down) then it is the wrong stick and you have to start over. If they fall the same way then it is the right stick. At this point you have to find the number on the stick which corresponds with a number of a paper in a cabinet (seen behind us in the pictures below). When you retrieve the paper it will have the answer to your question on it. 

One side of the paper was written in Myanmar and one side was written in Chinese. Alex was able to read the Chinese and Meme the Myanmar so they both helped translate our answers. I had to try mine a couple times because the stick wouldn't come out. At first Alex said it was because I was asking the wrong question but then we realized (on the third try) that I was just holding the container wrong. 

Also known as The Four Seated Buddhas, Kyaik Pun Pagoda stands at 88 feet tall. Each of the four Buddhas which are seated to face the four cardinal directions, represent the four Buddhas that have reached Nirvana. One legend relating to this Paya involves four Mon sisters who, when helping to build this, pledged to never get married or shall the Buddhas come crumbling to the ground. When one of the sisters broke her vow and married it is said that one of the Buddhas did in fact collapse. 

This spectacular place was built in 1553 by a famous Mon King, King Bayinnaung, founder of the 2nd Empire. Most of the area was destroyed in a foreign attack but has been under excavation since the early 90's. The originally walled palace contained 4 square miles of land and 76 buildings. I could not believe how much gold there was, it was literally covering every inch of the palace. The details were unbelievable and the throne room was just spectacular. 

The Beehive is another building on the grounds of Kambazathadi Golden Palace. I was surprised at the amount of people just hanging out at this building. Apparently sleeping, kissing, chatting, and just general meeting up is what this building is good for. 

Okay, so I kind of lost track here and I can't seem to find the name of this pagoda anywhere. It was all under a covered roof and had different covered stairways. The most interesting part of this pagoda was the lady boy.

While we were visiting this pagoda we stumbled upon something very interesting: a drag queen. Okay, that may not be exactly what this was but it was pretty darn close. It was a man dressed up as a woman dancing and singing. He had his own band and people were watching and cheering him on. The audience also provided alcohol for him and tucked money in his clothes. I have heard about so called "lady boys" here who have a connection with the ancient Myanmar religion that believed in spirits. The idea is that sometimes, especially on special holidays, men can become possessed with a spirit and this will cause him to act like said spirit. Hence you find men dressed up as woman, dancing and acting out of character. I'm not sure if that was what was going on here but either way it was really interesting to see and I would love to learn more about this custom. 

I tried to find the name of this pagoda but all of the information about it just refers to it as the snake pagoda. Well, you can't say that the name isn't accurate because what this pagoda is best known for is housing a GIANT snake. We took a few dirt roads in the general direction that we were pointed in but our driver had to continue stopping to ask for directions because there were nothing posted to guide people here. This was very off-the-beaten-path. When we arrived we saw a very small golden pagoda that was only 10 or so feet high but we were pointed to a small building right next to it where we walked in to this:

The story behind the snake involves a ancient monk who had a vision that Buddha was sending a snake to live at the monastery with him. I'm unclear if the snake was just sent there from Buddha or if it was a part of Buddha or . . . I don't really know how the snake was connected to Buddha. Anyway, sure enough a snake showed up so they build a house for it and so it came to live at the monastery. It now lives in it's own building where it has it's own Jacuzzi sized pool and lots of bedding. There are people who sit with the snake (to watch him/her?) and you can give them a donation and they will pray to the snake for you. 

Another golden pagoda stands in the center of this town. Shwemawdaw is actually the tallest pagoda in Myanmar (although Shwedagon in Yangon claims to be). It is 375 feet tall and has been rebuilt multiple times due to earthquakes and other natural disasters, with it's origins dating back over 1000 years. It is said to enshrine 2 hairs of Buddha and at least one sacred tooth. What I found out recently was that things like sacred teeth may not actually be from Buddha, rather they are someone else's teeth that were placed next to one that is from Buddha to gain it's energy or merit or holiness or whichever. 

Although it is larger than Shwedagon it is certainly not as popular, in fact it was almost completely abandoned while we were there. It was strange to walk around this ginormous space practically alone. There were fortune teller shacks that were closed up (above) and community water bowls available (below). Just like most everywhere in Myanmar, there was a confusing juxtaposition between the glittering, glitzy gold and jewels that adorned the pagoda and it's surroundings and the warn, decrepit, aging, falling apart as the general state of many things throughout the area. 

Above is a sort of game that I found at the pagoda. You make a wish then throw a folded dollar into the area trying to get it into one of the bowls. The whole contraption spins. If you get it in then your wish will come true. 

Our last stop of the day was to Shwethalyaung Reclining Buddha. This Buddha was built by the Mon in 994 but it was lost  to the jungle when the town of Bago was destroyed. It was rediscovered in 1880 and restored several times. It is 180 feet long and 52 feet tall. It claims to be the second largest reclining buddha in the world but I know of a few others just here in Myanmar that are bigger. The feet and the pillows are adorned with mosaics and jewels and the entrance to the hall is lined with souvenir shops. 

There is also another reclining Buddha right next to this one that is outdoors. We could see it from the car and decided not to go up close because we were thoroughly exhausted at this point. What an amazing day visiting Bago! It was so nice to get outside of Yangon and see life outside of the city. Looking forward to our next day trip already. 

Just a short walk down the street from us is another amazing Buddhist site, Chaukhtatgyi Reclining Buddha. The story is that fifty years ago there was a giant standing Buddha statue that towered above the trees on this spot. One day it got tired and crumbled to the ground. So they decided to build a laying Buddha in it's place. This is actually not a very touristy site, it is not listed on many of the places to see in town yet it is a stunning site. I think what was most surprising was the very simple surroundings of the Buddha. You would expect a place this important to stand out but the entrance looks similar to many other pagoda entrances that aren't nearly as spectacular. 

The Buddha itself is over 5 stories in height and about 219 feet from head to foot aka it was HUGE! It was shimmering gold all along the robe and glittering with jewels. 

The feet were especially interesting. There are 108 images on the soles of the Buddha that represent the three worlds. "59 indicating the inanimate world (Okasaloka), 21 indicating the animate world (Sallaloka), and 28 indicating the world of the conditioned (Sankharaloka)." We got a pamphlet that showed the meaning of each of the symbols and it was fun matching them up to the soles. Some of the symbols included the sun, the east island, the cup full of water, the white lotus, the white parasol, the ruby, the mountain of the universe, among others. 

I heard that almost directly across the street from this Buddha is another seated Buddha that is one of the largest in Myanmar so we will most certainly have to head down to this area again to see another spectacular site. 

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.

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.