Log 20

Mingalabar,

The first thing you notice about Myanmar is the roads. After this experience, I will never complain about the roads in Pennsylvania ever again. They are so bumpy and practically throw you around the bus. You can’t even read a book, because you wouldn’t be able to hold it still long enough to read more than a sentence.

The other thing is that we had to take a shuttle an hour and a half to get from the ship to the city. We ended up in a commercial port terminal instead of a cruise ship terminal, because the ship is too long. Only ships 100 meters or shorter can go to the port terminal right next to the city. Our ship is 140 meters long.

They have a tradition here similar to the zodiac signs that we follow back in the states. The difference is that their zodiacs coordinate with the days of the week instead of months. Each day is represented by an animal. I was born on Tuesday so my animal is the lion. But their tradition goes a little further than ours. The day they were born also dictates who they should marry. Since I was born on a Tuesday, I should marry someone born on Thursday or Sunday, and my worst life partner would be someone born on Wednesday. If anyone is curious about what this says about you, ask me when I get home. I have a list for all the good and bad pairs.

Related to that, they also believe in astrology. The have palm readers that they go to that advise them when they need to make decisions. Their palms tell them how many boyfriends or girlfriends someone is going to have and which one they should marry. It also says stuff about work, prosperity, wisdom, travel and a lot of other things.

Something else that caught my attention is that there is one almost fool proof way to tell if someone is a foreigner visiting Myanmar. And that is if they are wearing sneakers. Everyone in Myanmar wears flip flops, but they call them slippers. Even the kids and construction workers. And while I was yesterday I say a kid with flip flops that squeaked the same way our kids’ shoes light up. I guess you’ll never loss him though. The only people that I have seen not wearing flip flops is the police. This is understandable to some extent because whenever you are in a monastery or pagoda or temple, you have to remove you shoes. Wearing flip flops makes that a very simple and quick process. Having gone to three pagodas and a monastery I can attest to how annoying it is to continuously take off your socks and shoes and then put them back on, just to take them off ten minutes later at the next pagoda.

Another cultural difference is that the University that they go to is determined by their high school marks. It is kinda the same in the states with SAT and ACT but we can still get into a school with the right recommendation. Their choices are purely based off of their high school marks.

So Vietnam had the weirdest language I had ever heard. Their words just sounded like a bunch of random sounds thrown together. But Myanmar, this is the weirdest language I have ever seen. Their letters look as though a child scribbled on a paper and then they said, ‘let this be the letter A’. It sounds funny but that is what it looks like.

I was a neat experience to visit the monastery. We went at the monks feeding time. What happens is, the monks line up with their pots and walk done a line of people with offerings. Some offer foods such as rice, corn, fruit, and peanut brittle. But others may offer other things like pens, pencils, and sharpeners. You can donate whatever you wish to the monks. Anything you give them they will use or eat. They get two meals a day. One in the morning and one in the early afternoon. I don’t know if I could handle that, but I guess when you do it every day your body because accustomed to it.

Lastly, the obvious topic to talk about is Myanmar’s political status. They are currently ruled under a military junta. They are working towards democracy, but the struggle is persistent. The people ended up electing Aung San Suu Kyi as their president. She is the daughter of the man who started the fight for democracy and created the Burma Independence Army. But the junta didn’t accept the results and put her under house arrest. The election was in 1988 and she was released from house arrest in 2010. But by the time she was released, her prime years were over. The junta also wrote into the constitution that no person with any family members who hold foreign passports may be president. This was done just to prevent Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president. Now she is almost 71 years old and acts as the head of state, but not the president. She has a lot of influence but is controlled to some extent on what she can do. The issue is that she is the face of democracy and since she is getting older, many people don’t know what will happen when she dies.

My overall experience in Myanmar was great. The roads were frustrated but that’s a minor annoyance. It is a very calm and laid back culture compared to the punctual Japanese culture. I wouldn’t mind coming back to visit in the future, but there are other places I would like to go to first.