The Royal Court at Mandalay

Palace Grounds, Mandalay

Oh, this is not the original palace, it's completely rebuilt using convicts. The original one burnt down more than a century ago (if I'm not mistaken).

Myanmar: The Golden Land Pt 2

Ananda Pahto, Bagan

OK, here’s more on Myanmar, if you’re still not sick of it yet hehehe.

People
Myanmar is multi-ethnic. Apart from Burmese, it has Chinese, Indians, Mons, Shans, Kachins, and a horde of other races. Apart from Buddhists, there’re Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. Basically, it is just like Malaysia. Maybe if Malaysia were to follow ‘The Burmese Road to Socialism’, Malaysia’d end up just like Myanmar. Yeah it’s backward, but it’s not all that bad. Where else (in the non-western world) would you find people of all race and religion using the same language? And sporting the same attire (meaning sarongs)?
Myanmar is foreigner friendly. Foreigners get waved through at the airports (meaning they won’t stop you from carrying your mobile phones in, although officially they have to retain it and give it back to you when you leave the country. Too much hassle for the officers, I suppose). Locals have to go through all sorts of checks, in various types of counters. Nope, I didn’t stand around to watch (less they decided to retain my phone).

Entrance Fees
Foreigners have to pay entrance fees for some of the tourist sites. Locals don’t need to pay a single kyat. Occasionally, they’ll let foreigners in for free, especially when the foreigner looks something like me, hehe. But then you can’t pull out your maps, or your Lonely Planets, or start clicking away with your cameras at every other thing, so I figured it’d be easier to pay (and get all the privileges of being a tourist) instead of pretending you’re Myanmese. The entrance fees are reasonable, USD10 for as long as you well like in all the sites in Mandalay. Same price for all the sites in Bagan, again for as long as you wanna stay. Try visiting some of the sites in India, and you’ll know that this is very reasonable indeed.

Transportation
Burmese drive on the right side of the road, although their cars have the steering wheel on the right side, which is not right for us, but alright for them. This sentence makes little sense. Visit the country and you’ll know what I mean.
Unlike Indians, Myanmese no longer honk at everything (moving or not) in the vicinity of their path.
Foreigners cannot drive in Myanmar. This includes motorbikes. Foreigners can cycle, or walk. Or take one of the many modes of public transportation. Many of us hire trishaws, cars or horse-carts. Hiring one with a non-English-speaking driver has its advantages. First, they cannot communicate with you. This may sound like a big disadvantage, but then, you’d save the trouble of trying to explain why you can’t pay more, or why you’re not interested in this souvenir shop or that restaurant, etc. As long as they know the words – go, stop, there (with your finger pointed at that direction), yes, no, eat (with your hands gesturing towards your mouth), hotel, and the names of the places you want to visit (Lonely Planet has all the place names printed in Burmese, luckily), I reckoned you’d be ok. Anyway, these drivers I figured, are less exposed to tourists, so should be less experienced at haggling you out of the meager amount of kyat that you still have in your hands (told you I’m a cheapskate hehehe). Besides, you’ll learn to pick up some Myanmese words, right?
My Myanmese vocabulary consists of 5 words – ‘mingalaba’ (hello), ‘be lauk leh’ (how much), ‘zeji-thiyeh’ (expensive – you have to stress it), ‘shaw bau’ (discount) and ‘cezu babeh’ (thank you). Oh, and it helps to know the numbers too.

Communication
Communications within the country is reasonably good. There’re quite a lot of phone service shops around that’ll allow you to make local calls, national calls and international calls. International calls are expensive. If you don’t feel like making an international call, you can try emailing. Come to think of it, I’ve not seen any cyber-cafes while roaming around. Besides (and according to LP), yahoo, hotmail and a host of other common mail providers don’t work in Myanmar, so it’ll keep you free from worrying about whether your boss is shouting obscenities at you for being out of reach, or whether the stock market in KL has bloody crashed, and such. If you really feel like contacting someone outside the country and want to keep your expenses down, try sending a postcard. These are at only 30 kyat per postcard (about 15 sen) – I am still waiting for mine to arrive, I only sent it on 20 Feb, so it’s now only about 3 weeks. Let’s wait for another month or two.
Mobile phones? Yeah, mobile phones are useful too. They can wake you up in the morning, or remind you to call the airlines to re-confirm your tickets, and to check up on some forgotten phone numbers. Besides that, you should remember, you aren’t even supposed to bring it in, in the first place, ok?

Things To Buy
Sarongs, velvet-lined sandals, ethnic ware, tapestries, painted replicas of religious murals found in temples, lacquer ware, religious paraphernalia, gemstones, jade, rubies, ecstasy pills, opium and heroin (just kidding, the last few are illegal, and I guess can’t be found easily, …unless you know someone from the Golden Triangle).

OK, I’ve about had it on writing about Myanmar, guess I’ll just post pictures for you guys to see next.

Temples of Bagan

Bagan, land of a thousand stupas (or more like 2217 according to Lonely Planet, and that's not including brick mounds which if included would give a total of nearly 4000 sites).

Bagan is an area filled with temples and stupas for as far as the eyes can see. Spires rise up from the ground like mysterious ancient alien citadels especially early in the morning when there's still some residue of fog hanging around. Cycling is a great way to explore Bagan (I felt like some cheapskate Indiana Jones going on a treasure hunt amongst the eerie looking temples). Besides giving me the much needed exercise (I'm proud to say I'm leaner and fitter (and darker) now), it is cheap at only about 2 ringgit per day, for as long as you well please (but mine doesn't have lights, and the bell doesn't work, so I thought it wiser not to cycle at night, besides what's there to see huh?). Bagan's also sparsely populated, and there're not that many tourists (unlike many parts of India) so you won't get much problems with cars and buses and what else d'yu have honking the hell out of you. Sometimes, especially in the less popular temples, and in the afternoons (when the sun is at its glorious peak), you'd find that you're the only one in the temple. Some of the less used tracks are quite sandy and hard to cycle thru though. A puncture cost me 400 bloody kyat, which is not too expensive actually, but my bike only cost me 500 per day!

If you don't fancy cycling, you can get a horse cart. But I was feeling a little adventurous at that time hehe.

Myanmar: The Golden Land Pt 1

Some ritual at Shwezigon Paya, Bagan
If only those tourists were not frantically clicking away... I guess the ones at the back of me would say the same thing about me, but I'm different! I look Myanmese hehehe.

OK here's my take on Myanmar: The Golden Land.

Myanmar is an incredibly friendly and wonderful place to visit.
It is not too expensive, ...even for Malaysians.
Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to convert 200 US Dollars to Foreign Exchange Certificates (FEC) anymore. You will need a tourist visa, flight tickets and liquid USDs.
1 USD = 900 kyat (change it only when you are at the city, not at the airport. Why? Go find out yourself, hehe).
Kyat is pronounced 'cat' as in Malay for paint, not cat as in the type that catches mice.
(Note for Dad: the 'c' in Malay is unaspirated, like the 'ch' in Chee Eng, not the 'ch' in cheese. The unaspirated 'ch' is spelt 'ky' in Burmese, so Chee Eng would be spelt Kyi Eng. Aung San Su Kyi is pronounced Aung San Suci (as in Malay for 'holy'). The 'j' sound is spelt 'gy' in Burmese so brother's name would be Gyason Ong in Burmese I suppose. This rule applies to all Burmese place names).

The Golden Land
Burmese like to gild their temples and Buddha images in gold. They are experts at making 'gold leaves' for to stick onto whatever religious things they can afford to.

Attire
Very few Burmese wear jeans (at least not while I was there). They don't like to wear them coz they're hard to wash (...I made that up hehe, but try washing them with your hands!) 90% of Burmese wear sarongs, for home, work and even formal occassions regardless of their religion or race. I don't know whether they wear anything underneath, I didn't ask, I'm not a pervert! Unlike Indians, I have not seen a Burmese peeing by the streets (except 1 who was drunk), although I figured it'd be easier if you wear sarongs, right? Indians are the true experts of street-peeing, Indians can street-pee while wearing slacks, squatting, and surrounded by hordes of people, with the utmost discretion (meaning you won't be able to see the 'parts' you're not supposed to see, unless you try very hard, which means ...that there must be something mighty wrong with you!)
Burmese prefer sandals to shoes, because every other place is a temple or monastery compound, and you're NOT supposed to wear your shoes, NOR your socks in them. Same goes to a lot of offices (and of course, houses). Most Burmese sport velvet-lined 'Japanese' sandals (flip-flops). If you visit, bring a light pair and plastic bags so that you can store them in your bag without coating everything in your bag with street-dust.

Food
Burmese like their food thickly coated with oil. The oil is supposed to protect the food underneath from germs. Don't ask me how you're supposed to eat the food without eating the oil, I still haven't figured it out yet.
Unlike Indians, Burmese eat their cows and pigs. I did not see a stray cow or a pig around the streets, only dogs, and cats, and oh yeah, horses (Horse carts are the No 1 mode of public transportation in Bagan, costs 6000 kyat per day. Nope I didn't try it, bicycles only costs 500 kyat per day (about RM 2), hehehe, cheapskate).
Most popular Burmese soup is 'hin-jo'. Tastes something like salted vegetable soup (ham-choi thong / kiam-chai theng) or 'chai-boei'.
Most popular condiment is 'ngapi'. Tastes like 'sambal belacan'.
Most popular drink is chinese tea. Every table has a thermal flask which waiters constantly top up with boiling water.
If you don't like Burmese food, there're lots of Chinese and Indian restaurants around.

...To be continued. I think I better post this first, it's getting mighty long-winded as usual.

Two Years in Delhi

Hello! I'm back. Today is Sunday, my favourite day of the week (coz I don't need to work, usually, and I can sleep late, usually). This month marks my 2nd annivesary of my stay in Gurgaon, India. The climates have changed from cold to pleasant, becoming hotter everyday. The mosquitoes are on their way back from hibernation, or wherever they go during the winter. My job still sucks (actually it ain't that bad, the groove is slowly returning each and everyday hehe). I am still sorting through the more than 1200 CVs of job applicants, and have not decided who to employ. Unfortunately NONE of the applicants are girls, believe it or not!!!

Besides that, slight changes have taken place since I first set foot in Gurgaon. Oh don't worry about the animals, the cows, the pigs, the donkeys, horses, buffaloes and camels are still having a helluva time around. The scenery in front of my apartment is no longer an expanse of green field (yellow in summer) dotted by huts and shelters of construction workers. It is now blocked by a rapidly rising shopping complex due to complete by end 2006. The drivers surprisingly, don't honk as often as they do (they still drive on the wrong side of the road when circumstances demand, which happen pretty often). The trucks still like to use their headlights high beams to shine the shit out of you at night (maybe those trucks don't come with low beams, who knows?) The people are less in awe of the escalators, they no longer cause traffic jams at the head of escalators. They no longer call the lift down by pressing the 'down' button when they want to go up. My cook is getting better by the day (or I'm getting more used to the cooking by the day). Pretty girls are still hard to come by, except on tv, magazines, or if you linger around posh restaurants in 5 star hotels. I am still single and unattached. My Hindi still sucks. My English is slowly getting Indianized. In India, people expire instead of die, pass-away, pass-on, etc. Transvestites are called eunuchs, even if they still have their balls attached. Water heaters are called geysers. Air-cons are always referred to as ACs, never as air-cons. Goggles do not only refer to the ones that have elastic straps for swimming, etc; they also mean sunglasses or shades. Grass (as in the one you smoke) still grows wild in the dividers and road sides of Delhi (although they've tried to clean it up last year). And i still have the luxury of a 3000 sq ft office with stacks of work on my 'keep-in-view' tables all to myself (coz my one and only colleague is still on leave due to the 'expiry' of his father).

And I better get started on Myanmar before I run out of steam.

Entry No 1: Test Run

OK, this is a test run, I’m personally lousy at computing (except for use of software such as Excel and Word, which I think I am pretty proficient judging from the others I meet at work), but after some prompting of my dear sis, and seeing that both my sis and bro are into the blogging trend, I think I’ll try my hand at keeping a blog as well. I’m basically a pretty lazy writer, so let’s see where this gets me to (hopefully, it’ll not end up like the other diaries I’ve tried to keep in the past – think I’ve tried about 3 times in my life, always after some major life-changing incidents, such as break-ups, ….and err… my soul-searching days?? The most successful of them diaries of past ended after, I think, …3 entries?!? Nope, I don’t have them anymore, I’ve given them all back to mother earth.)