Downtown Yangon

As we groggily walked upstairs for breakfast in the hostel, a cheery woman in the kitchen smiled and said, “Merry Christmas!”  Crap – I forgot.  Suba and I looked at each other and laughed.  I couldn’t help but smile inside as I thought of a much younger Ashley who used to set her alarm at 6am (but didn’t sleep the night before anyhow) and anxiously bounded into her parent’s room to announce (to the WORLD) that it was Christmas.  Who knew fifteen years later I would FORGET the holiday.

We went shopping with Phoo today and gosh did I have fun.  We were looking for a top to match the longyis we bought the day before with Ei Ei.  Phoo took us all around Yangon in search of the perfect blouse – and, to say the least, we had a blast.

MAIDS representing in downtown Yangon

Phoo, her boyfriend, Suba, and I met up with another classmate of ours Harry, who arrived earlier that day on a flight from Bangkok.  We ate a delicious noodle soup lunch together, and I tried my first avocado milkshake.  Coming from the States, where everything “California Style” simply means ‘with avocado’ I was surprised I had never tried one of these before.  It was DELICIOUS.

We then slowly made our way to the bus station to begin the next leg of our journey…but of course, we first did a drive-by of the U.S. Embassy and The Lady’s NLD house.  The Lady’s house was enormous, but even larger – was the U.S. Embassy compound – it was gigantic.  What was incredibly disappointing however, was the lack of friendliness at the American Embassy.  As we slowly drove by, guards came out with guns and demanded we keep moving.  I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to me in Myanmar – because my own country’s embassy is barricaded like a fort and no one can enter!  I guess I expected nothing less but it was sad to see my country’s “relations” so barred.

We arrived at the bus stop where Phoo nicely drove us, and loaded into the back of pick-up flat bed trucks.  I joked with Suba that I hoped this wasn’t the bus – but the joke became rather unfortunate as we did spend about two hours driving outside of town to get to the Yangon bus stop.  The uninviting seats on the bus never looked so comfortable after spending two hours sitting on wood with metal bars in your back!   

City living in Yangon

14 hours later, after several freezing moments battling the bus air conditioning, we arrived in Bagan…at 4:30am.  As we groggily got into our horse cart (SO COOL) to go to the hostel, we passed monk after monk after monk, going to collect alms in the morning.  Although I was tired and honestly just wanted a bed – I was really happy to be able to see them.  At 4:30am, it was incredibly quiet and peaceful and watching the monks walk along the streets collecting alms was very special.