Yangon

The largest city in Myanmar, and the whole of Harry’s few days there with Cameron Mofid.

His summary is that there is not a great deal to do in the city itself — a few pagodas — and that the way to spend your time is to get out of it on the train. On safety, he is unambiguous: Yangon is safe and the people are very friendly, and the fighting is a long way away.

Arriving

• A six-hour flight delay to start with, and compensation handed out at the gate.
• Immigration in five minutes, because there are almost no foreigners on the flight.
• The currency and SIM counters were shut when he landed. He had kyat only because a friend had given him some in advance — it’s a closed currency and you can’t buy it abroad.
• A taxi into town, negotiated down without any idea of the right price. He says on camera that he’s tired, he’s letting it go, and if he gets scammed he gets scammed.
• The curfew is why the roads are empty. Nothing moves between roughly midnight and 3am. His driver can drop him off and then has to sit and wait until three before going home.

The hotel is the surprise: $40 a night, one of the nicest he has stayed in and, he thinks, the cheapest. There’s a nightclub downstairs.

Changing money

The most useful practical passage in the video.

• The official rate is worse than the black market rate, and tourists aren’t supposed to use the latter.
• A subscriber recognised Harry in the street and told him what rate he should be getting, which is how he avoided being cheated. He deliberately doesn’t film the transaction, to avoid getting anyone in trouble.
• The rate moves daily and is volatile, so you can’t know precisely what you should get and have to trust the person changing it.

Shwedagon Pagoda

The famous one, and a huge gilded structure that was under bamboo scaffolding when Harry visited.

• The gold leaf is replaced periodically, which is what the scaffolding is for, and it is real gold. Your entry contribution goes towards it — the guide’s framing is that visitors are paying for the next layer.
• The approach is lined with souvenir stalls, which Harry notes has turned Buddhism into capitalism.
• 20 to 25 tourists a day, where three years earlier there were a great many.
• You can pray anywhere in the complex; there are no restrictions on where you sit.
• You can fan the Buddha, which Harry does, and describes as a gym workout.
• A guide asked 30,000 and took 20,000 — about five dollars — for a short tour, having explained that his usual rate is higher and that tourists are so scarce that things are hard.

Obs: the guide gives his name, but in a form the subtitles render only as a number, so he is not named here.

The circular train

The best thing in the city, on Harry’s account, and the thing he’d tell you to do.

• The Yangon circular railway runs a full loop of about three hours, and you can get off wherever you like.
• A ticket is around 1,000 kyat — roughly 30 cents. A watermelon bought on board cost nearly as much as the fare.
• The station feels British-built, which he clocks immediately; his comparison is Sri Lankan and Indian stations.
• The train is Chinese, with Chinese lettering on the front, and it is the oldest he has ever been on — the destination board looks fifty years old.
• There is no tourist infrastructure, because there are no tourists.
• Vendors work the carriages constantly, including a man who boards with all his ingredients and cooks lunch on the train.
• Locals dry their clothes on the tracks.

His conclusion, delivered twice: get public transport out of the city, because the city doesn’t reflect the country. It became a tip.

The rural market

Reached by getting off at the wrong stop and walking twenty minutes along the tracks.

• A huge indoor market, mostly fruit and vegetables, with enormous speakers playing music, and thousands of people.
• The locals are noticeably more suspicious of the camera than in the city. Harry’s guess is that foreigners essentially never come here.
• Sugar cane juice, 700, which he loves, and a lot of cane grown locally.
• Stingrays, 10,000 each — about $2 — sold from a van with what looks like more than a hundred in it.
• A load a woman is carrying, 40,000, about $10.
• A drink he’s warned off, because it’s mixed with unclean water. He notes the old Harry would have drunk it.
• The meat aisle, where animals are being killed in the open, and which he declines to film much of.
• Money hung on a tree. Notes of 1,000 and 5,000 pinned up in the open in the meat section, untouched. His comment is that in England or America it would all be gone within minutes.

Street food and street life

• Coconut, 6,000, drunk on a kerb with a group of Burmese boys who sit down with him — some of them apprenticed monks, who will devote their lives to Buddhism.
• Pork trotters, offered to him by locals who visibly debate whether to charge him and then don’t. He describes it as pure fat and eats it anyway.
• A fried vegetable snack, which he rates highly and which he’s given for free.
• Pirated DVDs — K-pop, Hollywood and Bollywood, and clearly not legitimate.
• Betel-chewing men everywhere.

Harry’s tips

• Bring kyat with you or arrive with dollars. It’s a closed currency and the airport counters may be shut.
• Find out the black market rate before you change money. A stranger told Harry his and it’s the reason he wasn’t cheated.
• Be off the street before midnight, or plan to stay out until 4am. The curfew is real and the roads are empty.
• Do the circular train. Three hours, thirty cents, and the best thing in the city.
• Get off at a random stop. He did, by accident, and it made the video.
• Don’t drink anything mixed with tap water, which is the one warning he was given and took.

Source

• All Aboard the Myanmar Dictatorship Express! 🇲🇲 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSO2NF9gQ-M