Myanmar (Burma)

Myanmar may have been my favorite trip so far. I was nervous; it was very far and I really didn't know much about it at all. I loved it. It was so full of exotic surprises, coupled with very kind and welcoming people.

I looked up the discrepancy of the name. The tl;dr version of it is that their colonizers called them Burma. When the military government took it over, they changed the name to Myanmar. The issue is that many people did not see or agree with the validity of the military government to take over, and therefore change the name. So many people still consider it Burma. In the country it is quite interchangeable and different governments around the world recognize it by different names. The US officially recognizes it as Myanmar (Burma), yes in those parentheses lolol. In the words of J. Pederman, "you most likely know it as Myanmar, but it'll always be Burma to me"

So because it was a very short trip (one week, Saturday February 16 - Friday February 22), I kept feeling like it was "nothing". Like, oh next week I'll be in Burma but whatever I'll be back by the weekend, what do you want to do? It wasn't until like the day before it hit me how far it was and how I was going to be traveling about 24 hours to make it there! Sheesh!

Flying out over Santa Barbara!

Somewhere over North Korea O_o

Pulling into the Mandalay airport

So, here was my great introduction into Myanmar. Despite my best efforts with the flying timing, I couldn't not land in Myanmar at an unreasonable hour. I think my flight landed about 1:30am. I arranged an airport pick-up with my hotel because I was nervous about the taxi situation in Mandalay, to say nothing of that hour.

For the first time, no one was there to greet me. No worries, I'm patient, despite the hour. When I was the only person left in the airport, I got nervous. I decided to say whatever and just get a taxi because I just wanted to get to the hotel. There was one "taxi stand" in the airport, and this was it.

Looks fine right? Right. So I go over there and this is the guy working the taxi stand.

I am tired and nervous and want to get to the hotel so I am there for a solid 15 minutes, borderline shouting 'EXCUSE ME!' 'MINGALABAR!' 'HELLO!' and this guy WOULD. NOT. WAKE. UP. Only in Burma, right? Well, spoiler alert, I finally get through to the hotel and they pick me up and I finally get to sleep around 4:30am. So I thought the trip was off to a bad start. Well obviously it wasn't IDEAL but the trip really shaped up in the end.

My hotel was the bees knees

Walking along the Mandalay Palace perimeter
toward Mandalay Hill in the distance!

ALL YOUR ATTENTION NEEDS TO BE
ON WALKING. ALL THE STREETS
LOOK LIKE THIS

Mandalay Palace moat

You may have heard me talk about it on the Meet Us In Paris podcast that I am a regular contributer on, but when I go to new places, I try to learn the following phrases: Please, thank you, sorry, hello, yes, no and count 1-10. Wellllll that was impossible in Burmese. I tried to look up "thanks" in Burmese but it was insane. So I thought, well what's a simple "no"? I took a look at the below and was like welp, I tried haha.

Stopped here for a drink after the palace.
Doesn't it look like Adventureland of
Disneyland?? I just love it.

Amazing stupas!

The Buddha in the Stupa

The entrance to Mandalay Hill!

But I took the tuk tuk down the road...

The pagoda at the top really was breaktaking. All of the roofs and steeples were gold plated, and every inch of the walls were mirrored and bejeweled.

Then of course, the reason I was there! The education fair hosted by the US Department of State. I actually took a picture of this to send to Chrishon, since she works at George Washington University, and then I saw the UCI pennant afterwards haha!

No shoes inside the building!

But, they had complimentary sandals for you to use inside the bathroom LOL.

Lunch was amazing and droolworthy

Flew Myanmar Airlines from Mandalay to Yangon. I was a little worried. Mainly because they are the only domestic carrier and when I was doing research on them prior to this trip, they were saying it was a government airline and not the most organized and sometimes the plane would have to change destination mid-air??? It ended up being 100% completely fine, the only oddity being that when we checked in, we were given these stickers that we had to wear LOL

The Shwedagon Pagoda is famous, and rightly so. It is the most famous pagoda in Myanmar and was breathtaking and amazing!

Sadly the video only captures the sight and sounds, didn't include the smooth, cool marble floor or the wafting incense from every direction...

I went to a big famous market right next to my hotel and bought fabric and had a Burmese longyi made! This was the skirt fabric. I loved it.

I thought I looked like a hotel maid lololol
but whatever, I liked it

A cat wearing a sweater.

My student helper at the fair in Yangon (Rangoon)!

All the helpers were so adorable!

Chinatown in Yangon

You there! Sell me one of your melons!

Jodi and I went and got some amazing foot massages from a
highly rated spa on TripAdvisor. They completed it by giving
us some thanaka, which pretty much all women wear. It's
a sandalwood paste that helps the skin on top of serving as
a sunscreen agent

I loved Myanmar, and I didn't get to see everything either! Bagan is one of the holy cities that you see a lot of the pictures of with the hot air balloons and the temples. I definitely didn't have time to make it (it was a four hour drive from Mandalay) but this trip was such a wonderful introduction.