First tastes of Myanmar

We arrived in Yangon, Myanmar yesterday evening and had to set our watches back half an hour from Bangkok time owing to the country's unusual time zone. We took a taxi to our downtown hotel just as the sun was setting, and observed the scenes outside: open-doored buses packed with passengers, men wearing sarongs, women with smudges of cream- coloured make up or sunblock on their cheeks and noses, and not a motorbike in sight. We were driving on the right hand side although the cars are right-hand drive. After checking in to the hotel we went out to eat, and sat outside on low seats at a local cafe. We learned that to attract a waiter's attention, you should make a kissing noise in their direction, something that feels very unnatural and rude to us!

Today we had a full day of sightseeing. With the aid of a Lonely Planet guidebook I led the five of us on a walking tour of downtown Yangon. There were some architectural gems to see, from gold painted stupas to crumbling colonial facades to impressive modern government buildings. We walked down a street known as the 'open air library' where it was possible to buy all sorts of copies of books in both English and Burmese. I was pleasantly surprised to see rows of biographies and writings of Aung San Suu Kyi on sale here (later we saw t-shirts imprinted with her face, but I doubt anybody would wear these in public). Another highlight was walking through an outdoor food market along one street, where colourful fruit and vegetables and slabs of enormous fishes were being sold from dishes and baskets on the floor.

At one point we stopped for me to have my palm read by a fortune teller sat in the shade of a tree, surrounded by colourful diagrams of hands and below an umbrella suspended between the tree and his briefcase, as though it were levitating. He told me with absolute certainty that I will marry this year, at which Lily and Jessica loudly expressed their opposition. Amongst other things, I was told that I am somebody who is liked by all, although after checking the length of my thumb he changed his mind and said that I have a 'hard mind' and people are afraid of me. The already questionable credibility of his statements was totally shattered, however, when Lily' s fortune was read after mine and the predictions were suspiciously similar. Perhaps he had only practiced a limited number of phrases in English.

In the evening we visited a very special place, somewhere so sacred to Burmese Buddhists that most hope to make a pilgrimage here at least once in their lives. It is Shwadegon Paya or Pagoda, an enormous gold stupa first erected over a thousand years ago, and today considered to be the most impressive religious monument in all of Southeast Asia. We arrived at sunset and stayed until it was dark. As the sky became a darker blue, the gold of the stupa became more radient. The atmosphere was very serene and the gentle scents of Jasmine and incense added to the magic. Lily and I were shown round by a monk who, at our parting, gave us a set of rosary beads each, a lovely souvenir, we thought.

My impression so far of Myanmar has been hugely positive: everybody is so welcoming and friendly, ready to give you a big smile, and the streets are attractive and interesting, despite the dirt, traffic and cracked pavements common to the poorer parts of this region. As Lily said, there are no obvious signs that this is a population living under the longest- running military dictatorship in history...