Next Stop on the SAS tour: The Bagan Open

Ahoy Freedom Fighters

We have officially departed from the town of Yangon (Rangoon) and made our way out the mysterious state of Myanmar and I feel like I even learned a thing or two. Myanmar is by far the most intriguing state we’ve visited simply because of it’s current state of affairs. For those of you who are unaware of what’s going on in Myanmar… I mean Burma… it’s a very sad situation. 14 years ago the people held their first free election and 80% voted for their president. This right of democracy was soon denied by the military regime who threw the victor in jail and a general remained at the helm. Now in the year 2006, only the government refers to the country as Myanmar, while the natives and everyone else in the world, knows it as Burma. Now the government is trying to tighten it’s grip by cutting off everyone and everything from the outside world, including shutting down most access to outsiders and making long distance phone calls cost up to 12 dollars a minute. Another way they try and discourage tourists is by offering a really bad exchange rate that’s not all too different than working with a six year old. The official exchange rate is 6 Kyat (chat) for 1 USD. However after wandering the streets for a few hours, you’ll find the black market exchange rate is a whopping 1,100 kyat to 1 USD. The bottom line became, when you were in Burma one dollar can take you a long, long way… unless it’s a bottle of rum you are buying for 50 cents, then you aren’t going very far except by taxi. So I bought a lachee (spelling?) basically a man skirt, and a nice eastern style button up shirt and made my way to the city of Bagan.




Bagan: The land of 2,000 pagodas and 2 actual buildings. The landscape of Bagan is absolutely breathtaking because the horizon of pagodas goes on and on and on. The first day we stopped at Shwedogan pagoda and it was amazing to see all the activity going on including prayer, Buddhist novication ceremonies, and all the monks dressed in their monkee attire. The second day I finally achieved something very few Americans can claim. I played a round of golf in Bagan. I shot 100 in Bagan, but it was glorious. The unfortunate thing is that the golf course probably had government ties, but this is something that’s very hard to avoid in a country that’s run by the military. We had caddies and all and the whole round cost us about 50 dollars. It was fun because we were the only people on the golf course. So at the turn instead of taking a 5 minute break. We took an hour lunch break and decided to wait off the heat. For those people who hate clouds, I have a country for you, there were absolutely no clouds the entire time I was there. But plenty of smog for you smog addicts. With the faithful caddies, I only lost one ball the entire round. Later that night we watched the sunset from a pagoda and enjoyed a relaxing night watching Back to the Future on HBO. Really not much of a nightlife in Bagan. One night we went out to dinner at a puppet show theatre house. I wasn’t too impressed by the puppetry and thought that it seemed strange.




After this short trip we made our way back to Yangon for one last night of exploring the town. The city of Yangon is actually very wonderful. My thought association of Yangon is much higher than that of India because there weren’t as many beggars and everything seemed a lot cleaner on the whole. We eventually made our way to a local restaurant we they let us come on stage and sing with the in house band. People were defiantly very interested in seeing and learning as much as they could about foreigners. They seemed almost confused at our reasons for being there. One thing that is dirtier in Burma (noticibly) is the water. It literally looks like a boiling puddle of mud. We ended up docking actually in a fairly wide river which took a toll on when we could and could not leave because of things like tide and water height. Now we off and I am on my way to Vietnam/Cambodia to see my mom and mike. And soon our boat can stop conserving water, which would be wonderful. One thing to explain is that my amazon trip and safari were all done independently. My last two over night trips have been completely arranged by Semester at Sea. When you actually get away from the main group and do things independently the trip is a little riskier, but infinitely more rewarding. To anyone thinking of going on SAS or knows anyone going SAS my advice would be to first check everything out independently and you experience will be far richer. If you ever get a chance to see Myanmar/Burma, I would definitely do it, with military regimes becoming a fad of the past, it’s something I recommend to anyone. It’s a very safe country and I think it’s a country that is worth getting behind and fighting for independence from the control of the government. But after India, is a democracy really an improvement for everybody or even an ideal setup, are people smart enough to rule themselves? I am not too sure anymore. Today on sea we finally hit our first storm but it was not too rocky. Also they put out a PIRATE ALERT!!! They have all the hoses dispensed and ready and people watching guard on the back of the boat as we head through the most heavily pirate infested waters in the world: The Malacca Strait. Ahoy mateys... I am ready to take them on! We also had a crew talent show which was really AWESOME! Things are getting better all the time. Oh I have to go get ready for the drag show. TaTa.