Yangon, Myanmar (Burma)

Yangon welcomes me with the smell of urine and durian. Spices fill the air. Spices so exotic that you choke just by inhaling them. The streets are dirty. The buildings are slum-like. It reminds me of India. I wasn't sure what to expect, I'm just kind of wingin' it. The shops are all open and don't have doors. There's loads of street food vendors sitting on stools and selling who knows what out of a big bowl. It's intense. I'm overwhelmed, wondering how I'm going to survive just two days in this place all on my own. I'm surrounded by sounds of horns honking and bike bells ringing. You've never really seen what a traffic jam looks like until you've been to Asia, believe that. I can do this, I think to myself.

The climate is labeled as "tropical monsoon" which I'm assuming means that it's so damn hot that you sweat so much and then it rains a lot, so either way you're drenched. I was shocked to see that Uber is readily available here but it was relieving as my trip to my hostel went as smooth as it could have. My hostel is located on the fourth floor of a building. To get inside, you have to walk through a t-shirt shop through a small little staircase. I wonder to myself if the guy selling the t-shirts gets annoyed every time I walk into his shop and don't buy anything. Ha.

On my first adventure into the town, I walked to a place called Sule Pagoda which is a small place of worship, covered in gold. Gosh, it was bright, but beautiful. Inside, I'm looking at various Buddha statues and a local boy comes up to me and asks if he can speak with me in English. He was kind but my guard was completely up. He offered to take a picture for me but I was being super cautious and didn't even want him to hold my phone as I was afraid he might run away with it. Traveling in places like this alone, as a female, can be really difficult in the sense that you have to be super aware at all times and I'm always just under the assumption that someone is trying to scam me. But at the same time, talking and spending time with the locals is the best way to get a full-on, absolutely amazing experience so I continued. The boy and his friend took me to a local lady to buy a longyi. A longyi is similar to a sarong. It's a large piece of cloth that you tie around your waist. Here in Myanmar, almost everyone wears a longyi at all times. Both men and women. And they tie it a certain way. The boys and the lady at the shop helped me do it correctly and we were all hanging out, just laughing. In Myanmar, the people also wear this clay like mask on their face to keep cool because of the heat. It's called thanaka. I got some for free after I was basically forced to buy the longyi because "I tried it on" (it goes over your clothes mind you). See, scammy. I got over that quickly though because now I have a longyi. The boys and the lady helped me apply the thanaka on my face  and we laughed because it was pretty silly. After this, I continued on with my day, solo.. walking around with a longyi and clay all over my face. I felt a little silly and there were lots of stares glancing my way but also lots of smiles (probably because they were laughing at me lmaooo who knows). I was really diving into the local culture, I'd say, so I was okay with it all. I was even approached by a Burmese guide man at another temple because I was wearing a longyi, and we had a marvelous life conversation. Solid day.

The next day consisted of riding a bicycle for four hours with a couple from France and a man from Austria. We rode around through local villages, in the rain. I loved it. I also hated it because I'm seriously out of shape and riding a bicycle for four hours consistently is pretty tremendous if you're not used to it. Luckily for me, I have killer endurance and was able to keep up with these folks. Now this was a freaking experience! The Austrian man, our tour leader, had moved to Myanmar and started this tour company. He also is involved in a project to provide clean drinking water to people in small villages. We biked through one of the villages he sponsors. During this adventure, his bike got a flat tire. He just happened to know some local man here who could fix his tire, so off to his house we went. Somewhere along the day, we took shelter from the rain in a little coffee hut. The coffee was 50 cents and they had a selection of instant powdered coffees to choose from. I didn't hate it. Biking through these villages and seeing how some people have to live is just wildly humbling. These people built their own houses out of trees and that's all they were. Houses raised on stilts, all out of wood with no real flooring, and no doors. Anyone could easily come and go through the open space where the door should be. But the village is close-knit and it's most likely that no one has anything to take, really anyway. Just wild. I'm seriously still trying to wrap my head around third world countries and how so many of us just don't understand how seriously privileged we really are.