Day 1 in Yangon and it’s been a long old journey to get here. The days seem to meld into one as I’ve flown through time zones (we flew into the sunset which was stunning and like watching it on a time lapse) and I vaguely remember this day starting at 5am at a dark coach stop on my way to Heathrow. I’m always flustered by such early starts and it’s not helped by my washing down my malaria tablets with what I thought was water but was actually a leftover half glass of wine.
We’re delayed leaving Heathrow for reasons that were unexplained but involved baggage handlers gesticulating wildly on the tarmac and throwing luggage in a manner that suggested an unbroken one is seen as a dent on professional pride. It’s a very long and boring flight, and not made any more enjoyable by Vietnam Airlines not really having enough food on board – there were so many people asking for something else to eat that all they had left were some sort of Vietnamese version of a Pot Noodle which made the entire cabin smell of noodles, if noodles were made of rancid plastic. I attempted to drink my way through this horror and consumed so much wine that the chap next to me took to asking the stewardess for wine on my behalf when the trolley rattled past again, “as that’s what she had all the other times you came round”. Oh dear.
I meet most of my party on the connecting flight – I think we all spent various transfers and journeys trying to work out who our co-travellers might be – then, luggage located and guide met, we emerge from Yangon’s rather new and shiny looking airport into the bright heat of a Burmese afternoon (whilst Burma has generally changed its name to Myanmar there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent of “Burmese”) and a traffic jam. I never mind traffic jams in new places as it gives me chance to drink everything in – huge buildings, some colonial and some more modern but many in less than ideal condition, tower over streets crowded with sellers of bottles of water, fruits and posters of Aung San Suu Kyi, and every sort of method of transport from rickety bicycles to huge gleaming off-roaders. Car ownership is something that’s only recently become widespread here but the congestion would suggest the idea has been enthusiastically adopted. I’m struck by the extraordinary combination of a time-warp and the modern world: advertising hoardings and wifi hotspots abound, but so do hand carts and power cuts.
And we’re off to explore Yangon with our lovely guide, Myo Myo. Yangon, renamed from the colonial Rangoon, is Myanmar’s largest city. Our first stop is Chauk Htat Gyi Pagoda, an enormous hanger-like building which houses one of the most hallowed reclining Buddha statues in Myanmar. There is a reverential hush as devotees go about their prayers on huge carpets in front of the gigantic statue which is 217 feet from one end to the other – the eyelashes alone are more than a foot long.
Calm seems to fill the air and all around is decoration and yet more decoration: the Buddha’s upturned soles are delicately carved with dozens and dozens of sacred symbols. Here a huge mirrored mosaic stand with a bell sparkling in the sunlight, there statues bowing towards the Buddha, with gongs and more shrines lining the walls.
More Buddha statues are everywhere, from the huge to teeny tiny ones in alcoves, and everything brightly painted and glittering. Many are decorated with rather startling flashing fairy lights – in fact anything flashing or electronic seems to be de rigueur – and offerings are everywhere, whether it’s money or flowers, incense or delicate paper umbrellas. Not everything is translated from Burmese so I just wander and look. An open air walkway runs across the back of the temple, the wall decorated with statues of more Buddhas every few feet, and I look out across the skyline – even the houses are built in the angular-eved style of pagodas and the roofs of many poke out from among the palm trees along with the dumpy gold towers of stupas; the domes which form Buddhist shrines. I learn quickly that pagodas, Buddhas and stupas form a BIG part of this trip. I’m also struck by how much Buddhism forms part of every day life – back home it’s a minority belief system and seen as rather hippyish, but here’s it’s part of everything.
Before sundown we arrive at the 2,000 year old Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s holiest temple site which dominates the skyline over the city and is reputed to hold relics from four ancient Buddhas. We shuffle through the crowds at security where any of our party not deemed covered-up enough are lent longyi; long sarongs traditionally worn by both men and women in Myanmar and differently knotted or folded according to gender (although the ones for tourists have handy wrap ties as there’s an art to getting them to stay on).
Then we’re whisked up in a lift and along a walkway into the temple site. The sheer scale of it is hard to comprehend; a vast complex dominated by a gold stupa dome towering high into the sky, surrounded by yet more stupas glinting in the fading sun, brightly coloured statues, pavilions and shrines as far as the eye can see. The scent of frangipane flower offerings hangs in the air and endless little paths lead off though the shrines away from the main marble terrace. It’s disorientating and easy to lose your bearings, not least because it’s absolutely packed with tourists, worshippers and monks.