Rangoon, Burma/Yangon, Myanmar
That’s the meaning of Rangoon/Yangon. Kind of ironic, given recent history.
I have to admit a bias for Burma over Myanmar. Burma has fewer syllables, and Myanmar sounds like a disease of the jaw.
Arrived here by air from Chiang Mai and noticed a change from Thailand – more packs of stray dogs, no street signs, and a general urban shabbiness and lack of trash collection that comes with decades of living in a socialist paradise hermit republic.
Then this morning we went to the Shwedagon pagoda. The centrepiece is a 99-metre gold foil-covered wonder of the world. After weeks of seeing dozens of temples, they pale in comparison to this place.
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It’s approached up this grand staircase.
Which is guarded by these marvelous crocodiles.
Once there, it’s like being in New York City for the first time: the most jaded cosmopolitan is transformed into a slack-jawed gaping yokel.
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We spent hours walking around.
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By the way, that’s an improvised longyi I’m wearing, made out of a travel towel, because shorts are not permitted while visiting the pagoda. A longyi (sounds like loan-gee) is a piece of material worn by both men and women here.
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Some more shots of Shwedagon.
And another.
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Strange fact: In Thailand, they drive on the left, like the British, even though they have never been a British colony. Yet here, which was a colony, they drive on the right, like in North America, but the steering wheel is on the right side, like left-driving countries. Just one of the mysteries of the orient.
![](https://randomrambles.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IMG_5738-1024x724.jpg)
On the way to Shwedagon, we came across a charming custom. This woman has a cage full of birds. For a thousand Kyat – less than a Canadian dollar – you can set one free.
![](https://randomrambles.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IMG_5755-1024x758.jpg)
So I liberated this little guy, thereby gaining great merit.
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I should’ve ransomed the whole cage.