Exploring the inland of Myanmar/Burma

On the evening of Thursday, September 27th, we boarded the night bus for a 9-hour ride inland, towards Mandalay, the second city of Myanmar. A city with 1.3 million inhabitants.

While our travel bags were being loaded into the hold, we noticed the quotation from the Bible "The Way, The Truth and The Life" on the side of the bus, this is absolutely not common in this boeddhist country. Once inside we see at the top of the windshield the sentence "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (yes, we know, this is not exactly how the scripture reads, but hey, this is Asia... :-). That’s special, we don’t see this in buses in The Netherlands. It appears the bus company is owned by a Christian businessman.

In Mandalay we have an appointment with an English teacher from Germany. She has lived in this city for 7 years and speaks perfect Burmese, and next to flawless English, even though she says she is still learning this difficult language. It's a fun and inspiring conversation about her work as a teacher and about the opportunities for entrepreneurs in this area. It shows she has a very large network and she has very good insight into the possibilities, as well as the complexities and limitations in this country. In Mandalay, and it’s surroundings, business opportunities in agriculture or tourism seem to be very doable (e.g. start a plantation or a guesthouse to create employment), but she also sees many other options. We will soon write a separate blog about business in this special country, there is a lot to tell.

She teaches English language to young people, teachers and children. We are very surprised when she takes us to a pre-school (kindergarten), where she also gives language training to the teachers and kids, and when she very carefully opens a door, she whispers that we can follow her inside. Apparently, it is rest-hour, and on the floor there are 40 sweet Burmese children,

aged 3-5 years, sleeping nicely in a row. It's a big puzzle for us how they manage to have all these children sleep at the exact same time!

Back in our hotel we go through the options for business activities here - we have learned a lot but it's not going to be an easy ride..

In the afternoon our teacher arranged for her neighbor, who has a tuktuk (a three wheeled motor taxi), and he drove us through Mandalay for the rest of the day to visit places of interest. Most attractions here consist of Buddhist temples.

Not what we are directly interested in as Christians, but if this is the country where we will eventually live, it is good to have seen this and to see how Buddhists experience their faith.

The monks in the temples are very friendly and they all ask where we are from and are very proud to show off their limited English language skills.

Taking English language lessons is very expensive for the average citizen, and it's popular, especially among young people. Being able to speak, read and write English is seen as a major step towards development and creates more opportunities in the labor market. It has become an important language since the country opened for foreigners. And as more foreigners enter the country, the better that is for the economy. Still, the number of people that are able to speak a full sentence is very small. The majority just smile and stutter the 2-5 words they master.

On the second day in Mandalay, we continued to explore the city by tuktuk and tried to get a feel for, and a better understanding of, this city. Mandalay is a lot quieter and more relaxed than Yangon.

The next day we travelled by bus from Mandalay to Taunggyi. Again a 9 hour drive, this time during the day - a beautiful ride through the mountains and a lot to see, we were not bored. A beautiful landscape with mountains and rivers, but also with small huts where people live, skinny cows, women who carry scales with asphalt on their heads to fill holes in the road surface, even 3 elephants on the doorstep in a village! Taunggyi is a city with 380,000 inhabitants (about the size of Eindhoven) and a lot cooler - it lies on a plateau at about 1,000 meters (3,000 feet) high. Not 33, but 24 degrees Celsius (from 92 back to 75 degrees Fahrenheit), what a relief!

In Taunggyi it is quieter on the street. However, like in Yangon and Mandalay, there are many open air markets and a large part of life takes place on the street. It is so obvious that this country is living in poverty - old people and young mothers with their babies, selling their vegetables, sitting on a sheet of plastic on the ground. If one owns a bit more, then they can afford to spread their merchandise on a table or buy / rent a stall or even work in a covered market. The happy few can work in a store in a shopping center or elsewhere in the city. And if you speak English you can work in a hotel lobby, this is considered a really good job, only available for those who were able to afford an expensive education, unattainable for most.

As we still are in the rainy season (till mid-October), there are pretty heavy showers in the afternoon and we explored the city in between showers, with or without our ankles deep in water. After two days of Taunggyi we went back to Yangon by night bus, a 13 hour drive. We have seen and experienced a lot again.

Next week we will go to Chin state, the poorest state of Myanmar, where we hope to meet many different people again.

As mentioned, it's still the rainy season - check out the next video and smile (the quality is a bit mediocre, we have not been able to upload it in high resolution to YouTube, next time we will do better ...).