Everyone Should Go to Burma

At least twice during the past ten days Lara turned to me and asked, "Don't you think everyone should come to Burma?" and of course I said yes. Absolutely. Everyone should go to Burma. As I was getting ready to leave the states, I had a "what's the point" moment, wondering why the hell I was about to spend insane amounts of money considering I'm currently jobless to go half-way around the world when home is so comfortable. The second day in Myanmar I got my answer, as we were jostling in a horse-drawn carriage down a dirt road in Bagan, 12th century temples and pagodas to the horizon in every direction, brilliant pink acacia blooming at the side of the road and not another tourist in sight. Of course, now Lara and I are sitting at the computers in our hotel lobby in Phuket, with some bad karaoke act singing "Cocaine" in the background. The town we're in looks an awful lot like Cancun. It's depressing. Travel is all about the sublime and the ridiculous I guess.

Anyway, after Lara found me in the Bangkok airport we made our way to Yangon and after 32 straight hours of travel we checked into our hotel where there were blessed blessed beds. We spent most of the next day wandering Yangon, which is . . . fine. Thanks to the military junta, which has banned motorcycles and horn honking in Yangon (though not in the rest of the country, more on that later), Yangon is a surprisingly quiet city. We made our way to the main tourist destination, the Schwedagon pagoda which makes the country look really really rich. That's one hell of a lot of gold. A toothless man calculated our horoscopes. Strangely enough, we both happened to be wearing our lucky colors (mine is pink, Lara's is red for the record). In the afternoon we flew to Bagan, what has to be one of the wonders of the world, which Lara's friend Jim had warned us we'd need more than one day to appreciate. He was completely right, but we gave it only one day anyway. Stupid of us. More on Bagan later.