Naypyidaw and Yangon (Burma: days twenty to twenty-two)
I arrived in the city of Naypyidaw at 1.45am. To recap quickly, I had taken a 12-hour overnight bus from Lake Inle to Bago, spent part of the day birding and then taken a 6-hour overnight bus from there to Naypyidaw to visit the zoo. Naypyidaw is the capital city of Burma. This might come as a surprise to some people given that Yangon has always been the capital of Burma, but about a decade ago the government decided Yangon just didn't cut it anymore and they wanted a new capital city. So they just went ahead and built a new one, basically out in the middle of nowhere, and that's why Naypyidaw exists. I had read about how the city is rather like a massive sprawling ghost town, with huge highways completely empty of traffic, and it really is like that. Big highways all over the place with not a car or motorbike on them. It is a weird place. (I also should comment on another “fact” I had read, namely that motorbikes are outlawed in Naypyidaw – completely untrue!).
The bus dropped me off on the side of the road. I had no clue where I was. There were few buildings around. But there were some motorbike taxis sitting there, none of the drivers of whom spoke more than a few words of English. I told them I wanted to go to a hotel (while using the universal “sleep” gesture of hands together under the side of your head) – I mean, I'd just got off a bus at 1.45 in the morning, what else would I be after?
“Yes, yes, you want massage” they said.
“No, a hotel. Sleeping.”
“Yes, massage, I take you there.”
“No, a hotel. Cheap. Ten dollars.”
“Ok ok, I know, I take you.”
I got on a bike and we went across the road, down a lane and stopped outside a house literally about one minute from where I had got off the bus. There were six girls sitting at a table outside the house, which was extremely obviously a brothel.
“Um, this isn't a hotel,” I said.
“Yes, yes, massage,” said the driver, gesturing at the girls.
“No. Hotel.”
“Massage!”
“No! Hotel! Sleep!”
“Massage!”
“No, no, no, no, NO! HOTEL!”
“MASSAGE!”
Another guy came out of the house. “Do you want massage?” he asked.
“No, I want a hotel – for sleeping!”
“Girls: very cheap!”
I just started walking off at that point and then the motorbike guy seemed to get that I actually did want a hotel, and so we went off again …. for about another minute to a hotel on the main road. This turned out to cost US$100 per night, far too expensive for me. The driver did not understand this at all, after all $100 is “very cheap” apparently. Another couple of drivers came across and there was yet another extended discussion, getting nowhere fast, but it seemed that almost all the hotels that are allowed to accept foreigners are in the “Naypyidaw hotel zone” which was about 10km away from where the bus had dropped me, and all of them are about the same price. I was not liking Naypyidaw very much at all at this point! Then the motorbike guy said he wanted 5000 kyat at which I almost knocked his head off. I pointed across the road to where the bus had dropped me, about two or three minutes walk away, and refused point-blank. The drivers were trying to get me to go to the hotel zone but I wasn't going to pay for a 10km ride just to find out I couldn't afford the hotels there, so I said no, I would just sleep here, under that tree. This really confused them! You can't sleep there, you're a foreigner, there will be big trouble from the police. “Pfft, what police?!” I said, “The place is deserted, I'm in the middle of nowhere.” I was heartily sick of these guys by now, so I first tried the hotel to see if they would let me sleep in the foyer for $10 (the night-staff got really hostile with me at that suggestion!) and then went across the other side of the road again and found a bench outside some industrial warehouses. I slept there for a couple of hours but the funny thing with night-time is that it gets colder as the dawn draws nearer, and the wolves were gathering (by which I mean a pack of dogs who seemed rather angry that I was sleeping in what was presumably their usual sleeping spot), so I headed off again and eventually found a tea house where I spent the remainder of the night sleeping sitting in a tiny plastic chair.
Once the sun had come up and I had filled up on coffee and fried eggs, I took a motorbike to the Naypyitaw Zoo. This was a fair distance out of the city (I had been expecting it to be inside the city) and was much more expensive than the other zoos I had been to in Burma at US$10. The zoo itself was great. It is a new zoo, built when the city was and stocked with animals moved wholesale from the Yangon Zoo, but I had been expecting it to be built in the same 19th century style. In fact with very few exceptions all the animals are housed brilliantly. The test for me was going to be the bears and macaques because these always have horrible enclosures in Asian zoos, but here not at all. In fact the black bear enclosure here is the only bear enclosure I have seen in Asia which gets a passing grade from me. I have seen shocking ones, bad ones, ones that were bad but have been made better, and even pretty good ones occasionally, but never one that was good right from the start. There weren't really any unusual animals (in fact this and the nearby Naypyitaw Safari Park which I didn't visit are where most of the exotic “typical zoo” animals in Burmese zoos are) but I'm glad I went because otherwise my overall opinion of Burmese zoos would be completely skewed.
From the zoo I got another motorbike to the bus terminal and there was a bus just about to leave for Yangon. This wasn't another overnight bus thank god, and at six hours long it got me to Yangon at 8pm. I had booked my last night in the country at the Aung Si Guesthouse where I had stayed before, but I had arrived back in Yangon one night earlier. The Aung Si had no vacancies for that night so I stayed instead at the Yoma Hotel which was right around the corner and cost ten dollars more at US$30. The guy at reception warned that the ceiling in the room was a bit low, to which I jokingly replied “that's all right, I'll just bend down”. It turned out the ceiling was “a bit low” – I literally couldn't stand fully upright! The ceiling was at about the same height as my shoulders! I felt like Gandalf in a hobbit house.
I had been contemplating making a return visit to Hlawga Park on my last day to try and find Davison's bulbul, but instead after transferring to Aung Si Guesthouse I went to Lake Kandawgyi (next to the zoo) to try and find the aquarium. I had tried to find it on my first day in Burma and failed, so it seemed fitting to try again on my last day! I was having some “stomach issues” from I think the bad chicken at Lake Inle (every toilet at the Naypyitaw Zoo had received a visit from me....) so I took a taxi to the lake instead of walking. The whole of the lake is surrounded by a fence and there is a minimal entry fee. The taxi dropped me off at the gate nearest the zoo side of the lake because that is where the city map showed the aquarium to be. In fact it was on the other side of the lake so it took me quite a long time to get there (the gyi which forms a part of many lake names in Burma means “large”). The map just labelled it as “aquarium” so I had been calling it “the Yangon Aquarium” but the real name is the Kandawgyi Fresh Water Fish Garden and it is quite nice, a sort of combined garden and pond area with additional large outside aquariums and an indoor aquarium house for smaller tanks, as well as a few poorly-housed reptiles and a blue whale skeleton. It is a little run down but still worth seeing if you like fish. All the zoos in Burma are government-owned (I haven't heard of any small private ones like you would find in Thailand and other parts of Asia) but the aquarium looks to be privately owned, although it might not be. After leaving the aquarium it took a while to get out of the Lake Kandawgyi area because I couldn't find the exits. It's a funny place – it seems to be the premier make-out site in Yangon. There were cars parked all along the roads around the lake and they all had couples in the back seats. There were even a few taxis with the couples in the back seats. I also passed a photo shoot for some models wearing Valentine Day tshirts.
The next morning I left for an early morning flight to Bangkok. The Yangon Airport building was lined with house crows – the entire front of the building! It was creepy, like Hitchcock's The Birds becoming a reality.
And that is the end of my Burma visit. I had a lot of fun, I would definitely recommend people to visit there, but just not in the main tourist season and not Naypyidaw!! If within the main tourist areas it is very easy getting around everywhere. It is quite expensive, and no doubt will keep getting more expensive. I won't be going back any time soon, but as soon as the more interesting areas in the north and south become freely accessible I shall be returning.
Were there any New Zealanders around? Were you tempted to jump in and swim with the dolphins?
]. As for its age – it is according to local tradition the reincarnation of a monk, which is how I think they got the figure of 120 years. My motorbike driver told me the snake had been found fifty years ago, and they had just built the pagoda to attract visitors to make money......
and btw an interesting overview of Burmese zoos too.