Welcome to South East Asia!
A few hours after my arrival in Burma, I am in sandals on the dirt streets of Mandalay, in the middle of a tide of people, eating grasshoppers. Welcome to South East Asia!
I landed at Mandalay ..., the second largest city in Burma, located in the north of the country halfway between India and China. As soon as my bags are dropped off at the hostel, I go on an adventure with two accomplices sharing my dormitory.
There are so many activities and people in the streets that I think first of all that it is a festival. This is my first encounter with these famous night markets, where every evening is an opportunity to try local and strange food. What I do on my first corner when a lady offers to eat fried grasshopper. The taste, however, is not particularly memorable. You almost just taste the shell. A bit like eating an almost empty shrimp, without having removed its skeleton.
A giant grasshopper, sir?
Myanmar or Burma?
But before going any further, you may have noticed that I am now writing Burma and not Myanmar. I'll explain why, after researching, I changed my mind about the name of the country!
The history of the whole region is quite complicated, intertwined between different kingdoms, colonial conquests and modern wars and coups. From 1962 to 2011, the country was under various military dictatorships, and generally under British rule for most of the previous century.
Myanmar and Burma (Myanmar in English) are two old terms, referring respectively to all the inhabitants of the territory, and to the majority ethnic group of the country (Burma recognizing in total more than 135 different ethnicities on its territory).
The term Burma had been the one used by the British to designate the region. But in 1989, to free itself from the colonial past, the ruling military government chose to use the term Myanmar instead. On the other hand, the international community did not follow this decision in protest against this dictatorship.
However, since 2011, Burma now has a democratically elected government, and it has continued to use the term Myanmar. To complicate matters, Myanmar is now used mainly by English-speaking organizations and media, while the majority of communications in French still use the term Burma.
Note that even the European Union does not seem to know what to think, designating the country in all its official documents in English as "Burma / Myanmar".
In short, one or the other works. However, I will use Burma now, if only because there is no adjective or gentilé going with Myanmar.
End of the day seen from Mandalay Hill, hill in the center of the city which gave its name to this one.
The palace
However, all these questions about the name of the country certainly do not prevent me from visiting it. So I take a bike path through the thousands of scooters and small motorcycles. The absence of traffic lights at first glance seems to create immense chaos, but it quickly becomes clear that no one is really driving very fast and that drivers have no choice but to be careful and attentive to compensate for the lack of traffic. signage.
And then, the ubiquitous and loud horns amply compensate for the missing signage!
In this cacophony, I head for one of the only quiet places in town: the Palace.
The fort protecting the palace is immense: a square of 2 km side, itself surrounded by moat 75 m wide. This fort was the refuge of the last two Burmese kings, before the British conquest in 1885.
Unfortunately, what we see today is only a replica of the palace of yesteryear. The same British who bombed the fort during World War II, when it was in Japanese hands. The wooden palace did not last long ...
The palace grounds in Mandalay.
The heart of the palace.
End of the day at the palace.
Sick
At our hostel, a girl who arrived on the same flight as me is already ill on her third day in the country. Enough to spend his days between his bed and his favorite toilet stall ... Talking to another Canadian, I may be putting on a little too much confidence in my physical abilities.
Pffff! Me here, bacteria are afraid of me, man. I didn't even filter my water in Central Asia and I (almost) didn't get sick!
I have to take the boat the next day to go down the river to the city of Bagan and its temples. When I get up at dawn, however, I feel a little weird. Despite the nausea, I managed the feat of getting to the boat, literally two minutes before it left.
The bacteria must be braver here because I'll be spending this day sailing 80% asleep, 10% leaning on the railing, and 10% telling the friendly waiter on the ship that, no, I don't want coffee!
I arrive in Bagan at the end of the day, quite weak, but still alert enough to realize that I have a puncture and that I have to repair it on the beach, surrounded by about fifteen curious who examine me and advise me ...
Welcome to South East Asia!
