First, Trish and I flew into Bangkok and spent 2 days together there while we got our Burmese visas.  It was a great opportunity for me to get two custom made suits.  I paid $171 per suit and had custom made suits 24 hours after walking into the tailor’s shop.

My father had warned against the political protests in Bangkok, sending me email after email about the “situation in Bangkok”.  Upon arrival, we learned that there were 8 sanctioned protest sites.  Unbeknownst to us, we chanced on a protest site on Sukhumvit Street and found the street lined with tents, vendors selling t-shirts that said “Shutdown Bangkok, Restart Thailand”.  There was a stage with performers, but there was no violence.

Tents line Sukhumvit, part of the political protest

After our brief stint in Bangkok, we boarded an AirAsia flight to Yangon, went to bed immediately as we knew we had a full day the next day.

On our first full day in Yangon, we visited the Shewdagon Pagoda in Yangon, which is the most important religious site for Burmese.

Entrance to Shewdagon Pagoda

Shewdagon Pagoda

In the afternoon, we took the Circle Train, which goes through the Yangon “suburbs”.  It was interesting to watch life come and go, to pass by markets set up at the train station, to see the houses change from sturdy structures to huts, to see the hawkers selling fruit and corn, and to see the women farmers enter and exit the train with 6 cumbersome bundles of cauliflower, tomatoes, and other vegetables.

Locals on the Circle Line train around Yangon’s “suburbs”

Watching boys as young as 12 with rotten, red-stained teeth from months or years of chewing on the addicting betel nut and spitting the juice out the door of the train was sad.  Yet, seeing the locals sit on the train for an hour or more, content to watch life go by, with nary a book, or a smartphone to entertain them, was an important reminder that life – without distractions of the modern world – is enough to content us.

A prisoner laughs while handcuffed and accompanied on the train.