Yangon (ရန်ကုန်မြို့,)
is the biggest city in Myanar with around 5.21 Million inhabitants and already the name is very confusing. Sometimes it is "Yangon" or "Rangoon" or until 1755 "Dagon",
Yangon means something like "the end of strife".
Anyway, we ended up in Yangon at 7 am after a very bumpy 12 hour trainride from Mandalay and were really hungover from the short night, the wine and the ride itself.
It turned out that we had some kind of "land sickness" and like with the sea sickness we felt very dizzy and nauseated. Apparently we got used to the steady rocking of the train while sleeping and now with steady ground under our feet again we felt strange.
The first thing we noticed about Yangon was: No motorbikes! At all!
In 1989 the city introduced a ban for motobikes which was very interesting for us, because we haven't seen a single city without crazy traffic partly caused by motorbikes.
According to an urban legend, the law is the result of an incident in which two teenagers pulled up alongside the car of a military general and made gestures resembling the firing of a gun. “This is true,” said Deputy Traffic Police Major Win Lwin.
So imagine this: The roadrage of the general was so big that he just banned all the motorbikes for good! We had a good laugh on this :D
Of course there are countless monks in the street aswell, like in every other burmese city
I saw this lady everyday because our hostel was right across the street of her apartment. Sometimes we waved at each other :)
I took this picture from a skyscraper restaurant, there were a lot of new and fancy buildings covering up the mostly run down parts of the city, which was an odd contrast. You can see the Yangon River in the backround.
Young Monks sitting in a truck smiling at us while we walk by :)
The "ferry" over the Yangon River was basically just a bunch of small boats. Many people were waiting for a spot on the boat, some with bicycles, TVs and whatnot. I imagined it must be hard to rely on transportation like this to get to your job or somewhere important.
This girl was living with her family at the abandoned part of the Yangon Railway station and had put up a "bakery" to play with.
Another picture of the abandoned train track, where people and dogs were walking around.
A woman sitting down to pray in the street, it was amazing to see somebody finding a calm moment with all the traffic and noise around.
Construction workers near the harbour using the last light of the evening to get some work done.
One of the highlights was a visit to the Shwedagon pagoda (burmese: ရွှေတိဂုံစေတီတော်) , a big spiritual centre for the monks and buddhists in Yangon. We arrived when the sun was already coming down and the light was truly magical, in addition to the special atmosphere that place has.
Thank you for reading! :)
Have a nice day,
all photos I post are taken by me with a Canon 6D
come and visit my profile for more photography and travel images :*
What a great article. Thanks for your writing and amazing photos.
PS: You should consider removing one of your tags and adding travelfeed instead. I'm sure this is an article that they might reward and resteem. 😃
Will do! Thanks!
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What a spectacular post @biffboff (lol nice name ;)!! I especially love the young monks' faces!! You've really captured their beauty here :) Thank you so much for sharing!
Fantastic travel photos! You captured your experience there nicely, and the motor bike ban story is prerty incredible.
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what an amazing post!
I always enjoy photos from Asia, especially ones like yours. You bring the everyday life to people who can't visit this place. You also show that Asia is full of contrasts. I can see from your photos that people are kind, you can somehow capture them in their normal life with real emotions in their faces. That boy is just adorable!
Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed your photographic diary :)
How crazy beautiful is the Schwedagon pagoda? Loved Burma..where are you headed next?
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Wow everything looks so squished together and crowded. But the pagoda seems so tranquil like an enchanted space.
That sounds like a very good place to be a general though.
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