Myanmar January 2016
Blog 8
Myanmar January 2018
I must say that Myanmar wasn’t very high on the list of places that I had felt the need to visit, but as our partner college in Myanmar wanted to discuss the possibility of delivering some of our accounting programmes, the normal response was taken, ‘we’ll send Ewan out to do the next lot of teaching and he can talk to you about it’
It was quite a long trip, 12 hours to Singapore, 2 hour stop, then 3 hours to Yangon. Imagine how much my mood was helped when I arrived at the airport at the driver had not turned up to collect me, there’s more on this later!!
Not a big problem, I found the taxi rank and then had a 1 ½ hour ride the street of Yangon, a very interesting view indeed. I arrived at the hotel with no alarm and had a rest before the start of teaching the next day. I found it strange that the college had not contacted me with details of what to expect the next day, but not all do so decided to just roll with it. The next morning, I looked on the college website to get an address and proceeded to take a taxi to the address. I was not happy when the driver pulled up next to a pile of rubble and said this is the address you gave me, panic!!!
The driver translated a note on the gate of the pile of rubbish and called a number and we were off again he pulled up infront of a lovely building which apparently is new premises, relief. Imagine my shock when I walked in the building to find that they weren’t expecting me until next week and there was no students there, 2 hours later the students had been rounded up and we were away with the teaching, all’s well that ends well.
That night one of the staff took me to visit the Shwedagon Pagoda. This is the most sacred Buddhist temple and contains the hair of Buddha himself. It is the most spectacular temple I have ever seen, visible across the whole city and covered in gold so it reflects in the sun it has the most unbelievable display of gems and jewellery. I was actually quite humbled.
This was a whistle stop trip to Myanmar one which I am glad I was able to make, and I will never forget me visit to such a sacred site.
