Tag: Myanmar

2019 in the Rearview

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Writing a look back on the past year hadn’t crossed my mind this time, not to mention my complete overlooking of the fact that another decade had just flashed by. I only realized this after the deluge of posts by friends online, listing their accomplishments, highlights and lowlights.

Photographically speaking (since this is technically a photo blog), 2019 was a year I spent capturing my experiences, vs. actively seeking out sceneries to photograph. There’s an important distinction here. I focused on the latter in 2016 and 2017, where I joined photography Meetup groups to visit beaches along the Sydney coast every weekend at sunrise, and later on with Sydney by Kayak every morning in Lavender Bay. My goal then was to learn to see, capture, and appreciate the same environments in the different seasons, clouds and light.

Here in Singapore, the beach-scape hasn’t inspired me to the same extent, though I admit it would be a good challenge to take up, to try capture the different essence that is Singapore. In any case, my motivation to consciously and actively seek out scenes to photograph has waned, and accordingly my DSLR and various lenses has for the most part, stayed in my cabinets.

So, 2019 was the year of documentation, of recording our numerous journeys and adventures around the world, and of little moments with friends.

We rung in 2019 while still on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, where we learnt that at those altitudes where the air is so thin, it’s safer to stow away our cameras and focus literally on just placing a foot in front at a time.

When Jeff went to Shanghai for work in January, we also made a weekend trip out of it, and spent long hours walking around the town, delighting in the clean streets and charming old school architecture.

In March we joined a friend for a weekend in Yangon. It was like stepping back in time, into a Singapore in the 1950s.

We also did our first week long kayaking and camping trip in Coron and Palawan in the Philippines. There, we got a first real taste of ocean kayaking, where wild waves and currents freaked us out just a tad. But the food, freshly delivered each evening on long tail boats, was heavenly, as was dips in the crystal clear waters at our lunch and camping spots.

We also spent a long weekend in Bali, where we dove at Manta Point and Crystal Bay, and also visited some padi fields.

Over the Labour Day long weekend, we visited Hoi An in Vietnam. We may have spent one too many days in that little tourist town, but had did enjoy visiting the Champa temples in My Son.

Mid-May, we went to Sydney for work, and made most of the weekends visiting with friends.

Over the Vesak Day long weekend in May, we went to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Even though the weather was unforgiving, we thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the different temples. Apart from the main Bayon temple, which was crawling with tourists, most of the other temples were quiet and serene.

Natalie visited for two weekends in June, so we went to Langkawi in Malaysia for one of the weekends. We were a little disappointed that none of the beaches had kayak or SUP a rentals because of the (small) surf, but we still had a relaxing weekend splashing about in the sea and pool.

August saw us visiting Copenhagen and Greenland for the first time. The food in Copenhagen was stunningly expensive but delicious, and the kayaking in Greenland was addictive.

In September, we spent another long weekend in Sydney, this time for our friends’ Garry and Linh’s wedding.

When we got back, I found that I had an extra week and a half before I started my new job, so I booked myself on a week long trip to Nusa Penida in Bali.

October saw me travel back to the States, the first time in almost five years, to San Francisco for onboarding. I made most of my weekend there, meeting up with various old friends.

Over the Deepavali long weekend in November, we went to Yogyajarkta with a friend. We weren’t blown away by the Royal Palace or Ratu Boko, but Borobudur itself is grand and worth a visit.

In December, we did the Raja Ampat liveaboard, and so thoroughly enjoyed the diversity and richness of live in these Indonesian waters, we are seriously considering jettisoning our plans to kayak in Greece this September for another liveaboard aboard the Blue Manta to Komodo Islands.

Jeff’s family visited over the Christmas break, and after a few fun and relaxing days touring Singapore’s attractions and lounging in our pools, we spent a couple days in Bangkok.

2019 was definitely a good year travel-wise. It turned out fantastic career-wise too. So I’m stoked for the many more adventures 2020 will bring!

Weekend in Myanmar: scenes from the train edition

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I’ve never been very comfortable with street photography. But since we’ve moved to Singapore, the opportunities for landscape photography has shrunk quite significantly. At the same time, our goal this year is to visit more of South East Asia, havens for urban photography.

With that in mind, one of my goals this trip was to get out of my comfort zone, and take more street shots.

Alas, for whatever reason, my camera battery was drained by the end of our first day in Myanmar. And this was the same battery that had served me so magnificently at high altitudes and in the cold up on Kilimanjaro! So all the shots taken from Weekend in Myanmar: street scenes edition are actually from my Pixel 2 phone. None too shabby, if I say so myself. Nonetheless, as decent as the quality those pictures may look on the small screen, they don’t hold up too well printed out.

In any case, I was able to get in plenty of practice on our train ride to nowhere that first day….

Yangon Central Train Station. The cost for our 3 hour circular train ride was just US$0.30. That said, given that the route was under construction, we didn’t actually manage to do the entire loop
Locals aboard the train. Note the open doorway. There aren’t actually doors, so people can jump on and off without waiting for the train to come to a complete stop.
Watermelon fruit seller who jumped on at one of the stations
Betel nut seller. He had no takers, and so wrapped a leaf for himself
Family cooking outside their house right along the train track
Children hanging out outside their house, right by the train track
Everyone wanders freely about the tracks
There are benches right behind, but since they were in the sun, everyone elected to just sit on the track
A lonely little set up
Walking around downtown Yangon

Weekend in Myanmar: Street scenes edition

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Our trip to Yangon, Myanmar last weekend was somewhat spontaneous, suggested by our friend Jessie whose goal this year is to explore all the countries in South East Asia. We didn’t really know what to expect or do, beyond visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda and wander about the city. But we had a most wonderful time, and felt like we’d stepped back into the past, seen what Singapore could have been like in the 60s and 70s. Men still selling betel nuts and leaves by the roadside and hawking them on trains. Electric lines still criss-cross the streets, most of which still have no traffic lights, so everyone just brazenly jaywalks. Dozens of monks and nuns, dressed in their saffron or pink robes, walk around barefoot, carrying their aluminium tiffin carriers.

The street right in front of our hotel, Merchant Art Hotel, near the Shwedagon Pagoda
Lady chopping up frozen blocks of fish for cooking, right by the side of the road

Our first day wandering around the city, we found the bridge to the Bogyoke market closed. The bridge was across some train tracks, and to get around them, we had to take a long detour – another 30 minutes under the hot sun. Later, when we decided to take the train that circled Yangon to get a better feel for the local life, we realized how blasé people were with the tracks. People were leisurely strolling along the tracks, or had pulled up plastic stools to sit right alongside the tracks – their version of people watching perhaps? And they didn’t have any qualms jumping off or flinging themselves onto the cars even when the trains had started to pull away from the stations.

Training as the locals do – haha, we look like hardcore travelers here, but in actual fact, the train had stopped, and we hadn’t even realized at that point that they’d detached the locomotive!

We weren’t quite as brave. The “circular” train route we took turned out to be under construction, so the train was only running partway. We didn’t realize this of course, when we bought the tickets, not knowing any Burmese. An hour after we’d pulled away from the station, the train rolled to a stop at some random station near the airport, and most everyone jumped off, save a couple old men who sat unconcernedly on. After 10 minutes of waiting around, we got off to discover that the locomotive pulling the train had already been detached. Nobody we asked seemed to understand English either. Since we had time to spare, we decided to wait it out. Then a train came alongside ours into the station, heading back towards Yangon Central Station, where we’d gotten on. The conductor peered into our car at us, and motioned for us to climb onto his train. But it was already starting to pull away at the time!

Eventually though, the workers brought around another locomotive and reattached it to our train, in the direction of Yangon Central Station. So all’s well that ends well. Haha.

Locals aboard the train
Locals just strolling down the train track
Street vendor hawking her fresh produce one a random street side
Laborers at the Bogyoke Aung San Market
Monk on his way to collect his Sunday meal
We passed by a few such alters, but none as vividly painted as this old Banyan
We were quite fascinated with how these longyis are worn (and whether they are worn the way the Scots wear their kilts…), and how men go to the bathroom with them

We were quite taken with these little nuns going about their business, in search of their evening meal, and followed them down the street.

From what we’d read online, one of the bustling areas in Yangon is Chinatown, the area roughly bounded by streets 18th through 24th. In the evenings, the streets are lined with rows of plastic tables and chairs and hawkers grilling meats along the sidewalk. We went right before the peak period, around 4pm in the afternoon, so while there were some hawkers set up on the street corners, some of the streets we walked down were almost eerily quiet. We walked by shuttered store fronts, and gates with faded and peeling paint that had seen better years.

The architecture dredged up memories of Chinatown in Singapore about 30 years before, before the government had revitalized the area by tearing down some of the older structures and repainting the remaining in vivid bright hues. My grandmother had lived in one of those 3rd storey apartments with the dim naked bulbs, steeply sloping eaves, and wet kitchen with its ever-present inch of water that refused to drain away. Even then though, I remembered the streets as being cleaner. Still, it felt like we had walked back in time.

A shopfront in Chinatown

A short two days, but it felt just right. The next time, we want to hit up the countryside, especially Bagan, with its over 2000 pagodas and stupas and lush greenery.

Weekend in Myanmar: The Shwedagon Pagoda Edition

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One of our goals for while we’re living in South East Asia is to explore the region, so quite spontaneously, we decided to join a friend this past weekend in Yangon, Myanmar.

The Shwedagon Pagoda is one of the – if that the – highlights that the city has to offer. As it’s open from 4am to 10pm everyday, we decided to try to miss the crowds and visit right before sunrise.

The pagoda was already bustling with activity from the early morning devotees, some of whom prostrated their way around the main stupa. Others parked themselves in spots, and mediated.

Moon sets over the pagoda
We saw a large group of finely dressed devotees ceremoniously sweeping the grounds