Arriving in Myanmar

 



Arriving in Yangon International airport, I was excited. While I'd been told a bit about Myanmar, much about it was a mystery to me. I quickly found that reality see-sawed either side of my expectations, and was forced to abandon all preconceptions and give way to discovery and learning (as any traveller should). 

 

My first stop within the airport was the visas on arrival desk. I already had a valid 28 day visa, but I was staying for 32 days and wanted to find out about the two week extension I'd been told about in Kuala Lumpur. The visa office in KL had signs indicating an extension was available and I was told by a staff member that I could apply for it in Yangon. Here in Yangon, however, I was told that the 2 week extension is only for business visas. I was casually told that I could just pay an overstay fee at the airport when I was leaving.

After going through immigration, I was surprised to be standing in a room lined with ATMs and money changers. I was with my partner, who travelled Myanmar in 2012 and had believed that back then there were almost no ATMs in the country. It looked like times had changed. MasterCard advertisements sat on the walls above almost al of the exits and I started to wonder whether our efforts to get perfectly crisp, flat, unmarked US dollar bills in KL was necessary.

Moving through the airport, my attention was drawn to the local men’s attire. They wore long longyis (sarongs), mostly in dark colours with a fine checkered pattern.  I’d seen men in longyis in India before, though I hadn’t seen them teamed with business shirts and flip flops. It’s an interesting combo.
Many women wore thanaka (a paste made from tree bark and water) painted across their cheeks, a somewhat primal choice of cosmetics in this day and age.

We were flying through to Sittwe and had a layover, during which I took a gamble and searched for a free wifi network. I connected to the free REDLINK_WIFI_YIAP network. After about six attempts, I managed to post on Instagram, but booking my flight from Heho back to Yangon online was impossible; the connection dropped out too frequently for me to complete the booking.

 

Yangon's domestic terminal is a beautiful old building with carved timber pillars and balustrades. The baggage scales are analogue and the check in desks are little stalls with fake flowers and vines strung along them – very sweet.

When we checked in with Air Bagan for our flight to Sittwe, I was surprised yet again – this time by my boarding pass. Two years before my boyfriend had been issued hand-written carbon paper boarding passes. While Air Bagan have upgraded to printed cardboard boarding passes with stamps on them, the stamps only detailed our flight number, our destination and the date. A sticker with a seat number had been added, but the gate, boarding time and flight times were left off. I found it funny that they had advertising on the back of their tickets, but on the front they' were missing many of the details a Westerner would consider necessary information.  

Boarding announcements were made in the gate lounge, though distorted and in Burmese. To back up the announcements visually, a man with a placard bearing the destination and flight number made laps of the area. We waited for the placard man to do his thing for flight W9309 and once he did, we boarded our plane.

Intrigued by what I'd discovered within a few hours in the airport terminals, I was eager to explore and find out more about Myanmar.