Walking in Myanmar



Above ~ Police Station: Before getting off the boat we were warned not to exchange money (your home currency to Myanmar currency) with locals for 3 reasons...1) The exchange rate would not be in your favor. 2) You might get ripped off with fake Myanmar currency. 3) It was illegal.

 

While walking by the above police station we were swarmed with locals wanting to exchange money.

While walking through the city we spotted several pagodas.

The city is an example of contrasts. For every beautiful pagoda there would be an abandoned building (above) or an apartment building (below) that looked to have seen better days.

The city streets were littered with bicycle taxis. I inspected several of these bicycles and they were in awful shape. The vinyl of the passenger seats were torn and tattered. The screws and bolts holding the "side-car" to the main portion of the bicycle were rusty. In some cases the screws and bolts were missing. Although there was no way I would ever be a passenger on one of these things...The thought did occur to me that having one in my bicycle collection back home would be pretty cool.

Liz walking to a pagoda.

Top of a pagoda.

There were some green/park areas in the city. The one that we spent time in had a very nice walking path along a large lake area. More pictures of this area will be in a later post. 

A curious cat looking at curious Americans.

Typical apartment building.

The city's alley-ways were filled with homeless persons as well as small shops mostly selling farm goods and textiles.