THE HAIRY GIRAFFE… IN MYANMAR
After two weeks in Myanmar, it’s time to reflect. How did we experience this journey? What were our joys, disappointments, questions, doubts, and discoveries? This is not merely an assessment of a country but rather of a trip—how we perceived it individually and subjectively.
 We are François and Benjamin, Canadian and French giraffe hairstylists and travel enthusiasts. On this blog, discover our travels, tips, moods, and everything you need to become a giraffe hairstylist and embark on travelling the world. An honest blog with photos guaranteed 100% unfiltered and untouched. |
Benjamin’s Travel Reflections
We spent two weeks in Myanmar, our first Southeast Asian country to visit. The country had already opened up to tourism for a few years, and there were constant calls everywhere to hurry before it was ‘too late.’ Not that our acquaintances had predicted the 2021 coup; they rather referred to the supposed loss of authenticity in Myanmar. But from our first steps in the country, we were reassured: Myanmar was far from having lost its authenticity, and we were about to embark on a particularly exotic journey.
For two weeks, I was alternately captivated, intrigued, amazed, and sometimes embarrassed. Why were so many people asking to take photos with us? (On what criteria did certain individuals choose François and others me? And did that father really ask me to take a photo alone with his son?)
What did those statues mean (a bit kitschy, it must be admitted), with horse heads or giant egg shapes? Why was Buddha represented infinitely within the same temple? Was there a contest for the largest reclining Buddha, the largest standing Buddha, or the largest seated Buddha? What fervor could explain the amount of money deposited in front of each statue by people with limited financial resources? What were those exotic fruits and vegetables seen in the markets?
To answer all our questions, we would have needed one guide, ten guides, a hundred guides: every visit, every encounter, every discovery raised new questions. And yet, I had researched the country, its traditions, its culture; we had visited an exhibition on Buddha at the Guimet Museum, and we asked questions on-site whenever possible. But the culture shock was such that we had to face the truth: in two weeks, we remained outsiders, strangers to Burmese culture.
If we had extended our stay by one or two weeks, we would most certainly have remained just as unfamiliar and would probably have returned with even more questions…
If sometimes the incomprehension and novelty unsettled or made me uncomfortable, I loved discovering Myanmar, feeling like I was in a world very different from my own. The millions of smiles offered to us spontaneously by the locals, their curiosity towards us, and the ease of making contacts made the journey relatively easy.
And then, once past the initial discoveries, there’s a certain, almost infinite repetition of motifs that establish a familiarity with the places: in Bagan, the dozens of temples start to resemble each other, one manages to identify minor differences between two representations of Buddha, and placing a gold leaf on a statue or a rock becomes almost routine (except for women, who do not have the same religious rights as men and are often kept away from the heart of the action in the temples…).
Even the most touristy places in the country seemed to me to possess real authenticity. After seeing numerous photographs of Inle Lake, I remained skeptical about visiting. I arrived there somewhat reluctantly, fearing that I would find nothing more than a charmless expanse of water where everyone is accustomed to the tourist routine (a guide takes you by boat throughout a whole day from one workshop to another, along an identical route for everyone).
Yet, the charm of the place, that indefinable authenticity, made the experience magical. It was one of my favorite spots of the trip (perhaps even more so than Bagan, where the repetition of temples eventually made the site a bit less enchanting to me). Of course, at the entrance to the lake, a few individuals strike a pose in exchange for a fee to allow tourists to capture THAT photo of a fisherman balancing on one leg with the other raised. But just a few dozen meters away, real fishermen tirelessly practice traditional techniques, paying no mind to the passing tourists.
Even the sunrises and sunsets captivated me. I must admit, I’m not a fan of those sunrises or sunsets that too many bloggers present as ‘must-sees’ when visiting Myanmar, Rio de Janeiro, Santorini, Angkor, Mount Bromo, or any beach worldwide. The photos often look much better than reality, and I’m rarely convinced that the sun ten thousand kilometers away from me is really more beautiful than the one I see from my window.
However, I must acknowledge that with very few exceptions (especially the overcrowded viewpoints in Bagan), the spectacle often proved to be stunning (especially at U Bein Bridge and Inle Lake). Perhaps I would have loved the sunrise over the temples of Bagan from a hot air balloon if the rain hadn’t decided to keep us grounded after waking up at 3 in the morning…
From this trip, I have genuine favorites that weren’t exactly what I had imagined when preparing our stay. Bagan didn’t exhilarate me as much as I had anticipated, and I was disappointed by the colonial buildings in Yangon: I had loved photographs of nature reclaiming its space by invading the windows of buildings, but in reality, the facades are more abandoned than poetic.
Conversely, I fell in love with Inle Lake, and also with Mandalay, this city further north where we discovered diverse and richly adorned temples, and the Golden Rock, a site that could have been so disappointing (a golden rock on the edge of a cliff) but was made magical by the incredible fervor of the Burmese people.
In just two weeks, this journey offered me numerous cultural shocks, challenged my curiosity, and created hundreds of memories. Three months later, the world was closing due to a health crisis, and a year later, the country witnessed a military coup. It’s proof enough that we did well to heed the advice of our acquaintances and visit Myanmar before it was ‘too late.’ Unfortunately, as too many other countries have recently shown us, ‘too late’ sometimes arrives earlier than we could have imagined…
Check out François’ Travel Reflections:
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