After a grueling 38 hour trip from Yangon, Tyler and I officially moved back to New York last week! Jay-Z has become our official soundtrack (though let's be honest, it basically has been all year), and the big lights certainly are inspiring me.
Who knew, though, that the most pronounced reverse culture shock would come from, not India (where we were for almost five years), but Burma - where we spent two weeks that felt like an eternity, in the best way possible.
Three stories:
#1: A few hours after our flight, we headed straight to the mall (a suburban couple already!) to get our cell phones in order. As the service rep reached out hastily for our pristine hundred dollar bill, we both cringed automatically -- needing to stop ourselves from urging him to BE CAREFUL WITH THAT!
In Burma (or Myanmar, as everyone local calls it), exchanging US dollars for kyat (pronounced very confusingly as "jet") only became legal one month ago. Prior to that, all currency exchange was done on the black market, and this market continues to flourish despite banks also getting involved. Somewhere someone up the chain decided that they should only touch dollars if they are recent, pristine one hundred dollar bills -- meaning absolutely no folds, marks, areas of fading, etc etc etc.
To be fair, we were warned about this, and I asked Citibank Long Island for the nicest bills they had. Despite this, some still got rejected, and we found ourselves closely protecting the bills we had from any accidental fold or marking. A good exchange rate was $1 to 800 kyat, and when we conducted our first exchange, we received 80 bills of 1000 kyat, which felt just a bit ridiculous in either of our overflowing wallets.
The recent history of currency, like everything in Burma, is fascinating. General Ne Win, who founded the Burma Socialist Programme Party (the only political party until 1988) and served as chairman from 1962 to 1988, apparently only likes the number 9, which he considers auspicious. He therefore banned all currency in denominations not divisible by 9, literally wiping out the savings of millions of Burmese (we bought one of these unusable bills as a fundraiser for political prisoners at the incredible Moustache Brothers' comedy show; see NYT article here). Incredible.
#2: This leads directly to culture shock #2. Later our first week back in NY, we were chatting with Tyler's parents about Burma. They asked about the junta situation, and I felt myself go into a whisper when talking to them about it (though we were all in the US).
And that's the thing with Burma. For all the incredible, exciting changes spurring democracy forward, it's still a military junta. Emails are read, intercepted, and blocked (learning about how the democracy movement is organizing their movement across in Burma is the stuff of movies). There are spies keeping tabs wherever you are. We had drinks with a friend of a friend in Yangon - a former banker who moved to Burma initially to scope out business investment, and now staying to be part of the democratic movement. When Tyler mentioned a general's name just a bit too loudly, he instinctively looked around and urged us to keep our voices down.
But the changes are there. You see it economically in things like the new pipeline being built by China from the Bay of Bengal to China's Yunnan province. And you see it in images across the country (well, at least the 10% that tourists are allowed to visit). As recently as a couple years ago, images of Aung San Suu Kyi were banned, and it was forbidden to even utter her name (even now, everyone still calls her "the lady").
Now, there are images of her everywhere. My favorite was at a small textile workshop, where each woman had a photo of "the lady" at her workstation. Many of these were photos of Aung San Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton, from her trip to Burma earlier this year.
#3: It's easy to take for granted that Burmese people can even access current news and images such as these of Aung San Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton. During our stay at Inle Lake, we grew to become friends with our tour guide, Nyi Nyi, who took us not only to a school and orphanage that he's involved with, but his home as well. In the course of our conversations, it came up that he loves reading National Geographic, but print versions of this are essentially impossible to get.
Now this hits home - especially being back in New York City, where absolutely everything is at our fingertips, 24/7. Nyi Nyi warned us that any packages sent to him with National Geographic would likely get intercepted. So when we saw some copies for sale in Yangon, we excitedly went to buy some... until we saw they were from 2003!
In the whirlwind since we've been home, I'm only now really digesting our trip to Burma. I've never felt farther away from the US as in Burma, where globally ubiquitous products like Coke are only sold on the black market, and entire generations continue to grow up never seeing an image of Mickey Mouse. Just about no one is on their cell phones, as sim cards cost about $150 (compared to about $1 in India), adding to the perception of incredible distance.
Needless to say, it was an incredible, unique, eye-opening, inspiring trip. Pictures to come...
Who knew, though, that the most pronounced reverse culture shock would come from, not India (where we were for almost five years), but Burma - where we spent two weeks that felt like an eternity, in the best way possible.
Three stories:
#1: A few hours after our flight, we headed straight to the mall (a suburban couple already!) to get our cell phones in order. As the service rep reached out hastily for our pristine hundred dollar bill, we both cringed automatically -- needing to stop ourselves from urging him to BE CAREFUL WITH THAT!
In Burma (or Myanmar, as everyone local calls it), exchanging US dollars for kyat (pronounced very confusingly as "jet") only became legal one month ago. Prior to that, all currency exchange was done on the black market, and this market continues to flourish despite banks also getting involved. Somewhere someone up the chain decided that they should only touch dollars if they are recent, pristine one hundred dollar bills -- meaning absolutely no folds, marks, areas of fading, etc etc etc.
To be fair, we were warned about this, and I asked Citibank Long Island for the nicest bills they had. Despite this, some still got rejected, and we found ourselves closely protecting the bills we had from any accidental fold or marking. A good exchange rate was $1 to 800 kyat, and when we conducted our first exchange, we received 80 bills of 1000 kyat, which felt just a bit ridiculous in either of our overflowing wallets.
The recent history of currency, like everything in Burma, is fascinating. General Ne Win, who founded the Burma Socialist Programme Party (the only political party until 1988) and served as chairman from 1962 to 1988, apparently only likes the number 9, which he considers auspicious. He therefore banned all currency in denominations not divisible by 9, literally wiping out the savings of millions of Burmese (we bought one of these unusable bills as a fundraiser for political prisoners at the incredible Moustache Brothers' comedy show; see NYT article here). Incredible.
#2: This leads directly to culture shock #2. Later our first week back in NY, we were chatting with Tyler's parents about Burma. They asked about the junta situation, and I felt myself go into a whisper when talking to them about it (though we were all in the US).
And that's the thing with Burma. For all the incredible, exciting changes spurring democracy forward, it's still a military junta. Emails are read, intercepted, and blocked (learning about how the democracy movement is organizing their movement across in Burma is the stuff of movies). There are spies keeping tabs wherever you are. We had drinks with a friend of a friend in Yangon - a former banker who moved to Burma initially to scope out business investment, and now staying to be part of the democratic movement. When Tyler mentioned a general's name just a bit too loudly, he instinctively looked around and urged us to keep our voices down.
But the changes are there. You see it economically in things like the new pipeline being built by China from the Bay of Bengal to China's Yunnan province. And you see it in images across the country (well, at least the 10% that tourists are allowed to visit). As recently as a couple years ago, images of Aung San Suu Kyi were banned, and it was forbidden to even utter her name (even now, everyone still calls her "the lady").
Now, there are images of her everywhere. My favorite was at a small textile workshop, where each woman had a photo of "the lady" at her workstation. Many of these were photos of Aung San Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton, from her trip to Burma earlier this year.
#3: It's easy to take for granted that Burmese people can even access current news and images such as these of Aung San Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton. During our stay at Inle Lake, we grew to become friends with our tour guide, Nyi Nyi, who took us not only to a school and orphanage that he's involved with, but his home as well. In the course of our conversations, it came up that he loves reading National Geographic, but print versions of this are essentially impossible to get.
Now this hits home - especially being back in New York City, where absolutely everything is at our fingertips, 24/7. Nyi Nyi warned us that any packages sent to him with National Geographic would likely get intercepted. So when we saw some copies for sale in Yangon, we excitedly went to buy some... until we saw they were from 2003!
In the whirlwind since we've been home, I'm only now really digesting our trip to Burma. I've never felt farther away from the US as in Burma, where globally ubiquitous products like Coke are only sold on the black market, and entire generations continue to grow up never seeing an image of Mickey Mouse. Just about no one is on their cell phones, as sim cards cost about $150 (compared to about $1 in India), adding to the perception of incredible distance.
Needless to say, it was an incredible, unique, eye-opening, inspiring trip. Pictures to come...
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