Friday, September 21, 2012

Yangon and Dala

Yangon is a large busy city at the Yangon River. Big rusty ferries full of shouting street vendors selling everything from jackfruit to toothpaste cross the river. The other side is called Dala, and it's a different world. It feels like a river delta village, with small bamboo and wood houses spaced widely, with forests, fields, and little lakes and channels. All that within view of a city of six million. People here are friendly and seem to have plenty of time; some guys were calling out to me and we ended up chatting for two hours. They didn't speak English, or just enough to point at each other and say "crazy". So they taught me words in their language, and had me repeat them until I got it right, sort of. Unfortunately they couldn't tell me what they mean so there was a sense of futility about it, but we had a lot of fun.