State of Depression

People live in wooden huts in Myanmar

People come back from a holiday refreshed. I come back depressed. Well, it wasn't exactly a holiday. I had a mission. A long mission which would probably include a few more trips to this country before it's completed.

I wonder why we gripe about the little things that seem so minute, things that compared to the lives in Myanmar would seem so unimportant.

In my next lifetime, if I had to be born again and if I could choose, I would never choose to be in Myanmar. To the person who bought me my airtickets and paid for all expenses while I was there, like I said, this place is difficult but live-able. Give me a year in Myanmar and I will surely either die of boredom, lack of living or depression.

A rundown hut, full of holes where the family lives and does carpentry work

People in Myanmar live in houses like this. Mind you, this is the largest city in Myanmar and it used to be the capital until they shifted it to the jungles in Pyinmana where the world could never find it. Imagine if Kuala Lumpur was like this and we had to live in huts or a broken down home where water drips down to the very floor that you sleep on when it rains. Even the 'kampung' houses in rural areas in Malaysia looks far better than the houses here. Some of them are so poor that their home consists of a rag on the non-tarred road. All government money goes to building temples filled with hundreds of precious stones and golden statues.

Let's go shopping down this street!

Shopping? This is one of the shopping streets for the locals. Of course they have 4 lanes of 'preffered shopping' location which includes 4 hotels, a couple of run-down cinemas and a street of small shops for foreigners. These 4 lanes forms a cross-street, a lot shorter than Bukit Bintang strip in KL. Locales don't shop here where prices of things are possibly 30 times more than the run-down shopping streets like these.

Transport anyone? The roof is still available....

Stop complaining about our public transport, how the Metro buses drives haphazardly or how the Intrakota buses are never on time because if you are in Myanmar, the only mode of transport other than your own two feet are vehicles that you would never imagine to be on. Unless you are a millionaire and don't mind being known as a foreigner who gets charged 3 times more for taxi fares, then you get to travel in non-aircond broken down taxis in that sweltering 38 degrees Celcius heat - taxis that have to start their engines each time they need to stop at junctions. I cannot imagine what happens when this blue vehicle in the picture runs over a hole on the road which incidently, roads there are in such terrible condition that you'd be thanking the traffic jammed roads we have here.

The people living there are repressed and controlled. I cannot walk down the street with a sleeveless t-shirt for example or even a skirt which lengthens below the knees. I crossed their so-called highway and was screamed at by those taxi drivers in their language, not knowing why. Hey, there are no zebra crossings or overhead bridge (ever!), what was I supposed to do? People stop their bicycles, they stop whatever they are doing, even the traffic stops just to gawk at me and my Mat Salleh friend.

So, here am I, all back in one-piece but feeling depressed over the living conditions in Myanmar.