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I think that Myanmar is definitely the weirdest place I’ve ever been to. In those 10 days that I energetically spent wondering around, I didn’t understand it completely. Was it beautiful? No doubts about that. To avoid boring you with every tiny thing that happened, I’ll just talk about some of the most weird, funny, and magnificent moments of this incredible trip.
The approximate itinerary I covered starts from Yangon, a beautifully chaotic city, continues towards Bagan, a valley filled with thousands of temples, and ends in Mandalay, a city that … well … a bit of everything. I won’t deny that (and several people close to me can testify this statement) until a few minutes before the taking off of the plane I felt a certain fear to undertake my very first trip all by myself without any sort nor person of support. But this mile stone had to be surpassed sooner or later. And I like the sooner better than the later. Apparently in Myanmar burping literally in the face of other people while engaged in a conversation is something very normal. Thing that obviously happened as soon as I arrived at my hostel during a unilateral talk (the English he spoke resembled more Swahili than actual English) with the kid in charge in the lobby. A stupid smile in the desperate attempt to withhold a laugh remained on my face for the whole length of the conversation. Let’s move on to Bagan, approximately at 10.30 AM, typical hour for my temple explorations while riding an eBike. In local slang we are talking about “temple hopping”. In the middle of my hipster photographing two kids approach me, roughly 9-10 years old, ready to sell me any kind of thing: postcards, wallets, and even pirate copies of George Orwell’s books. After having understood that Lorenzo is not a very interesting client, they hanged around curious of what the hell I was doing around Myanmar and where I came from. The most memorable moment of the conversation was when at my question “Why aren’t you two at school right now?” one of them answered me “We are two businessmen, can’t you see? We even have two jobs, who has time to go to school as well?”. I must have lost a passage of the Burmese entrepreneurship. I conclude for equity with an episode in Mandalay. Episode not particularly funny but really particular to me, happened inside one of the many golden Buddhist temples that populate the nation. The protagonist is a monk, of whom I forgot the name. This man, about sixty years old I’d say, must have seen me as quite exotic to convince me to sit on a bench and chat for a while. I find totally amazing how everywhere in Southeast Asia people can find the time to stop their lives, even if just for a couple minutes, and show interest towards the people that surround them. It’s something that in the Western world we have completely lost, place where we see hundreds of people every day, but remember the face of none. For the rest I think that the photos mainly speak for themselves about the beauty of the places I visited. I would like to thank all of the people that made my “Burmese Days” (Orwell) an incredible experience, and, most of all, unforgettable. In particular Gianni, San, Tom, Enzo, el chico de Chile, Sun Yen, and Julia. A magnificent 2015 to everyone, next stop Bali!
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After having reduced my expectations to spend my birthday in Singapore as I didn’t get back my passport until yesterday, I decided to dedicate the week-end to shopping malls. If compared with Sunday, I must say that Saturday was actually pretty boring.
I left with 6 other kids (Miki, Thom, Becky, Priya, Janka, and Remi), basically al british and hungarian people, heading to the Sunway Mall. This atrocity of a construction is basically an egyptian-themed mall, so that there’s actually a giant pyramid and sphinx. Nevertheless, I must say that all asian malls are places incredibly pleasant and enjoyable. The plan was to have lunch, ice-skate, and then head over to the cinema. However, after having eaten way too much local pizza and some quick shopping, we abandoned the idea of ice-skating, mainly because the rink was heavily overcrowded. However, we didn’t renounce to the movie theatre. Here’s something that I really hate about Italy: dubbing. For 20 years of my life I had to watch movies always with the same voices (you can easily notice that the voices are always the same), mainly because the average Italian either doesn’t know English, or it’s way too lazy to read the subtitles to hear the original voice of the movie. Movie aside, even the way back home was pretty epic. After having split in two different taxi, we headed towards the highway. Shortly after our driver got a nail on the road and there: flat tire. I do not know if I’m a magnet for these sorts of events, but the whole situation was pretty surreal. Remi, the Hungarian guy, immediately helped the poor indian driver, while I decided to be the “supervisor” of the whole process. This is my last Malaysian adventure for 2014. In just about one hour I will leave for Myanmar, the land of temples and Buddhism. It’s the first time I’m taking a trip like this, and I must admit that I’m a bit nervous about it, but I hope it will become a great adventure with lots, lots of tails to write about. |