We spent yesterday sightseeing in Yangon with Myo, our A&K guide. When we met in our hotel lobby at 9:00am he asked us if we’d like to go “across the river,” checking in with us to make sure we were up for seeing some “real poverty.” It must be hard for local guides to guess Westerner’s tolerance for seeing people living in pretty rough conditions, but we didn’t come to Myanmar to get the 100% sanitized version, so off to the ferry we went.

The current here is very strong, so to cross the ferry essentially drives sideways. It’s about a 15-minute ride, and the boats go back and forth all day long. Locals pay 100 kyats (about $0.10) each way. On the way over, we rode in front of the captain up there on top, which we had to ourselves and enjoyed a nice breeze as we made our way to the other side.

The community across the river is part of Yangon city, but is a township called Dahla. The scene at the ferry dock on that side is crazy, with people coming and going in every direction, trishaw drivers and scooter “taxis” shouting for customers, and mini-van bus drivers shouting destinaions through bullhorns. But once you wade through the crowd the scene quickly becomes more rural, with a combination of paved and dirt roads and houses built from bamboo mats and other found materials lining the streets on both sides.

No two ways about it: life is tough here. We saw no evidence of running water, sanitation, and some electrical wires (though hard to know who actually benefits), lots and lots of trash strewn along the side of the road. In a nutshell, very little evidence of civic infrastructure.

But my lasting impression of a morning in Dahla was the feeling of people doing the best they have with what they’ve got. Not to say that they wouldn’t want or benefit from indoor plumbing, but there was a lot of industriousness, too.

One highlight of the morning was a visit to a large Monastery school (Buddhist monastic education is an alternative to government-run schools; monks pay for everything through donations from the community), where we had the opportunity to learn a little about how the monks and teachers care for these children, some of whom are so poor they live at the school full-time. Here they are practicing some rote religious chanting; with this many kids enthusastically shouting their lessons and the preponderance of hard surfaces, the sound was nearly deafening. 

We also had a lot of fun with our trishaw drivers; being, ahem, larger than your average Burmese, we required the use of two trishaws.

Josh’s driver spoke pretty good English, so as we rode along they chatted about politics (he loves Obama, doesn’t like Bush, and Clinton is “so-so”), religion, family, and education.

Around noontime we headed back to the ferry to return to the city center and take a break from the heat over a curry lunch.