As I mentioned earlier, Yangon is far more chaotic then Bangkok. Maybe more "Asian". I don't know. Cars are roaring past me, people are clinging to the outside of busses, there are strange smells everywhere and street-vendors are noisily praising their fruits and other wares. If there is one sound wthough, which I will forever associated with Myanmar that it's the gurgling sound of collecting mucus and spit at the back of your throat and spitting it out. rrrrrrRRRRR-Tscht.

You hear this everywhere! The reason is that Burmese man constantly chew on crushed Betel Nuts, that have been wrapped into palm-leaves. Apparently the betel nut contains a substance like caffeine or nicotine that give you a slight buzz. The betel nut itself is brown. But it turns blood red once chewed. The result is that large parts of the street, especially near bus stations or anywhere else where people gather, look like someone has just slaughtered a herd of cows! It also means that the teeth of Burmese men slowly turn red as they get older. Believe me when I say that this is not a pretty picture. Besides you have to worry all the time that someone might unintentionally spit at you. Mmmmm....

I also went and changed money today. 300 USD all together, according to friends of my parents who are living here that should be enough to last me all month. Accommodation is mainly paid in dollars and should set me back a further 10 USD/night if I stick to guest houses. Hotels costs easily 25, 30 or 50 USD per night. No, for foreigners Myanmar is not a really cheap country to travel. Mainly because you have to pay “foreigner prices” everywhere. But I digress: So I went to somewhere I could change my money and got a whole brick of kyats. The heap was easily 20 centimeters high! Feeling slightly uneasy about this I asked for a plastic bag and hurried back to me hotel. I’m telling you that is sooooo strange. When all of a sudden you start to count money in centimeters rather then bills.

While the kyat is not really worth all that much, the value of money and goods is something very different here then you’d expect. As mentioned earlier as a foreigner you frequently have to pay prices that are close to what you’d have to pay at home or at least more then you’d pay e.g. in the Czech Republic. But that’s not the only thing. Due to the embargo - and the desire of some unscrupulous people, some things simply cost much more money here then back home. The most extreme example for this is the price of cars: A normal 1988 Toyota costs around 12.000 to 15.000 USD here. The price of a new car at home! And for that money you will not even get the steering wheel on the left side (they drive on the right side of the road here). A nice pickup goes for 75.000, a mini-bus for 100.000. I’m not kidding! My parents friends told me that they thought of buying a car a few years ago when they arrived in Myanmar. An 88 Toyota something. Back then the car would have cost around 2.000 to 3.000 USD. Today the same cars costs more then four times as much! That is insane! Of course you could say that under these circumstances it would make sense to buy a car now and wait while it raises in value. But of course this whole systems will break apart as soon as the embargo is lifted and new cars are being imported into the country.