Tea and the US Embassy in Myanmar

The following day was fairly unexciting. We went to the United States Embassy, which is an interesting place near the park we had visited the day before. Half of the road is blocked off and we tried to enter it the previous day, we could have sworn that we were redirected by a cop across the street. Why he wouldn't let two foreigners down a foreign embassy street is beyond us and confused us greatly.

We thought it may have something to do with the large sign in English that faced the embassy. This sign informed the public of the four "People's Desires" namely
1) Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views.
2) Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation.
3) Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State.
4) Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.

You gotta love the word stooges. I think they strategically placed the sign in front of the US Embassy so they could see number 3. You also gotta love crushing destructive elements. Word choice in these matters is key.

As it turned out, our fears were for not because we had no problems getting in the following day, except we arrived in the morning to be informed that they only saw their own citizens from 2-3:30 in the afternoon. So, we putzed around the city for a while, stopping at a sidewalk side teashop for a drink to hide from the rain. When I say sidewalk side teashop this is exactly what I mean. I was a little surprised to find many teashops literally on the sidewalk. The owners set up child-size tables with child-size stools and one sits about 5 inches from the floor while sipping on tea and eating snacks. Most of these shops are equipped with large umbrellas to shade their customers from the sun and protect them from the rain. So, we sat on our stools and watched Yangon go by in the rain.

The way most tea shops work is you sit down and order a hot drink. Usually this is Indian style sweet tea with condensed milk, much like the tea tarik we found in teashops in Malaysia. However other teas, such as lemon tea, are also available, we just don't know how to order them yet. Then, each table is also provided with Chinese style plain tea, which is free for the taking. Some of the shops place a tray of fried snacks at your table, which you sample at your liking. If none is eaten then none paid for. Some more permanent shops also provide dahls and curries to eat with your tea. These shops are the center of social life for many Burmese. Men and women will converge here to gossip, catch up and sit for hours to while away the day. They are most interesting places to visit.

After our long cup of tea, we headed back to the US Embassy. With great smiles and superb English the security staff began rummaging through our bags telling us all of the things we may not take inside. We may not bring bell peppers, cameras, water or even medicine (medicine? this one confused me). We opted to leave everything in their care, save the umbrellas, which we were forced to deposit before passing through the metal detectors so we really shouldn't have bothered.

Once inside, we noticed how small and quite it was. There were a handful of Burmese men being interviewed for visas so they could work on ships but other than that, it was empty. We decided to register and get more pages in our passports, so we could get a Cambodian visa in a few months. This took awhile, but they had CNN on while we waited and we were able to rummage through months old copies of the New Yorker, the Economist and Time, so we caught up a bit on foreign and national affairs.

It was an interesting if not exciting afternoon.