Myanmar Misfortune: a visit to the fortuneteller in Yangon

by David Farley on

The man who told me my unfortunate future, did so with glee. I quickly learned he had a proclivity for sustaining the last syllable of every sentence, like a Spanish-speaking soccer play-by-play announcer after a goal, or a game show host announcing I’d just won a BRAND NEW CAR……!

“In future, you will be very unluckyyyyyyyyy,” he said after recording my birthdate and looking it up in a tattered book filled with numerical codes.

I was doing a self-guided tour of Yangon, the erstwhile capital of Myanmar, as outlined in my guidebook, Lonely Planet Myanmar. The walking tour took me down a street lined with fortunetellers and palm readers. I hadn’t planned on sitting down but I thought that if one of them was particularly insistent, I’d do it.

That’s when Min Kyot Kyow announced himself to me. I took a seat on the bench and within seconds he was rambling on about my unfortunate fate. Astrology is taken very seriously in Myanmar. The location of the new capital, Naypyidaw, was reportedly determined by astrology.

I’ve never really gravitated to fortunetellers, palm readers and psychics, but I’d randomly had a couple experiences with this ilk that left me both intrigued and perplexed. In Rajasthan, a fortuneteller’s main message to me was that the best years of my life were 1996 and 2005. Up until 2011, those were, by far, the worst years of my life. Or did he mean that suffering equals growth which eventually equals positivity? It’s possible, I suppose; after a terrible last year, I’m currently quite happy about the way things have worked out. In Rajasthan, though, I didn’t stick around for clarification. Instead, I walked away distraught and confused. The second brush came when I was reporting a story on people who privately collect holy relics. One of the collectors, it turned out, was also a psychic. In the middle of his answers about how he attained the complete skull of St. Anne, he’d get a glazed look in his eye, stare over my shoulder and make random (and, at times, frightenly accurate) statements about my past.

But no one had dared tell me my future yet. Min Kyot Kyow picked up a piece of paper and began reading badly worded statements in English about what lie ahead for me. It was as if this crumpled notebook leaf of paper had been divinely inscribed just for me. But because the ballpoint pen ink looked long faded and the piece of paper itself appeared to have been through the wash several times, it was like someone saw me coming about five years ago. Or did the fortuneteller just say these things to all the foreigners who happen to walk by?


Telling me things like I would live with my father until I was in my 70s or that I have a kind relationship to “beasts,” as he put it, was fine, I guess. I didn’t really need to know this information. I won’t be living with my father and I already know I’m a friend of the beast, after all.

But then he started to get specific. “You will marry foreign womaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” he screamed. And just in case I didn’t understand, he began naming nationalities, counting off on his fingers with each one. “China woman, Thai lady, Brazil woman, Indonesian woman.” Then he paused before adding: “Burma woman,” and raised his eyebrows up and down at me a few times.

I wish he would have stopped right there. I could have walked away and begun my search for my new foreign-born wife.

“But in eight years,” he added after studying my palm, “you will become widowwwwwwwwwwww.” A widower? Really? He was prophesying the death of a woman I’m going to fall in love with but haven’t met yet? (Note to any foreign-born women who may take a romantic interest in me: unless you like the idea of knowing you’re going to die in 2020, stay far away from me.)

The fortuneteller gave me a candle and pointed me toward the Sule Pagoda, the large Buddhist temple in the center of town that was looming in the distance. He said I’d know what to do with it when I got there (um, light it, maybe?). Which is what I did. I put it on an altar, set the wick ablaze, and sat there, meditating with a handful of Burmese Buddhists, hoping this fortuneteller was terrible at his profession.

Abandoned Austin: photos of neglected structures in the city of Austin

by Elizabeth Seward on

Life might sway to a slower beat in the South, but, compared to other cities in the United States, Austin, Texas‘ growth over the span of the last decade or so hasn’t been slow at all. Steady job growth and population growth have worked together in Austin to create a sort of surreal union between urbanity and rurality. A succinct but steadfast downtown area in Austin is only a couple of miles away from artists’ communities developing on the outskirts of town. These communities are budding and blossoming a short bike ride away from the city’s center, but these communities, like East Austin, are still rural enough that you’ll find chickens roaming the streets and newly-converted living and work spaces being created from has-been barns. This is usually the way these things work.

Artists seeking more affordable housing in New York sought Brooklyn and found homes in vacant factories–vacant anything, really. With dilapidating real estate, supply often meets demand in communities that are attractive for one reason or another to creative thinkers–innovators. It takes a visionary to see the worthwhile in what’s been neglected, and Austin seems to have plenty of visionaries. Upon close inspection, Austin’s framework is still falling apart at the seams in some places. It’s a safe bet that these abandoned and broken-down buildings will be renovated or replaced in due time, but for now, during an economic shift like the one taking place is Austin, these boarded up buildings belonging to abandoned Austin represent the transition of a city to me.

%Gallery-145676%Austin is no abandoned city, but the bygone buildings in Austin are all that much more interesting because of this. Some of the most notorious neglected buildings in Austin are, as summarized in an article in the Austin Chronicle: The Cabin, The Walls, The House, The Restaurant, The Tracks, The Kiln, The Athletic Club, The Rock, Robertson Hill, The Hog Farm, and The Dog Park. The Riverside Dog Park‘s abandoned house on the hill is the only one I visited for this piece, and that’s because I frequent this dog park regularly as it is and was interested in taking a closer look at the house, which has always only been an object barely noticeable in my periphery while socializing my dogs.

Other abandoned Austin buildings have stuck out to me since moving to Austin. The old train station that sits next to the current Amtrak station, for instance. Smaller buildings, like homes, that are beautiful in that way that only a run-down structure can be always catch my eye–particularly since there are so many of them in my neighborhood, East Austin. When I went out to shoot for this piece, I posted a status on my personal Facebook page that read:

“Out photographing abandoned Austin. If you know of a cool abandoned building in Austin, tell me where it is.”

One of my friends commented:

“There are abandoned buildings in this town?”

And I thought that was telling. With all of the boom and business hitting Austin, it seems people are quick to overlook the lack thereof in some areas. It’s easy to overlook, primarily because there really aren’t that many abandoned or otherwise neglected properties in Austin. Thanks to Austin’s increasing popularity and good reputation, people have been flocking to the city for years now and swiping up run-down buildings and making them new. Few remain untouched and that is exactly why I wanted to capture them while I still can. It’s a beautiful thing that Austin is doing so well, that these buildings likely won’t stay neglected for long–and I say that despite that fact that I aesthetically like something about dying structures. I gathered these photos not as a showcase of all of the neglected buildings in Austin, but as a photo diary depicting the abandoned buildings I encounter in my daily life here in Austin. Take a look at these buildings–they won’t be unoccupied for long.

Will Scam for Food in Burma

by David Farley on

It was my first night in Yangon, the southeast Asian metropolis formerly known as Rangoon, and I was standing in a dank, dark back street arguing with a 16-year-old boy over his fee for oral sex. Well, sort of. He had propositioned me. And while I wasn’t interested, I was appalled when he told me how little he’d do it for. So I began lecturing him that he should charge more. Not that I know the going international rate for such things. I swear. It just seemed low for doing such an intimate thing to a complete stranger. Why I didn’t talk him out of the nightly practice completely is beyond me. Then again, my mind at that moment was in full-on negotiating mode.

It all began when I had arrived in Myanmar two hours earlier. As I was checking in to my hotel, I was told the price of the room and pulled out my wad of $20 bills (there are no ATMs in Myanmar, so one must arrive with a bulk of cash). I put three bills down on the counter and the team at reception began scrutinizing the notes like avid baseball card collectors inspecting a Honus Wagner card. They discussed among each other, spitting out a slew of Burmese and then shaking their heads from side to side. The oldest member of the money-scrutinizing triumvirate stepped forward and informed me my money was no good. “See this,” he said, pointing to the tiniest of creases in the crisp $20 bill. “No good.” I protested, saying that anywhere else in the world these were perfectly valid twenty dollar bills. “You don’t understand,” he said. “This is Myanmar.”

I have to confess: I had heard the warnings that they only exchange perfectly crisp, blemish-free American dollars here and it wasn’t until the day I was leaving–having already withdrawn $500 in cash from my bank the day before–that I realized I should take it all back to the bank and get brand new bills. The problem, though, was that by the time I got around to it, the banks were closed. I had no choice but to get on my flight that night, hoping that the guidebooks and friends who had been here were grossly exaggerating.


They weren’t.
At the reception desk, the three hotel employees went through my entire bundle of bills. They found three that worked. Enough to pay for my room that night. But that was it. The rest, while mostly crisp and new-ish, were disqualified for having a tiny crease here or a black marker spot there.

I took a deep breath and wondered what I was going to do. One of my biggest fears when I’m traveling is being stuck in a place with no access to money. To be totally stranded, reduced to a homeless beggar. The previous month I was in Ethiopia and when a few ATM machines wouldn’t let me withdraw money that old uncomfortable feeling came back and I sulked around the streets of Addis Ababa for an hour or so going on a cash machine crawl and fearing the worst. I did eventually get money.


So, with no ATMs in Yongon to seek out, I deposited my things in my room and picked out five of the most corrupted bills I had. I was going to exchange these by the end of the night. I was determined. And I was going to do in the street. Not in a brightly lit hotel with overly discriminating employees. The key, though, was this: I knew that exchanging money on the street anywhere in the world is an invitation to get ripped off. So I was going to have to be as sketchy and scheming as the guys with whom I was going to be doing business. I was going to have to out sleaze them. I might as well have hung a sign around my neck that read: WILL SCAM FOR FOOD. Was I up for it? Well, I did want to eat that night. So, yes.

About two blocks outside of my hotel, a couple teenagers accosted me. Did I want to exchange money? Why, yes I did. I followed them. We twisted and turned down dark narrow streets. Water dripped from god knows where. In the distance, female Buddhists were chanting. We finally stopped at the entrance of an apartment. I was invited up. But this is where the shady part begins. We needed to do this in as dimly lit environment as possible. I knew I was risking getting ripped off as well, but it was the only way I was going to possibly exchange money.

After some arguing about whether I was going to come up and the price of the exchange, one of the boys finally ascended the steep steps to get the money. Meanwhile the second boy began quizzing me on my sexual preference. He could do it just as well, if not better, than a woman, he assured me in near perfect English. I said I believed him but I wasn’t interested. His explicit details were interrupted when his colleague materialized with the cash.

He counted it out. Seventy-five 1000 kyat bills. And then he handed it to me and asked for my five $20 bills in exchange. First, though, I wanted to count the wad of Burmese kyat myself. I did, creating individual piles of 10 bills each. It was all there. One of the boys picked up the money again and demanded my cash. I pulled it out and as they were looking at each $20 bill, I recounted the kyat. Suddenly only half of it was there. Here was the scam. Here was when they matched my sleaziness. When I called them on it, one of boys threw down the missing bundle. But it didn’t matter. They’d already noticed that my dollars were tainted with creases and value-decreasing ink stains.

“Okay then, forget it. The deal is off,” I said, grabbing the five American bills from his hand. But their desperation got the better of them. They’d already invested enough time and energy into this situation that they didn’t want to let me walk away now.

“No, okay,” one of the boys said. “We’ll take your dollars.” I handed him my money and scooped up the 75 Burmese bills. I counted off a few and handed it to the boy who made the indecent proposal to me. “Here, go eat something instead of propositioning foreigners,” I said and then briskly walked down the street, fearing they’d change their mind about the exchange and run after me. I celebrated in a restaurant eating curry chicken and various vegetable dishes over rice and washing it all down with an enormous bottle of Myanmar beer, trying not to think that in a few nights I was going to have to do this all over again.

Culinary Cab Confessions: where to talk politics (and eat well) in Yangon

by David Farley on
He said to call him Ricky. As our taxi jerked its way through the center of Yangon, the southeast Asian metropolis formerly known as Rangoon and the recently dethroned capital of Myanmar (the erstwhile Burma), Ricky explained to me how he acquired such an unlikely name. “My Sunday school teacher gave it to me. You don’t even want to know what my Burmese name is,” he said, taking a sharp right turn. “Too hard to pronounce.” Ricky said that despite his Sunday school attendance, he’s a lifelong Buddhist and that he just attended the school to learn English. Which he seemed to pick up quite well at the expense of Jesus and Co.

A few minutes earlier, I had walked out of my hotel and there he was. “Taxi?” Maybe, I replied. But I had a special request. I was in Yangon for a few days and wanted to do another installment of Culinary Cab Confessions, a series for Gadling in which I put to test the notion that cab drivers are the best guide to a city’s undiscovered and affordable restaurant gems. I presented the idea to him. “Get in,” he said.

And within seconds we were swerving through traffic. We passed the railway station and the football stadium. Ricky, 32, has been driving a cab for a few years. He said he does it every day from 5:30am to midnight. And then he goes home to the outskirts of the city and spends the only few waking moments with his wife before passing out from exhaustion.

It was just my second day in Burma and I was eager to talk to locals about the current political situation. Changes, it seemed, were happening quickly. Political prisoners were being released. Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime voice of the opposition, years under house arrest, had also been set free. Elections for April 2012 had been called. The Burmese populace suddenly had something to be hopeful about: that the decades-long military dictatorship in Burma would finally end. But, as I was informed, one doesn’t just bring that stuff up here. The secret police, I’d been told, are everywhere. And if someone gets caught saying anything bad about the ruling government, it’s curtains. Instead, as a visitor, you have to wait for them to talk about it.

Want to know a secret?” he asked. That didn’t take very long, I thought and then waited for him to begin. “The place I’m taking you is a very local place. There are no tourists there,” he said. And within a minute, we were pulling up to the Morning Star Café, a partially open-air eatery that appeared to have more staff than customers. Then again, we were about an hour ahead of the lunch rush. As is my custom in such situations, I prefer the local to do the ordering, telling him only to ask for what he usually eats. I realize the risk involved in this. What if he had an eating proclivity for the bizarre? Or worse, what if he was a vegan?

Tea arrived first. Then something called mohn hihn khar, a fish soup in a semi-translucent broth bobbing with garlic, onions, and ginger. Burmese cuisine doesn’t really dazzle the food-loving world in the way that its neighbor, Thailand, does when it comes to food; or its southeast Asian brethren, Vietnam. But this was good. Packed with flavors that conspired to create something bold, the soup was gone in minutes. “You want something else?” Ricky asked. I nodded. And then he pointed his face toward a gaggle of lingering waiters in the distance, pursed his lips together, and made loud kissing noises at them.


A few minutes later, a plate of coconut rice topped with a stewy bone-in chicken pieces was deposited in front of me. Chicken and starchy coconut had never tasted so delicious together. This was a dish that only the love of air kisses could create. While I was devouring my lunch, Ricky and I talked about family, Buddhist philosophy, and football. Ah, I thought, who needs to talk about politics. Besides, we’re in a public place. Ricky could get in big trouble.

And just then he leaned in. Ricky took a few quick glances around and said: “Do you know about the changes that are going on here….?”

Tips for road-tripping with your dog part 2: tips from commenters

by Elizabeth Seward on

I recently published a piece here on Gadling titled 10 tips for road-tripping with your dog. Somewhat chronicling my experience with hitting the road for 38 consecutive days with my 6 month old puppy, I thought through what made the trip work for me and compiled those thoughts into 10 tips for those of you enjoy the open road alongside your pooch. Luckily for me and all of our other readers, many of you chimed in, as requested, with your own tips through the comments. I was excited to read so much useful advice from those of you who are road warriors and dog lovers. So excited, in fact, that I felt a part 2 to my first piece was in call for… and so, here you have it, a list of additional tips for road-tripping with your dog, courtesy of the typing hands of Gadling readers who comment.1. Don’t assume hiking trails and other recreational areas are dog-friendly.
As one reader pointed out, you sometimes have to learn the hard way with this one. I was recently in Laredo, Texas and found that the only park in the city (that I could find) for dogs was Lake Casa Blanca. Once I paid the fee and got into the park, I found out that dogs aren’t actually allowed off-leash inside the park. So my dog, Fiona, and the puppy I rescued off of the street while in Laredo, Donnie, got to exercise a bit, but not as much as I was hoping for. If a campground is dog-friendly, don’t automatically assume the surrounding park is. Do your research.

2. Get a Kennel Cough vaccine.
If at any point in time on your journey you’ll be boarding your dog or leaving your dog where other dogs are or have been, consider getting a kennel cough vaccine for your dog. Kennel Cough is a highly contagious illness that affects canines. It causes inflammation of the upper respiratory system. Not only do you want your dog to be healthy and free of nasty bugs like this one, but a sick dog can demand altering your travel schedule and/or itinerary.

3. Research before crossing borders with dog food.
One commenter says that you cannot enter the USA with an open bag of dog food nor can you enter the USA with dog food from another country. Before crossing any country line, make sure you know the rules about what kind of food you can bring into the country for your dog.

4. Have a doggy bag.
Consider putting together a bag that is just for your dog. This bag can include everything from your dog’s paperwork to medication. This way, while you’re cramped up in the car, you’ll know exactly how and where to find everything your dog may need.

5. La Quinta.
La Quinta hotels, according to one commenter, are pet-friendly and don’t charge a pet fee. Keep that in mind.

6. Safe water.
Not all water is created equal. Make sure you have a healthy supply of water for your dog. Don’t assume the water in any particular region of the world is safe for your pup to drink before knowing the facts. In some cases, your dog will need to drink bottled water.

7. Safety check every space.
Before letting your dog off-leash at a pet-friendly hotel or even the house of a friend or relative, make sure you sweep through the area and check for pet-unfriendly items. I was recently at the home of a relative and found chocolate candies on the floor that her daughter had dropped. Not the fault of the relatives, of course, they don’t have a dog and probably don’t know or think of doggy no-nos, but checking the floors and areas can prevent your dog from illness or even death.

8. Dog tags.
Make sure your dog has all of the proper tags on his or her leash. Vaccination tags, name and contact information tag, microchip tag, etc. This will be a dog-lifesaver if your dog wanders off without you.

9. Have photos of your dog.
Make sure you have good and clear photos of your dog before embarking on any trip. In case your dog does get lost, this will enable you to more easily and effectively have people in the respective community on the lookout for your dog.

10. Bathroom on command.
I have Fiona trained to use the ‘bathroom’ on command (and I’m working on the new guy). This is particularly helpful if you are road-tripping. If your dog knows the bathroom command, you won’t have to worry about having accidents in the car.

11. Doggy daycare is everywhere.
Rather than leave your dog in the car if you’ll be away from the car for any extended period of time, consider looking into local doggy daycare centers. When I say they’re everywhere, I’m only kind of exaggerating. They are available in many locations, many of which you will likely be traveling through.

12. Know local law.
If you do sometimes leave your dog in the car for short and safe periods of time, beware the laws of the land as you travel. One commenter told a story of having a dog removed from a car in Burbank, where, apparently, people frequently remove dogs from their owners’ cars without consulting with the owner (who, for all they know, might have been picking up takeout food from the restaurant just beyond the restaurant parking lot, for instance). If a place you’re traveling through has regulations in place regarding dogs left in cars–know them. Know them well.