Gypsy Cab Company

Since we are not allowed to buys cars or motorcycles in Myanmar, our main modes of transportation include the following: walking, biking, and taking taxis.

Walking is not bad, but it is slow and the sidewalks can be deathtraps at times…see photo of sidewalks. Many of the sidewalks are really just covered sewer drains and sometimes the covers are missing or loose. No high heel lady shoes here. This is flipflop/sandal country.

Biking: Buying bikes in Yangon has been the best decision we have made so far. It is super fun to cruise around the city and check out all of the side streets. Traffic can get a little hairy at times, but I have yet to see a single car accident. Regardless, we wear helmets (thank you to Elsa and Scott!) and ring our bicycle bells a lot. Ding-ding, Americans coming through, watch out!
The people in Yangon are very friendly and like to practice their English. When we ride our bikes to school in the morning (about a 25 minute ride) we are bombarded with people yelling “hello” and “hi” and “hey, where you go?” When you respond back in English, people laugh and love it. Sometimes, when there is a cute Myanmar baby around, the mother or father, will take the child’s hand and vigorously shake it at you as if the child is actually waving at you. I am not sure how much the child likes this, but the parents get excited when you wave back.

Taxis: I believe that the Myanmar people must be the best mechanics in the world. All of the taxis in the city are these old, small 4-door cars from the 70s and 80s that are miraculously still running. It is not so much the dents that make me call them the gypsy cab company, but the interiors. Any taxi one rides, is bound to be missing any of the following items (sometimes more than one): inside door panels (meaning there are doors, but it is a metal shell on the inside of the cab versus one covered with fabric or plastic), the window knob for manually rolling down a window (you often have to ask the driver for the knob, insert it into the door, roll down the window and then return it to the driver), a liner for the floor where your feet rest. Some cabs have small holes on the floor and when you drive in the rainy season, you’re feet will get wet from water splashing up from the road. You can’t always see the holes, but you see and feel the water splashing up. Yabba dabba do!
Everytime I ride in a taxi here, it has been a memorable experience. Andrew and I were once in a cab that had a manual window roll down knob on my side and an electric/automatic roll down button on his side. How that came to be I will never know, but it worked! Taxi prices are fairly reasonable, costing around $3 to get anywhere around the city. Since the fuel price hikes, prices have gone up a bit, but its still very manageable. Speaking of price changes, I know everyone has been watching the news and have no worries, things are fine here. While there have been some protests, they have been very small and there haven’t been any big changes. Had the protests not been on the news, we would not have been aware that they had happened. So life in Myanmar continues as normal.
One last note about taxis is that they usually smell good. I’m not kidding! Considering how gypsy they look, they smell good because the cab drivers buy strung orchid flowers to hang on their rearview mirrors as an offering to Buddha (at least I believe this is why.) The flowers are extremely fragrant, a mix between the scent of lilacs and stock. That is the best air freshener yet!