Not The Usual Suspects

At a random moment I spotted a place on the map the group is unlikely to go for our study trips: the Shukhinthar Amusement Park and Bowling. Jackie thought this sounded like fun so we took a taxi for 5000 Kyat (chet, roughly $5). The park appeared abandoned with rusty equipment and only the people running the park walking around. We found the water park and there were about 12 teenage boys swimming who shouted "Hello" at the two of us as we walked through. Since most of the society here is quite conservative, I wondered if women are allowed to swim and show that much skin.

We asked a couple people where the bowling was and they said on the next street. Thinking it was still in the park, we wandered some more. We finally saw it through a fence and realized it was separate from where we were. Next door was a very modern bowling alley. We rented shoes and bought socks. Each game was ~$1.30. The scoring monitors above us were all manually entered so we had a girl sitting at the desk keeping track and typing in the scores for us while we played. She also clapped for us when we did well.

From bowling we decided to head downtown for lunch and to walk around. We were dropped off at the Trader's Hotel where we stepped inside to cool off. Much to our delight we found a case inside with loaves of fresh bread and cheesecake. We were mesmerized by the bread and decided to purchase some before we headed back to the hotel. Across the street was the Sky Bistro which Linn had gone to with some people she met here. Their food was fairly inexpensive for a fancy restaurant on the 20th floor. We had an excellent view of the entire surrounding area of Yangon as well as the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Each of us ordered a dish to share. It turned out the servings were enough to feed 2 people each, so we had enough food to last us for lunch and dinner.

Next to the Sky Bistro was a movie theater with a show in an hour from when we finished lunch. Thinking it would be something we would never do with the group and would also be air conditioned, we got tickets for ~$1.60 each to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie was pretty good and we stayed nice and cool. It was interesting to note that they show the flag and play part of their anthem (I think?) before the movie starts. Everyone stood up. Most people also ate crunchy snacks and a few took phone calls during the movie. The ushers also checked for tickets with two boys in front of us, so I missed a few minutes of the movie. It was fascinating to see how people acted and that most wore western styled clothes.

Tomorrow we will split into pairs and visit local churches for worship.