Fruit stalls alongside sold apples, watermelons, lychees and durian. However the stalls weren’t touting the usual tourist junk, instead household items designed for the average Burmese citizen – screwdrivers, mugs, Frank Lampard underwear, wallets, DVDs and books. On the pavement there was just as much people traffic as cars on the road, the tight streets lined on both sides by pop-up stalls and patient vendors by their sides. The roads were teeming with cars, their horns bleating, intersections just a mass of metal and frustration.

Welcome to Yangon, I thought sleepily in the back seat.Īfter a two-hour nap at our hotel we set off into onto the streets of Burma’s largest city, the morning cloud now broken by fierce sunshine, the humidity sticking my shirt to my chest. The roads of Yangon were almost completely empty, but the driver still insisted on racing through the streets as if he were being pursued by the police, haring through red lights and round corners, Jo and I swaying violently from side to side. We stumbled into the back of an old, grey taxi that I guessed was blue in another life. Dawn may still have been hours away, but the bus depot was busy and bustling, and it didn’t take long to find a taxi. We arrived in Yangon at 5am, a cruel time to be dropped off by a nightbus in any city.

Thrill of the chase a rocky riverbed