First day in Myanmar we visited a temple and had a business visit.
In the morning, we visit the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is the most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar. It was built more than 2600 years ago, so it is also the oldest Buddhist stupa in the world. The top and the upper part is the pagoda was made of gold with several diamonds inlaying in it. In general, people belong to specific creatures based on which day of a week is their birthday according to the Buddhism in Myanmar. For example, I was born on a Monday, so my day or my corner would be a tiger. According to what our tour guide said about the religious traditions in the temple, everything is supposed to be done three or five times for a lucky reason. I’m not a Buddhist, but I like to try things I have not done before. I went to the tiger corner and poured water on the tiger and the Buddha.
In the afternoon, we visited the offices of Royal Haskining DHV and Mandalay Technology. The guy giving us presentations and answering our questions was called Zaw Nieing. He didn’t use a PowerPoint, but he showed us the magazine that presents their company and their partners. When introducing their companies, he gave us a lot of examples to help us to understand, and he was really welcome to take questions along the way. I was impressed by his enthusiasm and patient, because we asked a lot of questions. He also encouraged us to take the risk to invest in the Myanmar market because it is a merging market in the early stage. The market was like the one in Vietnam five years ago, which means there are a lot of opportunities in this developing country.
We learned a lot today about the culture, religion and economy in Myanmar.