Mister loverman.. shabba! Mister loverman…
Twist and shout… Come on, come on, come on baby now..
Yep, you are in Myanmar, in the only and unique reggae bar, 7th Joint.
This bar has nothing to do with reggae except the colors on the wall and the bob Marley picture illustrating the menu. But you have a live band playing sometimes and it’s just a great place to meet people. Like these expats from France and Maurice or these two football coaches from Nigeria…

I wanted to go out and being on my own didn’t rhyme anymore with “what the other’s are going to think about a girl sitting in a small bar, eating potatoe wedges and drinking an Heineken…?”. People can be really judgmental and pity you when you are traveling on your own but really, being alone can be a benediction sometimes. There is one thousands reasons to that but I won’t list them here, you can follow this blog and wait for the documentary who will come soon to have the proof of it (I also encourage you to check some other blogs as they were my references when I started this one.)

  
Myanmar is a pretty conservative country. You won’t see local solo girls traveling or drinking or smoking. Neither you’ll be able to glare at some shoulders or ankles here. I can say that I was a little attraction and I was reasonable pleased about it in a way. Once you say that no, you are not english, people are smiley and helpful (sorry guys, it looks like Myanmar prefer French girls!). They genuinely ask if you have a husband and if it’s “just you?!”. It is actually not embarrassing at all, you can feel that they are just curious.

However, this is not a fairy tale and there is assholes everywhere in the world. For the first time in my trip, I felt insecure and disgusted after a man who did obscene gestures to me in the street. It’s not the place where I want to have a talk about how this guy looked like or from where he came from, let’s not stereotypes countries because of one or two stupid uneducated person, but he was not Burmese.
That said, that moment happened so quick and it was so much out of nowhere that I didn’t reacted as I would have in other circumstances. In the end, it was not a big deal, he didn’t touch me or something but I felt insulted so deeply as a woman that I burned from the inside for a long time after that. When a guy harass a girl in the street, if it’s me or somebody else, I feel like he is harassing the entire gender.

He looked nice at first, saying hi to me and asking me where I came from. It was a casual talk like you can have everywhere in the street in Yangon, with a random stranger. And then the gesture. Twice. Really… Really vulgar.
I just gave him my best middle finger, not sure how to react in that situation, in the middle of a crowd, in a country that I just started to learn.

It didn’t helped me for a revenge or something but just to let him know that is not alright to treat woman like that.
In the end, I tried to smile, breath calmly and think about the positive part of this awkward situation. That’s what my travel taught me: “don’t take things too personally girl, detach yourself from all negativity and bad thoughts interacting in your personal area”…
That day, I was the stereotype of the white slut for him but of course I know that I’m not. He was not attacking me personally, he hated an entire part of the world because he was just too stupid and had not the education to understand basic things in life like the concept of respect to any human or equality.
Suddenly, I felt so sorry for him that my anger went away and I realize how strong, powerful, lucky and intelligent I was compare to this guy. I don’t want to forgive these kind of things because it would mean that I understand and obviously I don’t because other people with the same life than him would have probably never done these kind of things, but I felt better. And I felt safe…

I still loved Myanmar!