Shorts, Longs, Skirts, Dresses or Longjis
Trip Start
Dec 07, 2011
1
24
Trip End
Dec 28, 2011
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
I wore shorts arriving into Yangon where the tempurature was warm. I noticed the vast majority of patrons at the hotel were in shorts. The female staff were in outfits coming down to just below the knee. When I walked next door to where there were night clubs and upmarket restaurants everyone I saw was in short shorts.
When I met up with the trip leader, he advised that visiting shrines one must be in bare feet and long pants. We were going to visit shrines every day.
On the first day, it was quite hot in Yangon but going to Shwedagon Pagoda I wore pants with zip off legs. It was quite uncomfortable and as soon as I left the pagoda I wripped off the legs and from then on I primarily wore shorts and never looked back.
There were only 2 pagodas where the shrine official wanted people to now show legs/knees. Here I temporarily put on a light pair of long pants over the shorts. One could also borrow and wear a Longji.
My wearing of shorts attracted absolutely no attention from locals with one exception. On a milder day (around 21c) locals were wearing overcoats as they considered this cold and it amused one lady that I was wearing shorts in the "cold" weather.
Outside Yangon the locals (Male & Female) generally wore Longjis. Males had a plain pattern and particular colours and females tended to have designs or flowers on the Longjis.
A women on our trip purchased and wore a Longji but she wanted a "mens" design. She got lots of looks and comments that she was wearing a mens Longji.
At Ngwe Suang beach we were joined at the resort by 300 employees of a local pharmisurtical company. These employees were likely the middle class Myanmars. Absolutely non of these people wore Longjis, they were wearing designer jeans, long pants and many wore short pants.
Buddhism we were told did not discriminate between sexes, but at some shrines there were signs that women must not wear shorts and some places women were barred no matter what they wore. I never saw a sign that men could not wear shorts.
Longjis are low cost and can be worn by people of varying size. Our guide said he preferred wearing Longjis to trousers. I noticed people regularly needing to retie to Longji and one big inconvenience is that the Longji has no pockets. I saw men stuffing their wallet in the back of the Longji. This seems a great way to loose it.
Some say that we should not wear shorts in respect to local customs. I do not go allong with this. I think we should wear appropriate clothing. I do not think we are helping the locals by pandering to illogical concepts. I predict that as Myanmar develops, the middle class will increasingly wear western clothes.
My advise to other travellers to Myanmar is to wear appropriate clothes.for the circumstances.and carry either long pants or Longji that could be temporarily put on when visiting shrines with a thing on dress. Shorts that covered the knees were OK for many shrines.
