My First Flood Survey in Myanmar

Hello, everyone! This is Liu Chang writing about my first time of flood survey in Myanmar.
Thanks to the help and support from all my loving friends and families, I continued my PhD study here in the same lab, so three more years to spend together!

Shortly after my formal enrollment in this university, I went to a ten-day flood survey in Myanmar from Oct. 21st to Oct. 30th. Our target region is mostly near Bago villages and Bago city. With the help from students from Yangon Technological University (YTU), the survey was carried out quite smoothly despite of the hot weather (34 degrees).

The first morning, we gathered together at YTU office and took a lecture from Shrestha-san, who is responsible for this survey. According to him, the data from survey will be extremely useful for developing risk curve in agriculture. All this had made the survey more exciting and meaningful.

Having a lecture from Shrestha-san

Because it was the first time of my flood survey in another country, everything seems to be so new to me. The most impressive parts were the hot weather and kindness of people. As we are taking survey in some rural area in Bago region, most houses didn't have airconditioners, some even in lack of electricity. This made me sweat all day long under the sunshine. Students from YTU kindly provided some hats and umbrella to me. Without that I may not be able to make it till the last day.

Me wearing a hat under the sun

The pagoda where we had lunch

Another impressive point was the kindness of people. All of them were so cooperative and kindly offered us precious information regarding to the damage of past flood event. Nearly every house kindly invited us to have some dessert and fruit. I ate from one to another, without knowing the name or material of a lot of dessert. But they were really delicious and suitable for the hot weather. We tried to take some break during lunch and had a lot of delicious Myanmar food (sadly I still don't know all of the food names). Thanks to Bo Bo san, you always organized everything nicely.

Delicious lunch of our group

Although some houses were not in good condition, and some of them even suffered from flood every year. The situation was still better than I first imagined. Generally it's like 20 years ago in my hometown in China. Considering the fast development of Asian countries these years, I believe Myanmar has great potential in economic development.

The last afternoon, I took half day off and visited Myanmar National Museum and a lovely Church nearby. Myanmar has a long and great history lasting over 900 years. Hope I could learn some Myanmar language next time when I travel there. And in the end I wanna share some sightseeing photos with you.

Saint Mary Catholic Church

Ancient pillar of Kanbawza Thadai Golden Palace

Exhibition of Budda Statues