The next day Yousef picked us up very early, we met him the night before outside a restaurant where he showed up with his tuk-tuk and a book of recommendations written by people from all over the world. The tour started with a breakfast on him at one of his favorite stands. And we went to the U Bein bridge that runs 1.2km into Taungthaman Lake. It is a teak wood bridge built in 1850, believed to be the oldest of this material (and once the longest) in the world. We enjoyed the view, clouded by soaring pollution, but still, mesmerizing. The length of the bridge, its material, the people walking through it… it was a walk of peace.

We visited different temples and stopped at one that finally brought us back to the sexist land of Myanmar. A white pagoda, not the famous temple but its white marveled us as we passed through its street. We wanted to walk through it, climb it, explore it. Until we came across the sign “no ladies allowed” and it took away the pleasure of appreciating such a clean white but with such a dirty message (I apologized for that half cliché phrase). We did not leave immediately. We continued to observe it from afar, I was still perplexed by this prohibition, chauvinism had never been so irrational to me, nor so present and so current, without it coming from another person, but from a monument. I left with some indignation that I decided to let go because we did not have many hours left and I wanted to see something that exceeded that moment.