Unfortunately the story isn’t actually that interesting, sorry.
At the moment we’re living right next to Kandawgyi Lake* which has a lovely boardwalk around its circumference, for boardwalking.
So one evening we decided to walk on said boardwalk. We were planning to watch the sun set, but various reasons—mostly me being slow—meant that we were setting off a little later than intended.
Our first issue arose when we realised there was a fence around the lake. So we went looking for a gate. Once we found a gate we had to cross the road (never straightforward in Yangon). But we made it across, and through the gate, and wandered blithely past the booth where we were probably supposed to pay the entry fee (whoops).
And then onto the boardwalk itself. We had been warned not to use it if we wanted a morning run around the lake, but from our apartment it looked completely fine, so I assumed people were being hyperbolic. It was perhaps the least stable surface I’ve ever walked on, punctuated by missing planks and railings. In the rapidly dimming light of the evening we were becoming a little concerned, not least because the boardwalk meanders quite a way from the shore, and we hadn’t seen anyone else for a while. Just when we were about to give up and turn back, we found a junction that took us back to dry land, only to discover a locked gate in between us and the road we needed to be on. Thankfully, the man we had just walked past sitting in the gutter turned out to be some kind of caretaker with a key, who let us out with a smile and waved us on our way.
Friendly Yangon parks staff 1; clueless semi-tourists 0.
*Interesting fact: it seems that ‘Kandawgyi’ translates to “Royal Lake” or “Grand Lake”, so saying “Kandawgyi Lake” is like saying “ATM machine”.