Yangon Again

Left for the airport at 7.30am . Only an hour and 15 minutes to Rangon. They are obsessed with putting stickers on you in this country so wasn't surprised to find that we had a sticker colour coding us according to which flight we were on. The airport was like going back in time with lots of paperwork rather than computers.

Back to the Panda Hotel which was where we started so in a familiar area. 7 th floor with a view.

This is the hotel that serves chocolate eclairs for breakfast.

After checking in Jan and I took a taxi to the big market.unless I wanted to buy expensive jade or jewellery or cheap Chinese clothing there was absolutely nothing to buy.

We looked for somewhere to have lunch.

Maybe not!!

We found somewhere else where our can of beer was three times the price of our food.

Giving up the market we wandered down the road a bit and found an upmarket department store... escalators and air conditioning... like being in a very pleasant dream. There was also a very nice cafe/bar selling some wonderful fruit juices. The pineapple, mint and lime was just what I needed.

A rest in the hotel before we met for dinner.. only eight of us left. We had already said goodbye to Hay Mar and two others who had left, and two more had got lost somewhere.

After a nice dinner... probably the most expensive I'd had at about $14 we went back to the hotel for a drink. There is virtually no nightlife at all in Myanmar and at 9.30 pm we always expected to be thrown out of bars and restaurants. In Mandalay even the buses stop at 6 pm.

It was goodbye to several people as some had early morning flights but others weren't going to lunchtime. I have one more night before leaving Sunday morning.

I plan to spend my extra day just wandering.

It has been a fantastic holiday. An interesting country with a great guide and a nice lot of people. I've seen a lot and done a lot. We were extremely luck to be here at a time of festivals and to witness them. I loved every moment except for the bed bugs. 

Bagan Again

Getting harder to get out of bed in the morning... we are all getting tired and it's very hot. But today was definitely worth getting out of bed for as our driver had heard about an initiation ceremony and took us to view a procession.

Leading the procession were the parents and grandparents.

They were followed by the young girls and boys either on horses or in horse or oxen drawn carts. The boys were going to the monastery where they'd get their heads shaved, don a robe and spend about a week learning how to be good Buddhists. A couple of the boys were as young as 3 but this was evidently because there were several sons in the family and it's cheaper to have one ceremony for all of them. If the child is really young their father may accompany them and they may not stay as long. Two meals a day..... breakfast and lunch must be hard for a 3 year old.

The girls don't have to go to be monks but they have their ears pierced.

The procession was followed by a mobile sound system blaring out very loud music .

Monks from the monastery watched.

There was much excitement in the village with a real party atmosphere and lots of food preparation.

We all got quite a buzz out of that experience and visiting a temple after that wasn't quite so exciting. However, the temples dated back to the 11 th and 12 th centuries and were amazing.... beautiful murals and enormous Buddhas.

Unfortunately we couldn't take a photo in the best one.

Our next stop was at a very traditional village. Hay Mar was armed with packets of detergent, shampoo, hotel toothbrushes and some medicine for the villagers.

We saw many aspects of village life.

There were a couple of modern touches to village life... many of the young people went off to university (95% literacy rate here) and of course TV.

We were dropped off at our hotel at lunchtime and left to do our own thing. Pat and I walked down the road and found a place that had chicken sandwiches for lunch... a welcome change from rice and noodles. Then we went shopping but the only thing we bought was deodorant... we sort of used more than normal. Therereally wasn't   anything much that we wanted to buy.

Just as we walked back through the hotel doors it started to rain ... great timing because when it rains it really rains. A shower and a lie down was very welcome. 

Walking back along the road it looked a bit like someone had been murdered  ...patches of red that looked like blood as we'd seen all over the roads of Burma ....bettlenut spit!!!

In the evening we had our farewell dinner because instead of flying back to Rangoon wiith us, two people are leaving us at the airport and going to a beach for a couple of days. It was a nice dinner with a big tip for Hay Mar. she has an 'outstanding' award from Explore and we know why. She was faultless... knowledgeable, reliable, organised, willing to depart from the Explore itinerary to give us a bit more of an experience, and nice. We have been lucky to have had her.

Two more days in Rangoon then home!

Bagan

We woke this morning to find that it had poured with rain during the night leaving us with a very hot and humid day. Now I have mosquito bites to go with the bed bug bites... no malaria in the area!

I am told that in Bagan there are over 5000 pagodas in an area the size of Manhattan . Pagodas everywhere you look ... mostly brick from the 11 th century. Several of them were covered with bamboo scaffolding or blue plastic while they were being restored.

We had a look at a few pagodas and temples. It's an archeological site and the people living in the villages are paid to look after it.

The locals use a natural sun screen which they make by rubbing the bark of a tree on a slab with water. It looks like a pale yellow chalk which you can often see on their faces. They don't want to get dark!

Actually it makes you realise how strong the NZ sun is because you can be out all day in the sun here and hardly notice it. 

You can see a mum sunscreening her child and Hay Mar demonstrating how it works.

We were given a very nice Burmese lunch today and were amused by the dessert menu .... none of us fancied bread bums or even brown bread and butter.

After a welcome afternoon break in the hotel we all piled into horse carts to ride through the archeological site to see the temples at sunset.

 It was a great ride through the village.

Loved the enterprising young man who was trying to sell postcards he'd drawn himself.

The horses had to negotiate a few rather large muddy puddles at times and at one time we were entertained by an incidence of road rage when two horse and carts met each other in a narrow lane. The yelling must have been heard for miles as the area was very quiet and serene until then.

The sunset was beautiful. Our intention was to climb the Pagoda for a better view but given the number of people on the various levels we decided we may be better off staying on the ground..... and we wouldn't have to take our shoes off!!!

It was a stunning evening!

River Boat

A 5 am wake up call to enable us to catch the river boat to Bagan. The boat was able to take over 120 passengers... how luck were we to only have 35 today on our 9 hour trip.

The Irrawaddy is wide so we weren't all that close to the banks to see much of the life on either side... not that it really mattered as there was almost zilch to see.

Nice hotel at the end where we stay for 3 nights ... but not good wifi.

Went for a walk at night to a restaurant that was better than the ones we found in Mandalay. Ordered what turned out to be a quadruple gin and tonic... about $2.50 NZ.