Staring at the Pavement
When I was a teenager, I used to walk down the road staring at the pavement. I don’t really know why. As I got older, into my late teens, I made a concerted effort to stop doing that - maybe so that I appeared more confident and would be less likely to get raped or something.
Anyway, I managed to achieve this and developed a definite ‘power walk’ attitude. I have, unfortunately, now reverted to my old ways, through no fault of my own. The pavements in Yangon leave rather a lot to be desired. They are uneven, there are 2 foot by 3 foot wide gaping holes, down into the drains. It’s about six million lawsuits waiting to happen, if indeed people knew what they were here.
So now, I am forced to lower my gaze to the pavement again, just so that I don’t break my bloody neck. How disappointing.
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On a brighter note, happy new year, and here’s my first blog entry of 2007!
I had an absolutely wonderful 3 week holiday over Christmas and New Year. I went up to beautiful Ngapali Beach with Josh, and enjoyed about 1.5 days of it before coming down with my 2nd stomach bug since I arrived here. He looked after me, but I spent a good 5 or 6 days feeling very sorry for myself.
Then my parents arrived, and the real adventures began!
31st December, Mum and Dad rolled up at Yangon airport. I took them to see my favourite bar downtown for a pizza, they wanted to see the British Club too so we did that, and after 3 days in Yangon we jetted North to Bagan. 2 days in Bagan at a lovely hotel with a terrible restaurant - we spent the first day bumping around on a pony and cart, visiting a tiny selection of the thousands of ancient temples which can still be seen. We watched the sun set over the horizon from the top of a temple and took some piccies. The second day in Bagan was spent cycling around, buying lacquerware, traipsing through markets and fighting off the vendors, getting a very sore bottom from the ancient bicycles, losing my Dad, finding him again and eating dinner outside whilst listening to a very small little girl singing.
Then we flew to Inle Lake… What an incredible place. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen - huge, glass-like lake, punctuated occasionally by a leg-rower, fishing with a unique cone-shaped net. We stayed in a hotel which consisted of small ‘cottages’ on stilts, above the water. We walked behind the hotel onto the marshland and the land, and through a little village. We saw mud huts with people watching us with great interest from their windows. Little school children coming home down the mud path said ‘Mingalabar’ to us and one little girl walked right up to my Dad and shook his hand!
So we took a tour of Inle Lake the next day and saw Padaung women (with the looooong necks), we saw silk being woven, cheroots being rolled, swords being beaten (and I bought a couple….) and various other things. Most interesting of all was the ‘jumping cat monestary’ where the monks have trained their resident cats (About 12 of them) to jump through a hoop in return for a kitty treat! Got some great ‘action’ shots of this!!
After Inle Lake was my 2nd attempt at Ngapali Beach… we had a lazy couple of days reading, swimming in the sea, walking up and down the beach, the usual sort of thing!
Then back to Yangon for a day, dinner with Josh and my parents (stressful??? :sideways:) then next day - off to Bangkok for shopping!!!
More information on Bangkok later - got to do some work now!!
