So big, polluted, noisy, crowded Bangkok turned out to be a great place this time around!! We had both been here before and hated it, but this time was different. Maybe because we were staying with our friend Miwa, or because our friend Lochy was there aswell, or maybe its because Bangkok seems to have matured, and lost a lot of its pollution and seediness.. We spent a week and loved it! One of the first things we did was get Roh's hair and beard, and Miwa's hair dreadlocked! (I'm a trend-setter I know..) we had such a great day at Khao san, shopping, people watching and getting our hair done, but it was nice to be able to leave and go back to a real home aswell! We also had a rather fun night in Patpong, watching really old and fat women shoot various objects, with lots of talent, from their v*g^$as.. It was the boys idea, yet they were grossed out while Miwa and I thought it was hilarious!!
After a week of good Thai food, good Thai beer, good Thai wine-coolers, good Thai shopping and lots of fun, we (Roh, Lochy, Miwa and I) jumped on another good old Airasia flight and headed to Yangon, Myanmar to meet up with another friend, Kara.
With the 5 of us finally together after months of planning, and after finding a not-so-dodgy money changer to change our “only big heads, no pen, no crease, perfect US dollars into- old, ripped, dirty, crumpled Kyat (pronounced “jet”), we sat down to, over our first of many “Myanmar” beers ($1.20), decide on our game plan for the next week (Miwa), fortnight (Kara) and month (us and Locky).
After much research and many trips to the bus ticket office, we finally decided to head, first of all to Bago.
Before Bago though, we spent a couple of days exploring Yangon. For such a big city we were totally amazed at the lack of infrastructure!! Electricity is sporadic at best, all of the buses and taxis and vehicles are atleast 30 years old, a large portion of the roads (including the major ones) are still dirt roads, and it felt like a step back in time..
Yangon was a great city though! Little coffee and tea shops on virtually every footpath, great curry and noodle stands on virtually every corner, funky little ice cream shops here and there, and monks more numerous then ordinary folk. The locals were some of the most friendly you could ever ask for! We once had a taxi driver walk us to the bus station and haggle bus prices for us after we told him (quite rudely actually.. sorry) that his taxi price was too high!! Where else in the world would that happen?!?
We spent most of our time in Yangon just walking the streets drinking lots and lots of yummy sweet tea, but we did make it to the amazing Shwedagon Pagoda. I don't think it is possible to imagine just how beautiful, big and amazing this pagoda is unless you have actually been there... photos just do not do it just. We spent about 3 hours in the afternoon being guided around by a novice monk, only to have more tea outside on the footpath and go back in for another couple of hours to watch the sunset!!
With the boys riding on the roof, and us girls crowded in underneath, our pickup truck coughed and spluttered its way to Bago – a crazily busy junction town (and subsequently dusty and loud!) with a very friendly and inviting – come and explore me – vibe to it. We spent the afternoon wandering through the market place, trying various weird and wonderful foods along the way, and strolling along different random streets, discovering monasteries, little children, lovely locals, and more temples.
The plan was the next day to continue East to Kyaitikyo to see the stunning and inspiring, balancing golden rock, but with Lochy clutching his belly, it was decided that the girls would do their own private road trip! And what a roadtrip it was!! After finally reaching the basecamp town of Kimpun and checking into our super cute bungalow, we headed to the “truck station” and were loaded into the back of a dumptruck, converted into a truck-bus, by putting about 10 rows of wooden slats across the back, with just enough space to not quite fit your knees in... So with about 70 of us crammed into the back of our truck-bus, and literally holding onto whatever we could for dear life as the truck sped around hairpin corners, and people tried to not be thrown out, we eventually reached the bottom of Kyaitikyo. Then we had to spend the next hour climbing the mountain to get to the top!! Well, technically I shouldn't say “had to' because we did have the option to be carried all the way to the top by about 4 muscle man Burmese men!! We said no, out of both embarrassment and cheapness, but we did see a couple of big fat Germans being carried which was quite funny!!
I'm glad we made the effort to go all the way to the top though because the famous balancing golden rock, was definitely golden, definitely balancing, and definitely amazing!! Kyaitikyo is somewhere I have wanted to go for many years, and it was even more spectacular a place then I had been imagining! We went on Christmas eve and were surprised by the number of locals making pilgrimage there – to a Buddhist monument, on a Christian holiday... the walk back down the hill was just as hard on the legs as on the way up but a lot quicker!! Then it was time to jump back in another truck-bus and head back to the hotel. The manager of the hotel had told us of a Christmas festival happening close by (Kyaitikyo is in the Christian state of Mon) so Kara and I decided to check it out. We almost didn't make it though. Just after we got back from dinner, we discovered that the hotel walls were a lot thinner than we had imagined.. We could hear every single punch, kick and profanity that the guy next door threw at his crying wife, with their young son screaming for him to stop... Not knowing what to do, and afraid that he was actually going to throw her through the wall, we asked the manager who quite calmly informed us that “It's okay! They are married!” .......Well, that's okay then!
So leaving Miwa to catch up on sleep, Kara and I set off for the festival for about half an hour.. Miwa didn't need to come anyway, as there wasn't much to see, and she definitely got to hear it anyway. They literally had the same karaoke song on repeat for the entire night!! They finally turned it off around 6am! Just in time for us to wake up from our sleepless night to catch a bus back to Yangon! Merry Christmas!
Back in Yangon, we met back up with the boys at our beloved Okinawa Guesthouse (an amazing place to stay if anyone is heading there?!!?), and decided to head out to dinner at one of the only Italian restaurants in town. It was sooo much better then we had expected and we all rolled into bed after lots of cheese, wine, beer, pasta and pizza, and a couple of buskers singing Christmas songs.
Boxing day saw us say goodbye to Miwa, who had to go back work, and the rest of us headed north – Lochy to Mandalay for a couple of days, and Kara, Roh and I to the ancient city of Bagan.
The manager of the Okinawa guesthouse had organised for us to stay with her friend in Bagan and it ended up being a resort, with a beautiful courtyard, massive rooms, private bathroom and big breakfast!! Bagan was just amazing. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been. There are over 4000 stupas (some old, some new, some still being built) scattered over an area roughly 5kms by 5kms, with trees, dirt paths, lakes, cows and sheep scattered in between. On our first day, and actually in our first stupa we met a local artist named Zaw-tun, who showed us around the stupa, then showed us some of his paintings. We were sceptical at first and only really agreed to look at the paintings because he had been so nice as to show us around, but we were flabbergasted by what we saw!! Not only were they amazing and perfect reproductions of the traditional murals from inside the stupas, but they were painted on sand!, a technique his father had conceived. Between the 3 of us we bought about 8 paintings, and then Zaw-tun, grateful to us for buying his work, left his beautifully pregnant wife in charge and insisted on showing us around all of his favourite, off the beaten track, pagodas for the rest of the day! For lunch we stopped off at a quaint little vegetarian restaurant we happened to pass by, only to discover that we were their first ever customers!! Apparently the beautiful family who own the restaurant used to have a shop in Old Bagan but were kicked out by the government (an illegal word in Myanmar – we code named them “the purple people”) and had only just re-located in Minkaba Village. So instead of the 2 dishes we ordered, we ended up with 5! (you not order this but please eat!) AND presents aswell!! They were just the most beautiful people, so kind, generous and lovely that we promised to tell everyone about them, and to go back again aswell. Which we did, for dinner, and then again for lunch, and then again to say goodbye, each time leaving with more presents, full bellies, and full of happiness at meeting such beautiful people.
After a couple of days of walking around the closer stupas, we decided to hire bikes to get to some of the more out of the way pagodas. With bike and map, (and Zaw-tun still insisting on turning up to our hotel every morning to show us around!) we soon discovered a few favourites, especially one called “Mingala Zedi” which was just perfect for sunsets, and without the tour group crowds of the other stupas. For New Years we decided to keep with our international meal theme and had a big Indian meal in Nyuang – U. With poor Kara sick at the hotel, we left the restaurant early at about 11pm, bellies full with food and emotions high on drinks, jumped back on our push bikes and rode the 30min ride home along deserted streets, alongside ancient pagodas, guided only by the brilliant and bright star-filled sky, and the motorbikes and cahooting of drunken Myanmarese locals!
After happy new year fruit (?!) provided by the hotel, we headed to bed, happy and looking forward to a peaceful, loving 2009....
At 2.30am, although fast asleep, Roh somehow sensed something, and both Kara and I awoke to his screaming “what do you want?” at a shadow lurking close to Kara's bed, and then before we knew what was happening, he was up and chasing the guy out of our room and all over the courtyard before finally tackling him against a fence!
Apparently the drunken Myanmarese guy who was also staying at the hotel, had also tried to break into Lochy's room but given up when Lochy made some noise. Then he seems to have broken into ours and, without so much as touching our bags, money, cameras or passports, headed towards Kara's bed. After Roh caught him, we searched him and couldn't find anything of our property on him, which he seemed to deem as evidence of his innocence, and refused to tell us why he was there or what he was doing, apart from “I was drunk. I thought it was my room.” hmmm... his door was wide open and on the otherside of the courtyard, and he not only picked our lock, but then managed to unlock the slide lock aswell?!?!
The manager of the hotel was extremely angry as were we, but at 2.30 in the morning we were more shocked and confused then anything and didn't really know what to do. Before we got up the next morning, the guy had already left, without paying and the manager had had to chase him down the street.. I guess it just shows that there is always one sour grape. Unfortunately that sour grape left our hero Rohroh with a black eye, cut lip and grazed knee, much to his frustration as the real criminal was unscathed...
After saying goodbye to Kara (another one of those rare-few people with real jobs!) and after having the privilege of being invited to share a home-cooked meal with Zaw-tun and his family, we also said goodbye to beautiful Bagan and headed to Mandalay, the city of dust, generators and smog.
We only stayed 2 nights in Mandalay, and then had to escape while we still had some use of our lungs. Don't get me wrong, it is a beautiful city and we had some amazing meals there, but the electricity is just sooo sporadic that generators go 24hours a day, which makes it noisy and smokey, and with very few paved roads, dusty. We spent one of our afternoons there visiting the ancient city of Amarapura, famous for its 1.2km long teak bridge (the world's longest), built of 1060 teak posts across a beautiful river. We rented a boat and watched the sun go down behind it, as monks who had gathered on one side for a local soccer competition headed back to their monasteries and fishermen headed home with their catches. Roh and I have given it first prize for most amazing sunset so far.
Our lung recuperation after Mandalay took place in a little village called Hsipaw (pronounced shipo.) We spent about a week here, lazily walking through the markets and marvelling at all the different hilltribes in traditional dress selling new and wonderful things, lazily drinking beers on the verandah of our guesthouse, debating over which restaurant to eat at, walking through the small and super friendly local villages and being chased by extra-happy children, and watching monks and nuns go about their daily business. We also took a boat trip to a monastery school, and Roh and Lochy did a trek up and down very steep hills to some further isolated hill tribes near the Chinese border, where grannies smoke big pipes, young boys smoke tobacco in bongs, and herbal rum is what they prescribe you for malaria.
Our final stop, after 18hours on a bus, was Nyaungshwe and Inle lake. Being one of the most touristy areas of Myanmar, we were not expecting the beauty and tranquillity we found here. The town of Nyaungshwe was a super funky village, with lots of trees, rustic houses, inviting restaurants and horsedrawn carriages by the dozen. Inside the massive markets selling everything unimaginable, we were bombarded with shouts of “try this! Try this” instead of the Asian favourite, “buy this! Buy this!”, which lead to some amazing discoveries, including Roh's favourite - chilli flavoured homemade chips, perfect for beer! We decided to play the tourist and along with another friend, Jonny, rented a boat and driver for the day to take us around the lake. It's hard to describe the lifestyle of the people living on this lake.. yes living ON, not around. The houses are literally built on stilts above the water, and every house has a 'boatpark” instead of a carpark. It was quite common to see mum paddling her children to school, and little children paddling themselves to the corner shop. Yes, they even still have corners, and streets, or rather canals?! We were even more amazed to see all of the farms! They grow tomatoes, cucumber, coconut, bananas, papaya, eggplant, chilli and much more, all 100% hydroponically on top of the lake. We even saw a few water rats dashing in and about, probably hiding from the jumping cats who live at one of the monasteries, and literally, jump through hoops on cue! It is debated whether the monks were bored, or the cats watched too many meditations?! The highlight of the lake trip for me, was watching the fisherman fish in their traditional ways. While standing on one leg at the very rear of they boat, they wrap their other leg around the oar to row, whilst slapping on the water with a big stick to entice, or rather scare, the fish into their nets. It was a very beautiful and peaceful, and extremely coordinated thing to see.
A couple more lazy food and beer filled days in Nyaungshwe and it was time to jump back on our last 18 hour bus ride, with the usual stop every 2 hours at various teahouse and wine stalls, back to Yangon, for one more day of shopping, sweet-tea stalls, road side curries, power blackouts, and monk-watching, before the 3 of us climbed into our last 30+ year old taxi, to bump our way back to the airport, pay our last tax to the purple people and board our Airasia flight back to Bangkok. Its amazing just how fast 1 month went. We had an amazing time and feel blessed by the people we met and the sights that we saw, and we hope 2009 is a year of peace and happiness for the people of such a beautiful country.
After a week of good Thai food, good Thai beer, good Thai wine-coolers, good Thai shopping and lots of fun, we (Roh, Lochy, Miwa and I) jumped on another good old Airasia flight and headed to Yangon, Myanmar to meet up with another friend, Kara.
With the 5 of us finally together after months of planning, and after finding a not-so-dodgy money changer to change our “only big heads, no pen, no crease, perfect US dollars into- old, ripped, dirty, crumpled Kyat (pronounced “jet”), we sat down to, over our first of many “Myanmar” beers ($1.20), decide on our game plan for the next week (Miwa), fortnight (Kara) and month (us and Locky).
After much research and many trips to the bus ticket office, we finally decided to head, first of all to Bago.
Before Bago though, we spent a couple of days exploring Yangon. For such a big city we were totally amazed at the lack of infrastructure!! Electricity is sporadic at best, all of the buses and taxis and vehicles are atleast 30 years old, a large portion of the roads (including the major ones) are still dirt roads, and it felt like a step back in time..
Yangon was a great city though! Little coffee and tea shops on virtually every footpath, great curry and noodle stands on virtually every corner, funky little ice cream shops here and there, and monks more numerous then ordinary folk. The locals were some of the most friendly you could ever ask for! We once had a taxi driver walk us to the bus station and haggle bus prices for us after we told him (quite rudely actually.. sorry) that his taxi price was too high!! Where else in the world would that happen?!?
We spent most of our time in Yangon just walking the streets drinking lots and lots of yummy sweet tea, but we did make it to the amazing Shwedagon Pagoda. I don't think it is possible to imagine just how beautiful, big and amazing this pagoda is unless you have actually been there... photos just do not do it just. We spent about 3 hours in the afternoon being guided around by a novice monk, only to have more tea outside on the footpath and go back in for another couple of hours to watch the sunset!!
With the boys riding on the roof, and us girls crowded in underneath, our pickup truck coughed and spluttered its way to Bago – a crazily busy junction town (and subsequently dusty and loud!) with a very friendly and inviting – come and explore me – vibe to it. We spent the afternoon wandering through the market place, trying various weird and wonderful foods along the way, and strolling along different random streets, discovering monasteries, little children, lovely locals, and more temples.
The plan was the next day to continue East to Kyaitikyo to see the stunning and inspiring, balancing golden rock, but with Lochy clutching his belly, it was decided that the girls would do their own private road trip! And what a roadtrip it was!! After finally reaching the basecamp town of Kimpun and checking into our super cute bungalow, we headed to the “truck station” and were loaded into the back of a dumptruck, converted into a truck-bus, by putting about 10 rows of wooden slats across the back, with just enough space to not quite fit your knees in... So with about 70 of us crammed into the back of our truck-bus, and literally holding onto whatever we could for dear life as the truck sped around hairpin corners, and people tried to not be thrown out, we eventually reached the bottom of Kyaitikyo. Then we had to spend the next hour climbing the mountain to get to the top!! Well, technically I shouldn't say “had to' because we did have the option to be carried all the way to the top by about 4 muscle man Burmese men!! We said no, out of both embarrassment and cheapness, but we did see a couple of big fat Germans being carried which was quite funny!!
I'm glad we made the effort to go all the way to the top though because the famous balancing golden rock, was definitely golden, definitely balancing, and definitely amazing!! Kyaitikyo is somewhere I have wanted to go for many years, and it was even more spectacular a place then I had been imagining! We went on Christmas eve and were surprised by the number of locals making pilgrimage there – to a Buddhist monument, on a Christian holiday... the walk back down the hill was just as hard on the legs as on the way up but a lot quicker!! Then it was time to jump back in another truck-bus and head back to the hotel. The manager of the hotel had told us of a Christmas festival happening close by (Kyaitikyo is in the Christian state of Mon) so Kara and I decided to check it out. We almost didn't make it though. Just after we got back from dinner, we discovered that the hotel walls were a lot thinner than we had imagined.. We could hear every single punch, kick and profanity that the guy next door threw at his crying wife, with their young son screaming for him to stop... Not knowing what to do, and afraid that he was actually going to throw her through the wall, we asked the manager who quite calmly informed us that “It's okay! They are married!” .......Well, that's okay then!
So leaving Miwa to catch up on sleep, Kara and I set off for the festival for about half an hour.. Miwa didn't need to come anyway, as there wasn't much to see, and she definitely got to hear it anyway. They literally had the same karaoke song on repeat for the entire night!! They finally turned it off around 6am! Just in time for us to wake up from our sleepless night to catch a bus back to Yangon! Merry Christmas!
Back in Yangon, we met back up with the boys at our beloved Okinawa Guesthouse (an amazing place to stay if anyone is heading there?!!?), and decided to head out to dinner at one of the only Italian restaurants in town. It was sooo much better then we had expected and we all rolled into bed after lots of cheese, wine, beer, pasta and pizza, and a couple of buskers singing Christmas songs.
Boxing day saw us say goodbye to Miwa, who had to go back work, and the rest of us headed north – Lochy to Mandalay for a couple of days, and Kara, Roh and I to the ancient city of Bagan.
The manager of the Okinawa guesthouse had organised for us to stay with her friend in Bagan and it ended up being a resort, with a beautiful courtyard, massive rooms, private bathroom and big breakfast!! Bagan was just amazing. One of the most beautiful places I have ever been. There are over 4000 stupas (some old, some new, some still being built) scattered over an area roughly 5kms by 5kms, with trees, dirt paths, lakes, cows and sheep scattered in between. On our first day, and actually in our first stupa we met a local artist named Zaw-tun, who showed us around the stupa, then showed us some of his paintings. We were sceptical at first and only really agreed to look at the paintings because he had been so nice as to show us around, but we were flabbergasted by what we saw!! Not only were they amazing and perfect reproductions of the traditional murals from inside the stupas, but they were painted on sand!, a technique his father had conceived. Between the 3 of us we bought about 8 paintings, and then Zaw-tun, grateful to us for buying his work, left his beautifully pregnant wife in charge and insisted on showing us around all of his favourite, off the beaten track, pagodas for the rest of the day! For lunch we stopped off at a quaint little vegetarian restaurant we happened to pass by, only to discover that we were their first ever customers!! Apparently the beautiful family who own the restaurant used to have a shop in Old Bagan but were kicked out by the government (an illegal word in Myanmar – we code named them “the purple people”) and had only just re-located in Minkaba Village. So instead of the 2 dishes we ordered, we ended up with 5! (you not order this but please eat!) AND presents aswell!! They were just the most beautiful people, so kind, generous and lovely that we promised to tell everyone about them, and to go back again aswell. Which we did, for dinner, and then again for lunch, and then again to say goodbye, each time leaving with more presents, full bellies, and full of happiness at meeting such beautiful people.
After a couple of days of walking around the closer stupas, we decided to hire bikes to get to some of the more out of the way pagodas. With bike and map, (and Zaw-tun still insisting on turning up to our hotel every morning to show us around!) we soon discovered a few favourites, especially one called “Mingala Zedi” which was just perfect for sunsets, and without the tour group crowds of the other stupas. For New Years we decided to keep with our international meal theme and had a big Indian meal in Nyuang – U. With poor Kara sick at the hotel, we left the restaurant early at about 11pm, bellies full with food and emotions high on drinks, jumped back on our push bikes and rode the 30min ride home along deserted streets, alongside ancient pagodas, guided only by the brilliant and bright star-filled sky, and the motorbikes and cahooting of drunken Myanmarese locals!
After happy new year fruit (?!) provided by the hotel, we headed to bed, happy and looking forward to a peaceful, loving 2009....
At 2.30am, although fast asleep, Roh somehow sensed something, and both Kara and I awoke to his screaming “what do you want?” at a shadow lurking close to Kara's bed, and then before we knew what was happening, he was up and chasing the guy out of our room and all over the courtyard before finally tackling him against a fence!
Apparently the drunken Myanmarese guy who was also staying at the hotel, had also tried to break into Lochy's room but given up when Lochy made some noise. Then he seems to have broken into ours and, without so much as touching our bags, money, cameras or passports, headed towards Kara's bed. After Roh caught him, we searched him and couldn't find anything of our property on him, which he seemed to deem as evidence of his innocence, and refused to tell us why he was there or what he was doing, apart from “I was drunk. I thought it was my room.” hmmm... his door was wide open and on the otherside of the courtyard, and he not only picked our lock, but then managed to unlock the slide lock aswell?!?!
The manager of the hotel was extremely angry as were we, but at 2.30 in the morning we were more shocked and confused then anything and didn't really know what to do. Before we got up the next morning, the guy had already left, without paying and the manager had had to chase him down the street.. I guess it just shows that there is always one sour grape. Unfortunately that sour grape left our hero Rohroh with a black eye, cut lip and grazed knee, much to his frustration as the real criminal was unscathed...
After saying goodbye to Kara (another one of those rare-few people with real jobs!) and after having the privilege of being invited to share a home-cooked meal with Zaw-tun and his family, we also said goodbye to beautiful Bagan and headed to Mandalay, the city of dust, generators and smog.
We only stayed 2 nights in Mandalay, and then had to escape while we still had some use of our lungs. Don't get me wrong, it is a beautiful city and we had some amazing meals there, but the electricity is just sooo sporadic that generators go 24hours a day, which makes it noisy and smokey, and with very few paved roads, dusty. We spent one of our afternoons there visiting the ancient city of Amarapura, famous for its 1.2km long teak bridge (the world's longest), built of 1060 teak posts across a beautiful river. We rented a boat and watched the sun go down behind it, as monks who had gathered on one side for a local soccer competition headed back to their monasteries and fishermen headed home with their catches. Roh and I have given it first prize for most amazing sunset so far.
Our lung recuperation after Mandalay took place in a little village called Hsipaw (pronounced shipo.) We spent about a week here, lazily walking through the markets and marvelling at all the different hilltribes in traditional dress selling new and wonderful things, lazily drinking beers on the verandah of our guesthouse, debating over which restaurant to eat at, walking through the small and super friendly local villages and being chased by extra-happy children, and watching monks and nuns go about their daily business. We also took a boat trip to a monastery school, and Roh and Lochy did a trek up and down very steep hills to some further isolated hill tribes near the Chinese border, where grannies smoke big pipes, young boys smoke tobacco in bongs, and herbal rum is what they prescribe you for malaria.
Our final stop, after 18hours on a bus, was Nyaungshwe and Inle lake. Being one of the most touristy areas of Myanmar, we were not expecting the beauty and tranquillity we found here. The town of Nyaungshwe was a super funky village, with lots of trees, rustic houses, inviting restaurants and horsedrawn carriages by the dozen. Inside the massive markets selling everything unimaginable, we were bombarded with shouts of “try this! Try this” instead of the Asian favourite, “buy this! Buy this!”, which lead to some amazing discoveries, including Roh's favourite - chilli flavoured homemade chips, perfect for beer! We decided to play the tourist and along with another friend, Jonny, rented a boat and driver for the day to take us around the lake. It's hard to describe the lifestyle of the people living on this lake.. yes living ON, not around. The houses are literally built on stilts above the water, and every house has a 'boatpark” instead of a carpark. It was quite common to see mum paddling her children to school, and little children paddling themselves to the corner shop. Yes, they even still have corners, and streets, or rather canals?! We were even more amazed to see all of the farms! They grow tomatoes, cucumber, coconut, bananas, papaya, eggplant, chilli and much more, all 100% hydroponically on top of the lake. We even saw a few water rats dashing in and about, probably hiding from the jumping cats who live at one of the monasteries, and literally, jump through hoops on cue! It is debated whether the monks were bored, or the cats watched too many meditations?! The highlight of the lake trip for me, was watching the fisherman fish in their traditional ways. While standing on one leg at the very rear of they boat, they wrap their other leg around the oar to row, whilst slapping on the water with a big stick to entice, or rather scare, the fish into their nets. It was a very beautiful and peaceful, and extremely coordinated thing to see.
A couple more lazy food and beer filled days in Nyaungshwe and it was time to jump back on our last 18 hour bus ride, with the usual stop every 2 hours at various teahouse and wine stalls, back to Yangon, for one more day of shopping, sweet-tea stalls, road side curries, power blackouts, and monk-watching, before the 3 of us climbed into our last 30+ year old taxi, to bump our way back to the airport, pay our last tax to the purple people and board our Airasia flight back to Bangkok. Its amazing just how fast 1 month went. We had an amazing time and feel blessed by the people we met and the sights that we saw, and we hope 2009 is a year of peace and happiness for the people of such a beautiful country.