Right, we have a blog...

We will try to post something more substantial and photo-filled later, but for now, let's just stick to an exciting update about our where-abouts in rare and slow Internet land!

We did finally make it out of Bangkok and to Dhaka, Bangladesh. After a very, very wet and flooded day in Dhaka, we took a 24 hour steam-driven paddle wheel boat south to Mongla. Yup, pretty cool! From there, we visited the Sunderbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, the city of Khulna, and Bagerhat, a world heritage site with the famous 77-domed mosque.

Heading back to Dhaka, we spent a lovely day making friends with the guards at the Dhaka International Airport awaiting my sister Jennie's arrival from Delhi. We were too cheap to pay the admissions fee for the arrivals hall, and they were gracious enough to let us sit on a bench just inside the gate to avoid some of the beggars and stares we were experiencing. The reason we had time to make friends is because Jennie's flight was also delayed, eventually cancelled, and replaced with a completely different one. Of course, no one could tell us this, and in the end, we picked her up the next morning after an inquiring phone call to GMG Airlines at 7:30am, an astonishing answer that she was landing in 10 minutes and that we should just call her cell phone to confirm she was on the flight, and then a frantic taxi ride to the airport. Despite a very long night in the Delhi airport, she made it!

We spent some time exploring Dhaka with Jennie before taking a night bus North to the border with India. The border crossing required the writing of our information in massive logbooks a total of 6 separate times, a few more cursory passport checks, and one cup of cha (tea) while waiting for Josh to return from the bank with certificates that we'd paid the travel tax (Jennie and I were waiting with the one uniformed official trying to be as charming as possible). The whole thing only took 2 full hours!

We are now in Darjeeling, India, enjoying misty mountains and lovely cups of tea. We take the "Toy Train" tomorrow back down the mountain and head off to Nepal and Kathmandu! We have plenty to say about Bangladesh, so watch for that when we get a chance to post again. The country was beautiful and full of helpful and friendly people. On the other hand, we experienced more shortchanging, overcharging, and lieing to than ever before. But, if you want to feel like a celebrity... this is the place to visit! We stopped people dead in their tracks, including one bus so that a passenger could snap a photo of us, and had more stares... a stop to check a map produced an audience of 3-4 people, to buy two mangoes about 25, and a stop to ask for directions about 45 (plus the 13 children who were already following us). No, I exaggerate not!

Yangon in a nutshell

The possibility of beauty but in dire need of some upkeep. All those betel nut chewers/spitters don't help the cause...

Myanmar likes 'em big...

This is the Karakweik Restaurant at night. It floats on a big lake in the Myanmar capitol of Yangon, and it's huge.
This is the Shwedagon Pagoda. It is huge, too. It's apparently built over some of Buddha's hairs and the entire complex feels like a Buddhist Disney World.
Here we are at the Shwedagon Pagoda. Do you see that dark cloud back there?
Thank goodness for all these shelters because we kinda forgot our umbrellas on the bus to Inle. (The bell in the photo reminds me- we also saw the worlds largest unbroken bell in Mandalay. The largest is in Russia and, ironically, I've seen that one, too.)

Find out how we kept ourselves occupied for a few hours...
Find out how we kept ourselves occupied for a few hours...
We figured out that our camera's macro lens kicks butt! Why did we not figure this out sooner?!? (Also, Megan laments the fact that we didn't start using the widescreen feature until last week. Coulda come in handy in those mountains in Vietnam... Guess that's what monsoons are for! Also we had a stoned man come try to trade jewelry with Josh. He was escorted out by officials. Weird day.)

The most awkward moment

A brief photo after the most awkward moment on the trip thus far. Part of our Inle boat trip was a visit to the "longnecks" where we were the only guests. The two of us sat in front of three women/girls who sang, danced, and performed for us. It was followed with our translator (this woman's niece who chose not to wear the jewelry at age 10) saying, "You can take picture with longneck woman now." They were very gracious about it and the tradition really is quite fascinating, but it just felt like they were on display! So I reluctantly did (take the photo) and was quite happy when the whole thing was over!

Next stop: Inle Lake

Those baskets in the boat are full of ducks...

I hate to tell you, but we are not as adventurous as you thought. Well, maybe, but we did end up taking the "typical" loop through Myanmar which includes Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake, and Yangon. Does it help that maybe you haven't heard of any of these places before? It's actually fairly difficult (on our time and money budget) to travel beyond these places, with a few small loops North or South as an exception. We kept trying to make a stop somewhere, only to discover that the buses go from point A in the evening and arrive at point B in the morning, so we would still have to pay for A to B and get off at some early-morning hour mid-route and try to catch the same bus (again paying for A to B) early some later morn, praying the bus would stop and no one had claimed our seats. The alternative is to hire a car/driver, but that whole budget thing got in the way... All that being said, we did our loop with three overnight buses and a very long, bumpy, non-AC day bus, and still enjoyed Myanmar immensely!

Oh, right, this post was actually about Inle.

Inle Lake is a big-ish, shallow lake nestled in the mountains. We stayed in the nearby village of Nyaung Shwe in one of our favorite hotel rooms- big, airy, ceiling fan, pretty dark woven bamboo walls, bathroom attached (I really am planning a post on hotels and bathrooms, Mom). Electricity was just as spotty as it was in Mandalay, but with cooler weather, it really didn't matter.Nyaung Shwe was full of monasteries and temples. Most Burmese men are monks twice in their lives and many women become nuns for a time. This line of nuns-all children- went from restaurant to restaurant singing for donations of food. We'll try to upload the video because it's pretty cool.

We spent one day taking a boat tour of the many local craft shops, monasteries, stilt villages, and floating gardens, and another day biking around the lake to a market. On the lake, much energy was spent collecting seaweed (above)...... in order to make floating gardens. Tomatoes were especially popular. Tending and picking are done by boat.

Most of the villages are networks of canals and bridges, which our driver kindly led us through.The crafts we saw were silver smithing, umbrella making, paper making, weaving (cotton, silk, and lotus), and cigar making. This women is preparing silk thread for weaving.I thought all these dyes looked interesting. We saw looms in Vietnam, but this system, while extensive, seemed much more "home-grown." The looms were hand-powered and the dyeing was done in large pots over a charcoal fire.

The markets rotate through lake-side villages on a 5-day cycle, but we happened to take a boat trip on the full moon day- when the market-cycle takes a break for meditation. The bikes we rented were even worse than the Bagan ones, with horrible seats and non-existent brakes. But the bumpy ride was on red-dirt, tree-lined paths through canals and emerald green rice paddies or fields of sunflowers fringed with blue mountains and white, low-laying clouds, with views of the occasional stilt village and rusty temple or monastery. We had to set out by 6:45 to make it to the market in time, but it was well-worth getting up early.This man is preparing betel nuts wrapped in leaves at the market. Everyone chews these things, which make your teeth and gums look all red and bloody. The streets are stained with dark red spit...

A market view.

One last interesting thing- I stopped by this place along the canal that sold the item above because I thought they had a cute sign. Instead I found a cause perhaps worthy of attention. That dark line along the rim of the bucket is actually a "bowl" made of rice husks and clay and lined with something (I think she said silver nitrate? Not sure...) that filters the water. I was shown the brown water in the top and the clear water that came out. The lake and canals are used for bathing and laundry and dishes and sewage and everything in between, but the people also use it for drinking water. This company is using donations from foreigners to make these buckets and filters and to distribute them to area schools and now homes. What a brilliant idea!

Mandalay, temples, pickups, and living on the cheap!

Our time in Mandalay was a fun (and incredibly cheap) time. We rolled into the city after a nine hour bus ride where we sat on a wooden bench (not quite but close) and felt like we wanted to see Mandalay our own way... so we did!

A game that is popular in the area. Its played with a rattan ball and feels like people playing hacky-sack, except there is more showing off. People spinning, jumping, kicking it behind their back, etc... cool.

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We've decided that while seeing the "highlights" of a place is fun and gives you an idea of why they make postcards (sometimes we pick what to see based on what is on the postcards!) there is something to be said for leaving the other tourists aside and trying to do it yourself. So when we were looking at what to do, we decided to forgo the packaged sights and attempt to see some of the other ones.

Getting gas for our bus. Who needs pumps when you have a funnel and some big drums of diesel.

We did this for three reasons: first the packaged items are all contained on the same entry ticket, which costs 10 bucks... a lot on our budget. Also, the proceeds from this ticket go to the governmental run agencies ,and Megan and I don't feel like supporting a government that has some of the worst infringement of human rights on the planet. So screw them, we'll do it ourselves. Finally, like many of the things in Myanmar, the old and historic has recently experienced "improvements". For example, the ancient palace of Mandalay was damaged during WW II but rather than repair it or leave it in ruins, it was torn down and rebuilt in modern brick and concrete (with forced labor). Similarly, Bagan with its crumbling towers has had several new additions to the ancient monoliths, making for a weird juxtapositions of ancient brick and modern concrete. So with that in mind, we didn't feel obligated to see more of these "new" old buildings and monasteries.

A look along the new Mandalay Palace and its moat.

This decision made for a lot of walking and a lot of just wandering through a city we knew nothing about dressed in Longyi (aren't you glad you know what those are?) and getting stared at by locals. We accidentally wandered past a school during its lunch time, and they were utterly fascinated with us. We ended up leading a little herd of children who smiled, waved, followed, and stared at us as we ordered ice cream; I felt like the Pied Piper.

We still ended up seeing some of the main-yet-off-the-tourist-path highlights. The first thing we found was a Buddha where you can add gold leaf as you feel inspired (assuming you pay for it), and consequently he is literally covered with tons of the stuff. I do believe its the most gold leaf on a Buddha anywhere. Adding to the curiosity of it was that Meg wasn't allowed into the inner sanctum because she was a woman. I thought that was odd given the inherent equality of people within traditional Buddhist thought or so I thought.

The gold leaf-ed Buddha. The monks shine his face every morning while the rest of him just sits and acquires more and more gold leaf.

Just for perspective.

We then spent the next several hours wandering around a neighborhood looking for a teak wood monastery... it took us a while and we walked by it a couple of times but eventually we found it. I'm not sure how else to describe it aside from a "cool wooden monastery." Not mind blowing but still quite fun to be the only ones there aside from the monks.

Megan really just wanted a picture in of me wearing my longyi out and about.

Wooden carvings.

The next day we decided to brave what passes for mass transit in Burma and try to get from our hotel to the bus station and buy our tickets out of Mandalay(it is cheaper at the station). Mass transit in Mandalay are really just pick up trucks with benches in the back that run on fixed routes. Few of the drivers or callers (people who stand in the back yelling the "bus" route and collecting money) speak English, and we didn't really know how to say where we wanted to go but with some confused looks, a hearty attempt at the name of the bus station, and a picture of a bus later, we were on. By the end of the day we had the hang of this process down... but it was never easy to yell out the name of a place you can barely pronounce, while having a man wave you onto a truck that is rolling away, as he continues to shout something that is allegedly the name of route.

A little boy we met on a pickup. He was quite shy until Megan took his picture then his face lit up like Christmas tree. He also was holding a chicken the whole time, which he said was his... this wasn't that abnormal for Mandalay.

Mandalay was a good time and a rather fun city (Especially for one that is so poor. Roads in the middle of the city may or may not be paved, sidewalks are traditionally broken up, any standing water smelled suspiciously rank, and electricity was always hit and miss. Funny to be in a city of almost a million people and to not have reliable electricity). I think its biggest appeal was how "exotic" it felt. Monks in robes, people in pick ups, women selling fruit outside of a pagoda... it felt just about as different as can be from anything I've ever known. It felt unlike home and fairly untouched by the tourist machine. I'm still novel here and this place still feels unique, which I think is why the country has been growing on me as we spend more time here, and I get more of the feel of it.

A visit to the "World's Longest Teak bridge." But in reality it just felt like a long dock.

"Duck herders." I don't know if that's what they call themselves but all they did during our trek across the teak was herd ducks.

P.S.

Megan wanted me to quickly add this picture. While we were visiting a ruins site we met another couple (who are dutch) and the woman's last name was Feenstra! Crazy!

A quick and funny update...

Just a heads up this is going to be out of order, but its what's happening to us now and we just want to share it as its going on...

We are stuck in Bangkok! When we flex out of Myanmar we were looking forward to being in a new country and being on a new part of the contient but lo and behold our plans as such have failed and we are sitting in Bangkok, again.

So far we spent ALL day (yesterday) in the airport only to discover that our 9pm flight (which was pushed back from 5pm) to Dhaka was delayed until 5:30 am, this morning. Of course, the counters here only open 2 hours prior to departure, so we didn't find this out until 7pm even though I bet they knew it. So... we all (all 12 of us on the flight) checked in and waited for a van to a hotel, expecting to go across the street or something. Instead they took us a FULL HOUR away to the OLD airport, where apparently they still have hotel connections or something. The new airport and the old airport are fully off the maps of bangkok- one off the top of the map and the other off to the right, which tells you how ridiculous this is, especially since to get there you have to drive through the middle of Bangkok and it's glorious traffic. Anyway, they fed us at 10pm and said the pickup time was now 6am. Then they called in the middle of the night to say it was at 10am. Then we got up for breakfast and found out the flight leaves at 4:30. Now... who knows! BUT they are feeding us (bad food) and we stayed in teh first real hotel room of the trip- with towels and a tv and everything. We stayed up and watched "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night, which somehow made me feel better..."

So it could be much worse. When we first heard about the delay we were preparing to spend ANOTHER 12 hours in the airport (thank goodness we found where the employees eat, about 1/3 to 1/4 of the price inside the airport). But right now we are still scheduled to go so hopefully by the time you read this we will be in Bangladesh. I hope this doesn't serve as a premonination for the rest of our travel in Bangladesh, otherwise we will never make it out of Dhaka!

Here a temple, there a temple, everywhere a temple, temple (e.g. Bagan)

(I apologize in advance if you have a slow connection... I had a little trouble with the whole editing thing here, so I just kept adding photos- despite the painful internet speed in Yangon! Don't tell Josh- he always seems to manage to get it down to something like 2 photos...)
Other than a day and a half in the capitol city of Yangon, Bagan was a first stop in Myanmar. And what a stop! I don't think we ever got around to posting photos of Angkor Wat, Cambodia, but that was an amazing place and one of my favorites on our trip. Bagan, however, is now a very strong rival!

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Bagan is an ancient capitol city a long overnight bus ride north of Yangon (let's just say, our last row seats were secured with one screw- bumpity, bumpity, bumpity- and my seat didn't recline...). With thousands of temples and pagodas in 16 square miles, the Lonely Planet describes it something like squeezing all the cathedrals of Europe into Manhattan. I think this description works! UNESCO has been unsuccessful at registering the site as a World Heritage Site, which apparently has something to do with that government I wrote about earlier... The government has also been adding some strange things to the landscape, like an ugly museum and viewing tower, and "fixing" certain temples that would be better left in ruins!

Some of the temples were gilded like this big one.

A capitol of Burmese empires on and off from 874 A.D., Bagan's temples were primarily built in the 11th through 13th centuries- contemporary and a bit earlier than those of Angkor. They are all constructed from big, flat reddish bricks and in quite good repair. All but one (Hindu) are Buddhist temples or pagodas. Temples usually contain four Buddhas facing the four cardinal directions, arched passageways and narrow stairways leading to receding terraces. Pagodas are solid brick and usually topped with a bell-shaped structure. Monasteries were also common and their ruins often included plain, square buildings.

Although we could have opted for a horse and cart ride to the major sites (yes, there were more horses/buggies and ox carts than cars in this town), we decided to rent bikes and explore on our own. It was hot and sunny and surprisingly arid. After leaving Yangon's flooding (we just learned a typhoon was rolling through when we were there and UNICEF is sending aid it was so bad), the cactus were surprising!

Riding bikes around these temples was one of our favorite parts- that's Josh on the bike.

An alternative method of transportation...

Our first day was amazing. We wandered down dirt paths, avoiding sand and thorns when possible and stopping when and where we wanted. We encountered a few friendly people who helped us on our way and only two tourist couples the entire day. It was a fantastic day (except for the whole Josh losing the air in his back tire and having to walk back, but we won't talk about that).

We often felt like we were walking around in a video game set.

The second day we hit more of the bigger temples, and therefore encountered more pushy sellers. They would sit at the temple entrances, insist on showing us around, and then beg us to buy something from them. This felt a bit like some of the temples at Angkor and was disappointing/frustrating. The people are generally quite poor and with fewer tourists during the low season, they can get quite desperate for a sale. They would watch our eyes to see where they'd rest and then persistently hold out any item we'd hesitated over. It felt as though we had the choice of being hassled or being rude- neither of which are ideal.

These hasslers liked two phrases in particular. I began to hate the phrase "lucky money." Whether it was true or not, it meant that the sale would be their first of the day so the money would be lucky. Instead, it just made me feel sad when we'd encounter "lucky money! lucky money!" as late as sunset... On the other hand, the "just looking" invitation was quite amusing. I think they'd heard the phrase from polite English-speakers and now used it to wave people nearer their stand/blanket not realizing it meant, "please don't hassle me right now; I just want to see what you have for sale".

Josh trying to figure out where to go next!

Overall, Bagan was a beautiful and relaxing place with great weather, amazing scenery, and some great restaurants. I just can't believe the views- temples as far as the eye could see. If you ever find yourself in Myanmar, here's one place to stop...

A lacquerware workshop. Very interesting work and friendly people. On a sadder note, many of the people in this area were forcibly removed from their homes in what is now called "Old Bagan"" and resettled in "New Bagan" a few miles away. We met a kind family in Inle Lake who resisted the move and settled in Inle where the weather was gentler (read: not so hot) and there were better opportunities for the massage business they've built out of their house. If you move quick enough from tourist site to tourist site, it's easy to miss the very real people who have dealt with this oppressive government.

This temple was supposedly built by someone who had been imprisoned, thus the four too-big Buddhas crammed into the space.Another too-big Buddha- it was almost claustrophobic!

One of our favorite places was a locked temple that a random "Key Master" (yes, that is his title) let us into. We wandered around and found the terribly dark and narrow stairs up to beautiful views of temples and these people working in the fields. Also in this complex were surprisingly well-preserved 800-year-old paintings. One part was left unfinished because the Mongols invaded and the artists ran away, the Key Master said. We also heard about a temple where the Mongols cut off the Buddha's heads and tore out their chests (hearts)!Josh in front of this strange stomach Buddha. Can anyone help us on this one?
OK- one last pretty photo.
I lied. I like this one too- Can you see all those spires?!

PS A photo for Mom and my other nurse relatives and friends- this is the village "district hospital"!


I promise that's all.

We're men, We're men in skirrrrts.

Little did we know that when we landed in Burma we had hit cross dressers heaven. Burma ,along with some other countries in the region, have a long tradition of men wearing a piece of clothing called a longyi, but let's face it, it's really a skirt. And this skirt is everywhere....
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We had heard, vaguely, that this was present, but it wasn't until we landed that I think we really began to understand how widespread the practice is. I pictured them as something like kilts in Scotland, formal, kind of fun, but not really that common for day to day wear, but man, was I wrong. Longyi are the clothing option of choice for most men in Burma, from your 15 year old delivery boy to your 55 year old banker. Sure there are slacks, jeans, and other pant-ing options but the most prevelant is eaily the longyi.

Since we are here a few weeks and since this is a conservative country where shorts aren't around, we decided to invest in some longyi ourselves. We asked multiple people before we bought them if it's ok for us to wear them (we were always told yes) and so we did.

I've now worn my longyi several days, and while I get some weird looks, I get many more compliments and smiles. And even then I think the weird looks I get are not because I, as a man, am wearing a skirt but because I, as a foreigner, am wearing local clothing. It is all a very surreal experience but one that I've slowly begun to enjoy (??) though I don't think I'll ever wear one back in the states. (I could hear my dad's sigh of relief with that last comment).

Anyway, we though you should all know what is required to wear a longyi (both the male and female versions).

To begin it should be noted that the longyi is simply a huge sewn loop of cloth (like a big tube) that you pull up over your waist, normally while exclaiming, "Why is this thing so big? It could fit three of me!" Once you have inserted yourself in said cloth tube pull it up to (or above) your God given waist, not where you wear your pants. Men stand in the middle of the longyi pulling both sides out, whereas women stand on one side pulling the other across.

Next you wrap yourself in the folds of the longyi, an easy task because it is so big! Women have a particually easy time of this as all they have to do is pull the end of the longyi they are holding to their other side of their bodies (or around if you're really skinny). Men on the other hand get to do a "shuck and catch" routine, where in you take the fabric that is between your hands do a quick toss into the air and then encircle this fabric with the fabric in your hands. Its kind of like throwing a christmas present in the air and then trying t wrap it before it hits the ground.


After this all there is left to do is tuck the tails of your fold in (once again the women's is easier), women simply tuck this in at the top of the longyi. Men however, get to pretend that their longyi is a giant twist tie and wrap the tails around themselves twice before tucking it into the top of their longyi.

And now you can wear your longyi with pride! After all, it isn't that often that you can wear a skirt and be proud... kind of... depending upon who you are... and I guess how proud you are.