The following day we were back on the road. We stopped at a viewpoint to Mount Popa, a temple set on a mountain top.  It’s a stunning sight since the mountain stands alone.        The viewpoint is surrounded by colourful shrines with massive pastel figure of Buddhas and snakes.  We reached the top after around 1000 steps up a covered staircase lined with shops and filled with locals visiting the temple.      There are monkeys all the way up, they migrate here where they are fed bananas by the residents.   There are Buddhas everywhere here, in every temple, for sale by street vendors, but the country is very serious about…

We took a looong boat ride down the river to our next stop, Bagan.  Bagan is famous for its over 2200 temples, strewn through 26 square miles. We docked at old Bagan, and drove to new Bagan where the people were relocated when the tourist industry started to develop a couple of years ago.  Visitors are charged $20 to enter the area, to help restore it to become a world heritage site.  Some temples are outfitted with flashing neon lights which is just wrong.  Streetlights would be nice though.  We walked with flashlights to a nearby restaurant for dinner. We visited some of the most impressive temples on our first…

In Mandalay, we jumped into the backs of small trucks, the local taxis, to dinner at a buffet, all you can eat local food for $4. On they way back, we stopped to check out a huge street party with bands playing, for kids being sent off to be monks and nuns.        We chatted and took pics with the locals, then liked up for our own group pic, when paparazzi with a spotlight appeared to take their own pics of us, then had a family line up chairs in front of us to have their family picture taken with us.  Back at the hotel, we couldn’t sit out…

I am in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, former capital of the country formerly known as Burma, now officially known as Myanmar. The capital was moved ten years ago to a city built at great cost where some government offices have moved but few people.  It has an eight lane highway through it but few people, and remains a ghost town. I went for a walk in the 100 degree heat to the covered market, with more than 1000 shops, many for jewellery, clothing and crafts. The streets are filled with shops as well, or independents such as the guy stirring his white plastic jug full of a fried crickets,…

After many hours in transit, I arrived at the Yangon airport after midnight of the second day (it’s 10 1/2 hours ahead of home).  The sign to the immigration area reads Warmly Welcome to Myanmar.  My reams of official paperwork were in order, so I continued to the atm to withdraw some of the local currency , the kyat (pronounced chat). The machine swallowed my card. Helpfully, a number to call if this happened was posted on the atm. The guy at the tourism counter called it for me, and was told they were on the way. This handy guy was also an unofficial money trader, who exchanged some of…

Rangoon (Yangon) Weather Sunny 101°F/77°F can I handle weather like this?  I knew it was going to be hot, but it seems so much hotter in Fahrenheit…