Summer Palace Yangon (Rangoon)

... they've been wonderfully generous with their time and recommendations. <br><br>Exercise<br><br>Whether a morning or sunset dip in the small pool in our guest house, or a trip to one of the larger hotel pools for laps, swimming is very much part of our life here. Although it is supposed to be the cool season, the heat has not yet broken, and at the end of the day, the cool water is a wonderful contrast to the sweat and dust accumulated over the day. While I have stuck with the ...

After our stay at the gold ol convenient resort near the airport in Bangkok we were up bright and early for our flight into Burma.<br><br>Check in, Immigration and Security were a breeze and after that all we had was some time to kill and use of the free Wi-Fi around the airport.<br><br>The flight was a rather short one at just over and hour and had a couple of whinging yanks on board. The arrival paperwork took the whole flight to fill out!<br><br>The ...

... many people on the street trying hard to eek out a living such as trishaw drivers (a trishaw is a bike with 2 seats attached to it, turning it into a very fun taxi), selling food and other commodities....I saw many people with a tiny stall on the side of the road just selling remote controls! Pretty random! Like many countries in Asia the poverty is pretty in your face but in Myanmar, most of the beggars that came up to me had massive smiles on their faces! I gave one woman some thanakha ...

... of Myanmar...it was impossible not too!....i will never meet nicer people i am sure..........<br>They really do deserve some kind of fair election in 2010.<br><br>In Calcutta now......its suitably crazy .........and its lovely to be back in India.......my rusty Hindi language skills are improving every day .......and me and Jens are really enjoying just walking around and seeing what crazy stuff is happening in the streets .........india is unbeatable for that i think ...

... was still funny. We sang "Driver on the bus goes: beep, beep, beep..." and "If you're happy and you know it, honk your horn". I think we were already delirious after an hour. I was not sure that we were going to make it out alive! At this point the TV was playing music videos and then two short movies (very loudly and not English). We listened to the iPod for a while to drown it out. I love the CD you made for me Joe! Thanks! We stopped Elliott style on ...

... is very little light and they are playing barefoot. The goals are simply bricks stood on one end and they invite me to play, as long as i am barefoot. It's great fun and, although they don't speak English, they do speak football. After half an hour, they go to watch the other football game on TV and I go back to my guesthouse. My feet are on fire after running on the asphalt for 30mins. I hope it's better before tomorrow.

... State, one of those regions wanting autonomy from the military junta. Of course they aren&#8217;t getting any so they take up various subversive activities which winds many of them up in jail. Indications are that more men mysteriously disappear here than from any State in Myanmar. <br><br>There are numerous floating villages along the shores and the lake is home to the famous one-legged rowers who fish the shallow waters in their long and narrow dugout canoes ...

... is no freedom of speech and if anyone criticizes the government, they're commonly given a 15-20 year prison sentence, during which they're often tortured. In Burma there are actual laws on the book that allow the government to do this, citing national stability. Not that the laws of a military dictatorship carry much credibility globally, since the very nature of the totalitarian system is constructed to deny basic human rights. But most appalling is the state ...

... clean and fully airconditioned...somewhat like the Bangkok airport. The hotel still looks the same. According to the locals, the cyclone only destroyed the back part of the hotel, so all else remains good. They are in their rebuilding process now so most places look new. Some things still remains the same though. For example, taxis still don't run on meters so bargaining is required. Price of rice ...

... kaum internationale Hilfe zulaesst.Uns war deshalb nicht so ganz klar ob wir ueberhaupt ein Visa beantragen koennen. Reiseagenturen in Bangkok wussten es nicht so genau oder meinten es waere im Moment nicht moeglich ins Land zureissen. Dave und ich wollten es aber genau wissen und sind selbst zur Botschaft gegangen.Und tatsaechlich, nachdem sie sich vergewissert haben das wir auch wirklich keine Reporter oder Journalisten sind, haben wir ohne Probleme unser Visa beantragen, und 2 Tage ...