Out With The Cold, In With The Warm

We have successfully moved from the cold season where it is 85 degrees and sunny every  day to Spring where it is 95 and sunny every day.  Now the hot season is coming on where it is 105 degrees and sunny every day.  We also had many visitors starting on January 3 and going through March 18th.  The above pictures is from our trip out to Gold Rock with Aunty Christine.

In early March we had Opa and Mookie visit and we did the Tour de Myanmar: Inle Lake, Mandalay, Bagan and then Ngwe Saung Beach.  It was eventful.  The above picture was taken on the boat tour of Inle Lake.  In Mandalay, we had small stop over at the Hospital emergency room as Mookie was very dehydrated from her present (stomach bug) that India was kind enough to give her before arriving in Myanmar.  The off to historic Bagan, followed by a week in Yangon and then out to the Indian Ocean where we stayed in Ngwe Saung Beach.

This is an old loom used to weave lotus flower thread, which they then turn into fabric to make the traditional form of men and women clothes called longyi.

We took a day trip on the boat up river to this rural village called In Dein....you guessed it more pagodas and stupas, but the boat ride was very cool.

Coming into another village who was hosting the market on that day.

Here a lady is counting her kyat at the market!  Note all the dried fish and shrimp in the baskets behind the potatoes; they put those in just about every meal.

This is our horse drawn taxi in Bagan and a local girl who thought we were famous white people.  We are often asked to have our picture taken with a variety of Myanmar people, much like a zebra with spots.  For some reason, people are really interested in getting their picture taken with us!

Yet again, they really like me (Lael) and though this little girl was being shy, she really wanted to get here picture taken with me.

One of the many thousands of pagodas and stupas in Bagan. To tell you the truth, Lael and I are pretty much over the novelty of seeing pagodas and stupas.  Mama and Papa keep talking about all these cool adventures we are going to go on and they usually end up being some kind of pagoda or stupa, seriously how many of these things do we need to see! Can't we just head to the pool now?

Happy Holidays from Myanmar or....ပျော်ရွှင်ဖွယ်အားလပ်ရက်မျာ!

So we have been here for five months and have received all our furniture, clothes, bikes, and toys.  We have experienced rainy season where it is 98 degrees and 90 percent humidity with heavy rains almost daily and the cold season where is it 70 degrees until about 10am and then 90 degrees with 70 percent humidity and no hope for rain.  I think papa is desperately missing the cold weather so he cranks the air conditioning in the house down very cold so he can wear fleece vests and sweaters during the holidays.  We continue to keep a packed scheduled to stave off the home sickness from being so far away from friends and family, but we have made some really great friends here in Myanmar.  We are also expecting our first visitor in the coming days, Mr. Collin, followed by Aunt Christine, and then Mookie and Opa!  We have been saving some big tourist trips for these visitors so the next few months should be fun and adventurous.   Here is a little update from the last month, which you have probably seen glimpses of on mama's Facebook acct or papa's Instagram acct.

At the annual holiday party at the Ambassador's residence, Santa trotted out his local sleigh given that his reindeer really do not do well in the heat and humidity.  This is Santa's SE Asian land assault vehicle of choice.  All the bells and flash is to help scare away the feral dogs so they do not eat the feet of his Burmese reindeer. 

This is the our fake plastic tree (like the Radiohead song) but when it is decorate and has gifts under it you can hardly tell.  You can tell papa got what he wished for Christmas beer (case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) made with hops rather than rice.

The last day of school we had a performance, that is me Lael front and center in case you could not pick me out in the crowd.  I really like to sing and perform and dance and basically have all the attention on me, in case you were wondering.

Gingerbread cookies......you know you can have these for breakfast too.  They are probably the closest cookie to a healthy option.

 On Christmas Eve we went to our friends' house, Dominique and Elodie and had bbq sausages for dinner outside while the grown ups had Moroccan couscous with lamb and chicken under the moon and stars on a wonderful evening. 

Christmas morning we splurged and went to the Melia Hotel for Christmas Brunch.  Pretty much every expatriate who celebrates Christmas and who was still in Myanmar was there.  The ticket sales alone from this deluxe brunch was almost twice the total GDP of Myanmar's legitimate economy!  This head chef at the Melia is German and he does an amazing job every Sunday, but really pulled out the special items for this brunch: braised venison, ostrich (quite popular in South Africa and amazing), French and Irish oysters flown in, sushi bar, roast beef, ham, pork chops, an array of amazing deserts.....it was never ending.  They also had free flowing champagne, wine, and beer.

Just to show that deer can survive in Myanmar, the Melia hotel flew in these communist red deer from Russia, though they were on strict guidelines to stay in doors where the AC was on most of the day in between power outages.  Like most things Russian, the exterior was quite impressive, but inside things were not quite as solid as you originally thought.  Still none the less, seeing a deer in Myanmar was indeed impressive.

Do you think anybody would notice if we slowly dismantled this gingerbread town???

A big Christmas tradition in Myanmar is face painting.  You actually do it on all occasions.  This is my friend Piper and we are local Junoniini butterflies native to Myanmar (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

Tell you the truth, after seeing that local sleigh and rein-horse who was dressed up like a Hindi wedding chariot I was not sure Santa was going to make it.  In fact, I began questioning the validity of this whole Santa thing.  But I guess Santa truly is magical, just look!

Ngwe Saung Beach for Papa's Bday

We normally make an annual trip to a National Park for some camping during Papa's birthday weekend, but this year we made the 147 mile, 5:30 minute drive from Yangon to Ngwe Saung Beach on the Indian Ocean (West) coast of Myanmar.  The roads are crazy, the people on the roads are crazy, but it was still a fun four day weekend at a pretty amazing beach side resort.

On the way out we drove through a myriad of roadside village, shanty towns and rice paddy farms with locals carry all sorts of things by cow, by tractor, by moped, by truck and often by bike.  Since most of these villages lacked electricity, firewood and cooking oil are primary sources of heat for cooking.  Here is a guy loaded down with firewood. 

The guys was loaded down with all sorts of snacks.  We passed him and then he passed us and then we saw him again at the top of the mountain pass where he was picking up a bunch of his snacks that had fallen off his moped or was likely clipped by large truck or bus on the narrow roads.

We left at 5:15am to beat some of the traffic and to enjoy almost the entire day at the beach.  The scenery did not disappoint upon arrival.  This photo is untouched and was taken with an iPhone 5c!

Do not mind the worried look on my face, I was only whining about something. Probably the fact that Eamonn and his buddy Oskar are in the background sharing that floating lounge chair and would not let me on.  Note how the pool just disappears into the ocean.

This is one of those shots that you often see in picture frames when you buy them at the store and wonder why they decided to insert that stock photo into the frame.  I was making potion with the sand with my friend Oskar who is just outside the picture frame.

Mama asked me to smile so I just laughed, which has become my general practice and most favored choice of defiance.  Well that and completely melting down when I am tired and super hungry, aka HANGRY!

One night we went to Umi restaurant which was an outside restaurant that had a fire show during dinner.  It started raining and crazy high winds at the end of dinner so it was not clear if the show was going to happen, but it did.  The funny part is Eamonn and I saw a few of our teachers from our school partying at the bar.....bon jure enseignant!

Local fisherman and their morning haul.

The last night we were there we had a beach bbq with our new German friends.  The spread included pasta salad, German potato salad, chicken, pork, beef, and shrimp skewers, giant prawns, and some pretty amazing fish fillets.  We brought coolers of beer and wine down and enjoyed the sunset.  This is Oskar and I with the chef.

Luang Prabang, Laos for Boun Lay Hua Fai (end of Buddhist Lent)

We decided to take advantage of the overlapping local holidays and U.S. holidays to escape to Luang Prabang, Laos for a little 4 day vacation.  The festivals in SE Asia mark the end of Buddhist Lent and the fall Full Moon.  This usually is also called light festival across the buddhists countries of the region and is similar to Diwali in India.  Luang Prabang and Boun Lay Hua Fai festivities definitely did not disappoint.  A great little town, steeped in French colonial architecture set in a lovely valley with mountainous views and the mighty Mekong River driving through and around old town.  We packed a lot in during these few days...good weather definitely helped as did the cool water in the pool at our guest house.

Across the street from the Haw Pha Bang of the Royal Palace.

Street side BBQ (fish/chicken feet/pork), the chicken feet did look good.

Kuang Si Falls

After the falls, we checked out the butterfly reserve at Kuang Si falls.

The following day we hiked up the Phu Si mountain with our 

friends Ben, Lauren, and Vivy Zinner.

Our last day there, we took a deluxe river boat up the Mekong to the Pak Ou Caves

which are Buddhist Temples dating back thousands of years.  That boat was actually a family's house boat who were water merchants that used their house boat to carry goods up/down the river.

The steps up to the Tham Ting (lower cave) and the various river boats.

Mama, Lael, and Vivy just chilling on the luxury Monsoon river boat.

Rooftops of old town Luang Prabang.

Lael's 5th Birthday: Circus Party with Mr. Julien

This Saturday we had a wild and crazy circus party at our house for my 5th birthday.  My entire class came with their siblings and parents and Mr. Julien, performer extraordinaire from Social Circus led the party in a series of tricks using circus props.  We ordered pizzas from Parami and mama and papa provided chipotle chicken and fish tacos for the adults.  Mr. Myo's (driver) sister came over early in the morning and made some amazing spring rolls and Vietnamese pork wraps made with Morning Glory leaves from our garden. Then we finished it off with some gourmet cupcakes from Sydney's Home Baked Goods.

Mr. Julien setting up.  We lucked out...it was raining 15 minutes prior to this.

Concentration is key when you are spinning plates.

Hey mama, look 4 plates!

Giant bubbles.

Attempt at the Guinness Book of World Records largest hoola-hoop-a-thon under 10 years old with Spidermand present in Yangon, Myanmar.  I think we nailed it.

Pools and pools and pagodas.

This is the Wednesday and Sunday pool crew at the American club.  We also meet on Friday afternoons at the Australian club where you guessed it, we  swim.  The cool thing about Friday is that there are kids from all over the diplomatic community and the pool is really big, plus they have one of the best playgrounds in the city.

Last weekend we attended a rooftop birthday party for our friend Oskar (his dad's name is Henrik like our cousin).  It had a nice view of Shwedagon Pagoda in the backround.  I am so shwe (golden)!

Date Day for Mama & Papa

Mama and Papa spent a nice Saturday visiting the Myanmar National Museum in Yangon without Lael and I complaining about how boring all this old junk is and can we go for ice cream or when are we going to leave.

King Anawrahta Minsaw, the founder of the Pagan Empire circa 1044-1077.  Also considered to be the founder of modern.  Anawrahta unified the entire Irrawaddy valley for the first time in history, and placed peripheral regions such as the Shan States and Arakan (Northern Rakhine). 

Afterwards, they decided to treat themselves to a yucky lunch at the Governor's Residence Hotel.  Glad we missed this one as they have no playground, no grilled cheese on the menu or milkshakes!  Instead they ordered banana leave salad with chicken satay, green mango salad with seared scallops, Shan State potato salad and fish with grilled vegetables.

Now this one I probably could have chocked down; at least the vanilla ice cream and passion fruit sauce.  The orange infused chocolate gnash with cocoa powder...probably that too.

That is Charlie the peacock. He likes to eat pastries (croissants and onion bread) out of the bakery window.  Not bad digs living at the Governor's Residence 5 Star Hotel!

Their garden table would look a lot better if their was a playground in distance.