Chillies in China Town

Spice-tastic

 

Mr Geer’s birthday

Yesterday was Mr Geer’s birthday. We have been eating out pretty much every night since we moved into the hotel in mid August and we are desperate to regain control over what we eat as soon as possible – assuming we can remember how to cook. However we saved eating out at Le Planteur for the occasion of Ant’s birthday because it is supposed to be the best place to eat in town… and if its good enough for Mick Jagger then its good enough for us.

There was complimentary vintage car pick up and drop off. Although you could argue that every time we get in a taxi in Yangon we are enjoying vintage car travel, these cars are special. Alas I managed to delete the photo of the car we came back in which was red and white and super fun!

 

The food was fantabulous. Lots of yummy mini-dishes in between courses. On the left was a papaya mini salad, and on the right smoked salmon with banana flower salad. 

 

We will have the animal rights campaigners chasing us with our fois-gras (Ant) and veal (me). The petit fours to finish up with were delicious… although we did struggle to fit them in after the birthday cake… mmm fresh cream… and birthday candle and singing of course.

   

Back at the hotel with his “Angry Bird” birthday balloon (don’t worry this didn’t come with us to the fancy restaurant). Myanmars have a thing about Angry Birds… strange given so few have mobile phones… but it is possible to buy Angry Birds t-shirts, backpacks, pencil cases… and balloons.

This and that…

Sule Pagoda. Downtown on Sunday.

 

Ant orders a scoop of strawberry icecream and a scoop of chocolate but gets 2 bowls. Lucky him.

The apartment saga has rumbled on. We have had to agree to pay quite a lot more money on a couple of occasions in the last week or so. We don’t think the landlord has rented out an apartment before, and this has caused some problems, basically he is clear how much money he wants, but he wants cash so as to avoid tax. Unfortunately this is not possible and when it came to the crunch (lease agreement) we ended up having to pay more to cover his tax, and in return he agreed to open a bank account, which at one point was in doubt. There is various talk in the international media about Myanmar opening up in terms of ATMs and credit card use, but in reality perhaps only 2% of the population have bank accounts and everyone deals in cash. I think it will take a long time to change that. To date there are no international banks, so no way of withdrawing cash from an overseas bank. Those using local banks have been able to access ATMs for the last year or so… and apparently will be able to pay by card in some supermarkets soon. Mastercard (and probably Visa too) are in talks with local banks… so perhaps we foreigners will be able to withdraw cash from a bank someday in the not too distant future. You can currently only use an international credit card in one or two high end hotels.

Anyway, back to the apartment… of course it is delayed by a week or so… hopefully we can move on 6th October (I feel this is optimistic… but anyway we can hope). We went over again today and some of the floors are nearly finished, and the others have sand down, which I think they use to fill any gaps in the parquet before sanding and polishing.  Despite agreeing last week that the ceilings would be white... what did we discover but decorators with paintbrushes in hand about to paint the ceilings lime green (see photo), pink and yellow. The tubs of paint were open... it was was distressing. There ensued a conversation where I said I knew I was totally mad for not wanting a rainbow ceiling, but could he pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease humour me and just paint it white. I think this will happen... but the poor landlord kept saying that when the lights go in the ceiling it will look so much better if it is painted green in some places to highlight the floral plaster moulds he has inserted into the ceiling. I didn't like to say that the less attention that is drawn to said mouldings the better...

On Saturday we go curtain shopping with the landlord. I predict more divergences in taste.

   

Gin and Pesto

Today we bought gin and tomato pesto (it was the last jar – and there was concern on my part that pesto would never be seen again).

To give an idea about prices the pesto (imported from Oz) cost £3 and the gin (imported from the UK) cost £6. One might conclude we will be drinking more gin than eating pesto… but it seems nearly impossible to buy tonic water. We found 3 cans in the fridge at a fancy bakery yesterday, but the supermarkets don’t seem to sell it, and other expats report rumours of a nationwide shortage of tonic water… apparently even the hotels are out of it. Clearly some sort of crisis. Lets hope it passes quickly and tonic stocks return to acceptable levels ASAP.

Random weekend part 2

The random activities continued with a trip to see the white elephants of Yangon in their golden elephant house. Historically white elephants have been considered sacred and bearers of good luck and power in several south east Asian countries. These ones are no different and had a small troop of carers who when we visited were singing to the elephants and scratching them with long bamboo poles. Actually the elephants are not at all white. There were 3 in total and 2 were pinky-brown in colour and one was fairly grey… but officially they are “white”. I think they are albino, and so although it doesn’t look much fun chained up in their concrete palace, they are probably fairly happy to be out of direct sunlight, even if they might like a lot more freedom.

    

After the elephants it was across the road to the giant marble Buddha – quite impressive as it was carved from a single piece of marble. The temple was on a hill and we spent ages sitting around, catching the breeze and watching people watching us (and often failing at their attempts to take discrete photos of us). It was a lovely evening. Much less rain now then when we first arrived. On the way out of the temple Mel was able to continue her tour of Myanmar street food with the purchase of mini samosas cooked on the mini stove in front of her in the photo below.

  

We also wandered around a pond with a temple in the middle, and nice little cafe stalls around the edge… later on we had yummy food and juices downtown in Monsoon. Mel and I were particularly impressed with our pointed piles of rice.

  

To end the randomness here is a sign outside the Armenian Church, and Ant with a baby baby ginger kitten. Alas taken, or I would be tempted to claim him as our own! The Armenian church is bizarre… a relic from a time when there were Armenian traders living in Myanmar. According to Wikipedia (source of all knowledge) 76 Armenians were baptised, in what was then Burma, between 1851-1915, 237 Armenians were married between 1855-1941 and over 300 Armenians died between 1811-1921. I have no idea (and neither does Wikipedia) if the church is still in use, and if it is, if any Armenians descended from all those that married between 1855-1941attend it… or if any Armenians descended or otherwise live in the country today.

 

I think enough randomness for today.

Random weekend part 1

Last weekend we enjoyed some random activities. We have perhaps mostly exhausted Yangon’s tourist attractions at this point.

First up was the planetarium. It is located directly outside our hotel so we had to go. It was built about 20 years ago with money from Japan and I suspect has not been changed much in that time. It was in beautiful condition, preserved in all its ‘80s wonder. It was not an automated show, and because Ant and I were the only people there they decided to do the “English” version. Although apparently the compare was speaking in English it was fairly impossible to understand anything he said apart from the repeated use of “on our way home” which he said about 20 times as we navigated from deep space back “on our way home” to Yangon… passing dinosaurs (I have no idea why dinosaurs would be in a planetarium) “on our way home”… whilst listening to ABBA “on our way home”…   

  

After that we headed off to the love park in front of Shwedagon… which was full of all things love.

 

In Myanmar you can easily spot happy couples when out and about because they are normally sitting on the floor under a discretely positioned umbrella. Being the love park there were a lot of umbrellas. My favourite was the couple crammed under an umbrella in the jaws of a giant concrete crocodile. See far right hand photo where you can just about make out the umbrella under the crocodiles teeth.

    

After all that love (and wilting temperatures outside) we had to go to J’s doughnuts and enjoy the AC, drink strawberry milk and eat doughnuts. Ant’s had a banana filling, and mine was of course orange.

Work is progressing

We went to visit our apartment to be yesterday. I am still not totally convinced it will be finished by 30th September, however there is an ARMY of people slaving on it.

It has been interesting to observe differences in construction methods and… tastes/ style.

In the UK unless you had a wedge of cash you probably wouldn’t have a teak parquet floor – I suppose teak and labour are cheap here. I think the floor will be beautiful.

In the UK you probably wouldn’t get workers hanging off a 6th floor balcony with no harness in order to drill holes for a sun shade. Health and safety hasn’t reached Myanmar to quite the same extent (although there is a fire escape in the building).

In the UK you would probably spend quite a bit of money renovating a kitchen. In Myanmar the kitchen seems to be the maids domain, and not really somewhere anyone spends any time, and so not worth spending any money on. We will probably need to construct more work surfaces just to fit in the “baby”(Gaggia), Ken-Wood and our microwave. Why bring a microwave to Myanmar you may well ask… well because it has an oven setting, and ovens are something most places seem to lack here… we couldn’t spend 2 years not doing any baking so the microwave will be winging it out here soon.

When we did our house back home it didn’t cross our minds to install crazy plasterboard ceiling features… however as you can see in the photos below, no modern apartment in Myanmar is complete without a few interesting ceiling designs. They seemed to have opted for cut out circles and swirls in the living area and chunky block work in the bedroom. I have a niggling fear that they will decide some large over the top chandelier type affair would be the perfect light fitting to sit in the plasterwork. We shall see!

I conclude that even if there are garish light fittings and pink and orange curtains it will still be the nicest place we will have seen by a long way. Roll on moving in day… roll on G&Ts on the balcony… 

  

Ebay-ing in Myanmar

So this would seem to be the end of any ambitions I might have for setting up a global ebay empire, exporting tourist tat from Myanmar to the WORLD… or in fact leaving buyer feedback for pre-departure purchases.

To be honest I was rather excited about the message… how exotic. I do wonder why I can’t shop in ebay but can in amazon… I may have to keep wondering. The mysterious world of International Sanctions remains mysterious. As far as I am aware current sanctions mostly relate to arms… and I don’t think you can buy arms on ebay. But I could be wrong about that.

Bangkok

The Bangkok minibreak started at 7am on Saturday when I met friends from Nepal who now live in Bangkok for their Saturday morning run. This was possibly rather ambitious on my part as I haven’t run anywhere for at least a year… and have generally been fairly lazy since arriving in Yangon. Whilst D&J easily notched up 10km I managed 2.5km (1 loop of the park) before I had to collapse have a rest and watch a crocodile creature crawling from the lake… I then managed to walk-run another loop… it was so hot! Anyway, I guess I wont be entering the Yangon marathon any time soon. 

  

After breakfast D&J showed me the sights… we did a river cruise (ooooo the buildings were so tall… the lights so bright… the skytrain so swish…), after that we went into a random shop selling weird and wonderful potions and pills, climbed some stairs and into a back room with mattresses. We then lay down and had rather nice Thai massages whilst the masseuses chatted amongst themselves and watched Thai TV. Spa it was not… but the massage was very nice. Then it was time for lunch and HUGE ice-cream Sundays (I guess there are some advantages to moderate levels of exercise in the early morning).

   

I then ambled back to China Town, via Tesco Lotus (a big disappointment – I think City Mart in Yangon is heaps better than Tesco Lotus in China Town). Ant arrived from the UK at around 4ish and we then spent far too long trying to work out what we were going to eat without going too far from the hotel (Ant was feeling ill – English illness) and without eating something Asian. This turns out to be rather a problem when you are staying in China Town. We ended up walking to the Indian quarter and eating Thali. Yum. Yes still Asian… but not Chinese Asian… and definitely not Shark Fin Soup.

  

Out hotel was quite fun… and Chinese… but lacking daylight in the rooms. That was more than made up for by the fact you could order a pet fish for the bedroom. Of course I had to try this out, so called reception and ordered a fish. 10 minutes later 3 fish and some fish food arrived, along with complimentary fruit and flowers… which were perhaps related to the fact I also asked to move rooms as the first room was noisy. This morning at breakfast there were many glamorous Thai types wandering around, this was later explained by a red carpet and photos and decorations in the lifts and lobby – I think a couple were getting married in the hotel.

  

Tuk-Tuking around town

  

Jo and Simon would be proud… we went to an exciting shopping mall with Starbucks (and all sorts of other fancy stuff in it)… see how provincial we have become… amazed by Starbucks of all places.

Made it home this afternoon to be greeted by Pepsi and Coke. They have apparently arrived. Not sure if they are producing bottles of fizzy stuff yet, but it surely wont be long now before Yangon is awash with locally made Coke. You can buy Coke now, either from Singapore or Thailand… but with the lifting of US sanctions Coke and Pepsi are moving back in. The rose was given to me at the airport. A cunning marketing plan by an Indian restaurant. A welcome rose and a voucher for a free glass of wine at their restaurant. Genius idea!

 

We have spent the evening unpacking the bags Ant bought. This involved me eating a crunchie bar (yum), and putting 3 chorizos in the mini fridge. Ant seemed to think chorizo was an essential import. As we have no cooking facilities perhaps we will just be taking a nibble of chorizo whenever we feel hungry???

Bangkok was fun, but also huge, dazzling and crazy. I think I am happy we live here not there… but it is nice to know we are only a 1 hour flight from the bright lights if we need them.