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.