Here we are at the lovely big golden Shwedagon. Geer sporting his longyi/ sarong/ skirt however you like to describe it… but yes he has become a hippy. No more corporate suits. It is all about the ethnic clothing for Mr Geer these days.
I think this photo was taken before my week long weight loss programme illness. I have been making up for things this week eating a lot of chocolate that Hils brought us from various kind peoples. Yummy.
This weekend Hils was in town so there was a good excuse for some random fun. First up a visit to “Snow Wonderland”. We had tried to visit in August when Mel was with us, but it was shut for renovations. This was obviously a HUGE disappointment. Luckily disappointment didn’t strike us twice.
After being equipped with some midget blue wellies and putting on my sweater for the first time since arriving back in Yangon in January, I was ready to go through the giant freezer doors into the wonderful snow wonderland. I am sure it brought back happy memories for Ant of entering the McDonald’s catering freezers to grab a few burgers back in the day.
Once inside it was another world. There were icy castles, icy angry birds, an army of ice santas, ice tunnels, an icy Christmas tree, (not exactly seasonal), icy snowman, icy snow white and 7 dwarves, icy games to play etc. Basically LOTS of ice. Hils was wise and wore one of the big multi-coloured padded coats they had for people to borrow.
Then it was on to the snow slope. Just like a mini MK SnowDome in the tropics. After negotiating the icy steps you got to tube down the slope at top speeds and crash into unsuspecting people at the bottom - which was a lot of fun.
After that was the toboggan run. The was an extra 30p to ride on and was very fast, icy and bumpy. I am not totally convinced it would pass any UK Health and Safety inspections, but was a lot of fun. As you can see by the point I got to ride the toboggan I was feeling rather cold. Cropped trousers were not a good idea… and where was my balaclava? My nose was so cold… to say nothing about mittens. At one point I was vaguely contemplating the possibility of contracting frost bite in Myanmar, which might not be a story that the insurance company would believe.
Finally a snap of an amusing scene which is often an integral part of any outing nowadays. Ant is posing with a Myanmar woman (who we have never met before) and her 3 friends are taking photos of the happy couple. This went on for some time as the women had to rotate so they could all have a snap with the tall ginger foreigner. As I was laughing away taking photos of them taking photos of him I too was accosted and had to have my photo taken with random Myanmars. Not being a minor celebrity may take some adjusting to whenever we return to England.
We have been missing our little garden in England and the allotment too… and we have been missing fresh salads and things like rocket, which is not possible to buy here. You can buy iceberg lettuce and some wilty green leaves, but it isn’t that nice and doesn’t last long. We have also been missing Italian basil (as opposed to Thai basil which is in abundance and is very different in taste), and other herbs.
In Australia we stocked up on seeds, which hopefully have a reasonable chance of doing OK here as the climate is not so very different. When we got back to Yangon we went to a park full of stalls selling many plants and bought a range of pots and plants. The service was very pleasing. We pointed at the pots and plants and then sat down in the shade under an umbrella (in the left of the photo), whilst people scurried around and potted up all the plants. This was convenient as I had been wondering where we were going to find soil. Once all was ready they found a truck to take us home and helped drag the pots into position. It should be noted that we did not buy the tree on the right of the photo. I just liked the idea of having a frangipani tree and so someone went to find me one… but we concluded it was a bit big for the balcony, and seemed to be a little dead looking.
The plants in position
Next up was the seeds. We got our friend’s landlord to make us some raised bamboo planters to plant these in. This should mean they get some light, and are easier to weed etc. Our balcony is a strange thing, there is really only a small area wide enough to sit out on, the rest of it is more like a long corridor around the sides of the apartment. By putting the long narrow planters round the edge it has made a useless space a bit more useful… and hopefully things will grow fast in the nice warm weather and then we can start eating. mmmmmm
A few weeks ago we visited the National Races Museum with Thorsten-the-German. It was quite a fun place set in lovely gardens, with lots of replica traditional wooden houses representing each of the major “races” of Myanmar.
At each house you could dress up in traditional clothing and have your photo taken. We pleasingly managed to avoid this, but on arrival in “Kachin” we were greeted by a lovely fellow visitor who had dressed up in Kachin traditional clothing but who wanted a photo of more than just herself in front of a concrete-not-to-scale-mountain… something to add a bit more authenticity to the scene perhaps? Three pasty faces, 2 with beards, in traditional European clothing was apparently just what was required. So began quite a long photo shoot which involved photos of us standing in front of the concrete mountains, climbing up the concrete mountains, posing on the suspension bridge between the concrete mountains, climbing down the concrete mountains… and finally standing at the bottom of the concrete mountains on the other side (of the range?).
… although no that was not the end. Two small girls were also dressed up as small Kachin girls and having their photo taken, when their family spotted the 3 pasty faces enjoying photo time on the mountain. They DID NOT want to miss out on the action… and so there were more photos with small people in front of the mountains, and besides a pond mountain lake. One of the girls took a shine to Ant and clasped onto his arm the whole time. The resulting photos look like quite the random family snap.
This weekend has seen the inaugural Yangon Literary Festival. Yes it is all happening here. Turns out we live in the cultural epicentre of the world… at least for this weekend.
The venue was in a big hotel by Inya Lake, which is always beautiful. There were book stalls and food stalls and lots and lots of interesting talks and lectures. The main attraction was The Lady herself. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. I think for most people outside of Myanmar, and even for those inside of Myanmar, she is the face of Myanmar, perhaps the one person you would name off the top of your head if you had to associate a single person with the country. Her life has been an incredible one, much of it spent under house arrest. But now she is free, an elected member of parliament, and a keen promoter of all things literary. So Ant and I, like the rest of the ticket holders were totally star struck the moment she walked in the room. Well to be honest, even before she walked in the room. The queue for her first session started 1hour before she arrived, it was hot hot hot, very sweaty, and everyone was crammed together, desperately hoping someone would open the door to the auditorium. Eventually it was opened and there was a minor crush as everyone piled in on top of each other. When she finally took her seat pretty much everyone in the room raised a camera or a phone to take her photograph.
We heard her speak twice. Once about her favourite books - Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” (it did sound like she had actually read it, and not just bought a rip off DVD of the movie from the local market), Harry Potter was also mentioned, as was a lot of poetry (we were all encouraged to commit as much poetry to memory as we could). It was very interesting, and she often referred to her time under house arrest - how reading books, the memory of books, the memories evoked when reading books first read in another time and place, even the smell of books, were so important to her.
Later on we heard her as part of a panel - "Desert Island Books" - moderated by Fergal Keane. She was sitting along side Vikram Seth (“A Suitable Boy” fame), William Dalrymple (“White Mughals”) and Jung Chang (“Wild Swans”). I guess with Daw Suu as the star attraction they had been able to pull in some other big names too. Vikram Seth was clearly touched when ASSK shared how much she had loved reading “A Suitable Boy” whilst she was under house arrest. Listening to them all talk was brilliant, as was a lecture by Timothy Garton-Ash on the continued relevance of Orwell – who of course lived in Burma – and then went on to write “Burmese Days”. Earlier in the day we listened to a talk by someone called Tom Maschler, who I had never heard of, but turns out he is a publisher who has published half the world it would seem. He was an elderly man, and rambled on about how he connected Roald Dahl to Quentin Blake, and discovered Ian McEuan, and published Catch 22 (originally called Catch 18)… he seemed to have met everyone and anyone who had ever written a book… which was quite entertaining.
To finish up here are some snaps of the lady herself!
