All ready…

Countdown is on for the great parentage visitation…

Palm fans at the ready…

 

Festival of Lights

This weekend has been Tazaungdine – the festival of lights. Every full moon seems to be a public holiday here, but this one is more special. According to Wikipedia (source of all my knowledge) it marks the end of the rainy season – ironic then that it rained heavily last night – and is also a time where monks are offered alms and new robes. For the last few weeks all over town what seem to be temporary collecting stations have set up. Blaring music and encouraging people to give. Last weekend we bumped into this procession of tri-shaws carrying all the robes and umbrellas, and fans, and slippers and money and alms bowls that had been donated.

  

There was also an elephant!!

Beautifully folded money at one of the roadside collection stands

   

Last night we headed up to Shwedagon with the rest of Myanmar. The place was rammed, and heavy with the smell of 9,999 oil candles, until it started raining heavily, putting out the candles, sending everyone running into the side temples for shelter, and turning the marble floor into a lethal ice rink (without the ice).

  

Yangon…

Things we love about Yangon…

… beautiful old crumbling cinemas…

… Ambling down a road and stumbling across even more beautiful crumbling colonial mansions…

… Indian street food…

… drinking faluda (Ant loves it) whilst sitting on super small plastic chairs at street tea shops… (love the child in the background of this photo in his Union Flag trousers)…

Bac Ha Market, Vietnam

On our trip to Vietnam we headed north, up to the Chinese boarder to visit to Bac Ha Sunday market and the Flower H’mong ethnic group. The market is very much on the tourist trail, but although there were tourists about and lots of people selling tourists fabric/ fabric related products it was still primarily a local market with people going about their business buying rice cookers, chilies, farm tools, clothes, buffalo, intestines, rice wine etc… The Flower H’mong traditional dress was beautiful – for the women – the men’s outfits were boring in comparison.

     

mmm rice wine…

  

Lots of puppies and buffalo for sale. I fear the puppies may have been for food.

 

Fantastic leg wear