Two years ago today, I was in Vietnam. A year ago today, my sweet cat Grover died. Today, I am releasing a book on my travels to SE Asia. Life is happy-sad-bittersweet. I also want to mention to all of you who do not know…the house where I’ve been living the last 16 YEARS is soon going to be sold. I will be moving…at long last. The very idea of packing 16 years of collected things and moving makes my stomach burn and leaves me unable to sleep. Anyway, check out my book… and buy one.
Category Archives: Burma
Travel In Burma
Sign in Myanmar – to instill fear.
PEOPLE’S DESIRE
To Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views (of the government).
To Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the state and progress of the nation.
To Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State.
To Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.
Of any place in the world the US should be meddling, it’s here. This government is horrible. Worse even than China.
back from Burma…off to Nepal!
Back in Bangkok one last time. What a fantastic journey Burma was! I can’t believe how quickly a month went. I didn’t really miss my computer or the internet, but I did miss listening to my music, especially on the long bus and train rides. I just checked my email and had over 500 messages waiting for me when I returned… It was almost entirely junk emails promising longer, harder erections, stock tips, a lower mortgage on the house I don’t have, and all kinds of other stupid stuff. A total waste of time. No, I didn’t miss email at all. I’ve been frantically busy trying to edit, caption, and burn image dvds and get them shipped of before I leave for Nepal tomorrow AM. I just finished it, so now I can actually use the laptop for updating my blog! But now I have little time left. Burma is amazing. The people are the nicest people I have ever met anywhere. I met a monk in Mandalay who accompanied me though the last few weeks of my trip. It was great fun. I can’t even begin to write about all of it right now. I even managed to take several good photos. I’m finally getting better at this travel photo thing. Practice practice practice. I could spend hours writing about my experiences, but I don’t have the time right now. I have to pack up my gear, get a box to ship some gifts and discs back home, meet Michael McGarrigle, the guy with the greatest job in the world, for dinner, and try to get about 20 other things done here on my last night in Southeast Asia! Yes, I am going to NEPAL tomorrow morning! I can’t believe it! Everywhere I’ve gone seems to get better then the last place. If you asked me what my favorite place was, at any time on my trip, I would normally be able to say it was the last place I was. This trip just keeps getting better and better! Unfortunately, my trip may be cut short. I may be heading back to Seattle July 1st, as my sub-letter wants to move out before October 1st. Coming back July 1st at least allows me to attend my good friend Robert’s wedding in Cyprus, which I have be planning my entire trip around since before I left. Ok….much to to….must go now!
Myanmar!
I can’t check email, but I CAN enter blogs and read your comments. So if you want to contact me before Feb 15th, when I leave Myanmar, I can only be reached here. Someone please let my mother know, so she doesn’t worry about me. Her email address is pamandron@nfinity.com.
My first day in Myanmar was quite an adventure. I hardly slept last night due to being relentlessly attacked by mosquitos, even though I was under a mosquito net. I stayed in a dorm room, and it was WITHOUT any sort of fan. In other words, it was ROASTING. All the beds are butted next to each other, so I was sleeping next to someone I didn’t know at all. So the only way to fight the skeeters was to cover myself up with a blanket or dig through my pack for my repellent, which was certain to awake everyone… so I tried the blanket. The blanket only made me sweaty, which seemed to attract the skeeters even more, and any flesh that poked out of the blanket was IMMEDIATLY BITTEN. It was insane. I finally gave in and dug out my repellent at about 1:30 am. It felt much better without the hot blanket, but any spot on my body that I missed spraying DEET on was bitten. It took all my nerve not to scratch and make things worse. This went on until I finally got every part of my exposed body covered and I finally drifted off to sleep around 3 am…only to be awakened at 4 AM by the LOUDEST MEGAPHONE BHUDDIST PRAYER SESSION I could have ever imagined. Earplugs did very little to drown it out. This went on for AN HOUR. Some time around 5:30 I started drifting back to sleep, but awoke at 9 AM for breakfast, which was great. I then moved to a fantastic room at the top of the guesthouse which not only has a nice comfy PRIVATE bed and a fan, but what’s best is that it has a great view of the Shwedogon Pagoda, which is this amazing 2000 year old towering pagoda that is covered in over 54 tons of gold, 5000 diamonds, hundreds of rubies… It the holiest place in Myanmar and one of the greatest human-made structures I have ever seen. I have been trying to kick this phlemy throat and cough thing I’ve had since I went diving, but it seems to be getting worse again. So I went out and exchanged money from a money exchange tout (only to discover later that he tricked me out of about 7 dollars in the exchange, clever monkey!) and found my way to a pharmacy to get some drugs. On the way, two local boys approached me and wanted to practice thier english with me. They took me to the Sulay Pagoda which is another gold-encrusted pagoda in the center of town. A man approached us there at explained in perfect english everything about the pagoda, the practices happening everywhere, and about transendental medication, which he went at length about for over 20 minutes before we got rid of him. We got rid of him by my agreeing with the boys to go to their english class and say a few words…
I arrive at the class, which has about 40-50 students in there late teens to late twenties, and I am immediatly brought to the front of the class. I am asked to improvise. So I go on for about 10-15 minutes about who I am, what I have been doing, etc.. and then ask if anyone has questions… boy did they.
Are you married? No. Why not? My girlfriend and I broke up. Why? She left me. How did that make you feel? sad. Someone asked me to explain how I felt about relationships and love. JESUS! What is this?? What is your religion? Do you like Jennifer Lopez? (No. Which was an unpopular answer, I found out.) What do you think of Myanmar. What do you think of Thai people? What do you think of George Bush and the Iraq War? (I LOVED this question, because I tore into George Bush. I found out later that MOST people in Myanmar really LIKE George Bush. I can’t imagine why, other than the only news they can sometimes get is CNN.) All in all, I was up in front of this class answering questions about travelling, love, relationships, politics and J-lo for an hour. I WAS the class. I was exhausted and little embarrased about my answers afterwards, especially when I revealed how LITTLE I knew about thier culture and country. At the end, I took a photo of the class. Which I will post when I can. It was actually great fun, and I have been asked to return before I leave Myanmar. Then my new friends took me to lunch, then the Shwedogan Pagoda which was stunning but was unfortunately under some rennovation, so photo ops were limited. Then we worked our way back home by super croweded bus, and then I got a sarong, because almost everyone here wears one! You don’t know how happy this makes me! It’s like being back in indonesia again! Tomorrow my friends are going to take me around again starting at 9 AM. I am exhausted. I found this internet place about a mile from my guesthouse, and it may be the only one in town. Anyway, it’s late here, so I am heading back to my guesthouse for hopefully a peacefull night of sleep.
Off to Burma!
Ok, I am off to Burma today. I may or may not be able to receive emails or
update the blog while I am there. The Burmese government is unpredictable
and things are changing all the time. I will be back in Bangkok on the 15th
of February. My quick stopover in Thailand has stretched out to 20 days
somehow. Strange. Everything took much longer than I suspected. The Burma
visa alone took nearly a week to get, then the plane ticket to Burma took a
few days. My diving trip in the Similan Islands also took much longer than
I could have guessed, since getting sick there (fever) kept me in Koh Lak
several days longer than I predicted. I also had some technical
difficulties with my laptop and my new digital camera back here in Bangkok
which took some time to figure out. It all adds up! I guess I was meant
to slow down for these 3 weeks. Now everything is sorted out perfectly and
all is good. I am finally ready for my next adventure!
PHOTOS!
I want to remind all of you who are reading my blog that I am uploading LOTS of photos to my website.
Also, I will try to keep my blogs shorter and hopefully sweeter so you will actually read them.
I am in Koh Sok, which was tsunami ground zero here in Thailand. Many destroyed lives. Nearly 5 thousand in this area alone. There are a few huge boats still on the far side of the highway. There are many new fancy bungalows being built at break-neck speed. There are only fat German tourists here. The dive shops, which are many, are all owned by Germans. The only reason to come here is to dive or be lazy in a fancy new resort on the beach. I came here on a whim(and an invite from my friend Nicole) to dive the Simlian Islands, which I heard are fantastic. They were. I will write about it later. I didn’t have any underwater housing for my camera, so don’t expect many photos…
Greg
PS. REMINDER: I am going to Burma in a few days, hopefully, and will NOT be able to send/receive emails nor post to this blog for the entire month that I am there. So don’t WORRY about me. Just pretend I’ve gone to a distant planet for a month. I will return to Earth some time in mid February.