travel report 15: collage melange

A little photo thingy of me making my way from South of Cambodia to Bangkok and on to Yangon. Not so many amazing border pix, as I was thinking the Burmese are probably not happy if I take pictures of their borders. A lot of waiting around for shared taxis and buses and planes. And the usual tourist attractions. Here goes...

Waiting for ride and chilling in Sihanoukville.

Waiting for ride and chilling in little border town across from Thailand. Even my color blind eyes notice the color coordination here.

Waiting for plane and chilling with my lovely Bangkok Couchsurfing host Rose, and her balcony. This backyard contains a multitude of songbirds, as Rose contains a multitude of talents and surprises. I wish I would have known about the meditation knowledge. I have been told it would be good for my restless mind. Well, maybe I can learn to do it online, like I am learning how to play a flute online.

No more waiting and chilling. I know I have told you this before, but the rythm on this trip has been amazing. Whenever I needed to chill, I was forced to do so, and whenever I wanted to run around, or meet people, or see something amazing that happened as well. So I am running around Yangon and I run into this walked down church. A bunch of people sitting around, you can imagine a congregation in buddhist Burma is rather small. Meet Vincent, a rather funny member there. We go grab a cup of coffee and some sweets, and chat the afternoon away walking around town, hanging out. This will happen to you a lot here. That you run into locals who just start chatting to you. Do yourself a favor be open and look for it. He teaches English to locals who want to bail this sinker of a ship and go to Malaysia to work. I dont know why I look so crazy in this picture. Must be an Arnold thing, reminds me of Kindergarten Cop, when the kids drive him mad.

After hanging with Vincent all afternoon I went to his English class to chat with his students. Honestly, this guy is ridicolously irreverent. I mean, why would he write that on the white board? The way they teach English is rather useless unfortunately, and derived from the way they teach buddhist scripture in Monasteries. They have a little book, out of which he reads, and then the class repeats what he said in unison. Thats it. I guess its enough for laborer english in Malaysia. Next time I go back I will possibly, if I can find a polite way of doing it, suggest to the owner of the school - a rather slick business guy - a different curriculum.

A couple of hairs of the Buddha. A few thousand years of devotion. A few tons of gold. Voila, I give you Shwedagon.

On the craziest busride of my life. These buses are pre WWII. They hold about 40 People. In a country where such regulations as to bus occupancy will be followed. Scratch that, in a country where such regulations exist. I counted, there were at least, approximately way to many people on it. Just because they are short and dont get to eat much, doesnt mean its a good idea to put 250 of them in there. It was amazing anyway, especially because the ticket guy took pity on my poor lanky behind hitting my head on the ceiling all the time, and gave me some Betel to chew. Only problem with Betel is, chu gotta spit a lot, and how do you do that on a full bus unless you are a local and have been training for just that occasion all your life?

Seriously, why would you build this thing in the middle of a river? Just to prove that you can? So that the faithful have to swim across instead of being properly humbled by walking up a thousand stairs to pagoda as usual? So that tourists have to pay 8 times as much as locals to get there on a "special boat"(boat is same same different)? Its pretty cool though to go there on full moon festival, its like being at the vatican on christmas.

This is my own personal guide I had for the day. She was practicing her German for work, and I got the full tour. Good exchange. Yeah, they always look serious in pictures.

As soon as I am annoyed enough I will bitch to google about the photo upload function of this thing. It is a complete pain in the neck, and dont even ask about the formating. Sorry if some of these dont open up, but after the third upload I gave up. Hope you like them anyway.