Five Days and Two Years in Korea 한국에서 2년 5일 : 2015

I loved Seinfeld back in the 90s. There was one episode that Pete and I have laughed about for years. It's the one where J. Peterman has a mid-life crisis and disappears. Later in the episode he makes a phone call to Elaine explaining he is in Myanmar. Confused she asks where Myanmar is. His reply is, "You probably know it as Burma."

Pete and I have been quoting that Seinfeld episode for years. Knowing our time in Southeast Asia is coming to a close, we thought about where we wanted our last adventure to be. With Myanmar's military government finally relaxing its rule over the people and the travel restrictions for US citizens softening, we found Myanmar a real option for travel. And I have to say, it was a wonderful choice!!! I have to warn you, though, before you read this blog post. Myanmar was such a different experience for me, that I took almost 2,000 pictures. I promise I am not going to post all of them here, but I will be posting quite a few. So I hope you've used the bathroom before attempting to read this post; it may be a while!

Myanmar.

It's a very real statement that you probably know it as Burma, because until 1989, that was the name of the country. The military government officially changed the name back to the original Burmese name of Myanmar in 1989, however, many nations, including the United States, still refuse to recognize the new name to protest the oppressive military dictatorship. So while the people of Myanmar officially call the country Myanmar, the US still calls it Burma...thus, "You probably know it as Burma."

Being frugal, we always try to save money on flights. Thus, we usually end up using China Eastern for our travels in Asia, because they by far offer the cheapest flights. But you definitely get what you pay for. We've used China Eastern for three of our vacations. Once they cancelled our return flight home leaving us stranded in Cambodia for an extra day. It turned out great for us, but potentially could have been a major headache. The other times they have always been late. Our flight out was no exception. We actually had to take three flights to get to Myanmar and every single one was late. Here's a picture of the China Eastern departure board.

I love how over half of the flights are delayed. You definitely get what you pay for.

Luckily, none of our flights were delayed significantly enough to cause any real problems. It helped that we had a 12 hour layover in Qingdao, China. The layover was overnight, so we booked a hotel near the airport. We booked a "windowless room," unsure of what that was.

Walking down the hallway, I saw these empty picture frames on the wall. It seemed a little strange.

I soon found out these were the windows of the "windowless room."

Behind the curtain you have these lovely windows.

Open them up, and sure enough, you are looking out into the hallway.

I love Asia! This would never meet fire codes in the United States.

And, of course, we had the wonderful bathroom window as well that we have found all across Asia. Here's Ali looking out of the shower. They always have the curtain you can pull down to cover the window when you are showering, but it doesn't really work. While you can't actually see the person showering, you are still left with a lovely silhouette. These would be great for a honeymoon, but not as wonderful for families!

The next morning we were off to Yangoon, Myanmar. When planning our vacation we settled on using a travel company. We rarely do this. Usually I like to be on my own so I can have complete control over the vacation. After reading about Myanmar, though, we heard of several people who attempted to book hotels online only to find out they didn't exist when they arrived in the country. Many of the websites I use for travel recommended using a certified travel company to visit Myanmar. We did a little research and settled on Backyard Tours. They were amazing! We told them what we wanted to do, and they planned everything for us. It was incredibly convenient! I highly recommend them if you are looking into a Myanmar vacation.

Now on to Myanmar!

We arrived in Yangoon, Myanmar later in the day than we wanted, because our flight was delayed -- shocking! That left us little time for sightseeing. Our tour guide, Akay, took us for ice cream first...

...then dinner. The kids loved having dessert first!

The food was amazing! There was course, after course, of interesting and different foods. A lot of things were cooked in peanut oil or covered in a peanut sauce. This little volcano of rice was some of the best rice I have ever eaten...and we've eaten a lot of rice in Asia! They cook it in a chicken broth type of liquid which gives it a savory flavor. Everywhere we went in Yangoon, we had this rice. I loved it!

After dinner it was time for bed. We were pretty exhausted from our full day of flying.

We woke up to this view from our hotel room. You can see Shwedagon Pagoda far off in the distance.

Directly across the street was this apartment building. I found it interesting how long this man on the second floor spent sweeping and cleaning his balcony -- especially given the fact that the building to the right was being torn down. It seems this must be a never ending chore.

Our first stop of the day was this park with a great view of Shwedagon Pagoda.

I found it interesting how everything in Myanmar was done by hand. This guy is cleaning the trash out of the lake by rowing around it and fishing it out of the pond with a stick.

The kids found a fun playground.

Our next stop was Shwedagon Pagoda. This is one of Myanmar's most famous landmarks. It's the most sacred Buddhist Pagoda's in Myanmar dating back sometime between the 6th and 10th century. Unfortunately for us the gold leaf is being restored, so it was under scaffolding.

It was still amazing to see though. There were hundreds of other golden pagodas surrounding the giant center stupa.

Everything was golden and beautiful! Even the little basket used to transport the gold leaf for the restoration project was amazing. You can see the basket on the wire here in the middle of the picture.

In Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced by about 90% of Myanmar's population, one way to enlightenment is to perform good deeds. Here in the temple, you find many people leaving donations of money, food, flowers, etc. at different alters and stupas around the temple grounds.

One practice we found in Myanmar to be a unique Buddhist practice we haven't seen anywhere else in Asia is paying respect to the animal representing the day of the week you were born on. We're not sure exactly the significance of this, but every person knows which day of the week they are born on and then comes to these "altars" and washes their animal anywhere between 3 and 5 times with water, then leaves a gift of flowers, food, or money. Our tour guide looked back through her digital calendar to figure out which animal we are. Ali, Emma and Pete were all born on Monday, and therefore are tigers. Tigers are honest by nature.

I was born on Wednesday, so I'm an elephant meaning I am cute.

And Ryan was born on Saturday making him a dragon who is smart.

This mother and daughter were leaving these beautiful flowers for Thursday's animal.

You can also leave a donation of wind by pulling on the string and fanning the giant Buddha. Here's Emma taking her turn waving the fan.

There were people worshipping all around the temple. They were kind enough to let me take pictures!

This little girl was my favorite!

After you finish worshipping at the temple, you share your good deeds with others by ringing this bell. This encourages others to similarly perform good deeds.

Because the temples are sacred ground, you must remove your shoes and socks before entering. I was very grateful I wore flip flops. We were constantly taking our shoes off and on. Our tour guide gave us wipes to clean our feet after each temple. Within a few minutes, we were taking our shoes back off again though!

Outside every temple, and many times inside, you find these little markets. They sell all sorts of trinkets.

The market extended outside the temple and onto the street.

In the market we noticed these three little kids. They would give people these plastic bags, then after the people would accept the bags, the kids would demand money for the bags. Great business! Luckily for me, they didn't charge to have their pictures taken. They actually found it quite amusing that we wanted to take their picutre. I found that was the case for most people. They were so intrigued by us, that the thought of us wanting to take their picture seemed comical.

I loved these vans that traveled around the city. They reminded me of clown cars. An unbelievable number of people would climb into the back of them. You can see it already has people in it, yet there were over 20 people waiting to board.

The buses were much the same way. I thought Seoul buses were crowded. They have nothing on Myanmar buses! I was never able to get a good picture of the buses, but believe me, they were full.

Our next stop was to another temple where we fed the turtles. Again, another good deed.

There were some little kids watching us intently so I offered them our turtle food. I could tell they really wanted to take it, but weren't quite sure what to do. They looked back at their mother, who looked at me. After motioning several times, they finally took the food and got HUGE smiles!

The kids had a blast feeding turtles together.

I found a few monks standing to the side watching us. I asked this one if I could take his pictures. Again, I was thrilled by how happy people were to have their pictures taken.

Our final stop in Yangoon was a fun market.

Here Akay showed us how to make thanaka. Thanaka is a yellow skin cream made from the bark of a thanaka tree.

You can see it here on this little girl's face.

Thanaka is pronounced "the-naka." In fact, when the tour guide started talking about thanka, I thought she was literally saying "the naka." I asked her some questions about "naka" and she was very confused. It was then that I realized she was not saying "the naka" but that it was all one word! Oops!

Thanaka serves two purposes for the people in Myanmar. First, it is a skin cream to help with aging, acne, and softness. Second, it's a great sunscreen. While it seemed a little shocking at first to see everyone's faces painted yellow, it soon became strange to see someone not wearing thanaka.

Our tour guide showed us how it's made and put some on our faces.

First you wet the stone.

Then you grind the tree in a circular motion on the stone. This leaves a yellow paste behind.

This is what you use to paint your face. Many women, after applying a thin layer all over their faces, like to make brighter designs on their cheeks. Akay made leaves for us.

It was a little hard to see when it was still wet. After it dried, though, it was much brighter as you can see on Emma's cheek here.

We then went shopping for longyis (pronounced long-zee). A longyi is the traditional form of dress for both men and women. It is a long piece of fabric worn from the waist to the feet. There aren't any buckles or ties. You simply fold the material over in a way that it is secured. It gets folded a little bit differently depending on whether you are a man or a woman. Here, Akay showed us that the longyi is used for just about everything in Myanmar. When she was a child, she used her father's longyi as a backpack to go to school!

Akay helped us all tie our longyi.

The girls all got training longyis that actually have ties on the side. There were much easier to wear.

The boys, unfortuantely, didn't have this option and had to learn to tie their own. Here we are in our thanaka and longyis looking very much like a traditional Myanmar family.

Unfortunately for Ryan, his longyi fell off at the airport. Luckily he still had his pants on underneath! We couldn't quite figure out how to re-tie it, but the guys at the airport were incredibly happy to teach us. Everyone was so nice.

They, then, wanted to take pictures of our kids. We found this to be similar to everywhere else in Asia. The kids were constantly being stopped to take their pictures. It made me feel better about taking everyone else's pictures!

We pretty much shut down the entire ticket counter because the workers all came over to take the kids' pictures. We almost missed our flight because of it!

We boarded our plane without a minute to spare.

And off we went to Heho, Myanmar where we would stay on Inle Lake.

We loved the little airport at Heho.

It's by far the smallest airport I've ever been in. It has one room. This was where we entered the airport from the plane. It was also the baggage claim. After we all walked in, they opened up the door and threw all the bags into the room. No baggage carousel. On the other side of the room was the way out. It was actually a breath of fresh air from the giant airports I'm used to that take at least an hour to get through. In fact, they never even checked our passports for this flight. Much different!

This part of Myanmar was drastically different from Yangoon. Yangoon was a bustling city that was fairly modern. This part of the country was the exact opposite -- lots of dirt roads, tons of scooters, and very small villages.

Loved this old train bridge. Apparently if you take the train from Yangoon to this part of the country, it should only take about 10 hours. However, because the rails are so old and the trains are so run down, it usually takes about 24 hours!!! You can actually run faster than the train because it usually only travels around 5-10 miles per hour. Glad we flew!

Here are a few of the pictures I took from the car. I wish I could have taken a million more because everything was so incredibly interesting! Most of the pictures didn't work though.

This lady was carrying these giant bundles balanced on her head.

Another truck crammed full of people.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this. This was a truck filled to the top with sticks. Then, on top of the sticks were about 15 people catching a ride. We were riding in a van, and you can see, I had to look up to take this picture. This gives you an idea of how high the people were sitting. I find myself to be pretty adventurous and not worried about many things, but this made me want to hyperventilate! I was just waiting for someone to fall off.

Everything was incredibly humble...

...and then you would drive across temples covered in gold like this. It was such a dichotomy.

We finally made it to Inle Lake. From here we transferred to these long boats, suitcases and all, to head to our hotel. The next two days we traveled everywhere by boat. Being a water lover, I thought this was pretty awesome!

Our chauffeurs. :)

It was about a 40 minute boat ride to our hotel, and I loved every second of it. The views were amazing as the sun started going down over the water.

The fishermen here on Inle Lake have designed a fishing method that is completely unique to them. They actually row with one leg, leaving both of their hands free to fish.

These are the traditional "nets" they would use to fish with. Most fishermen don't use these anymore, though. They have found normal nets work better. While many have abandoned the traditional fishing gear, though, all fishermen still row with their legs. It's really impressive! As our tour guide explained to us, it's actually much more efficient to row with your leg because your thigh muscle is much stronger than your arm. I don't know why I never thought of that.

We finally made it to our hotel here in the distance.

Emma and I arrived in our boat first. Here are Pete, Ali, and Ryan coming in.

The hotel was really beautiful.

It even had a little window bed for Emma. She thought this was fantastic!

The balcony was really nice too. After it got dark, the nighttime sky was amazing! Because we were so far from city lights we could see every star in the sky. After living in Seoul for two years, it's been a while since we've seen stars like this.

We enjoyed watching the sun set over the lake.

Then we headed in for a nice Shan Dinner.

Because Myanmar is divided into many states that house different ethnic tribes, each area of the country is a little bit different. Inle Lake is in the eastern part of the country in the Shan state. This is a traditional dinner for the Shan people who live here.

The meal included rice crackers, tomato and avocado salad, bean sprouts and tomatoes in peanut sauce, a bean soup, chicken curry, the traditional fish from Inle Lake, and rice. It was by far my favorite meal of the vacation! I loved the Shan food.

Pete had his coconut curry served in a real coconut. Pretty cool!

The next morning, we ate breakfast outside.

The mornings were really cool -- probably in the 60s. By the afternoon, the weather would get into the high 80s.

After breakfast we were off to our boats for our tour of Inle Lake.

It was so different to see these humble homes built up on stilts that families lived in. Everyone owned a boat!

I loved this picture. Here is a dad with his wife and child on the boat, rowing with one leg and fishing with his hands. He is obviously so skilled at this it doesn't even cross his mind that he might tip the boat over. I would be terrified to stand on one leg on the front of a boat with an infant on board. Again, impressive!

We went up and down many small canals, some so narrow our boats would rub against the bushes.

I loved how the houses were on stilts over the water, yet there were still power lines overhead. I shutter to think about what would happen if a power line fell. Yikes!

Every time we entered a housing community we would go over these speedbumps. They were bamboo poles laid across the water. Brilliant.

Another speedbump up ahead in the distance. When traveling in between speedbumps, the motorized boats had to keep their motors very quiet. Nice for the villagers I'm sure.

This was one of the many Buddhist temples out on the water.

Here you can see the floating gardens found everywhere on Inle Lake.

They are amazing! They have created this system where they layer mud and seagrass together to create a floating field. The fertile mud allows the plants to grow while the seagrass keeps the garden afloat. These little fields are all anchored to the bottom of the lake with bamboo poles allowing them to plant very organized rows of gardens.

Then to harvest, they simply paddle their boats up and down the rows. It really is ingenious.

There were a few times I swore they were standing on land, but as we drifted by, we would see the farmers standing on the front of their boats.

The villages surround these floating gardens.

While all of the villages at one point were floating, many have now added several layers of mud underneath their villages to create solid land. This dredger is used to dig up mud.

It was quite surreal to be floating along between these fishing villages, and then see these golden stupas and temples pop up on the horizon.

Then back to fishing villages.

This guy was paddling these bamboo poles down the lake.

Every once in a while we would run across a dammed up part of the channel. There was a tiny little place for boats to come up and down. I was amazed by how well they have made this work.

So many times I felt like I was in a National Geographic magazine. It was crazy to see these scenes!

Our next stop was to this little village. This is one of the areas that has been filled in, so we could walk on solid ground.

In this village they produce rice crackers. This sweet lady spends her entire day, everyday, making rice crackers.

Here is her kitchen.

She showed us how she creates this rice soup that she then ladles out into a circular shape over the heat. It reminded me of making Danish hotcakes.

She then puts these still wet circles onto her bamboo trays...

...and sets them in the sun to dry.

She gave us a finished rice cracker to try. It was delicious!

Here was her sweet friend who keeps her company. I loved these ladies!!! While I couldn't talk to them in their language, somehow I felt connected to them. I loved their sweet smiles.

I asked how many rice crackers are made and sold in a day. Basically, after working an entire day, she makes the equivalent of $6. That's less than any American makes in one hour. While we would call this poverty, what shocked me the most, was how happy everyone was in this town...and every town we went to here. By American standards these people were the poorest of poor. Though everyone here was happy. They all worked together for the good of the community. There wan't any stress to reach a certain quota of rice crackers. You did what you could. And everyone did it together. As I spent time in these little villages, I started to wonder if we so-called "rich" people are actually the poor ones. We have lost our sense of community. Instead of working together for the good of everyone, we are so concerned with ourselves and what we need. We are working ourselves into the ground to increase our bank accounts. I wonder if we are losing sight of what really makes us happy: serving and loving others.

Next we headed to one of my favorite places at Inle Lake -- Indein. We parked our boats and headed on foot through some villages to get there.

We got to see everyday life in these areas. I loved that we rarely saw other tourists. These villages weren't on display for visitors. These were real people about their everyday chores.

Here this man is collecting water, and this woman is washing her clothes in the lake.

This lady was bathing down on the dock.

Walking a little further we reached Indein and the beginning of the stupas. These were built sometime around the 11th century. There were thousands of them everywhere you looked.

Inside many you could still see the original Buddha statues.

As we were walking along the dirt road between these stupas, we were greeted by a heard of cattle!

It definitely reminded us how far from civilization we were!

We continued to climb and explore.

This was our eventual goal...Shwe Indein Pagoda. Shwe means gold, and you can see all the golden stupas awaiting us.

On our way we passed these men digging an irrigation channel. It was amazing to see this all being done by hand -- not a single piece of machinery.

Even the ladders were simply bamboo tied together.

Finally we made it.

We were greeted by these dogs.

Emma fell in love with them!

I fell in love with the temples! They were absolutely beautiful, and all so different. Many had been restored from their original brick to more modern stone or gold leaf.

These workers were taking care of the grounds and clearing out the brush.

Everywhere you turned there were more stupas. The higher up the hill you went, the more gold leaf you found.

When we finally reached the main sanctuary we found people who wanted to take pictures with Emma. It never fails!

We had to take a picture with our tour guide Win. We loved him! He was so wonderful.

Everyone was really nice about letting me take their pictures. What cracked me up, though, was as soon as I held the camera up, they would strike a very serious pose -- very few smiles! I think they didn't quite know what to do for the camera.

Emma loved playing with these puppies!

I took a lot of pictures of just everyday life and people because I found it all so unique. I love the thanaka on all the children.

We came across some more modern bathrooms -- no doors though.

Finally we were back to the boats.

Out next stop was to visit some Kayan people, a group of tribal people in Myanmar whose women wear golden rings around their necks. I've been fascinated by this practice every since I was a kid. My grandfather used to give us a subscription to National Geographic for Christmas every year. I remember seeing these people in one of the magazines as a child and it fascinated me.

Our guide told us the practice started to show how rich your family was. Only the most wealthy could afford to have their women wear gold. As the years went on, the practice stuck.

Here are some of the rings that would be worn. I couldn't believe how incredibly heavy they were. Women start wearing them around the age of 8 and add rings as they go. The rings don't actually stretch the neck, but instead, the weight of the rings drops the collar bone and shoulders giving the appearance of lengthening the neck.

I always joke with Peter that I have a giraffe neck. I had to try comparing mine to the elder lady's with the most rings. It think she was pretty impressed with my neck! No rings needed. :)

This picture is a lady who has removed her rings. I think my neck is just as long!

Next was lunch.

We tried the local specialty...this fish that I can't remember the name of! They actually take the fish and mix it with a lot of other ingredients and reshape it like the original fish, adding the head and tail.

After lunch we headed to one of the most sacred temples at Inle Lake.

Off went our shoes again!

These are the Buddha statues that are so prized in this temple. They have been so revered and honored, that people have covered them completely with gold leaf -- to the point that the buddha can't even be seen anymore. Inside these gold shells are the original buddha statues. They are only about 15 inches tall!

These people were happy to smile for my camera!

We spent the rest of the day visiting different villages to see the local industry. Here they weave clothing, scarves, blankets, etc.

This is how they dye the fabric.

This I found fascinating! These are lotus plant stalks. They actually cut the stalk and pull out the fibers. They use these fibers to create thread and weave clothing. Genius!

Next we visited the boat shop. As you can imagine, boat making is a huge industry here. Everyone owns a boat on Inle Lake!

They also make the traditional fishing nets.

Finally we saw how the local cigarettes are made.

The next day we visited a local market and had fun shopping for local products. This was the bridge to get over to the market. You would never see a bridge like this in the US!

It was barely wide enough to fit two people. These pictures are a little deceptive because this was really quite high off the ground.

And here's one of the parking lots for the market.

The kids love shopping at these markets, especially Ali. She loves haggling. If there's one thing all our traveling around Asia has taught her, it's definitely how to bargain shop. At one point during our shopping one of the shop owners asked me if Ali was my daughter. When I said yes, she replied that I have done a good job raising her and teaching her to be wise. Pretty funny!

These markets are held only once a week. Villagers from the surrounding tribes make their way here to sell their goods. You will notice the bag this lady has. Every tribe has its own pattern they use for these bags, so you can tell what tribe someone is from by the bag they are carrying.

It was very interesting to see the different goods they were selling.

Our guide explained some of these ladies walk for two days to sell at the market. They fill these baskets up with their goods and carry them over their shoulders. Their goods can weigh up to 120 lbs. These are some incredibly strong women!

Our final stop before leaving Inle Lake was this tiny village that makes different snacks.

I think it was my favorite place we visited because I'm not sure very many westerners have been here before. Everyone was just as interested in us as we were in them!

Again, there was such a sense of community here. Everyone had a job to do, and everyone was happily doing his or her job.

Even the children were involved.

These were little taffy type candies.

I also loved the very old fashioned mixed with modern. Here we have these water buffalo walking down this road.

And not more than 5 seconds later the water buffalo are followed by this semi.

This older woman's job was to sit and stir this pot all day.

We were super careful to walk around all the drying foods laying on the ground when we were visiting. This lady brought this rake out after we walked by these drying sunflower seeds and proceeded to shift all the seeds around while walking on them with her shoes. With all the food handling standards we have in the US, this made us all chuckle.

Sadly after this village it was time for us to leave Inle Lake.

We boarded our tiny little puddle jumper and headed for Bagan. We all got a kick out of the Christmas decorations in the airplane. We were not expecting everything to be as Christmasy as it was.

We arrived in Bagan at sunset. Our tour guide took us to this temple to watch the sunset from the top. I instantly fell in love with Bagan!

Inside was this beautiful Buddha

We climbed up this pitch black staircase...

...to be greeted by this

The view was amazing!

Everywhere you looked was a stupa.

Finally the sun went down and we headed to our hotel. The kids were so excited to have a swimming pool that they had to swim.

The water was FREEZING! Ali wasn't sure if she really wanted to swim or not. :)

The next morning we were off on a full day of sightseeing. We started with one of the tallest stupas in Bagan.

These were the stair we climbed to get to the top.

I'm not sure if these pictures show off how incredibly steep these stairs were.

Notice Emma here. She had to climb them like a ladder.

We stopped halfway up to look at the view.

It was actually shocking to see the number of stupas that had been built. All built in different styles and with different materials. They were literally everywhere you looked.

We climbed to the top for an even better view.

I love Asia because they haven't quite become obsessed with safety or preserving history. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. If these temples were in America, there is no way you would be allowed to climb all over them, especially without some sort of safety railing. Notice the tiny little barrier between Ali and a sheer drop off of, I don't know, maybe 100 feet. I'm sure it won't be long before Asia catches up with the US, but for now, I'm happy to be able to explore it as it is.

Here we are going back down. The pictures don't really do it justice. This temple was really tall.

Next we entered this long rectangular house.

It was quite different from all the other buildings around. I was unprepared for what we would see inside.

It was by far the largest Buddha I have ever seen. And I've seen a lot of Buddhas!

He was absolutely breathtaking! Notice the detail in the hair. I loved it. Emma wasn't quite as thrilled. She's not a huge fan of the Buddha. I think because we usually see statues of him in old, dark temples and buildings. She was a little freaked out to walk in here to begin with, then when she saw how big he was, she had to hold my hand through the rest of the building!

Next we made our way to this beautiful temple.

Some of the statues and areas of the temple had been restored.

While others still have original work.

I loved this part of the temple. Every window had a Buddha.

Here they are restoring the outside.

I found the scaffolding very interesting. It's simply bamboo tied together.

Next we headed to a local market.

We grabbed some local treats and headed to learn how they make the local specialty food...Pon yay gyi

Here is pone yay gi. It's fermented soy bean paste that has been cooked so long that its consistency is that of clay.

To be honest, when we first walked into the shop, I saw a little boy cleaning up the floor with a bucket of water. The smell was so pungent inside, that I thought for sure the little boy had just thrown-up and was cleaning up the vomit.

As we toured the shop though, the smell continued to linger and I thought, wow, that sure must have been a lot of vomit. Come to find out later, as I sampled this Bagan favorite seasoning, the smell didn't come from the little boy, it came from the pone yay gi.

There aren't too many foods I don't like. I've eaten everything from kimchi to still moving octopus, to duck fetus and haven't really found anything that I can't stomach. Well, pone yay gi may be the first.

Pretty much every local dish I had in Bagan was flavored with pone yay gi. In other words, all the food tasted like vomit. Yum!

Here are the ladies packaging the pone ya gi by hand.

I decided to pass on bringing any of this home!

Our next stop was this golden temple. I was amazed at the variety of temples here. I won't bore you with all of the details of every temple, just know they were all amazing!

We stopped by a lacquerware shop and saw how they create this product which Bagan is famous for. First, I never really thought about what lacquer is made from. I just always assumed it was a synthetic material. I'm sure the lacquer I've used in the US is synthetic, but original lacquer, and the lacquer still used here in Bagan, comes from trees. They actually tap the tree much like is done to harvest rubber, or maple. This sap then has pigment added to it and is used to cover bamboo to produce beautiful bowls, vases, chairs, etc.

Here this artist is carving designs into the lacquerware.

These kids were incredibly talented.

Finally we visited these caves that the monks used to live in.

Finally it was back to the hotel to swim for an hour or two. That was definitely on Emma's must do list!

That evening was our special Christmas Eve sunset adventure.

While walking to the boat we were greeted by these children selling different items. They spoke great English. Each kid took to one of us and asked our names, and then called us by name while attempting to sell to us. They were great little salespeople!

They loved Emma -- I think because her name was so easy to pronounce. (They struggled with mine. The little girl thought I said my name was "camera." That made us laugh!) As we were pulling out, they kept yelling to Emma, saying they would wait for us to return. We didn't think they would really remember us.

As we approached this deserted beach, we were greeted by these two boys.

They were carrying trays with warm towels to wash our hands and faces.

We had the entire beach to our selves.

The food was delicious! They had taken everything healthy from spinach to carrots to cauliflower and fried it all. Wow. Fried spinach. Who knew I had been eating spinach all wrong my entire life.

We enjoyed our food while watching the sunset.

We buried Ryan's feet to make him shorter. Emma liked this!

After eating, the kids played soccer with the Burmese boys.

I love how playing crosses every culture. These boys didn't really speak much English, and the kids don't speak Burmese, but they all had a ton of fun together. We are guessing these boys weren't much older than Ali. We cracked up at how they took their longyies and tied them up in the back to make shorts. Pretty smart!

We headed back to shore, and sure enough, two or three hours later, our little salespeople were waiting for us, calling out to Emma.

These little kids have definitely learned the art of sales. They were adorable.

The next morning we had a horse carriage ride around the city.

Our driver let Emma take the reigns for a while.

We rode through several farming villages.

And ended in this village that used to house many Buddhist monks. It was believed that the monks should give away all worldly possessions and keep nothing for themselves. Therefore, the monks lived in these caves here for many years, with no possessions of their own.

Our guide, Mr. Zaw, is a very devout Buddhist. He was very passionate as he spoke about these monks and their dedication to their religion. After sharing this, though, he paused before adding that monks today are not like this. He explained how difficult it is for him to see many monks with cell phones and other worldly items. You could tell he worried about the next generation. I already loved Mr. Zaw, but hearing him speak so devoutly about his religion, made me love him even more!

These caves were very interesting. They had little shrines all through them.

Here is an example of the beds the monks would sleep in -- very simple with no luxury. As a Buddhist monk, you should never save anything for yourself or for your future. You should share all you have and have faith that you will be provided for the next day.

Today, monks still live here, but not in the caves. Instead they have a little house nearby. This monk was nice enough to let me take his picture.

Next we were on to more stupas.

This artist was amazing. He drew your birth animal for you on your way into the temple.

Next we visited another little farming village to see how cotton clothing and blankets are made, as well as the local cigarettes.

I loved these bamboo chairs. I really wished I could fit one of these in my suitcase. They were awesome!

Emma loved this little calf.

Finally we loaded up the car and headed off on our one hour car ride to Mt. Popa. On the way we stopped at a local village for lunch. They showed us how they press peanuts to get peanut oil.

We each got a turn to try.

And how they tap the palm tree to collect the sap. This sap produces a delicious sugar that they use for all sorts of candy. At first, I thought they were collecting coconuts from the tree. Instead, this guy takes these coconut type bowls and hangs them from the tapped areas of the palm trees. When they are full, he brings the filled bowls back down.

As we were watching him climb the ladder, Peter leaned over and whispered, they do this without a ladder in Hawaii. We were unimpressed. :)

Here we tried the sap warm, straight from the tree. After that, we sampled all sorts of sugary treats.

These are straight sugar bits after the sap has been boiled, reduced and cooled. We also had coconut covered in this sugar, tamarind covered in this sugar, peanuts covered in this sugar. By the end of sampling I felt like I needed an insulin shot. This is definitely no place for a diabetic!

They again applied some thanaka for us.

This little girl watched intently as her mom applied Emma's thanaka.

When her mom was finished with Emma, she was anxious to have her turn.

They showed us how they grow their produce.

And then prepared us a nice lunch in their humble kitchen.

Lunch was great...everything except for the dishes lathered in pone yay gi. Again, the vomit flavor was more than my tastebuds could handle. I was able to finish everything on my plate, but there were a few times I had to turn my head to the side so our hostess didn't see me grimace as I swallowed.

After lunch it was back in the car to finish our journey. Being Christmas, Mr. Zaw had a Christmas present for each of the kids.

They were handmade lacquerware bowls. So nice!

It was fun just people watching as we drove out to Mt. Popa.

I really wanted to get a better picture of these trucks you see on the right of the picture below, but I never did get one. The van is so full, one person is hanging out the door, and the rest are riding in a basket on the roof of the van. The overcrowded public transportation was a common sight here.

We stopped at this little market for some fresh fruit.

Finally we arrived at our hotel -- which was gorgeous! It was located on the side of
Mt. Popa...

...overlooking the beautiful Taung Kalat monastery which we would hike the next morning.

The views were pretty incredible.

The kids were anxious to do a little swimming.

After swimming we headed to the terrace for our Christmas dinner while watching the sunset over the monastery.

Once the sun finally set, the monastery lights turned on. The gold looked amazing all lit up.

The next morning we were off on another amazing adventure...climbing to Taung Kalat.

I'm not sure if these pictures do it justice, but this temple is amazing. It sits on top of this volcanic plug, almost looking like a jenga piece that could fall at any moment. Our guide explained that some wealthy individuals thought building a temple on this high plateau might bring them closer to enlightenment. So they donated a bunch of money and people began to build it. It wasn't easy, because there weren't any stairs to carry the materials up. I still can't quite wrap my brain around how they managed to accomplish this. Luckily for us, there are stairs now, so ascending the "mountain" was very do-able.

Locals flock to this monestary. The area surrounding the base was packed with people and vendors.

The first thing you notice at this temple is the monkeys. They are everywhere! People buy little pre-wrapped packages of nuts to share with the monkeys. Again, this idea of doing a good deed. Here you see many of the wrappers the monkeys have discarded after enjoying their goodies.

They were really cute, but super agressive. One man had a bushel of bananas. After offering one to a monkey, the monkey grabbed the end of his longysie and wouldn't let go until the man gave him a second one. These monkeys were incredibly intelligent.

As we began to walk up the stairs, I was surprised that we were allowed to leave our shoes on. Looking at all of the monkey poop covering the stairs, I was incredibly grateful. My gratitude didn't last for long though. After about 100 stairs, we reached the area where we had to leave our shoes behind. During the entire course of the trip, I never minded being barefoot, until now. The thought of walking all over this monkey feces was pretty disgusting.

One thing that made this temple incredibly different from the others was the practice of worshipping nats. I didn't fully understand the significance of these nats, but from what I gathered, these statues are replicas of once living people. Each person lived an incredibly religious life and did something worthy of a type of sainthood. There were probably 30 or so of these nats in this temple. People leave gifts at the feet of the statues and also pray to them.

Here are some of the stairs leading up the mountain.

Here is the temple as we got closer. It looked as though it was built in sections. Some matching the previously built pieces, others completely different and connected with more stairs.

Each part of the temple had a different area for worshipping.

Everywhere we went here, the kids were famous. Emma especially so. It was difficult to make our way through the temple complex because we were constantly stopped for pictures.

Of course, I wasn't much different. I loved taking pictures of the monks!

And a family picture from the top. That's Mt. Popa in the background. Our hotel was located in the little clearing to the left of Ali's head.

Some of the many stupas in the distance. I was continually surprised by how many stupas can be constantly seen across Myanmar. They are literally everywhere you look.

We all got to hit the drum with a rope to share our good deeds with others in the temple.

There were people who spend their days cleaning the stair here in the temple and gathering donations for their work. This section was a nice, feces-free set of stairs. Too bad there weren't more of these.

Our guide was wise and had us hike up early in the morning. There weren't many people when we arrived. By the time we were leaving, though, we could hardly move through the crowds.

We ended in the market at the base of the temple.

Our final stop of the day was on the way back to Bagan. We stopped in a local village. I think this may have been my favorite place of the entire trip. It was so incredibly humble.

This was the family bedroom.

Notice the cow behind the bed and the clothes hanging up in the background.

They gave us a little tour of their village and taught us how to do their chores.

While we were here Pete leaned over to me and said this is like we're in Nauvoo or Colonial Williamsburg. And it was so true! Visiting rural Myanmar was like taking a trip back in time 150 years ago. Everything they did, everything they produced, every mode of transportation was what we used in America over a century ago.

Here this young girl, probably about Ali's age, was taking her ox drawn cart down to the well to get more water.

She was joined by these two other women carrying their buckets.

It was so interesting to see how these people lived. Yet, the most impactful moment, and the reason I think this was my favorite place we visited from the entire trip, was the statement this lady made.

I asked if I could take her picture. She agreed. Our tour guide was laughing with her that she is going to go international. She then said, "My picture can go international, but not me. I don't ever want to leave my village. I am happy here."

For all of the traveling I've done, this may be my favorite moment.

I think most Americans would feel sorry for this lady with her one little bed shared with her entire family. For her daily chores which are incredibly strenuous and time consuming. For her lack of running water. I wonder, though, how much happier she is than many Americans. The trick to life is to find happiness with what we have, when we have it. Happiness is definitely not something given to you, but something you create for yourself.

I loved our Burmese vacation. We visited a few more temples, shopped at a few more markets, made our way back to Yangoon where we started and flew back out through China to South Korea.

I was sad to leave Myanmar and the Burmese people behind. They welcomed us everywhere we went in their country with a warm smile and a willingness to share their culture with us. I was touched by how close I felt to everyone here. I love how across all cultures, religions, and skin colors, we are really all the same.

So I guess it doesn't really matter what we call this country -- Myanmar or Burma. Either way, it's a beautiful country filled with beautiful people.

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Saturday, January 24, 2015

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