Moving on from Myanmar

Last Night I dreamed I went back to Mandalay again…Opening line of “Rebecca” by Daphne DuMaurier.

DAY 2 OF MYANMAR:

After a magical day in Baga, we decided to head to Mandalay. Problem: The only way to get there  - without blowing the bulk of one of our precious days here - was to travel at night…. 8 hours in a taxi (with no air conditioning) on some of the worst roads ever.  You really could not sleep as you were afraid you’d suffer severe whiplash if you were not bracing yourself for some of the worst potholes.  We arrived at 3 AM and got a very MODEST hotel (a/k/a a dive with small crawling bugs in the bed and not even hot water).  But we had no real choice.  It was the 5^th hotel we stopped at. No other hotel even had a night manager on duty.  We grabbed a few hours of sleep, took showers and headed out early.  I had high expectations for Mandalay… mainly because the name is so great and exotic. I was disappointed. Mandalay is a noisy, hot, dirty city. 

 The nicest scavenger here was to visit the “largest book in the world” which is a temple where they have etched very page – of 729 pages – of the teachings of Buddha onto a separate stone tablet and enshrined each tablet in its own little white, decorated house.  To read the “pages” you have to move from shrine-structure to shrine-structure. 

We decided to get out of Mandalay as fast as possible to some of the neighboring villages. My two favorites were Amarapura …a village known for its silk items. We visited a silk weaving factory and saw the hand-pedaled looms that have to date back over a hundred years. At the “factory” (which is a loose term for “shed in the backyard”), the only decoration on the wall was a framed photo of The Lady with Hillary Clinton. 

It is from when Clinton visited Myanmar in December and recommended that the travel sanctions be lifted.  Everyone here believes that the new influx of tourism (that is expected from this change in policy) will dramatically improve their fortunes. There is great optimism here. 

We also had to cross this rickety bridge over the lake… a scary wooden structure with more loose and / or rotten boards than good.  I got some kid monks to agree to let me photograph them on the bridge.  I love the crimson color of the monks robes here (deeper and richer than the saffron of Thailand).

We also visited the village of Ava… reachable only by flat-bottom boat across a muddy river. Once you reach the banks of Ava, you travel to the old, walled city by horse and buggy (Thank goodness … because it was 130 degrees out and I was melting. The shade of the buggy was well appreciated). 

At the end of a VERY LONG day we decided to suck it up and travel overnight again… 11 hours this time… to get to Ingle Lake. Unbelievably, the roads were even worse.  But we arrived at 5:30 AM and got straight into a boat so we would see sunrise.  Forget being tired. It was stunning.  The fishermen were out.  They need two hands to throw their nets so they have learned to wrap their legs around the single oar, balance with one foot, paddle with the second foot and fish at the same time. It makes it look like they  are dancing on the lake. 

The villagers live in wood or thatched one-room houses on stilts in the middle of the water – sometimes alone, sometimes laid out like a village with canals and intersections. 

And best of all… we go to see the LongNeck women (a bucket list item for me).  They are weavers by trade  so we got to watch a group of them work. The golden coil weighs about 15-20  lbs.

Observations:

(a)    Burmese picnic.. no sandwiches or hot dogs. Rather the families pack hot meals into metal tins, stack the tins one on top of the other with a holder and handle for easy carrying and bring them along for lunch.  They eat a true “hot” meal sitting on the floor of the temple they are visiting. 

(b)   Everywhere you go there are these clay pots filled with water that have a lid and a metal cup on top. They are filled each day by the government to avoid dehydration.  A great idea but clearly a pot full of diarrhea for us westerners (I am only pretending to drink from one here… that water would probably kill me on the spot) 

(c) The sun is so hot that everyone wears wide-brimmed hats. We now know where all of the Walmart Easter bonnets disappear to after they go on sale.. Burma!! The ones with Easter egg colors - and lots of fake flowers - are particularly popular. 

(d)   We had to try Betel Nut… a disgusting concoction of betel root, coconut, lime, white paste and tobacco rolled into a palm leaf. You pop the whole thing into your mouth and it is gross, gross, gross.  I had a residual  taste of yuck for hours. It also leaves a nasty slime of red-coloring on your teeth 

(e)    Everywhere you look here there is something very old and beautiful… with a monk in close vicinity to make your photo even better.

  

       We are now in Oman having gone through Bangkok and Sri Lanka.  Great stories from both places that I will try and upload tomorrow.   I was – at first – disappointed to be going back to Sri Lanka because we’d been there before. But we made a decision to not repeat any scavenges that we had done before.. And we ended up having a great few days in Ceylon (I love the old name for these countries). However, it was not the smartest move points-wise. The Sri Lanka leg was set up where the only way to win the leg was to go North (there were 350-400 more possible points that you could earn ONLY if you went North) and the North scavenges were closer together and less time-consuming. But we’d done the North the last time.  So we opted for South. Not yet sure how bad of a loss we took this leg – which is a little discouraging as we worked our butts off and and had some amazing adventures – but will find out in a few hours when Bill opens the Oman leg. 

I'l keep you updated. I love the comments... keep them coming.. they make me feel less lonely out here.

Myanmar & Beyond

One of the guys on the trip has the same computer as me and lent me his charger for a few hours. So I have computer access for a limited window of time.  I need to finish up my Myanmar blog as I am now countries behind... Since Burma we have spent a day in Bangkok on a long lay-over (with scavenges to do while we were there) and 3 days in Sri Lanka.  We leave Sri Lanka in a few hours for Muscat, Oman.  I have amazing stories from every place... but first.. Day 2 of Myanmar as that is all I will have time for before we leave for the airport..
We decided to go HARD in Burma and just suck it up and not get any real sleep for our entire time in-country.  There are two other REALLY GOOD teams on the trip (An Australian team of two sisters from Sydney and a couple from New Zealand).... so we are catching our ass staying ahead.  We were in second place after Taiwan but managed to get ahead in Myanmar  (which was a Par 5 leg so very important). That put us in first place coming into Sri Lanka . Then - I blew it. I made a critical error plotting our path here and it cost us a bunch of time and probably this leg.  We do not have scores for Sri Lanka yet, but I am fairly confident that we will have dropped into 3rd or even 4th place after this country. More on that later...

Bagan... The magical valley of 2,000  Temples.  The morning of Day 2 we set off by plane for Bagan - an area by the river with more than 2,000 temples / stupas / shrines.  There is no way to properly capture it on film.  We had to climb to the top of one of the taller temples - at sunset - and look out over the Bagan valley.  It was a spectacular view that the camera just cannot convey properly.

The men - and women- in Myanmar wear skirts (with apparently no underwear and there was a total lack of underwear hanging with the washing outside of the homes)

And  the women wear gold-colored mud all over their face.

Bagan was a spirital, karma-filled amazing place.  We had to rent bicycles and literally ride from temple to  temple .... with 2,000+ year old stuff on either side of the road.  AMAZING !!!

Day 3 of Burma ... we went to Mandalay. Day 4 we spent in Ingle Lake

More on that to come....

Burma - Myanmar: The Land of “Broken Face Bills”

OK – I know that it is still early in the trip to call a favorite country… but I am doing it anyway…  Myanmar is my favorite.  And it’s on my list of top 3 South East Asian countries…up there with India (who owns my heart) and Nepal. It’s really that great. The biggest question is how will the new influx of tourists that are expected in the next year (now that the UN travel sanctions have been lifted) change this spectacularly untouched and magical country.  It is currently a real WOW!!!! I’ll try and upload my blog for this leg over the next day or so.  We are heading now to Sri Lanka (another internet wasteland) so  not sure how easy it is going to be to get my blog out.. but I will try.

We started off Day 1 - of our 4 Days in Burma / Myanmar – in Yangon (or Rangoon).   Our hotel was AMAZING.. one of those take-your-breathe-away places.  All I wanted to do was sink into the beautiful pool and nap under the umbrellas .. but no.. there were scavenges to do and points to get… so off we went. We ended up spending less than 2 hours of awake-time at this oasis – very sad!! 

Yangon is a big, bustling city but with more character than most and some great Pagodas.  We spent most of the first afternoon going to a market to buy soccer balls and school supplies and taking them to a Boy’s School (euphemism for orphanage of abandoned children).  We played with the kids (Angel organized a complete soccer game with teams and rules and everything) and then handed out the school supplies - one by one - to a group of the 5 and 6 year olds. The look on the kids’ faces, as we gave them a lined notepad and single pen, was like we handed them a bag of candy.  The administrator of the home told us that their allocated budget is 12 cents each day for each kid… TWELVE CENTS..!!!!... It breaks your heart.

My favorite part of Yangon? It’s where "The Lady" lives.  We – of course - had to go and take a picture in front of her house. I’m totally impressed with Aung San Suu Kyi and really wanted to jump the fence and just shake her hand.  Everywhere we went in Myanmar, there were pictures of her and kids wearing T-shirts with her face.  She is clearly beloved by the Burmese people.

That evening we had to go to a meditation center, learn to meditate and then actually meditate for 2 hours.  We arrived at a center to find that it was women’s only.  No panic.  The Head Nun gave us special permission for Rainey to enter.  A very nice lady – with very good English – then walked us through the fundamentals of Thai meditation (which involves a lot of calm breathing and emptying-the-mind). We then did one hour of walking meditation (stepping slowly and deliberately, back and forth, in the yard of the meditation center with over a hundred other women)  That was not so bad. It was the second hour that was my downfall. That session was inside this huge hall – with no air conditioning and temperatures over 100. We had to sit cross-legged on the floor and the Head Nun walks back and forth in front over everyone. She is the designated “No-Wiggle” police.  And worst of all… they made Rainey and I sit in the very front so everyone could clearly observe my total inability to sit still for an hour.  Plus the mosquitos were out in full force.  I tried the “Eat, Pray, Love” concept of watching the mosquito land on you, and bite you, and stay totally still through the experience but abandoned it after the first 3 or 4 bites. Then I entered full itch-and-move-and-crampy-legs phase. Forget calm breathing and empty minds. I was moving and jumping every minute or so.  I give myself a solid F- for  meditation.  I suck at it. But it was quite an experience.

Here’s the biggest problem with Myanmar.  The country is dirt poor and they are apparently determined to make everyone who visits fully experience that condition. How do they accomplish this? They make it impossible to spend money. First, there are no ATMs.  Second, there are no credit card facilities. Third, the little bit of cash that you have scrounged together before you enter Myanmar is consistently rejected because you have committed the cardinal sin of “breaking the face” by folding the bill in half.  Lest you laugh, let me assure me that I am deadly serious.  Every US bill (whether $1 or $100) is carefully inspected to make sure that there is no crease, mark, writing, tear or – worse of all – a fold down the center of the face of the person on the bill. Any “broken face bill” is summarily rejected. And rejected. And rejected.  So you enter Myanmar with what you believe is enough cash for your time there. Then 2/3rds of your money is rejected.  And suddenly… you are ordering street food and seriously considering whether you can actually afford that bottle of water that could save you from complete dehydration.

I am a dumb-dumb head and seemed to have left my laptop computer charger in Burma... URGGHHH... So unless I can figure out a solution (or April can save my butt) I may be out of contact for a while now.  That sucks because I have amazing pictures and stories about Bagan, Mandalay and Ingle Lake... Hope I get to share them.  Here's just one of the photos.... From dawn in Ingle Lake.... And from Mount Popa (outside of Mandalay).. and yes, we had to climb to the temple  on the top (of course) !!!!

Taiwan to Burma

This will be short and sweet as we are in the airport heading for our next spot... BURMA... where there will be apparently NO internet options. So I'm trying to get this out before we board.

Our second day in Taiwan was spent going to Takoro Park to hike the Takora Gorge. It was still rainy ... but amazing scenery. We would literally turn

a corner in this remote area and come upon a temple or monastery high in the hills.

And the funniest scavenge of the day... eating Bar-B-Q snake at a night market. Angel is really digging in as the meat is so tough that you have to literally gnaw the meat off the bone.

We are heading now to BURMA.... Yes, one of my bucket list countries. Since no-one has really been allowed to go there in the past few decades we are the blind leading the blind. I can't wait.

Gloomy Taiwan

After a long flight, we arrived to overcast skies and rain in Taiwan. A pity, but the weather did not dampen our excitement to get out there and start exploring. We came to Taiwan on Great Escape four years ago (with Ben and Nanny) so we deliberately avoided doing any of the same scavenges. There is always so much to choose from on each leg than you can never get more than a fraction of the adventures done. And Bill (the event producer) had added a bunch of new stuff to the scavenger list. We are in Taiwan for two days but this leg is split over two days. So we had until 9 PM tonight to go out and conquer the first day and we will get a new book of scavenges for tomorrow.

As soon as the leg opened, we went to the train station and got out of town. We went down to Hsinchu City on the super speed Fast Train. It moves like a flash of light yet, inside,

it’s like you are barely moving. We had to visit the City God Temple where a happy golden Buddha reigns over a temple that is literally in the middle of a street market. You walk through a throng of vegetable sellers to enter this wonderful temple.

We also had to find the East Gate of the original city, which now resides in the middle of a bustling roundabout!!!

Taxi driver roulette… This scavenge is to ask a taxi driver to take us to a restaurant that he likes and eats at regularly with his family.

I’m pretty sure much of that got lost in translation but our taxi guy did eventually drop us at a locals place where you order meat and vegetables and cook it for yourself on an open charcoal fire built into the middle of your table. The selection of meats was hysterical: chicken fingers, beef cartilage, lamb intestine (need I go on). Angel chose pork cheek meat (which was not awful as the name implies – just a little tough and sinewy).

After Hsinchu City, we had to split from Angel and Emily as the new rules only allow two teams to scavenge together for 4 scavenges each day. (URRGGHHH). And you can now only do one bonus per day. I hate that second rule as I really love the bonuses. Big cities do not often touch my heart. It’s getting off the beaten track - with the bonuses - that makes this trip so special for me. So I really don’t like the new restriction on how many of those you can do each day.

Rainey and I then chose to go to this wonderful little town outside of Taipei called Yingee. In the heart of the town there is a cobbled street filled with ceramic shops and kilns and potters. It was - unfortunately - pouring with rain at this point as that area of town was great and I’d have loved to just wander around longer.

We had to get a “treat” at this super-neat restaurant called Grandma’s where all of the food and drinks come “

dressed up.” Here’s my tea-time snack: hot chocolate and waffle. Almost too pretty to eat!!!

Tonight, we had to find something “on a stick” to eat at one of the night markets. Some of the gross-est things are served on sticks in South East Asia.

I was panicked. Then I found a vendor selling candied strawberries (just like candied apples but they use strawberries instead). YEAH… My Taiwan stick food was actually good. But I was not saved for long.

The next scavenge was to eat “stinky tofu” at the same market. I’ve eaten it before and it was awful but not disgusting. Shilin Night Market stinky tofu is gut-wrenchingly terrible . Fried up and covered with pink slime… it is the worst smelling and tasting thing ever. I gagged and almost threw up on the first bite. YUCK – YUCK – YUCK!!!! What an awful experience.

We also had to go into a convenience store and find examples of food that you would never see in the US. How about seaweed chips? Or Almond Fish (where they take dried little fish and pop them in their mouth like nuts)?

Observations:

1. Taiwan is clearly grappling with the difficulties of converting a culture from squat toilets to Western toilets. In most public restrooms, there is a choice (Honestly? Who chooses to squat when you can relax on a real toilet and do your business?).

But the signs are hysterical: (a) Do not climb on the western toilet and use it as a squat toilet; (b) Do not squat in front of the western toilet and pee on the floor…. Move back and sit on the toilet.

And yes, I did have some fleeting worries about arrest and interrogation for being the creepy pervert who is actually taking flash photography in the restroom.

2. You know you are back in Asia when the roof tops are fully decorated with scary dragons and brightly colored beasts.

I LOVE THIS PART OF THE WORLD.

And here's a weird one... Bill told us yesterday that the very next place that we go has NO ATMs, no way to get money and we need to bring $800 US cash (per team). Where in the world is that??? I'm betting Papua New Guinea (but probably just because I like to say those words together... they sound exotic coming out of your mouth).

San Francisco

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco…. Mark Twain

We arrived in San Francisco to find that it was FREEZING. Like 40 degrees freezing. I am fully packed for SouthEast Asia… warm, tropics. Freezing and windy was not on my agenda. In just two days I have worn virtually every layer of clothes I have and I’ve still been cold. We arrived with varying levels of luggage. Rainey wins for packing the lightest (and it is an award of which he is particularly proud) with Angel and Emily a close second. I was clearly in last place until we saw David and Natasha’s luggage and then I was redeemed. My trunk is DEFINITELY lighter than their trunks (Thank Goodness… as I was fully sick of Rainey’s condescending comments about the size of my suitcase).

On Friday, we took the boat out to Alcatraz to tour “The Rock.”The first night we went to eat at a DARK restaurant, which is exactly as it sounds. We ate in the pitch black, served by blind waiters. It is TOTALLY DARK. You cannot even see your hand in front of your face. There is no difference with your eyes open or shut. You expect your eyes to adjust to the dark. They do not. You expect that you will get used to being totally blind. You do not. You expect that it be the same as eating in a regular restaurant. It isn’t. The food tastes different. You talk louder. You end up with food and sauces all over your hands and butter in your hair (and no, I have no idea how butter landed in my hair… but it did). It was a great and unique experience and we had a blast.…

It was a beautiful day so the boat ride out was nice and the tour is very informative and way better than I anticipated. But … I hate prisons. I hate everything about prisons: the horror of being locked-up, the lack of control, the gloomy dismal surroundings… and Alcatraz has a strong creepy factor as well. I cannot even imagine being imprisoned there. Talk about really awful.

We then ate lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf and took dozens of photos of the lazy sea lions snoozing in the sun.

At 4:30 PM we had to check-in for our Around-The-World scavenger hunt. It is always exciting to get to meet the other teams and check out the “competition.” There are ten teams this year. Here’s the line-up:

2. Return of the Silver Surfers: Natasha and David (second time on the trip)1. Lawyers without borders: That’s Rainey and I.

3. 3. . Young Guns: Rainey’s daughter Emily and her boyfriend Angel (Emily came on this trip last year so she’s the veteran of their team)

4. 4. Mad Dogs: Kit and Joanne. They are a great couple from Canada who have been on the trip twice before with us and whom we LOVE. It was great to see them again and swap stories.

5. 5. Wyoming Wandering: Brent and Sue. Brent is a retired geography teacher who literally knows EVERYWHERE in the world. Sue is a retired nurse. They are super fit.

6. 6. Kiwis: A father and son team from New Zealand.And by that I mean not just regular get-out-and-jog-a-little fit. Brett did a marathon in Antartica and a 150 mile run in Saharan Africa. Sue walks 1,000 miles each year. Yes, that kind of fit. WOW !!! Talk about intimidating. (47)

7. 7. Sydney Sisters: A team of sisters from Australia. One sister is a VP for Starwood Hotels and has traveled the entire globe for work. The other sister heads the lab that tests all food for its glycemic content. They are great and very excited about the competition.

8. 8. You are not in Antigua any more: A couple from New Zealand. She is a teacher. I’m not sure what he does for a living. (48)

9. 9. A father / son team from California. Dad is a lawyer and a friend of Bill’s.

10. 10. A team of singles. One guy is from Louisiana and the other is from Australia. They met for the first time yesterday.

We got told at check-in that –rather than heading straight out for the Far East - we would spend all day Saturday in San Francisco doing challenges here.

And Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day… sunny but cool. We had dozens and dozens of things to choose from. We walked on the Golden Gate Bridge, ate Dim Sum in Chinatown, rode the cable car from beginning to end, and trekked up and down so many hills that I think my feet may well drop off. When we checked in at the end of the day, we found out that our first destination is…. TAIPEI, TAIWAN. We leave in 5 hours…!!!!!

GREAT ESCAPE 2012: Fifth Time is a Charm

Just a week away from our FIFTH (count it.. FIFTH) Great Escape adventure. We went out shopping today and got all of our last-minute items. Ready to start organizing this weekend. I have made a firm promise to myself to pack LESS stuff this time... but I say that every year and then, at the last moment, I panic and start throwing in stuff that I never use. And I curse every extra pair of socks all through the hard legs where we have to haul our luggage with us for days on end. You would think that I would learn from my prior mistakes.