We met the rest of our trip this morning after breakfast: a retired couple from Sedona, and some engineers from LA with their engineer son. Off we went on our first tour. Eight of us with Chang, our guide, in a bus for 20. We went past our first pagoda, the first of many.
We went to a school and monastery and watched as the boys lined up for lunch. Powhatan, it wasn't. I was amazed at so many boys lining up and eating in silence.
Lunch at a local restaurant for typical Burmese food of a chicken curry, a fish stew, and eggplant and noodles. Burmese refers to only one of the 134 distinct ethnic groups of the country. It is the largest, but that is why the Generals had changed the name to Myanmar, to try to incorporate everyone into the process.
A snooze after lunch(and we were late to the bus), and off to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest in Yangon. Shoes and socks off. There were hundreds of little sub-temples to Buddha on the compound. There were shrines for each day of the week that you were born on; two for Wednesday. There were bells from or for famous rulers. The biggest one was for King Tharrawaddy in the 1850s.
Lots of pictures, but at the end the sun peeked from behind the clouds to light up the golden spires very nicely.
Dinner at the hotel was more curries. I think this will be a recurring theme here.
Early to bed as we have a 4AM wake up call for a 4:45 bus to the airport. Blecch
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1 comment:
Looks like fun! Bring me back some curry please! But the cooked product, not the spice. Just put it in a cooler and pretend it's an organ
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