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I am late starting this blog as so far we seem to have had very full days with little time to spare. Then next thing was I tripped on the uneven path in the hotel grounds last Thursday and broke my wrist (right hand) so all in all I am way behind. Not to worry. Onwards and upwards, though this will sound a bit terse as my typing will necessarily be difficult.
We started our trip in Bangkok which of course we have visited before. We set out the first day and enjoyed walking the narrow streets across the river from the hotel again . Needless to say they were unchanged in so short a time. Same sweet musky smell in the air. Shops remain crammed to the hilt with sundry multi colored goods spilling onto the pavement and the same tinny music in the background. It was nice going back. We spent a day and a half there and bought a couple of things we needed for the trip before meeting friends Caren and Dougie and flying up to Yangon.
We were met at Rangoon airport by our guide Kin who drove us off into the crowded Yangon streets eventually ending up at the home of Aung San Suu Kyi where she was kept under house arrest off and on for about 15 years. We were only able to see the outside which was large and plain. If it knew how famous it was to become I dare say it would have made more effort. The visit promoted a lot of questions as you might imagine. Then we went off to see the National Museum of which artifacts included a large collection of local tribal costumes. There are many different ethnic groups here in Burma which I may give you some detail of later but for us, at this stage of the journey, the most apparent differences in the people here in Yangon are more between those who are poor and those more comfortably off and of course between the ordinary people and the monks. We will travel to the many regions of the different ethnic groups later in our tour but meanwhile the only costume of note is the brown robes worn by the Buddhist monks. They are to be seen everywhere we go. This may be the time to point out that the number of Buddhists in the population stands at about 90 per cent. Christians and Muslims make up the rest. I think Muslims make up less than 2 per. Cent.
While in Yangon we also visited Schwedagon pagoda which is the holiest of the pagodas and is built over the shrine of Buddha's relics ( Schwe = gold and Dagon= three hills). We were asked if we'd like to walk around the site 3 times (everything is in 3 s) but it's quite a large area so gave that a miss. Instead we anointed our birth animals 3 times as is customary. Dad's was some strange mystical beast, you two had a dragon and I had a guineapig. Guineapig I felt lacked a certain gravitas. A certain fair handedness seems to have been absent when doling out my day don't you think? Not likely to start you out on life's journey with confidence is it ................ a guineapig.
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