Myanmar thoughts

Greetings from Myanmar! I think out of all the countries I have visited in southeast asia...this one was the biggest culture and standard of living difference that I have experienced. The men here all wear towel like skirts called longees and so do the women and the cars are all 20 years old it seems. There are no big shopping malls or chain stores/restaurants and poverty is everywhere. It is seriously like stepping back 50 years. But we went to a temple today and it was the grandest most beautiful untouristy thing I have ever seen.

I haven't been eating
a lot lately because my mom refuses to eat at places that are outside or
the local food stalls by the road...something about food poisoning.But
honestly if like 95% of the population eats at those places it can't
possibly be that bad. It probably is where the best food is too! But in
Myanmar about 95% of places are like that, so it might become an issue.

However, I'm excited to see more
of Myanmar though! It's a good place to do some soul searching and just
reflecting about life as we know it...because it is SO differnet here it
seems. I'm heading back to the airport and flying to a different part of
Myanmar in a couple hours

so I am in another part of Myanmar right now...my mom and I were
supposed to rent a boat today and go out to this lake...except I got
really sick and had to spend all day today in bed! Doesn't that stink? May
have spoken too soon about the food hehe. I have a fever and just spent
today reading The Da Vinci Code while everyone else at the hostel went to
the lake and had fun. It's a pretty good book though I must say.

Yesterday I was freaked out on the plane
because it was a propeller plane and I have never taken one that small
before. The airport we landed in was literally in the middle of nowhere,
as it was just a house surrounded by grassland...it took an hour on a
sketchy taxi ride to get to this lake! But it was cool as we got to pass
through villages and see oxen pulling carts and the like.


I was literally in bed the entire
day and night! well...besides the hour when I was put into a jeep and sent
to a doctor in town. I haven't been this sick in a while actually. This
doctors office, let me tell you, is like nothing you have ever seen before
(at least I haven't seen it before). It was about the size of two of your
rooms, and on the dirt caked walls were hanging cobwebs. It was dark and
all the tools like thermometer and scissors and whatnot were just strewn
across this old wooden table. I really hoped he cleaned the thermometer
befor he stuck it in my mouth...it wasn't a disposable one and can you
imagine all the mouths it has b een in? The doctor himself was just in an
undershirt and didn't know English that well. But whatever he gave me some
medicine. I took the medicine later that night and it made me puke!What
kind of medicine does that? so sketch. Aiyyiah i think i just have to wait
this one out. but the cool thing was riding in a Jeep..that was fun,
despite feeling sick, riding in a jeep is almost always a blast. So today
I just spent it again resting and started on another book, The Life of Pi.
It's quite famous in the states and pretty good so far. It's about a boy
who is stranded in the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with a hyena and a
tiger.

Yesterday though still weak in the stomach I climbed into a speedboat and
went around a beautiful lake which was pretty awesome. It was huge,
serene, and filled with...floating tomato gardens and rice patties!
Surrounding boats around us had fishermen and people picking seaweed. We
stopped at several markets and some factories that showed us how cloth,
cigars, and umbrellas were made (a bit random but it was pretty
cool...seeing things transform from raw to good). But my favorite part was
just cruising around the lake and wishing you were there too. I think you
would like it...the water was blue and calm and clear so you can see the
fish and seaweed below if you look hard enough, and the skies had birds
with funny yellow beaks... and people waved as they passed by on other
boats. The village probably has some of the nicest people on the face of
this earth...when it was time to leave i was so sad to leave the
guesthouse because they treated us like family there!

I'm so sorry about the internet situation... it takes literally one minute
to get a page to load! I don't know what to do about it. Hopefully when I
leave Myanmar in a few days and go to Cambodia, it will be different.

The lake where I was at and actually Myanmar in general has probably been
the country most different to what I am used to.

Today I woke up at 620 to catch a plane and now I am back in the
capitol...it's much more crowded, dirty, and overall poor than the village
but our hotel is right smack in the center of everything so it's nice. My
mom read an article about people here using fabric dye instead of food dya
in the food and it is making people sick or something. So now i have no
idea what we are going to eat!

Well
like i said, I just got back from Myanmar and am back at the same hostel
in Thailand (if you ever find yourself in bangkok... i have a good hostel
for you) i hope that we will be able to use the webcam soon...as soon as i
find an internet place with one and figure out how to use it...my face
will be in that cam before you can say cheese! hopefully it will work =)
are webcams hard to set up?

Myanmar overall was the most different experience...it made me really miss
the luxuries of Singapore and home...just simple things like having
consistent electricity (i was showering and everything just blacked out!)
or having internet that works and a workable infrastructure...i definitely
appreciate those things a lot more now.