In true public transportation mode, I decline invitations from friends and neighbors to take me to the airport. Instead I take the Long beach 91 bus, the metro blue line, the mtro green line, and the final shuttle bus to get to Los Angeles International airport. It takes about an hour to do.
At Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport I catch a free shuttle to a hotel near the airport since it is midnight. When I get to the hotel I discover that I have left the cable connecting my camera to my laptop at home so I'll have to go find a cheapie somewhere. I watch some television until about 1 am on Tuesday morning and aim for sleep.
I spend the majority of Thursday just hanging out. My lower back is sore - probably from the beds in this new hotel that are as hard as the floor. Or maybe from the long flights on the previous days.
Except that I try to get through Thai immigration/passport control and now they don't like the condition of my passport. So I go into the story again and finally they say you are missing your Thai departure card. The agent is right - I have lost my departure card. So I leave the line re-fill in another departure card but now I'm stuck with a different passport control officer who is sitting right next to the first one. They are both speaking in rapid Thai that I cannot understand but they ARE pointing to the passport with strings falling off it and the illegible nature of the Myanmar visa. But they give me my departure stamp and I'm headed for the airplane gate for Yangon, Myanmar.
As I give my tattered and smudged passport to the Burmese immigration lady, I give her the traditional "min ga lar bar" Burmese greeting with my hands pressed together in front of me and a slight bow. She smiles and returns the greeting and this gets things rolling in the right direction. But son she's looking through the passport and calls another immigration lady over. She's a bit younger, but I give her the traditional Burmese verbal and gestural greeting and she also smiles and returns it. The two ladies are talking in Burmese (which I don't understand at all) and they are both pulling strings off the passport one at a time until the second one starts talking to me in English about my passport. I explain to her the tatterered condition and point out the pre-approved visa from the Republic of Myanmar Embassy in Washington, DC. They both end up smiling at each other and I get my stamps to proceed. I am now in Myanmar (again)!
I get up at 6:30 in the morning after having a nightmare that my house is under water and that there are plumbers digging around the entire yard. When I get out of bed there is water on the floor of my hotel. I almost slip and fall on the first step out of bed but hold on upright. Is the nightmare and hotel floor water a premonition of some sort? Later the hotel workers explain to me that they sometimes have this problem after heavy rains and when he air conditioning runs all night.
At 1 pm Shane is supposed to come to my hotel but it is pouring rain like crazy! The American midwest or Cambodia have nothing on the rain onslaught levels. We were supposed to go to the famous Shenwe Dagon Pagoda but we change plans to grab a taxi to an idnoor mall and pick up some of the supplies that we've been talking about. Except that it is idfficult to get a taxi so we end up walking under umbrellas and through foot deep puddles to a place where taxis hang out and we can get a reasonale price. I slow us down quite a bit during the shopping because I want to take the time and study all of the Burmese products or American products marked in the Burmese language. When Shane points out the salon where he ges his hair cut and colored and he tells me it costs $3, I almost fall over. I have to explain hat the cheapest haircuts in the USA at a place like Supercuts is $20. And now he almost falls over. But the rain quits and we walk over to a pagoda.
Shane heads for home and I get a taxi for the hotel. The taxi driver learned English in India (though he is Burmese) and we spend the traffic jam time jabbering away about economics and learning and work and neighboring countries. I have a slow relaxing evening in advance of a long Saturday.
Saturday starts as a disaster. After getting up and having breakfast, Shane meets me at the lobby of my hotel near 10 am to go buy an iPad. But various shops don't accept credit cards or an expensive price and we must have taken 5 taxi rides and done a lot of walking before changing enough money to the right currency and finding he right price. Finally Shane has his iPad. As the people at the shop set the iPad up all of the salespeople, who are young Burmese women, wantt to talk with me either in their very limited English skills or through Shane. So we spend almost an hour having the iPad set up properly and a screen saver put on and a case and talking about things. By the time we finished the entire transaction the daily Yangon downpour has started and the young Burmese salespeople have given me the nickname "Never-Ending Smile".
Shane and I grab umbrellas for the sun now and walk over to two pagodas - one with a huge Buddha image (or statue) and called the white pagoda. (Though I don't know why because it isn't that dominantly white.) Since we are near the outskirts of Yangon, rather than downtown, I get a lot of looks because I am a foreigner and I don't see a single foreigner on this excursion to Shane's home area. But I greet so many people in the Burmese language and they cannot help but smile with me. Finally we rest for a bit at Shane's home before I grab a taxi and go back to my hotel - dripping in sweat from the intense heat after the rain.
After we finish at Shwe Dagon pagoda I check out of the hotel and take my things via taxi to Shane's house. I'm greeted again by many people and I hang out while students come and go (even on Sunday). When Shane goes to teach his pupils for 90 minutes I have interesting conversations with Shane's mother and a former teacher and later a classmate. Near 5 pm we grab a taxi and go to the bus station for a 6 pm bus to Mandalay. Except that Shan'es brother-in-law bought the tickets for Saturday, not Sunday. So we have to buy more tickets. The bus ride that was described to me as a 6 hour ride becomes 9 hours as we arrive in Mandalay at 3 am on Monday morning. A short taxi ride where the taxis drivers do not know where to go because this is a new hotel gets us to the hotel at 3:30 am.
Near 1 pm one of Shane's friends takes us via motorbikes to the largest pagoda in Mandalay. We spend a couple hours in the mid-day heat walking around the pagoda, saying prayers as necessary, and greeting the Burmese people who are probably used to seeing foreigners here but not being greeted in their own language. After a while we sit in the shade with cold refreshments and talk before heading back to the hotel (because Shane's friend has students to tutor).
Tuesday is blazing hot in Mandalay so we run some errands including buying gifts for Shane's mother (who has never been to Mandalay though she has lived her entire life in Myanmar) and her students. We also buy a bus ticket for the return run to Yangon on Wednesday. Because of the heat it is a slow day until 8:30 pm.
When we stop at the hotel Htet suggests that we take a short trip to the royal palace. So away we go. But before we can get to the exact spot that we want Ko has a flay front tire on his motorbike. With a various combinations of phone calls and tag-riding, Ko gets his front tire fixed in 30 minutes or so. While the repairs are occuring the rest of us take walk along the moat of the royal palace (that we actually passed on the way to Mandalay Mountain the previous day). As we are walking Shane tells me not to greet anyone or talk to anyone. From the previos night's driveby and today's walkby, I can see that there are many unsavory types hanging out here including money boys and money girls. At one point we turn around from our walk and just go sit by the original flat tire spot and wait out the repair. When the repair is finished Shane and I get dropped off at the hotel before midnight.
This last hotel is pretty much the worst of the bunch, so its fortunate that it is only for one night. The air conditioning is strong, but everything else is very antiquated and broken down and the Internet is slower than can be believed. It takes minutes to try and load a simple yahoo mail login form. It's actually what I expected most of the hotels to be like in Myanmar.
On Thursday I have a bit of a sore throat so I just hang out at the hotel and don't do much until it is time to head over to the airport. I get to the airport early (as usual) and meet up with Shane. He has insisted on coming to the airport for a short visit and seeing that I get away okay. But the wait is long and he has to leave to go teach his students before I even check in for the flight. We say our goodbyes, I give him (most) of the rest of my Myanmar money, and pray to make it past the airline ticket agents and Myanmar immigration with the tatterred and washed-out passport. But this time I zip right through.
I get to the hotel and check in and Karl is not in his room. I call Mr Tree and get a shock when it turns out that Karl and Mr Tree went to the airport to meet me and are waiting for me at the airport. I just can't stop from laughing at the situation and I finally give them my room number and they say they will come back to the hotel and my room soon.
On Friday Karl and I head for the Ekimai bus station and get on a bus for Pattaya because he has a Thai friend who lives there. When we get to the hotel we check in and call Karl's friend. She in turn calls my friend Tree who is now mad at us because we were supposed to wait at Ekimai for him, not Pattaya. He waited at the Ekimai bus station for an hour before turning back and going home.
On Saturday everyone sleeps a bit late but I get up and have breakfast at the hotel and then wait for others to go. Karl and P have lunch while I just have a Sprite since I had breakfast (and they did not). Near 1pm Karl and I go in search of a department store for supplies while P goes to get books for study. On the way walking to the department store I strike up a conversation with two Thai people and soon there is the possibility of haning ou with them tonight also. I tell them to call my room and we can see if we can work something out. I have more luck at the department store than Karl does as I get all of the supplies that I need while ne can't quite find a replacement travel bag for one that has just ripped along he zipper as we checked into this hotel.
We get a ride to the second club and there is also good house/techno/trance music playing though the club is packed with tables (to get people to spend money on drinking) rather than an open space for a dance floor. This music is too good though so Karl and I move a few tables around and create some space to at least move around to the music. A few other people follow suit but the tables are still there. We have fun until only about 1:30 and we walk on back to the hotel.
Later on Sunday we go wandering around Pattaya to see a movie. The times don't fit our schedule well so we eat dinnr first and hang out. By this time I am ready for sleep and I beg off of the movie - arriving back at my hotel at 8:35 pm. (I probably would have fallen asleep during the movie anyway.)