In Mandalay, Myanmar

We can blog! While in Yangon, Myanmar, formerly Rangoon, Burma, access to our blog was blocked. We just tried again up here, in Mandalay, and the site is unblocked. So, here we go.

For the first two days we were her, Laura was mostly in the hotel, fearful to venture too far from the toilet. for the second, and last two days, Jim had a cold.

This is a frontier town of about one million which is hot, flat and dusty. There is one hill, the 760 foot tall Mandalay Hill, which is a major tourist site as it is the site of several Buddhist religious sites, and at it's foot is the Mandalay Palace and Temple. The only problem is that you can barely see the hill for all the pollution. the smog is really bad here.

We are staying at the Hotel Queen, www.hotelqueenmandalay.com, in the downtown area and so far we have seen one traffic light, in a town of around a million people. There are also no street lights so it gets very dark at night. The only light is from the shops and cars. the electricity is also hit and miss. It goes off frequently and most big businesses, our hotel included, have huge generators for when it does go off.

We found out today, that in making Gin Tonics, the tonic is as expensive as the Gin, as it is imported and the gin is local. That being said, the cost of a mid-range fifth of local gin is only $1.50. Or, just slightly more than a chicken curry chapatti meal.

We were able to call the kids today, since the hotel we are in has a very good internet connection. Again, kudos to Skype. Also, if we want to get up at 5am we can watch a live stream of the Superbowl. Tomorrow, it will be Superbowl Monday here. Also, in this hotel we can stream the oldies station, KCEA, from California.

Jim has found his blueberry danishes here as well as in Yangon, so he is happy. He found a branch of the same bakery that is in Yangon.

To get here we took the overnight sleeper. We left at 5pm and arrived at 10am.

On the train we had a two person compartment, with upper and lower berths.

After arriving we took a trishaw from the train station to our hotel. We piled both of us and both suitcases on it and off we went. Good thing the town is flat.