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Offline in Myanmar

Ok so I am very much in a backwater here in Yangon, Myanmar - or as many of you will know it as Rangoon, Burma.


I have been unable to exchange $600 USD (mostly as my notes from cash machines in Cambodia were marked, torn or creased!) so far but am hoping that a friendly departing Canadian's crisp 100 dollar bills swapped, ensure I can see this seemingly undiscovered country!

ATM's are non existent here, as is wifi. So this is my last chance to let you know I am going off piste for a month.Also my mobile is no longer working - it seems the only place in the world without a shared network agreement.This is what backpacking is supposed to be! Ahhhh no ringing in my ears or incessant tapping on the bus next to me and dog barks from sms's!

I've meet a cool Spanglish woman called Ayesha and we are planning to travel upriver to Bagan to see the many temples, then up to Mandalay to see the political activists the Moustache Brothers and east to the hill tribes and hiking to Inle Lake. it should take the best part of 2.5 weeks.

Unfortunately my ideas of winging it would mean I would be sleeping in the streets (or police station as some reports are coming back) real with hotels booked with no infrastructure for the overflow of toursits now here since the peace talks have been brokered with the military regime (and Air Asia flys from Bangkok for $50!). The people I have met so far are so friendly and by all reports it is THE safest place to visit with no personal attacks, thefts and only few suggestions of scams, except with the train officials which I will not be encountering on the bus. In fact today I watched 3 foreign girls all cautiously ignore a gentleman! All I could think, was of a man from Mum's Lions group being ignored and how affronted he would feel. Oh Buddhism you may have got it right with the people of Myanmar, sorry us Westerners are so damn rude from our other experiences.

Can't wait to tell you about it all in due course. Until then, have a wonderful Waitangi Day on the 6th and a brilliant February with kids back to school in NZ and the end of winter nigh in the Northern Hemisphere. Miss all my wonderful friends and family madly but alas, there is an adventure to be had.

Big Love X




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Location: Yangon, Myanmar

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