This place is amazing!!

Things in Yangon are very good. Email hasn’t been working the best, problems with plugs blowing fuses and buying the wrong adapters and having to get new ones and the fact that the Internet is so extremely slow. The other teachers said it is slower than last year and that may be due to the fact that the capital has moved to another city other than Yangon and the internet power has been routed that way as well.
Besides that, there have been no problems with power. The Dusit Lake Resort where we are living is beautiful. The outside looks a little run down, but the rooms are huge with 12 foot ceilings and windows, a huge porch (that looks right into a huge tree- this is good for bird watching but not good for catching a sunset), teak floors and closets with built-in shelves. We have a television that gets BBC, CNN Asia, the Discovery Channel and ESPN. While flipping through this morning, we found a Cubs vs. Kansas city baseball game on; we are hoping we may get football games in the fall.
The only downfall of our rooms is the kitchen. It is small and only has two hotplates, a toaster, microwave, blender and small fridge. We are trying to get the resort to give us pots and pans and bowls and mugs. Right now we only have 3 plates, a casserole dish and 2 forks, butter knives, spoons, etc. This is the first year the Dusit has had these apartments, so they are still some bugs to work out.
We are going to look into buying bikes next week. The gym teacher here is from Colorado and is a bike enthusiast who will take people bike shopping. His wife, another teacher, is about my age, named Kristy, and is fantastic. She lives right across the hall from us and has been fun to hang around with. She may take us to see a famous Burmese rapper tonight. She said the concerts last 4-5 hours instead of the normal 45 minutes in America.
The weird and cool thing about Myanmar is that is seems extremely safe and people are so incredibly nice to you. You almost feel like royalty. People open doors for you, always smile at you, help you with you groceries, help translate where you want to go in town to the taxi drivers. Speaking of which, we take taxis everywhere. To get anywhere in town, it costs between $1-$3. The taxi cabs are beat-up and look like the gypsy cab company in the movie The Royal Tennenbaums. Andrew’s middle school principal is a riot and reminds us of Bill Murray, not the older Bill Murray but the middle-aged one from Ground-Hog Day and What About Bob.
All the men here were longhyis, which are pieces of fabric worn like skirts. It is a very cool look, one I may try to convince Andrew to take on. The people themselves are very modest and polite. They look like a cross between people of Indian descent mixed with people of Thai descent. We went wandering around downtown the other day and it felt like we were in India. There are people everywhere with stalls selling food to bags to junk. It can be very crowded in the downtown area but not where we are living. Even with the mass amounts of people, no one bumps into you or pushes you. A lot of people are interested in practicing their English. We’ve had a number of people come up to us and start a conversation about how we like Myanmar, what we do, where we are going including a young novice monk. At first, like many Westerners, you start to think that this person may be trying to scam you, but they are not. They are just curious and just wanted to say hi. It’s a little crazy.
Since there are very few white people here compared to the rest of Southeast Asia, you are still a novelty in some sorts and it is very nice. I know I said you feel like royalty, but its true. You feel very wealthy and priviledged here, which is so foreign to us Wisconsinites. We can afford to eat at the best restaurants, take taxis everywhere, can easily buy things that would be expensive for the rest of the population and live at these beautiful places. Our resort has this amazing breakfast buffet we went to the first morning because we had nothing to eat and they had everything you could possibly want. It is in this big ballroom with tables overlooking the lake. Someone helps you into your seat and to eat there are fish soups, stirfried rice, noodle veggie stirfry, crab stirfry, naan bread, curries, pancakes, eggs, sausage, smoked fish, yogurt, fresh fruit, granola, cold cuts, pastries and an assortment of juice. This fancy breakfast is only $10 american. This is expensive for Myanmar but still it is incredible for $10. Andrew and I decided to go here for breakfast for special occasions like Canada Day and Presidents Day.
The bathroom in our room is a normal western style toilet, but many toilets elsewhere are very peculiar. There is usually a western style toilet or a squatting style toilet and a spray hose that looks exactly like a kitchen spray hose, used to spray down your sink or wash large pots or pans, attached to the toilet. Now, the weird thing is that, if this spray hose is used to wash oneself, how come there is usually no toilet paper. I don’t really want to sit around in wet britches. As a result, I have acquired the new habit of making sure I have some Kleenex in my purse when we go out.
Lastly, I would like to talk about the weather. It is not that bad. It is very humid but it hasn’t been that hot. We actually turn off the air conditioning in our rooms frequently because it gets to be too cold. It rains everyday, which really cools things off. When the sun is shining outside, it is definitely warm, but it never shines for long since this is the rainy season. So, I guess I would say that it is very tolerable right now.
Both Andrew and I have had some stomach ailments since we’ve been here but nothing too bad. I think we must be just getting used to new bacteria. Hopefully, this will end soon but it’s not anything too serious.
Other than that, we are doing well, enjoying Myanmar and excited about our new year here. It will be a very interesting year!