Rainy day movie day

Its been raining all weekend, so on Saturday, Andrew and I finally bought a DVD player. Yahoo! Most teachers have one and they're great for Myanmar for watching movies or catching up on an entire series of a television show. The average price for one is around $35-$40. The average price of buying a DVD here is about $1.
I've never been a big television watcher and neither is Andrew, unless of course the history channel is on, but we get very few channels here so it will be nice to pop in a movie from time to time or watch an episode of "The Office," when the mood strikes me.
Fun Fact: These are the channels we get.
1-CNN news Asia
2-BBC world news
3-Japanese news in Japanese
4-Korean news in Korean
5-HBO
6-Star movie channel
7-ESPN Asia, which is all soccer all the time
8-Star Sports, more soccer
9-Sports channel, more soccer
10-Discovery Channel (this is pretty good but they do a lot of repeat shows)
11-DW Deutsche Welle
12-Japanese Channel
13-Another Korean Channel
14-Burmese Monk Chanting Channel (all monks, all chanting, all the time)

So, the pickings can be slim at times. Because movies and tv shows are so inexpensive, many people have a large collection of them. We have plundered through our friend's Matt's collection. And this is what we have on temporary loan. The 5th season of 6 Feet Under (We have both seen it but it is so amazing), BBC series about life on Planet Earth (a lot of great nature documentaries), a 16-in-one movie DVD (Which is 16 movies somehow crammed onto one DVD-this one has Godfather I and II, Silence of the Lambs, and a lot of other scary movies), Lord of the Rings, and a movie about WWII called Letters from Iwo Jima.

Overall life is pretty good here. The one thing we do miss, Andrew especially, is watching football on Sunday. Da Packers! Asia is soccer obsessed, along with the rest of the world, and American football is hard to find. Some of the men at our Hotel are even looking into buying a satellite dish just to get the football season in. Desperation people, serious desperation!

On an unrelated note, as we were channel flipping over a leisurely Saturday breakfast, we came across a Brewers vs Braves game. Very exciting for us Wisconsinites! I am sad to report though that no sausage race was shown.

Now where are my high water pants?

We live right next to Inya Lake and when it rains heavy for a few days, the water rises. And as you can guess, in certain parts of Yangon there were flooding problems. We live on higher ground near Inya Lake so we were fine, but other parts of the city close by to where we live did not experience this luck. In order to get a taxi to go downtown, Andrew and I had to wade through the water to get to a dry spot. All the flooding should disappear in a day or two, but it has taken charge today.

A first for a Wisconsin Girl

Due to constant heavy rains for the past three days, school is getting out early at 1pm today due to possible flooding.

Cut Cut, Snip, Snip

Last Saturday evening, Andrew and I decided to get our haircut in preparation for my brother’s wedding we would be attending on October 11. We asked various fellow teachers where would be a good place to get a haircut. After a good recommendation from our friend Peter, we finally decided on a place called Tony Tun Tuns. They have stylists who have trained in Bangkok and have a few people who have experience cutting Western hair. We thought this would be a good sign.
We were in downtown Yangon on Saturday evening and walked to Tony Tun Tuns, which was a few minutes walk from our friend’s apartment. The salon itself looked fairly normal with kind of early 1990s black and white décor. No waiting was needed as both Andrew and I immediately had a stylist lead us to the hairwashing tables.
Here you lie flat on a table and get your hair washed. This is where SE Asia and American salons differ. The stylists not only washed our hair, they shampooed it 3 times. After the washing, they give you a slightly enjoyable and slightly painful head, scalp and shoulder massage. Sometimes I thought, this feels great and at other moments, I thought “this must be the painful experience described as beer massage.”
Another big difference between SE Asia and America is the lack of a steady stream of electricity. Even in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, there are constant power outages. They never last that long, anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes, but they happen fairly regularly. At the international school where we teach, the power goes out at least once a day and then the generators kick in. You get used to this fact of life fairly easy, but it can be a bit inconvenient at times.
We were getting our haircut after sundown around 6:45pm and the power went out about 5 times during that period. The stylist would be cutting my hair and all of a sudden the power would go out and we would be submerged in total darkness. They would stop in mid-cut and wait. Then the lights would come back on, the music would begin blaring and the cutting would resume as if nothing had happened.
In the end, we both received fairly good haircuts and experienced some good service. I had about three different people working on my hair most of the time: one to style, one to blow-dry and one to brush. As I was the only person in the place with long brown hair, I also had a lot of stylists come by just to touch my hair. Talk about attention-o-rama! The best part was that two haircuts, with a triple shampoo and head/shoulder massage came to the high price of $9. And that is why I love SE Asia!

Sunday stroll

Here are pictures of a close-by street that Andrew and I use everymorning when biking to school or walking to eat at the close-by barbeque. Notice the heavy amount of green foliage, its like a jungle out here. Umbrellas are used to not only stay out of the rain but also to stay out of the sun. A true Burmese lady is never without her umbrella.

Saturday night Barbeque

Like many great cities of the world, Yangon also has sidewalk dining at night. It may not be as refined as Rome or New York, but it carries the same appeal. Here are some images of the 19th Street Barbeque in downtown Yangon. The whole experience consists of an alley-like street that turns into 10 or so sidewalk barbeque restaurants after 5pm. Tasty-food and great people watching.

Country Club Living

Saturday afternoon was spent in true country club fashion. I swam at the pool, graded papers and took a nap. Andrew played tennis with our neighbor and fellow teacher Stewart from New Zealand. Ahhh, this is living.

This blog could use some beauty

and here he is!! Love that husband of mine.

Evil Rain Man

We are in the rainy season, which is nice because it cools down the temperature. I think the rainy season is controlled by a man with a twisted sense of humor though. Someone must be up there in the clouds and as soon as he sees the teachers and students pour out from the school, he gives the signal and BAM!- the rain is coming down and usually hard. Without a doubt, it will begin to rain around 3:05-3:15 everyday, even if it is sunny and beautiful all day. I come home soaking wet on most days when I ride my bike. I’m not necessarily complaining though because it could be worse, it could rain on my way to school in the morning.

Frisbee time

Wednesday is always good because it signals the middle of the week. This week has been going well. On Tuesday, a group of teachers assembled at the Dusit Resort (where we live) to play ultimate Frisbee. Some of men have been trying to organize a Tuesday team with limited success and this was one of the times when enough people showed up to play. We had enough for 4-5 people on a team. There was a constant rain coming down which was both good and bad. Good because it cooled you down from all of the running. Bad because it made the grassy field next to the Dusit into a virtual slip and slide, a mix between swamp and the wet banana backyard water toy beloved by children in the 1980s. Much like a gymnastic competition, ultimate Frisbee consisted of a lot of slides, summersaults and muddy knees. Oh Yeah!!!!

Badminton Champions

For those unfamiliar with Badminton, let your eyes rest on these Badminton Champions.

Club versus Sport

At school, you either have to coach a sport or do a club, so I had my first yoga-stretch and strengthen club today. Only 5 students showed up butwe had a good time! I am also going to do the choreography later this year for the school musical Annie "It's a Hard-Knock life for us."
Andrew is not doing a club, but he is going to be a coach. And yes, you guessed it….drum roll please, Andrew is going to be the new Badminton Coach!!!
No, he has never played badminton, but now is a great time to learn. I guess it is very competitive here. Some weird sports are popular in Asia, like professional cup stacking. Little 12year olds compete to stack 3 sets of 3 cups each and destack them in the shortest amount of time possible. I think the record is around 2.3 seconds. Andrew ordered a book off of Amazon about coaching Badminton, which my mom is going to give us when we see her in Italy. Whenever I imagine Andrew coaching, I think of the movie Dodgeball and Andrew being both Ben Stiller the coach and Vince Vaughn the coach. It is sure to be an interesting year for the team!

Sunday biking

I had a good weekend overall with a few ups and downs. We went out for Indian food saturday night with our neighbors Donald and Kristy, but Ithink it didn't agree with me because I threw it up in the middle of the night. Luckily I felt fine the next day, so Andrew and I went on a long bike ride north of the city to find this big lake. We ended up missing the turn off to the lake and biking around for 5 hours (with a lunch and snack break in between) where I was exhausted and a little frustrated at the end. We got about halfway back to Yangon and then took a taxi back into the city, because I literally could bike no further. The roads are bumpy and both my arms and butt hurt from enduring the rides, not to mention being out in the sun for that long. The redeeming quality about that ride was seeing a wild peacock on one of the side roads and finding a WWII cemetary. The weirdest part was having to go pee at a park in the country and walking to the bathroom, when a group of Burmese stopped me because there was a green and black snake (most likely poisonous but not sure) blocking the bathroom door. Just my luck! I really have to pee and there was a snake there. After the snake was scared away, I could relive myself, but not without some fear of having a snake attack me. We watched the really bad movie Snakes on a Plane last weekend while on the bus coming back from the beach, so the timing couldn't have been worse. See the snake post below for more snake stories. I generally do not feel too nervous about snakes in my daily life, but it can't hurt to be cautious.
After that crazy bike ride, I insisted that Andrew treat me to room service with dessert. So we ordered the special which is a soup, entree and dessert for only $4.50, it is a special for teachers staying at the Dusit resort.
We had chicken and peppers cooked in a sauce with a penne pasta side, some sort of pea soup and a custard dessert. I'm not sure if Andrew enjoyed it but I sure did. Tonight we are going to go out for Thai food at a place that we can walk to in 10minutes. They make a great curry and noodle soup. Other than that, things are good. It rained all day today, which cooled it down. : )It was sunny all weekend, which is strange for the rainy season. I haven't seen any more giant spiders. I think they only live down atthe beach. My stomach has been feeling a lot better, so I think I have mostly adjusted to the new bacteria-Yahoo!

Always scanning the ground near my ankles

This Saturday, Andrew went with our friend Stephen, to help set the Hash course for the afternoon’s hash. They went north of the city to a village area because Stephen wanted to do something rural and rural it was. Andrew came back with tales of running through rice paddies with knee-deep mud and a few close calls with snakes. This was enough to freak him out and for us not to do the afternoon Hash.
Snakes in Myanmar are a scary thing because there are many and they are poisonous. Granted, I have not seen one snake since I have been here especially since I live a major city, but I am sure they are around. Myanmar is number 2 or 3 in terms of the highest number of poisonous snakes. I think it trails Borneo.
The elementary school principal Donny is renting a house with a large backyard somewhere in Yangon. He told a story of his neighbor’s large German Shepard dog getting bit by a snake in the backyard and dying within 20 minutes of the bite! Yikes!
Donny shows dogs and has 3-4 dogs of his own at his place. In order to combat the snakes, he went out and bought 6 chickens for his yard. Supposedly, chickens start to rouse when a snake is near and they will actually corner it or surround it. I’m not really sure if that is true, but it would be worth a try.

1st Friday of September

On Friday, the director of the school Tim threw a going away party for his assistant Miss Phyu Phyu. She is a wonderful, organized and very cheerful woman about my age whom I will really miss even though I’ve only known her for a month. She took a job in Singapore for an international company and this will be a huge step forward in terms of both opportunity and pay. Everyone is happy for her, but sad to see her go.
The party was held at Tim’s and his wife Ann’s 5th floor suite at the Dusit Resort. This is the same place we live as well as about 15-20 other teachers. Being the director of the school, their suite is gorgeous, it opens to a living room with a half-circle of windows that opens to a half-circle veranda. He has views of Inya Lake, the pool, and most of Yangon. You can even see the golden spire of the Shwedagon Pagoda. I spent a good part of the night eating little homemade pizza bits and samosas, drinking wine and rocking on a rocking chair on the veranda enjoying the view.
We left the party around 9pm and took a cab to get some sushi at Samurai Sushi. This place does not have the best sushi in the world nor a great variety but it satisfies the craving when needed. The people who work there are pretty friendly as well as the customers. It is a teeny-tiny place with a 6 person sushi bar and 4 tables. Last time, we went there was a group of about 5 Japanese men there and one had brought his guitar and was playing some nice acoustic music. I’m not sure what he was singing but it was nice to listen to like your own private concert.
After Sushi, we took another cab to the British club, which is part of the British embassy. This is similar to the American club in Yangon, which is somehow related to the embassy. There is a big metal gate that serves as the entry to the British club, which is armed by guards, I believe the British version of the Marines. You have to bring a foreign ID in order to get. Once you are in, you make your way to the clubhouse which is mix of a bar, small restaurant and recreation room. The first Friday of every month, the British club hosts a party where any non-member can come. We have heard that this is the premier social event of the month to go to and its true. There are very few expats in Myanmar compared to the size of the place. No one knows for sure, but there are estimates that there are around 1000 expats in this city of 5 million. That’s a small slice of the population. At the British club, I had never seen so many white people in Yangon and I kept wondering to myself who are all these people? Where do they work? So it was fun in that sense to people watch, meet a few new people and socialize. Because it is such a small population of expats here, you virtually recognize almost every white person even if you don’t know them. Most expats are either teachers at international schools, work for NGOs, work for the UN or work for embassies. It’s a very fun crowd to hobnob with.
For example, on Thursday night, while I was at a ladies book club, Andrew spent the better part of the night hobnobbing with a Bangladeshi man who works for the UN. Our good friend, Stephen, is Dutch and works for a healthcare NGO. Stephen is probably in his early 40s and has some good stories to tell such as the time he was kidnapped in the Phillipines and held for ransom. Luckily, the kidnappers only wanted $4000 and then the Phillipine government/military got on their case and he was released unharmed.
Okay, getting back to British club. It was a happening scene with good music, people dancing, good drinks and good food. I will definitely look forward to attending that event every month. That is about as exciting as Myanmar gets in terms of people watching and nightlife. The funny thing is that you could find that scene in any hipster bar in a city in America, but not so much here because of the small number of expats and lack of bars in Yangon, so the British club is something to be cherished.

Coconut Forest

Deedly-dee

Big Ol'Teeth

Gigantic Spider behind a clock in our room, discovered the day we left!

kiter on the beach

Nwge Saun Beach

Pig on a leash on the beach

The kiteboarder returns

The Beach weekend on the Bay of Bengal was fantastic. The weather was good, it only rained for an hour or two everyday and then the sun shone through the sky. We spent our days swimming in the ocean, boogie-boarding, walking the beach, playing volleyball and of course Kiteboarding (at least Andrew did). Both days, there was wind to kiteboard, which satisfied a long needed urge of Andrews and I was thrilled to see him so happy. I think Andrew is the first person to kiteboard in Myanmar or at least at this beach. Once he started, all the people from the village came onto the beach to watch. Even the school kids were let out of school to check out the gigantic kite in the air.
The town is more like a village surrounded by resorts on both sides of it stretching for a few miles in either direction. When I say resorts, there are about two very nice ones, but nothing compared to the development you would see elsewhere in the world like Cancun or the Caribbean. No resort is over 2 stories and everything is very minimal. There are no snorkeling tours or boat tours or even advertisements.
We stayed in a run-down type of beach bungalow that was overpriced for $40 a night. It was minimal, kind of shabby and only had electricity from 6pm to 6am. Luckily it had air-conditioning during the night as it did get sticky. The bathroom was literally a watercloset in that you stepped down into it and it contained a toilet, a sink and a shower head sticking out of the wall where the water would flow down onto the bathroom floor (no separate area for the shower) and drain out near the sink.
It would have been a great place for $20 a night, but not $40. I think whoever booked the teachers’ getaway got overcharged due to the color of our skin. Andrew and I are going to go back to this beach for a week during our October break and will find something for a similar price but much nicer. The redeeming quality about this place was the funny free breakfasts you would get every morning. The first day was cold toast and cold eggs with a strangely colored yolk and thick, thick coffee I like to call cowboy coffee (we are talking syrup here). The second day was 2 small pork burgers with fries and cowboy coffee. And the 3rd day consisted of thin tortillas with oiled up lentils and spices, and cowboy coffee. You just never knew what to expect here in Myanmar.
The beach itself is not developed, very relaxed and has tons of areas to explore. It is mostly sand except for a few places that have rocks. There are hermit crabs and fiddler crabs everywhere, in addition to the occasional pig on a leash and ox cart on the beach.
We walked to town for dinner and had some good food ranging from the normal stir-fried vegetables with prawn to some new treats like fried clam strips and steamed crabs (the crabs are exactly like Maryland crabs but without Old Bay Seasoning). I saw some gigantic spiders at this beach area, which freaked me out a bit. I don’t think there are deadly but just huge, like the size of your hand. I wanted to wash my hands at one of the restaurants, so I asked where the toilet was and this boy who works there led me to the toilet. Like many restaurants outside of Yangon, the bathroom was a type of outhouse on stilts that I was led to by flashlight. Once there, the boy unlocked the door and gave me the flashlight. When I stepped in, of course there was no sink but there was a gigantic spider in the middle of the squat toilet. Yikes-Stripes! Needless to say, I just held it and didn’t really get to wash my hands.