Thailand Beach Holiday

14.04.2011 Thailand Beach Holiday

Thailand looked beautiful as we hopped on the first of two ferries on our way to Klong Dao Beach on the island of Koh Lanta. Well, what I could see of it through the driving rain which only intensified the further we got on our journey. A neat 12-hour door-to-door trip; we had left our house in Yangon at 6am and arrived at Banana Gardens Hotel at 6pm exactly. This was my first trip to Thailand and I was so excited to be in a place which it seems the entire world has visited. It would probably have looked super exotic had I not already experienced Myanmar’s palm-tree’d lushness but it did have lots of things that Myanmar doesn’t, like banks and ATM’s and real shops and motorbikes, scooters and amazingly decent roads plus the world’s cheapest mobile connection. We picked up a couple of Thai sim cards at the airport for a couple of quid.

By now you know that our stay was blighted with bad weather and in fact we were there during southern Thailand’s worst floods in I don’t know how many years. It rained and rained and rained, every single day. In the beginning it was OK because it was either mornings or afternoons and everything was new and exciting and Alfie didn’t care if he got wet swimming in the sea or wet playing on the beach. Plus our main reason for coming was to hang out with Uncle Tommy and Auntie Anna, Cousin Sarah and her boyfriend Chabbe, Cousin David and of course Cousin William, who is at that gorgeous age of wishing he had a younger brother so was happy to practice with Alfie. And naturally Alfie watched EVERYTHING William did with utter fascination and copied where he could. But towards the end we had a full three day rainstorm and it did get a bit wearing then. Thankfully Alfie never tired of the CBeebies DVD we had brought, though mummy and daddy did...

Banana Gardens was lovely and Annie our landlady looked after us very well, plying us with snacks at every opportunity, especially Alfie of course who had eggs specially bought for his breakfast and was inundated with donuts ona daily basis. Our room was just steps away from a restaurant, a bar and a massage salon, not to mention the beach itself which was naturally gorgeous, as I had been led to expect. It was such a treat to wander up and down and have your pick of restaurants and bars to try out, plus supermarkets and plenty of tourist tat. We did also go into Saladan the main town on a couple of occasions, to eat at the the waterfront restaurants where you could choose your own lobster before they cooked it for you.

The bar next to us was The Indian, widely recommended as THE place to go and though small it was perfect and friendly, with Pas the owner offering us the use of his tuktuk within 5 minutes of meeting him. We spent most nights there as the baby monitor allowed us to stroll over after putting Alfie in his cot. And the tuktuk was magic! A sort of caged side car on a scooter it seated up to, well loads of people and we tootled around in it a fair bit, Alfie sitting either with me in the sidecar or helping Daddy to steer (VERY Thai that). Lounging there on our first night, cocktails in hand, we watched the lightning storm over the seas and felt very lucky and happy indeed. On the second night we were treated to a spectacular display of fire poi by the local Swedish school children (yes, there are 2 Swedish schools on Koh Lanta apparently). It was brilliant to watch groups of five or so 10 year olds do these amazing tricks and not a hair out of place! And of course fire poi look so stunning on a beach. I’m not sure it would have worked so well in Walthamstow town centre, for example.

I indulged in almost daily massages, with varying degrees of comfort and relaxation, and Pete went diving with an old dive buddy for the first few days. There was, for us, a palpable sense of freedom which I hadn’t expected. Not that I feel repressed in any way living as I do quite the privileged life in Myanmar, but I hadn’t counted on feeling quite so free and ‘normal’ being away from Yangon. Just the thought of being able to buy something without really thinking about it (will this appear in the shops again, do I need to buy the entire stock today?) and not having to constantly count money and plan your needs ahead in that way (you can just go to the cashpoint, wow!) was lovely. Having normal internet access and mobile phones and satellite TV felt quite alien. I was SO excited to be able to text again I fired off about 20 texts to friends in the UK but I’m not sure they understood my enthusiasm! Just having information at your fingertips was a relief. For example, with the bad weather we were able to simply check the news reports online and on TV and ask the staff how best to make sure we got our flights. Can’t imagine that happening in Myanmar for one minute.

It made me a bit cross to be honest. What with all the visa hassles prior to coming and feeling MORE homesick than ever having spent time with my brilliant brother and his family I was very down on Myanmar and it’s petty non-existent-but-they-must-be-followed rules and silliness and didn’t want to come home at all. In some ways the rain did us a favour because it meant that despite all that after 10 days I was quite looking forward to seeing our house again and at least being dry for a bit. We had settled into beach life after a fashion and accepted that everything becomes ingrained with sand and that nothing would dry but just remain damp forever and that really you only ever wear a bikini and T-shirt so why did we bring all that stuff with us? But the endless mud took its toll.

Alfie of course had a ball. Even showers were exciting (and mandatory to wash mud if not sand off prior to going in the room) and he was thrilled with TommyAnna as he called them, often chanting TommyAnna in the mornings as if to say ‘when are we seeing them?’ (They stayed in a much posher hotel about 2kms up the beach, kids clubs being essential for a nearly-5 year old). He woke one morning saying ‘hej hej!’ and sounding VERY Swedish. Plus he learnt to play ‘tittut’ (peekaboo) with a lady in the restaurant. I’m not sure I mentioned but the resort was full of Swedes and is often referred to as Koh Stockholm. They even had Swedish menus and food in some places.

Pete and I did the classic tourist thing of eating a mainly European menu; Thai food being very similar to Myanmar food and easily available here in any case. Nope, steaks and pizza for me please! And the inexorable pleasure of being able to order a decent bottle of wine for a reasonable price to go with dinner. One rainy day we even set off in the tuktuk to the next beach and went to the British Bar for a full English breakfast. It was divine and were it not for the fact that we were sitting in T-shirts and sarongs we could have been back in rainy old Blighty.

All in all it was a lovely break and certainly nice to get back to ‘normality’ for a while. Alfie LOVED it all, particularly having more family to fall asleep on (and thanks for the elephant ride Uncle Tommy!) and he passed 2 significant milestones while we were there. The first being that he put himself to sleep. He was so totally exhausted by the endless playing and swimming that he insisted on being put in his cot and being left alone to sleep, sometimes even twice a day! ‘Want more cuddles with mummy or a lie in your cot?’ ‘Cot’ came the tired reply. Now he will even ask for ‘nanights’ when it all gets a bit much for him, sweet! Secondly he mastered the 2-word sentence (which already seems a distant memory now that he strings 3 and even 4 words together, not all comprehensively of course). The most hilarious example was ‘cow shower’ when he got it into his head, following a rinse off with Daddy, that the plastic ride-on cow he had found on the beach needed a wash. He heaved and pushed and pulled and sweated to get that cow up to the nearest tap and give it a ‘cow shower’. He’s determined I’ll say that!

Crazy Days

08.05.2011 Crazy Days

Blimey, hadn’t realised it was a full month since I last posted a blog. Oops, I believe that is terribly bad etiquette in the blogging world and a sure-fire way of losing readers. Seeing as mine are mostly family, it probably isn’t that easy!

In any case our days are getting crazy busy, even without a job for me (though I am on the way to being gainfully employed, more of which later). Take yesterday for example, when the day started with the Aladdin rehearsal at ISY. The show is next week so it was technically a dress rehearsal but unfortunately I couldn’t stay as I had Alfie with me and much as he liked being on stage with the dancing girls, he wasn’t so excited by Widow Twankey and the Ring Slaves (though they do have lovely shiny costumes). So on we went to the American Club for their Americana Country Fair. Which was heaps of fun, especially as we arrived in time for the dog show and one old gent let Alfie feed his lovely, first-prize-winning dog a biscuit. We’d just missed the American Pie contest but were in time to eat the results; pecan pie, chocolate pecan pie and cherry pie, YUM! Or ‘gek’ as Alfie calls it, everything sweet being cake. Except ‘doklat bidkids’ (chocolate biscuits) of course.

We played some fair type games, watched the older boys throw a ball to hit a switch to roll another ball over some plumbing pipes to hit a bit of wood and a counterweight and tip the bucket of water over the Marine soldier sitting underneath. OK, Alfie watched the ball and mummy watched the Marines, though not in uniform sadly.

And the whole getting soaked thing kinda lost its appeal after the rain started. And wow, did it rain! Having ducked under shelter to eat our burgers, corn and slaw, Alfie decided he may as well enjoy the weather and kept most of the crowd entertained by getting absolutely soaked whilst splashing in every puddle he could find (the event took place on the baseball/softball pitch). As if the rain wasn’t wet enough he also found a sprinkler system to stand under, much to everyone’s amusement. He fell face first in the mud a few times but no matter. Mummy too got pretty drenched running around after him and we left a pretty wet taxi behind when we finally got home. Still, lots of fun!

Then Daddy got back from Nay Pi Daw and we barely had time to draw breath before our neighbours invited us round to sample their mojito making skills. Yum again.

And finally, by early evening, I found myself sitting in a basement downtown listening to a string quartet playing some beautiful Mozart, Vivaldi and more modern classics. All led by the music teacher, and my new work colleague, at the Institute for Holistic Learning.

And that was a Saturday, normally a day to take it easy!

It does seem that as we passed the three month mark, all sorts of things clicked into place including our social life and activities. Plus I decided that I need to exercise every day and with such a variety of relatively cheap activities within my reach, now juggle pilates with horse riding and golf lessons. I’d love to do yoga but don’t know when to fit it in! And with three playgroups and a visit to the old folks home every week, it does rather mean that blogging and keeping up with emails home take a back seat. I am not even sure how I am going to fit in a part time job, I mean, how do people find the time?

Mothballs

30.04.2011 Mothballs

They are fond of air-fresheners here; my idea of hell. In fact I think synthetic air-fresheners are the Work of the Devil. I hate them. But being tropical it’s a fairly smelly place and I guess air-fresheners are the easy way out.

Unfortunately, they seem to think that mothballs are a legitimate form of air-freshener. So there is a pervading smell of naphthalene all over Yangon. Taxi drivers will hang a pierced bag of mothballs from what remains of their dashboard, yuck. Some shops will use it to such an extent that you have to walk out as soon as you walk in. A backpacker told me a hotel room she had booked smelled so strongly of it she walked out and found another hotel. Not only was the smell unbearable, she wondered what on earth they were trying to cover up in the first place. And of course they are used for clothes as well. That people wear. Without washing them first. Yeuch! I once had a massage in a place that lent me some loose Thai type clothing, which smelled of mothballs. Oh my days, even if the massage had been spectacular (which it was far from) I could not have relaxed with that smell up my nostrils. And every so often you might waft past a well-dressed Myanmar lady wearing perfume with a distinct aftertaste of… you guessed it, mothballs!

Fade Away and Radiate

02.04.2011 Fade Away and Radiate

I almost forgot to mention the Radiation Unit that greeted us at Yangon Airport on our return to Myanmar. This was only for travellers from Japan you understand. They had to go in the IN door of a big cubicle and come out of the OUT door (I’m guessing). It all looked terribly scientific, what with 8 young things hanging around dressed in white coats and carrying clipboards. Plus one of those scanner things the shops here are so fond of (God knows what they scan for, they always beep and no-one ever gets searched).

I sure did sleep better in my bed that night!

Visa Hassles

02.04.2011 Visa Hassles

Well, what did I expect? A smooth ride? An administrative system that WORKED? Less bureaucracy and more efficiency? What nonsense!

The whole visa situation is so dull and tedious I am loathe to write about it but I have to because it puts some of our experiences into context and in any case impacts our lives (and lives of those around us) to such an extent I can’t ignore it.

Basically our initial visa was for 3 months, which would be extended by another 9 months making a year, providing we didn’t do anything silly like insult the government or something. A relatively smooth process was of course spannered by all sorts of silly things like the fact that they didn’t have an official government for a few weeks so the visa committee didn’t bother having any meetings which means the backlog is enormous. At this time they also decided to introduce another level to the whole procedure so your application now has to go via your sponsoring ministry (in our case Health) to the Ministry of Home Affairs, then Foreign Affairs then something called the FACP which is the cabinet-level committee though no-one knows what it stands for. It’s completely bananas and meant that our very much longed for and planned-well-in-advance holiday to Thailand to spend time with my brother and his family, plus my mum and stepdad (Alfie’s beloved Mormor and Tony) was, well, kyboshed.

When it looked like we may not get our extension before our current visas expired (31st March) we took the decision to leave immediately and at least get just over a week of holiday before coming back on our expiry date. This did mean however that we only saw my mum for one afternoon which was lovely and tragic.

Of course it meant that all the work our landlord had planned to do in our absence had to be brought forward at short notice and would not be finished in time, plus poor old Amber had to come in every day to supervise and help out instead of having the time off with her kids we had intended.

Not only that, but we had a whole bunch of forms and paperwork (and fees!) in order to leave the bloody country too. Good job someone at Pete’s work mentioned this, otherwise how would we know? The trouble with secretive governments is that so much of their processes are shrouded in secrecy that it’s impossible, as a foreigner, to know what is the right thing to do. It’s not like there’s a website you can go to that tells you these things. Plus they seem to change at a moment’s notice though again, how anybody gets to know about this is a mystery.

By far my favourite part of the journey was watching the immigration guy struggle with all our passports and forms. He didn’t have a clue bless him. It doesn’t look terribly authoritarian when a middle aged bloke in crisp white and gold uniform dithers over forms. Eventually, his pen having hovered over it all for a good 3 minutes, he started simply writing down all the numbers he could find. Brilliant, great. I’m sure it must be somebody’s job to make sense of that but I can’t believe the bit of paper with all the numbers on gets any further than the bin.

So, off we went and had a lovely time despite rain and floods (see separate post). On the way back Air Asia got a bit antsy in Bangkok airport and for a full hour told us that Pete would not be allowed to travel as his visa had expired (his stamp looked different to mine and Alfie’s). The officious lady told us that she had telephoned Myanmar Immigration and they had informed her that indeed Peter Wilson’s visa had already expired. What?? Are you crazy? Why did you call them and more to the point why did you believe them? They DON’T KNOW ANYTHING you stupid woman. And you were ALL WRONG as we were finally able to establish (we did, handily, among the mountains of paperwork, have a letter to confirm that our visa extensions had been approved and was wending its way along the system. Just not in time to do anything useful).
And finally, in an ironic twist worthy of some ironic twisty person, when our passports were finally stamped again on the way back into Myanmar, Alfie and I got an expiry date of the same day, i.e. 31st March (so that immigration office does a good job eh?) and Pete got a stamp taking him up to 9th June 2011. RANDOM ain’t the word!

The lovely upshot of all this is that we are now without passports on the eve of the country’s annual holidays and can’t even travel within the country if we wanted to. We are not the only ones, our neighbours are similarly affected and also have a long established holiday to take. Not to mention our other neighbour who has waited 5 months to see her husband and father of her little girl (he is now here on a tourist visa and is STILL awaiting his business visa which he is perfectly entitled to as her spouse). In fact visa hassles, though a way of life here, have increased to such an extent recently that even the NGO’s are struggling to get people in. Some key staff in a World Health type organisation are on first name terms with the tourist visa issuing office in Bangkok, they use it so much. And practically everyone you meet has a visa nightmare story to tell.

Myanmar Immigration Office, I salute you.

Thingyan Expectations

07.04.2011 Thingyan – Expectations

So Thingyan (pron. tin-jan) is almost upon us. It is the annual Water Festival and VERY important in the Myanmar calendar, closely followed by the New Year which is, rather handily, the week after. It’s all to do with moons and Buddhism.

This year it all kicks off on 12^th April when everything closes for 4 days of public holidays. The following week has another 4 days for New Year so, in effect, everyone has two and a half weeks off, result! But when I say everything closes I mean EVERYTHING. A kind of siege mentality has set in, as evidenced by day-long ‘rush hours’ all week, when everyone is stocking up and shopping madly, much as we do for Christmas I suppose. In fact Amber told me today that the nearer to the start of Thingyan you leave your shopping the more expensive it becomes, as the markets hike their prices by 50 or even 100%.

Most expats are leaving the country and we were advised of this some time ago. Hotels and flights particularly get booked up months in advance. However, due to our visa hassles (see separate post) we are stranded. Even flying up to Ngapali Beach is out for us as you have to have a passport to travel. Technically, even driving up to the nearest beach resort, about 5 hours away, is also a problem as they could stop us and check our ID – Alfie and I are currently overstaying our visas, even though the extension has been confirmed and is in the endless paperwork pipeline. We have heard of people being kicked out for just this reason.

So, here we are, stuck in Yangon for the Water Festival. All sorts of dire warnings have come our way, apparently it is chaos and bedlam for days on end. The only time the Burmese are allowed to gather publicly, they make the most of it by staying permanently drunk for days on end (I find this so hard to imagine as they are generally such a sedate and dignified lot). And then there are the soakings. Traditionally pouring water on each other is a good omen but it has of course got out of hand in recent times, so that now the shops are full of not just water pistols but water bazookas and rocket launchers and apparently the festivities centre around the lake so that they can literally drain the lake water for canons and all round drenchings. Incidences of eye, ear and stomach infections rise exponentially at this time, not to mention all the RTA’s as a result of drunk driving (and bless them, most Burmese males can’t drive at the best of times). Foreigners, children, old folk, even babies – no-one is exempt from the water blasts and I for one have decided to wear a bikini if I venture out. With a matching bazooka of course!

Of course we will have to venture out, just to see what the fuss is about. We’re not far from Kandawdgyi (pron. kan-dodgy) Lake and it’s quite a sight we’re told. However, one or even two days is probably enough, four days and even a week seems like overkill. Stock up on chocolate and DVD’s one lady told me.

So, watch this space to see if our expectations were met and if we survived the dreaded Water Festival!

Secretary of the Women's Blingstitute

18.03.2011 Secretary of the Women’s Blingstitute

Yep, I have been elected Secretary of the International Friends Group, mentioned in an earlier blogpost. Not sure how that happened, except it was on their River Cruise event and I’d had a few warm white wines whilst gazing at a gorgeous sunset…

Still, it’s been a while since I sat on a committee and all bad memories have all but disappeared, so perhaps it’s time to give it a go again. The ladies are super friendly and do such fun things; Alfie and I attended a Myanmar rice-stirring ceremony for example, and yesterday I went to visit the Home for the Aged Poor which I really enjoyed. I shall be dragging Alfie to that too!