March 27th,2014

Burma (Myanmar) is one of the poorest and least developed countries in Southeast Asia.  This is largely due to the isolation and stagnation created by their government, the military, World War 2, and civil wars.  It is still mostly uninfluenced by the western culture.  They wear traditional clothing (men wear longyi's) and dress very conservatively.  Many of the kids and women smear Thanakha on their faces.  It is a traditional cream, moisturizer and sunscreen.  It makes them look like they are wearing masks. We found the people to be very friendly, humorous, engaging and inquisitive.  Most of them haven’t seen very many tourists that are my age so lots of them wanted to take photos with me even though none of them had cameras.  Even still, most of the country is off limits to foreigners who can only arrive by plane and must apply for a visa before entering  Burma. 

Less than 1% of the population has internet access and it is mostly in internet cafes, so the internet has been sucky even though our hotel has Wi-Fi. The media and internet are heavily controlled by the government.  Barely any international companies are in Burma due to restraints put on foreign investors.  The Burmese woman wanted to trade us for lipstick and perfume, two products that are very hard and too expensive to get.  One nasty habit they have is chewing betal nuts, a product that turns their teeth a disgusting reddish black (rots them) and is very addictive like chewing tobacco.

The products they make are still largely made by hand in back room sweatshops in small towns like Bagan.  We visited a lacquer ware workshop and the owner told us it takes about  6 months to make a dresser.  They are amazing artists.

 

In Bagan, temples and pagodas are everywhere.  They overwhelm the country (see video).  Most were built between the  11^th and 13^th centuries, much like Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  Originally, there were 13,000 temples in an area 4 miles by 4 miles.  Most of those were wood and are long gone, but 2000 stone temples and pagodas still remain.  Some temples are being preserved and are restricted, but many have been abandoned and are in disrepair.  Those temples were easily accessible and we could climb up skinny stone staircases to the upper levels (super fun).   We also visited the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon which is the largest pagoda in Burma.  It is for Buddhists, like St. Peters is for Catholics.  About 90% of the population in Burma are Buddhists.   At the pagoda, I spoke with a monk and he wanted to know if I liked Justin Bieber… I also saw a monk using an iPad Air to take a picture, so I don’t know what is going on there.  I guess they are more modern than they look. 

We really liked Bagan because it was a small town and we rode around on bikes to see all of the temples, even though it was 42C outside. 

Friday, March 21, 2014

The Wi-Fi hasn't been super slow in Burma so instead of downloading a blog of things we have done here, which would take too long and I am too lazy to babysit, I've decided to just do a big page of happy. So here it is.

 
Before we left Thailand we stopped at an elevated obstacle course in the jungle that had zip lines, spiral staircases, ladders and narrow swinging bridges. It was really fun but my mother is a little afraid of heights so we had fun laughing at her!! See Videos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way to Burma we spotted some white people food so we just simply had to get some! A nice change from fried noodles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look! Homework!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Chiang Mai, Thailand we were able to get in a cage with baby tigers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fooled around in some blow-up water balls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of Burmese people wanted a picture with me, even though they didn't have any cameras.

(I felt like more of a tourist attraction than the temples were)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slaving away at the blog.

Riding an e-bike (bike motorized by a battery) to the temples in Bagan, Burma.

 

March 12, 2014
We are in Chiang Mai, Thailand right now and yesterday we took a van out of town and hung out with elephants for a day!!!!! First, they took us to see a baby and an adult elephant just to see how we should act around them and what the do's and don'ts are around elephants. Then we drove a bit more and met our elephants that we would stay with for the day. My elephant's name was Ban and he was really fun and energetic. For the first 10 minutes we "made friends" by feeding them a bucketful of sugar cane and bananas.  Next we were taught to check our elephant's health with the following steps:

1. To ensure they are constantly flapping their ears and moving their tails
2. To check for dirt marks on their ears and their bodies to make sure they are sleeping properly at night. The elephants lie down to sleep and change position every 40 minutes. It is hard on their organs if they stay in one position too long and need to switch positions often.
3. To check to see if the elephants are sweating. Guess where an elephants sweats? They sweat around their toes.
4. We had to check their poop... every time nature calls there should be 5-7 poop balls! The poop balls should show that the food is well digested and smell okay!!  And then, to check if they are drinking enough water, we had the delightful job of squeezing the poop and watching the green liquid run over our fingers.

The elephants throw leaves and dirt on their back throughout the day to protect it from the parasites and horseflies, so we got the elephant to lie down and brushed it all off with a special leaf brush.
To help keep the elephants clean and free from leeches etc. we scrubbed down the elephant with a scrub brush in the river (see video).  Click on any photo to enlarge it.

Finally we set out and rode bareback on the elephant's neck through the jungle. First we had to learn to mount the elephant. Through instructions, the elephant lifted his front leg and we used that as a stepping ladder to climb onto his back. Other riders mounted the elephant from the front by jumping onto his neck when the elephant lowered his head. Riding the elephant was probably my favorite part because it was like riding a horse but it is slower, you are higher up and it is way more enjoyable.

We arrived in Bangkok several days ago and went on a 40 minute  bus ride out of town to see a train market. They set up their goods (mostly fruit, veggies, and meat/fish) right beside and on the train tracks at sunrise.  People walk along the tracks to buy their things.  But  everyday the train comes at 9:40 a.m., so they fold up their sun canopies and pull in their food.  After the train goes by they lay it all out again. The gross part was that most of their food was left out in the open so the constantly dripping sewer water from the train was landing on supposedly fresh produce.

 

March 08, 2014

Ancient Angkor

In 1863, a French naturalist first wrote about the ancient ruins of  Angkor Wat and how he was blown away by the architecture and elaborate carvings of the temples. Today, Angkor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,  is one of the largest archaeological sites in operation in the world. 

Between the 8^th and 13^th centuries, a succession of Hindu and Buddhist Khmer Kings created magnificent temples in stone.  These temples were designed for the Khmer’s immortal gods and have survived to present day because they were built of brick and stone. The royal dwellings and ordinary houses did not survive though because they were built mostly of wood.

The Angkor temple complex was built as a palace for the god Vishnu who was enshrined in the largest, central tower. It was believed Vishnu would show favor to the King and his family so there was a need to build the finest temple possible.  It seemed that almost every square inch of the temples had very detailed carvings.

Angkor Wat, the most impressive temple, that is one square km in area with 5m high walls. The temple grounds are surrounded by a moat almost 200m wide. Because of the moat, the temple was not overgrown by the jungle as the other temples were and was less damaged. The outer wall encloses a space of 203 acres where the royal dwellings and villager homes were located.

Because they had no protective moat around them, most temples have been overgrown by the jungle like Ta Prohm , where the movie “Tomb Raider” starring Angelina Jolie was filmed in 2001.

I found the temples fun to explore while we were visiting them because they are all open and easily accessible. 

 

March 2nd, 2014

A few days ago, we drove  15 kms southwest of the city of Phnom Penh to visit ‘The Killing Fields’.  From 1975-79, this area is where the Khmer Rouge brought Cambodian prisoners who had been falsely accused of a crime against the Khmer Rouge Regime.  Trucks brought victims to the fields stuffed with  60-100 bound and blindfolded citizens.

The prisoners came from the infamous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh where they had been detained and tortured for 2-4 months prior to being loaded on the truck.  S-21 was a former high school converted into a prison used for torture.  The prisoners were tortured from 7-11am, 1-5pm, 7-9pm.  One of the forms of torture was to pull off their fingernails with pliers and then pour a solution of salt over their hands.   Prisoners were also whipped, electrocuted, suspended from a pole….to gain admission to falsely accused crimes.  Once they admitted, they were shipped to the ‘Killing Fields’. 

 

Initially, trucks came to the ‘Killing Fields’ twice a month to drop off more prisoners.  Once they got off the truck, the solders immediately dragged them to the edge of a pit dug by laborers and killed them with sharp tools.  They used hoes, axes, stakes, bamboo sticks etc. to kill them since bullets were too expensive.  A few years later, the trucks started to arrive every night carrying as many as 300 people onboard.  This became too many to kill off at one time, so the Khmer Rouge put them in a holding space and kept them there until the next day. Most were still blindfolded and had no idea what was going on.  To prevent the prisoners and village people from finding out what was happening, the Khmer Rouge played loud music mixed with the sounds of the generator to block out the screams of the prisoners being killed.  They were buried in many mass graves, the largest of which held 450 people.

Approximately 3 million people (one third of the population) were killed or starved to death during the Khmer Rouge Regime.  There were 167 prisons and 343 killing fields throughout the country. The Regime ended when Vietnam drove the Khmer Rouge out of power in early 1979.  Disease and starvation continued to kill many others in the years after that. 

These people suffered so much but are managing to move forward. We met a man who was one of the seven survivors of S-21 and he had forgiven the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge (but not the leaders).   The soldiers were forced to act as they did or they too would have been tortured and executed.