one more little stone: June 2012

Friday, June 29, 2012

Day 145 Two Buffets are One Too Many! 29 June 2012

Yes, we indulged today with two buffets! Sizzler’s salad bar for lunch and Sushi buffet at Zen for a late dinner. We also went for a morning swim, hung out at the bookstore, roamed the mall and went to the movies (Madagascar 3).

Our last night in Bangkok was spent repacking- our least favorite thing about travel! But the Hangover 2 was on tv - a funny coincidence- so we had some distraction from the task at hand. For sure that was not our Bangkok experience!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Day 144 Daytrip to Ayuthaya 28 June 2012

After navigating the skytrain and metro we made it to the train station with 10 minutes to spare for the train to Ayuthaya. Around 11:30 we arrived at rented some bikes, ate a picnic lunch and then set out to see the major sites. Compared to all the other old Buddhist temples we have seen these were less impressive but still made for a nice day. Our personal favorites were the Buddha head literally growing in a tree

and a dressed reclining Buddha.

Day 143 Third day is a Charm 27 June 2012

You are starting to get the picture here, another resting day!

Day 142 Resting Day 26 June 2012

Another lazy day! We slept even longer! Then we got to work on some laundry and the blog.

Day 141 Resting Day 25 June 2012

We slept all day since we are exhausted from our travels to Myanmar. It was a very lazy day whose only highlight was a sushi buffet for an early dinner at our favorite mall in Bangkok.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day 140 Back in Bangkok 24 June 2012

Today we landed in Bangkok and returned to our luxury hotel to check in. We called Ana’s parents, then headed out to the mall for a late lunch at Sizzler’s,

saw a horror movie (Chernobyl Diaries), returned to the hotel, called Martijn’s parents and went to bed. It was a perfect reintroduction to modernity.

Day 139 Relaxing in Yangon 23 June 2012

Since we had already seen the main sights of Yangon on the first day, and we were both exhausted by the travel we decided to only do the essentials today, which included breakfast, lunch and dinner and sending a postcard.

The Myanmar Kinnara (male) Kinnari (female) (Romeo and Juliette) story is one of two winged lovers who were separated for one night by a severe storm. They embraced the next morning and said that the one night apart felt like 700years (or 7years, 7days and 7 hours). This is Ana’s sand painting gift.

Day 138 Inle Lake by Bicycle 22 June 2012

Today our guide took us bicycling around the lake, including to his hometown.

It took us about an hour to cover the 11km distance to a local market where we had some tea and bought some delicious sweet and sour sugar candy imported from Bagan.

After taking the same scenic route back, we had some lunch and then left for the airport.

Upon returning to our hotel In Yangon, we were glad we had twin beds considering they were just as springy as before.

Day 137 Inle Lake by Boat 21 June 2012

After breakfast we walked through the local market to the harbor, where we caught a long tail boat that would be our way of transport for the day. After about 4 km we reached the huge and beautiful Inle Lake, where we toured around, seeing another market, making a stop at a temple with about a thousand pagodas and had some lunch.

Highlights after lunch included a fisherman’s village, the floating islands where mostly tomatoes are grown (the tomato salads in Myanmar are absolutely superb) and a monastery famous for its jumping cats, which were taught by the monks to jump through little hoops.

Martijn, overexcited by this, tried to lure the cats by shaking the food container, unfortunately all the food went over the floor, making sure Martijn had plenty of cat friends.

We ended the tour with a visit to a bridge mostly used by the school kids to return from their school on land to their house in the lake.

Day 136 Getting to Inle Lake 20 June 2012

An early 30 minute flight and a two hour drive (Martijn took a nap) lead us to Pindaya cave, a cave filled with thousands of Buddha images in beautiful surroundings.

After lunch and another two hour drive (Ana’s turn to nap) we arrived in our hotel close to Inle lake where we had dinner in the restaurant next door.

Day 135 Mingun 19 June 2012

Today we embarked on a boat that brought us to Mingun in about an hour, another old city. The sights in Mingun were quite impressive with the unfinished pagoda, candidate for the world’s largest pile of bricks, which we climbed barefoot.

It was super windy!

Next was the Mingun bell, currently the world’s second largest bell.

Our last stop was at Hsinbyume Paya, a lovely white pagoda built in memory of the creators wife in the image of the Buddhist universe with 7 oceans and 7 mountains.

On our way back on the boat, the engine stalled and for a moment we were caught in the waves and strong winds.

Both Martijn and Ana had been relaxing on the top of the boat and were almost thrown overboard (we decided to sit on the floor after that), it added a bit of excitement to a very scenic day.

Day 134 Surroundings of Mandalay 18 June 2012

The program today consisted of visiting three old cities in the neighborhood of Mandalay. We started off by visiting the Ganayon Kyaung monastery in Amarapura where hundreds of monks were having lunch. Lunch is a big meal since monks are not allowed to eat after noon.

Afterwards we continued to Sagaing where we saw another two pagodas that were especially interesting because of the beautiful views down to the river.