Yesterday I showed you some of Southern Burma’s beautiful beaches. On Myaw Yit beach, this man and his son were collecting sand worms when my driver and I happened upon them. To find one, you have to stomp your heel into the sand in a certain type of spot (I never figured out…
The coastline of Southern Burma is lined with beaches. Huge, beautiful white and yellow sand beaches that go on for miles and miles and miles, with not a soul on them. Nabule beach near Dawei Ok, there are the ‘popular’ ones, like Maungmakan near Dawei, which is lined with little bamboo huts serving…
Leading up to the big pagoda in Myeik in Southern Burma there’s a street lined with stalls selling everything from sunglasses and longyis to toys and ice cream, and this crispy treat that I don’t know the name of. This man was making them, first by slowly pouring the batter into a wok full of…
I recently spent a couple of days wandering the town of Myeik in Southern Myanmar. Since then, this place has been described to me as ‘a shithole’, and ‘industrial’, but I have to disagree. Myeik may have industry around it, but the city centre was, like all Burmese towns, bustling and friendly. A main road…
‘Come, come!’ the man urged me as he handed me the razor. The boy cringed as I gently touched it to his already-bleeding scalp. I carefully scraped away a few tiny bits of hair and tried to smile prettily for the camera. It was my very first day in Burma (on this trip, anyway)…
As if living in Vietnam was not already an adventure….after 3 and a half years, I have left Vietnam and am on my way, on the next epic journey. Those of you who know me know that I have done this several times before. And yet this time it feels different. Although I’m not sure…
I’m about to head back to Burma for the third time. You might ask ‘WHY? If you’ve been there twice, do you really need to go back AGAIN?’ The answer is yes. Yes I do. Because I LOVE this country. Shwedagon Paya in Yangon. I first visited Burma in 2008. I’d been told…
One question us travelers get asked a lot is “How many countries have you been to?” The problem is, I don’t know how to answer that question. Ok, so for me, depending on how I count, it could be anywhere between 33 and 43. (Yes, I actually wrote them all down and counted them…
“Mot, Hai, Ba, YO!” we all shouted as we clinked our tiny glasses together and downed another shot of rice wine. I fought back my grimace and put on a polite smile as my glass was refilled yet again. ‘Jenny’, Ha leaned over and whispered, ‘you’re a woman, so it’s really ok if you…
In my latest post about AWE ’13, I mentioned that we started off with a food tour. Our host was Charles of Food Tour Malaysia, who has an absolute wealth of knowledge about not just Malaysian food but also history and culture. Sharing food experiences was a great opportunity for many of us AWE…