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Published: March 12th 2010
Let's speak English!
I am with the girls in the English class. We had lots of fun, these children were so eager to speak and learn. Really sweet.Ok, we're now more than a week further and basically all we did was visiting an English school in Mandalay and cruising to Bhamo Myanmar style... Guess this latter was a trimmed down or budget version of a similar trip we might do later when pensioners on the Mediterranean...
Let's Enjoy English!
On our cycling around in Mandalay we got lost at a point one day while looking for the teak monastery, but a nice local guy helped us out. Actually he offered to guide us there. Very kind we thought so we went off. On the way we stopped at his home, he offered some cold drinks (goood!!) and he told us that he runs a private English school in the evenings for the kids in the neighbourhood. This is a really great thing as English is not taught in public schools, foreign languages are not really encouraged here... wonder why... hint: Internet = foreign information source, no censoring...
After some chat he invited us to visit his class the next evening which we happily accepted. Neither of us ever taught anything for a class before, so we were quite excited (not only the kids). So the
Our quarters...
The deck of the boat on the way to Bhamo. Chris in the back sitting at our spot in front of the boxed fridges. Not cosy, but this is the real way to do it. Cabins were also options, but we declined. teacher, Zaw Zaw picked us up with his friend on scooters next evening, invited us for dinner and we went to the school, which is in the backyard of his house. There were approx 40 kids sitting there, girls on the right side, boys on the left, age between 6 and 20 let's say. And they were so happy to see us. So Zaw Zaw sat us down in front of the class at the whiteboard and invited the kids to ask us questions. The Q&A went on for 2 hours, even though being very exhausting, we really really enjoyed it. We discussed our own countries, Myanmar, just free talk with lots of fun. At the end we gave our email addresses to our kids and we honestly hope that they will have the courage to email us once. They promised.
Myanmar Cruise
From Mandalay we took the boat to Bhamo next morning. As we got the tickets the vendor mentioned s-thing like: "You've got seats 73 and 74" and indeed those we the numbers kinda legible on our cute blue slips: We Happy!!! So upon arriving at the ferry the workers looked at our slips and pointed
Sunset picknick
Sunset from the top of the boat on day 1. Peaceful and beautiful... to a stairs up where the desk was with our seats.... or so we thought: mosquito nets around and people just sleeping on simple blankets. No plush soft chairs, no comfi reclining seats, but just some rectangles painted on the iron floor with the
'seat' numbers. Ok, pulling out my simple Indian lungi cloth we secured our spot and went wondering what to do in the upcoming 1,5 or 2.5 days, as 2 different info sources gave differing durations for the trip. No much: reading, watching the scenery not really change, drinking some good old Russian vodka, which we picked up at Bangkok airport and being stared by every other person on the desk. We were their entertainment for the upcoming days...
So we did nothing... until at the end of the second day, when a food stall lady managed to explain us that the trip wasn't 3 days 2 nights, but 4 days 3 nights. More rum was ordered and all was ok... We spent 3 nights sleeping on the deck and all was pretty OK.
Lazy Bhamo
What can you write about Bhamo? Not much, besides the fact it's a very nice relaxed town. We actually
Our watermelon
Kids on the boat. The girl with the melon is the daughter of the "small shop" lady, who prepared nice tomato salads for us with lots of peanuts. Jummy! did not much there. We cycled to some nearby Kachin villages, we ate watermelon under a tree near the river, purchased our local garnments at the local market (longyi is the name, which is a big piece of cloth that you wear as a skirt around your waist.... pretty comfi in the heat) and figured out that the street BBQs are excellent. OK, one thing addition, we ended up at a festival near a pagoda, where cheap Chinese beer was served, which is ~ half price compared to the local Myanmar beers.
The only time we got excited was when we wanted to get our boat tickets back to Mandalay, as apparently Mandalay bound buses are off limits for foreigners. The bl@@dy ticket vendor (government service) didn't want to accept our USD notes as there was a single folding and after the 3rd note we offered he declined to look any further at our notes (ticket price was USD 18 for 2 persons). In the end 150 USD was in front of him and a big bunch of local money, kyat (we also offered to pay in kyat, but he refused to take it) so he didn't bother to
Coffee time!
Novice monk drinking coffee in the morning at the kitchen of the boat. So small these boys are. Lot of them remain monks for the rest of their lives. even glance at them. He just stated "Change USD at hotel" and gave us smug looks. The bl@@dy arrogant pig. G-sus, he really made the blood disappear from underneath my finger nails... f#ck him. But the hotel did help us out and after telling our story within 10 minutes they had our tickets. We happy!
So back to Mandalay. This time they said it will take 3 days, but OK going downstream should indeed go faster, and it was: 2 days and 2 nights. Think that for the next few days, I won't eat bananas anymore. I had more than enough of those lately....
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English
Actually English is taught in all Burmese schools. In fact burmese children started learing it in Kindergarten at age 5. We learned to write Burmese alphabets and English alphabets at the same time but the curriculum is not good and it got worse in high school.