Almost as hot as Hansel
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Published: March 29th 2015
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"So we can't send anything today?"
"No, we only open half day."
"Yes, and you are open now?"
"Yes. We open."
"But we can't send anything?"
"No. Come back Monday. We open Monday."
"Yes, you are open Monday. But you are also open now. And we cant send anything now."
"Yes, today we open. Come back Monday. We open Monday."
We were at the DHL office in Mandalay trying to mail our medical licensing information back to Illinois for our residency. Katie was growing a bit frustrated. The tiny elderly Burmese grandmother behind the counter didn't quite understand our exacerbation with the situation. How couldn't we understand that while they were open at the moment, they weren't able to ship anything (the primary function of DHL). But Monday they were open, and they work on Monday. Its logical... Later our cab driver came in and found out that the manager is the only one who can send items, but he is also the delivery boy. So when he is deliverying packages they can't send items. Instead they bring in this tiny old lady. He said she is their "light" security.
Oh how I've missed the
joys (and conundrums / follies in logic) of travelling! Med school has a tendency to halt attempts at international travels... But, I managed to finagle some time after classes and before residency (I'll be going into emergency medicine and working at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago) to get in some travels. I met up with Katie (for those I only know via this blog, she is my girlfriend who will also be moving to Chicago for her emergency medicine residency at UIC) in Yangon after she finished her travels in India. You can catch up on those at her blog
here. She had a rough ending to her trip and she is extremely diplomatic in her descriptions; for a more honest rendering of some of the frustrations India causes, and makes you love it in spite/because of, you can check out
my last blog from my time in India. Or just think of the scene in Animal House...
">"Thank you sir, may I have another."
We spent a few days in Yangon checking out a few sights and trying to get our licensing stuff squared away. Of course the latter was thwarted by a mix of slow internet speeds, irregularly regular power outages, and national holidays.
We will be going back through Yangon in a few weeks so I'll blog about the sights we saw there at that time, but in general I was taken aback by just how multicultural the city is. Most people are Burmese, but we were surrounded by Indians, Bangladeshi, and loads of Chinese (not to mention the numerous minority ethnicities that pass by my untrained eye without notice). There were christian churches across the street from Buddhist pagodas and just down there road were mosques and Hindu temples.
We jumped a night bus to Mandalay and shockingly it left the station and arrived ontime. We headed to our hotel, dropped our stuff off, then jumped in a taxi to check out the sights of Mandalay, many of which are outside the city. Sagaing, our first stop, is a town, once a capital of the Shan Kingdom, which now is known for its numerous monestaries and pagodas dotting the landscape. After a few hours of meandering along the hilly paths connecting each temple, we jumped back in the car and went to Inwa. Inwa became the capital after Sagaing and as been the capital several times since the 1300s (this changing
Marionettes
Stopped by a wood carving factory on our day of touring of capitals in Myanmar is a recurring theme, just look at the most recent change...). Here we rented a horse buggy to take us touring through the sights, many of them ruined old monestaries and pagodas no longer used dating from the 1800s. Bagaya Kyaung is a wooden monestary from 1834 with massive teak timbers holding up the prayer hall. Nanmyin is a single tower left over from the palace complex which was largely destroyed in an earthquake of 1834; now it is just a 90 foot leaning tower that zig zags upwards appearing ready to fall in any direction. After a few other stops of old monestaries and payas, we headed to the last stop of the day, U Bein Bridge. Billed as the longest teak wood foot bridge, it is really just a 4,000 foot wooden brindge over a lake/marsh that sways beneath you and feels ready to collapse at any second. If it weren't for the throngs of Burmese in front, behind, and all around you as you march along this contraption I may have been scared it would have collapsed; but they didn't have a care in the world so "when in Rome". We were planning
on staying until sunset but after a long day of sight seeing we had had enough. We were a hot sweaty mess...
Brings me to my final point. It is hot. Soooo damn hot. It is the kind of heat that just drains your energy, sits on your chest, slaps you in your face, and makes you submit to it. I dare say it is hotter than
Billy Madison's third grade teacher. Even
hotter than Hanselright now. Maybe that is an exageration.
My brother Darren catches up with us in a few hours and tomorrow we hope to take off for the hills to the north and east of here. Going to try and catch some cooler weather and check out some villages in the area.
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Bronstein
Eric Bronstein
The blog is back!
So happy this thing is alive. Puts a smile on my face. Happy trails to you and the travel squad bud. Miss you and mucho aloha from Sweden!