Last stop in Myanmar

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Just a half day drive to Mt Kyaiktiyo. This is a centre for Buddhist pilgrimages to the Golden Rock (a balancing boulder) which has legends behind it but apparently balances precariously due to the precisely placed Buddha golden hair in the Stupa. I decided to let the younger more athletic ones take the truck up the mountainside and then hike the last part to see it at close quarters, while I wandered through the touristic town watching hundreds of Buddhist monks and nuns arrive by the coachload. Quite a surreal sight.

We then moved on to Hpa-An for an overnight stop at a lovely hotel on the way to the Myanmar/Thailand border.

Now at the border and have left Myanmar and (just) entered Thailand (we can see the border post from the coffee shop). but because of some new ruling about foreign vehicles the truck is stuck and is not allowed to enter the country, so we are in another hotel waiting to see if the problem can be resolved. We can't go back to Myanmar as we have a single entry permit, and the truck isn't allowed to move at the moment, so we have a bit of a stalemate. More of that in my next wittering - hopefully from along the road.

The last photos are for Matt. In Yangon I saw a sewing machine repair shop with hundreds of machines in there - makes like Singer and Brother - but Mitsubishi? And then in Kyaiktiyo I saw a shop where a lady was using an overlocker, but she had young girls there that were choosing what clothes they wanted to make from a pattern book, and then she was helping the design and make them. And I will soon be in the realms of made to measure clothes, and silk materials - can't wait.

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