Bangkok’s airport was fancy, excessively so—although this made more sense after we saw the rest of the city. In Bangkok, there were many upscale malls, which were so fancy that one had a Rolls Royce sitting in the middle of the mall. It is a testament to Siam’s economic inequality. Practically none of the stores in the mall were Thai. While there were watch, car, and fashion companies based in Paris, New York, and Rome, none was based in Bangkok. Similarly, the food in the malls was American and from other places, but not Thai.

The economy seemed perfectly designed to suck as much money as possible out of tourists, and one of the ways it did this was scams. When we rode in a taxi, the driver would refuse to turn on the meter and would charge about three times a reasonable meter rate, and some would only take you three quarters of the way there, leaving you stranded with no idea where you were. Of course, not all taxi drivers did this, but it was pretty common (it exists in other countries as well). There are other scams too. We almost fell for one, but we escaped unscathed. We had planned to go to the Grand Palace—however we had to cross a busy road, which in Bangkok is a nearly impossible feat. It took us thirty minutes (no exaggeration) to get across. When we got to the palace, a man standing on the side told us it was closed (which was true). He then invited us to go on a boat tour. But he said we had to go on his boat, which was cheaper than the other ones (which was false). We didn’t fall for it, and came back the next day when the palace was open.

When we arrived at the palace, it was jam packed with tourists. We decided to go see the Emerald Buddha, which is a famous in Thailand and the main reason we were there. We looked at the incredible palace, and then moved on to an amazing mural that stretched the length of a really long wall. It showed the mystical story of the Ramakian, a sacred Thai Buddhist text. It was filled with outlandish beings and many small details.

We then went to see the building with the Emerald Buddha. Because of all the hype, we expected a giant sculpture. However, it turned out to be an elaborate structure with a small Buddha on top (the Buddha wasn’t really emerald, but actually jade. When it was first uncovered, it had been caked with mud. However, a green spot showed and so it was assumed to be emerald). The room was filled with more murals depicting daily life in ancient Thailand. We liked it, but preferred the mural outside. After that we returned home.

We did have some good experiences at the malls. One of them had each floor themed after a different city. For example, the Istanbul floor had English that was written to look like Arabic and was shaped like a bazaar. In the mall we found a store that sold Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. It had virtually every Yu-Gi-Oh! set ever released, as well as a few other trading card games. It was a tournament day (stores that sell Yu-Gi-Oh! cards have a tournament once a week). People were playing matches on the tables in the store, which didn’t leave much extra space. The cards were mainly in Japanese (Yu-Gi-Oh! is Japanese; the versions sold in other countries are translated), but there were some Korean and English cards too. The decks weren’t all in the same language. For example, even the Japanese decks had English cards. Since Thailand is in Asia, they played with cards not yet released in the rest of the world, including the USA.

While we were in Thailand, the news was awash with stories about the devastating earthquake in Nepal and we were wondering what we could do to help. We heard about a Nepal benefit concert, so we decided to go. It was part of the Nepal RISE: Earthquake Relief Campaign, and was held at a private school called the NIST International School. The concert took place in front of the school and people gave speeches. The one that we listened to was about helping Nepal after the crisis had passed. Then musicians came out and sang songs, and overall it was entertaining.

On the grass people had set up various stands. One had art that was being auctioned off. Another had Nepalese food, so we went over to it. Two women were at the stand, one from Nepal and the other from Boston. The Nepalese woman had family members in Nepal who had been impacted by the earthquake. The other woman ran a school that served poor and migrant children with her husband. She invited us to come and see the school, and learn about their work.Some time later, we went to visit the school. On the way, we stopped at an art studio and the owners invited us in and showed us around. On the walls there were many paintings, for example of people with extremely weird brains. There were also small scale replicas of famous pieces of art. It had a small cafe in the front, where we relaxed while in the company of a delightful cat and enjoyed cold delicious drinks.

When we got to the school, the Nepalese woman we had met at the benefit concert was sitting outside at a table, picking stems off basil leaves to make into pesto, which she sold for money. We sat down to help her, and soon the rest of the teachers and students in the school—including the people we had met at the concert—came outside to eat. For lunch, we ate pad thai (this was the only time we had it in Thailand) made by the kids themselves. Then we went to see the inside of the school.After that, we had a long conversation with the people who ran the school as we helped pick more basil leaves. They explained that the school was to help educate kids who worked on the street selling flowers all night. Their school had vastly improved the lives of these children. They gave support to the parents to help compensate for the money the children would have made if they had continued working instead of going to school. We also discussed their experience running the school, life in Thailand, and different books we had read, including one about Pope Francis.

On the way home we stopped at a cafe that had board games you could borrow. We played Settlers of Catan for an hour and then went back to the hotel. We were excited to head to Turkey the next day.

-Isaiah

It was a six-hour van ride to Kalaw, going through small villages and past rice fields and open plains. We saw an elephant by the side of the road (!!!) and rode by hundreds of water buffalo with big humps on their backs. Our guide met us at our B&B early the next morning and we walked out of the town. Nu Nu (our guide) took us to her family’s house first and we were served tea and candy. The first floor of the house, where we were greeted, had a small table with chairs around it and a small cooking area, but otherwise it was empty. Some of the walls were covered in calendars and posters of musicians and models. The second floor had space for sleeping. It didn’t take long to leave the stores and small houses behind, and we spent day one of our trek walking through forests and along dirt roads overlooking the valleys. Far below you could see clusters of houses and men and women working in the fields.   As we walked we shared stories with Nu Nu about her life in Myanmar and ours in the United States. She was fascinated by the idea that we spent nine days backcountry camping in the Grand Canyon.

Around noon we came to a tiny restaurant with covered, round picnic tables outdoors. There were a few other tourists eating and we sat down to a delicious lunch of Indian food. The restaurant overlooked the deep valley, and sat all alone on the side of the dusty road. Chickens wandered over the grass and ran under our feet. It was a 13.5 mile hike, so we continued on and spent most of the afternoon walking, occasionally passing through villages where we were introduced to the local people from various different groups with distinct languages. We spent the night at a homestay, where we slept on mats on a raised platform. There was no door between our room and the family’s — just a curtain hanging in the doorframe. The town we stayed in only had two families, but both families were big, so there were still many houses. We walked from one end to the other in less than five minutes. In the evening, we could hear music coming through speakers at a monastery in a nearby village.

We woke up early the next morning, and left the small town at 7am, before it started to get hot. Day two was even longer – 16 miles – and we left the forests behind for elevated rice fields and rolling hills. Dirt and grass paths had been made in between the squares plots of rice and many other crops (tea leaves, cauliflower, tomatoes, etc.), weaving their way through the fields. We walked up and down the vast landscape, looking back at the checker-board plains.

We ate noodles and vegetables with a fried egg on top for lunch, and napped for an hour-and-a-half in the empty second floor of a square building in a tiny town. The afternoon hike was long and hot, but it finally ended in a small town with cows in pens outside the houses, and people talking on the streets. We passed a Monastery on our way to the homestay (later my mother went back with Nu Nu to talk with the monk there). Dinner was fish and five or six different kinds of vegetables. For dessert the cook made banana flambé in honor of Mommy and Daddy’s 25^th wedding anniversary, and we watched the fruit go up in blue flames at the dinner table. We again slept on mats on the floor of a mostly empty room, and from the balcony in the morning we could see a man sitting in a loft full of hay, sorting it and cutting it down to the right size. He had been working since at least five in the morning.

Our third day of hiking brought us to a bigger dirt road, and then down to Inle Lake. We could still see fields all around us, but little houses and small villages started popping up on the plains. Lunch was served at a restaurant a few minutes from the lake, and we walked along a thin strip of water to a narrow boat, which we boarded. We waved goodbye to Nu Nu, who would take a motorbike back to Kalaw. She has been doing these treks about twice a week for four years, but soon she will stop guiding treks and become a school teacher in her village. She just finished university studying Myanmar history. She was fortunate enough to be one of the few girls in her village to get beyond an elementary school education. After primary school, the nearest school was an hour and a half walk. As a result most girls and some boys stayed home to work in the fields.

The boat we had boarded had four white, wooden seats nailed to the bottom of its floor, one behind the other. The couple that owned the boat took us to a Pagoda with paintings telling a story on the walls, a Monastery with more paintings and cats wandering around (they were supposed to be jumping cats, but we didn’t see that), and a shop where women from a native tribe south of Inle Lake were weaving cloth. The women had heavy metal rings around their necks, arms, and legs, which overtime extend their limbs. As you get older, the number of rings you wear increases.

All of these buildings were on the water, and it was hard to imagine that we were on a lake. It looked and felt like a river with lots of twists and turns. We passed restaurants, more stores, and motored through floating villages. Green plants floated at the waters surface and we passed “floating gardens” with rows and rows of tomatoes and flowers. As it started to drizzle, and the mountains in the distance disappeared behind the thick clouds of fog, we emerged into the open area of Inle Lake, and we finally felt like we were on a lake. Men and women stood at the ends of boats casting fishing lines into the water. They moved their boats by pushing long wooden rods into the water with their legs and feet.

We passed houses on the shore, beautiful pagodas and other buildings with traditional architecture on our way to the small town where we were going to stay for the night. Once we got to land it was only a short ride in a tuk tuk (a motorcycle pulling a small covered cart) to our hotel, where we were welcomed with cold lemonade. The next morning we took a taxi to the airport, passing by fields of sunflowers in bloom.

-Natalia

(Look at the photo section of the blog for more photos!!)

We heard the loud whistle and the vibrations of the tracks before we saw it. From the platform you could see men holding on to the vertical bars with their heads and limbs hanging out the doorless openings. It pulled to a stop and we climbed the steps onto the crowded train, bumping into bodies with nowhere to go. A few stops later seats opened up and we watched Myanmar speed by. Grimy apartment buildings, tin room houses, vendors by the side of the road, construction, monks, women with baskets on their heads. We got off at the central station, the center of Yangon – the biggest city in Myanmar.

A tall, golden peak rose from a building. We walked towards the pagoda; sweat already pouring down our faces from the heat. The Sule Pagoda was round, and you could walk around the interior of it, with air-conditioned rooms to your right and golden statues of Buddha on the left.

Men and woman knelt in front of the statues and prayed. The rooms held more statues encased in glass. Although there were many people who had come to the pagoda to pray, people came and sat on the floors of the air-conditioned rooms, talking; or sat on the raised platforms in the pagoda talking on their phones.After the pagoda, we visited a synagogue. The synagogue is the only one in Myanmar, and there are only 20 Jews left – there used to be over 2,500.  It was located on a small street filled with paint shops, carts, and stores selling rope and buoys for boats.

In downtown Yangon, each street filled with stores was dedicated to a different thing; one street was filled with paper shops, another boat supplies. We watched men push sugar cane through a crank to make sugar cane juice, and people sat on little stools on the crowded sidewalks eating and talking to each other.

We spent the afternoon at the National Museum, where we saw the golden throne of the last king of Burma, and wax figures of men and woman of different ethnic groups. Our taxi driver guided us through the museum and then took us to a pagoda even bigger than the one we had seen that morning: Shwedagon Pagoda, the largest and most important pagoda in Myanmar. We could hear female voices singing in unison from an open building at one end of the pagoda, and we walked towards the noise. There were Monks everywhere, wearing maroon robes, and bells tinkled in the wind at the top of the pointed roofs. Women stood in front of raised statues of sitting Buddha and poured cups of water over the head and shoulders of the statue.The next two days we spent in Bagan, riding around on rented bikes.  Bagan is 400 miles to the north of Yangon, in the rice-growing heartland of Myanmar.   From the 9th to the 13th century Bagan was the capital of what would become Myanmar.

We visited an ancient monastery with paintings from the 10^th century. It was filled with small rooms all connected by openings in the walls, and rays of light streamed in from the small windows with metal bars. We also went to a current day monastery where we burnt our feet running barefoot over the hot sand to the buildings. A monk led us around an older building with wall paintings, similar to the ancient monastery. Monks were sleeping on wooden platforms with blankets under shaded areas, and we talked with one of them.

On our way to the monastery we’d passed a small shop with pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi – the leader of the democracy movement in Myanmar – and her father, General Aung San, who led the country to independence in the 1940s. We’d seen their pictures in some shops and restaurants. On our way back we stopped to talk with the people in the office. This was the local office of the National Democratic Party and they told us about their work organizing meetings and opening offices in small villages. The country has elections in the fall, but it is still not decided whether Aung San Suu Kyi will be able to run for President. In the past, the military put her under house arrest for 15 years and tried to get her to leave the country by separating her from her children. The next day, biking to the river gave us a glimpse of the thousands of pagodas scattered across Bagan. The river was packed with wooden canoes taking tourists for rides, woman carrying baskets of small stones on their heads – bringing the baskets off of a boat onto shore. Tiny shops were set up randomly on the dusty open area bordering the water, and we stopped for a cold drink.

Later that afternoon, a driver from our hotel gave us a tour of the biggest and most interesting pagodas in the area (there are over 10,000) and we watched the sunset at – not surprisingly – the “sunset pagoda.” A beautiful way to end our three days in Yangon and Bagan.

-Natalia