Mission Myanmar

(To the tune of the BN Biscuits advertisements):

Myan-Myan, Myan-Myan,
Da daa, da da da daa,
Myan-Myan, Myan-Myan,
Da daa, da da da daa,
Myan-Mar!

From: bulgar.no-ip.info

Travelling companion and good friend, crazy Aussie girl Sarah, and I headed down to Pham Ngu Lao to book our tickets to Myanmar (Burma). It looks like this thing is actually going to happen, static sheets for my tumble-dryer or not, much to my disbelief; disbelief as I had to buy a Lonely Planet Guide (after much haggling with the bookseller) for 80 000 vnd ($5) just to find where it was on a map and didn't really think things through when I agreed to accompany crazy teacher girl. Okay, I didn't just buy the LP for the map; it's got truckloads of other useful info and a handful of otherwise miscellanous facts.

Allow me to digress. Under the topic Dangers and Annoyances: Bugs, Rats, Snakes and Monkeys they write: "Monkeys, too, can get a little friendly in places. A guide outside Monya pointed out natural medicines for 'not shitting', 'shitting' and 'snakebites', but said that there's nothing for monkey bites. 'Monkey bite is normal', he said."

Great, one less thing than to worry about, as in Myanmar it seems "normal" to get rabies from a monkey bite, become delusional, sinking deeper into the mental deficient quagmire called insanity, foam at the mouth, get lockjaw and die.

I'm really excited about this trip though. I'm like a grade 6 boy at his first "dance" party; you know the kind, with the table with the snacks and plastic cups on one side, a group of brace-faced, hormonal boys standing against one wall mustering up the courage to cross the divide, across the frontier to the other extreme of the room, where girls try their hardest to ignore the boys secretely hoping they'll be the ones that are asked to dance first.

We land in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) from Bangkok on the 10th of February and are staying for about 10 days. According to wikipedia, Yangon literally means "run out of enemies" or "the end of strife". I sincerely hope that is the feeling which will float down like mana from heaven to rest like a feather on my shoulders. I also really want to visit the myriad of temple ruins and complexes such as the ancient capital Mrauk U which now lies in ruins as well the last royal capital Mandalay.

Yangon from: www.asiatours.net

Obviously, as if there was any doubt, Sarah and I sealed the deal with a bottle of Go2 Cafe's finest Vietnamese Rhum and a impromptu version of "Myan-Myan" the BN song. BN, interestingly enough is also the ISO 639 alpha-2 language code for the Bengali language, an Indo-Aryan language of South East Asia. You're never to old to learn.

I'll keep updating as Mission Myanmar progresses.