Only con of my trip that was not mentioned yet...

The only thing bad so bad for the recent trip was my loss of money in my checked in baggage. I only discovered the loss of $ when I unpacked my bag after I reached home. It took me a while before I realised my $ was stolen. At first, I was still thinking, where the heck did I put the $ and why did the amount I left is so much less than I expect when I did not spend much for this trip?

Then I realised other than USD, my S$10 was lost. I remember clearly that I reserved it just in case I need to take taxi back home. Shucks, what bad luck. Tried to recall where it could be stolen and when I last saw it. Then I came to the conclusion that I lost it on my way back, should be during my flight back. The last I saw was when I left Inle Lake. How dishonest these workers were! To search my bag and took away my money!

I had bought travel insurance, so I called to ask if I can be compensated. The person asked me to fill up the claim form and wait for the policy to be sent over as it will take a week or so for it to reach my home by normal mail. Then to make a police report and call the airline to report. I did that, however for the airline, the person said the airline is not liable for loss of personal items in checked in baggage, hence I could not report irregularity report. Oh well, just my luck. I sent my claim form and my police report, and hopefully will receive some compensation back. It's a lot of $, almost 200 bucks. ***

Recently, I am really bad luck in monetary issues. The stupid AT collapse just when we should be our returns back. All in all, I really lost a lot of $$ this damn sh** year!

I'm Grateful to be Blessed with Health and Income

This morning, I was driving towards the medical centre for my annual checkup. Then I thought how blessed I'm to be alive and healthy. There were many in the world who do not have the health and have to worry about their daily life. Although I'm not rich, but I'm glad that I have no worries for my daily life and expenses and have my family, and a place to live in. I'm glad and thank my lucky stars or god or buddha for all this. The hard life I've seen recently in my trip made me appreciate what I have now. The only thing is I still have not found my aim in life. Just some thoughts, maybe I can look into organising trips for people. I'm getting a little bored/sick of my job now....it's a way to finance and definitely stable. But though I like controlling, the other duties can bore me down. So I really do not know how long will I stay in the job. Even if I stay till retirement, I have to think of what's going to happen after the retirement that will be in my early 40s...

Myanmar trip - part 4

Day 4

This was the day we had to leave Inle. Our flight was at 430pm, so we had to check in around 3.00pm, that meant we had to leave Nyaugshwe around 2.00pm. Today would be a relaxing day for us, we slept as long as we please...but not too long, around 9 plus am. We had our breakfast, and after that, headed for the market to buy some stuff and souvenirs. We figured we would not have much time in Yangon for that. I had a few stuff in mind, the biscuits and lovely mangoes. We went around to search for the biscuits, and it seemed that only a few stalls had it. As for the mangoes, I did not know how to choose them, so we just went to one stall and picked a few. They charged me double for the price a local had to pay(before we came out, we actually asked the four sisters the price of 1 mango, 50kyats). But I figured it still was not too expensive and hence did not bother to argue for the price, it was afterall only a few cents difference that we could afford. I bought 9 mangoes, 3 of which are different types, while Jas bought 3.

As we left the market, one of the brothers of 4 sisters came looking for us in motorbike. He told us that the plane had been scheduled earlier and we had to leave soon. It was only close to noon time. Puzzled but trusting him, we hurried back since we were more or less done with our buying. However, when we came back, it seemed like there was some misunderstanding and so we had our lunch here before leaving. The fried noodles cooked by the assistant(who looked very much like my mum when she was young) was delicious though simple. We had paid the bills, worked out to be about USD15 per night for the 3 of us and for 2 dinner and 1 lunch(breakfast was included in the accomodation cost), it was supposed to be paid as you wish, so we figured it cost about USD6 per pax for the 3 meals, so we round it up a bit and paid USD20. Well, I thought it was still pretty cheap. USD35 per pax for 3 nights?

So after saying goodbyes, we took a taxi that they called for us to the airport. It actually took about 30mins to the airport and thus we were there early. Cost about USD15 this time instead of 20. We hanged around the airport for quite some time and I took the chance to have a little nap. Air Bagan was the last of the domestic flight, and there was not many people onboard.

After flying for 30mins(some turbulence encountered, and I was a little afraid but did not wish to think much), we landed again. All of us thought how strange was it that the journey was shorter than the previous flight to Heho. Not suspecting anything, we walked down the aircraft, only to realise that this was not the airport we were supposed to arrive! It was Bagan airport...then the air stewardess called us back, and we walked back to the aircraft feeling silly about our mistake.

Well, it was an honest one, for when we bought the tickets, it was not explained to us that this was not a direct flight, so obviously when the aircraft landed, we naturally took our stuff and walked out. Hahaha.... Ok, now it woud take another 1hr 15mins to head back to Yangon. We had our dinner onboard ( I could not remember what we ate) but it was not bad I thought. We reached Yangon about 7plus pm in the end. And when we arrived, it took us USD5 for the taxi to the city...there was a case again that I forgot about porter being over-enthu for carrying our luggage...it happened again after my encounter in Nepal. No choice, gotta give the porter some tips.

We proceed to White House by LP. Took about 30mins. It was drizzling along the way, and actually I was a little impressed by the infrastructure so far, there were also trees planted along the roadside to beautify. How nice. We also pass by the Shwe Pagoda, very impressive, but we did not have the chance to visit due time constraint. It was glittering in gold in the evening. But as I got closer to the city, the buildings were old and like our country in the 70s or so. There were night stalls along the streets, and not too clean looking now. There were much to be developed.

The taxi driver would meet us tomorrow morning, since our flight was at 10.30am, that is, we had to reach the airport 8.30am. The white house hotel was 7 storey high. And when we went to inspect the room, it was okay,with aircon but cleanliness could be improved and there were no windows. No complaints, just a night stay, no problem. When we were shown the rooms on 7th sty, I did not really like as it was kind of dark and had to pass through the 6th sty that seemed to have no one staying. Although the 5th sty room was a dorm style and more ex(USD7 per night instead of 6), I found it to be brighter. Besides, we did not have to climb so high. Hence, we decided to stay here.

After putting our stuff, we had a little time to explore Yangon city, so we took a little walk. Besides, CH and Jas still had quite a bit of kyats to spend. So we went to the chinatown on the 18th street, since the famous Bo Aung San market was closed and would not be opened so early tomorrow. The weather here was much warmer and afte some walking, we began to perspire. We walked to the Sule Pagoda, a landmark there, and it too glittered in gold(not as impressive as Shwe Pagoda for sure).

We observed the night stalls, and discovered a lot of Indians around. Roti Prata and Bryani was a common sight. The night stalls were something like our pasar malaam, food and clothings and other things were sold.

In the end, there was nothing much to see and we settled for our dinner at a chinese stall selling pork bee hoon. It was a huge portion and cost only about 1200kyat(USD1). Jas and I could not even finish it. Haha.... The boss of the stall even came and sat with us. He chit chatted about himself and his business. He used to have stalls too in our country but have wound it up. His sister now had a worker employment agency too.

We asked him for what's good to look around, and he directed us to stalls behind the other main street. So we went to take a look and also shopped around their supermarket(not very big). Then the slight drizzle became heavier and it seemed like it would not stop. So after waiting a while, we decided to take a taxi back, since it was nearby and should not cost too much. It turned out to be about 1500kyats. Upon reaching, we washed up and rested for the day.

Day 5 - home coming

This was the last day of our holiday. We had our buffet style breakfast, not bad, quite nice. We also went up to the roof top to see the bird's eye view of Yangon. From a distance we could see the river nearby and Shwe Pagoda. Not bad, but it also showed the unsightliness of the city. Nothing much to miss about Yangon to me, but I missed Inle Lake more. The international airport was not too bad, with a few souvenirs shop for us to buy t shirts and accessories. Had a cuppa before boarding and goodbye Myanmar! I may come back, if so, will be visiting places like Inle Lake or Bagan and Mandalay.

Myanmar trip - part 3

Day 3

We went trekking for a day to the nearby villages. Our guide is actually the elder brother of 4 sisters. So all of them as you can guess were related, including the boatman who was also a relative, my trekking guide's nephew. Weather was nice and cooling, slight drizzle on and off throughout the trek.

Jas interacted more with the guide while CH and I were behind. We only carried minimal stuff, like water and camera and a raincoat. I soon realised that water is not necessary, as along the way, you would notice jars and that's for everyone to drink. Besides, when we visited the family, they would offer us tea to drink.

Along the way, we saw the fields of different types of plants and crops. There were many shy and cute children and there were once or twice where they offered some flowers to us. How sweet of them. The slopes were gentle, and not hard to walk. Not too muddy, so it was a nice trek. We saw how the locals work in the fields and their houses too. Their houses were made up of bamboo and wood.

The place we had our lunch actually had 2 storeys where they stored their stuff on the ground floor and they cooked, ate and slept on the 2nd floor. I had my toilet break here and was pleasantly surprised to find their toilets clean. I guessed their hygiene levels were not too bad. The lunch break was one of our highest point. I was not sure how high we went, but I did not think we go very high, my guess was 500m to 1000m at most. But we could detect a change in the temperature and it was certainly cooler here....such that it made us so sleepy after our lunch and we even thought of taking a nap here and just go back down. Hehe... afterall, we were here to relax...
For lunch, we had some local biscuits called "char boh weh" and some instant noodles with freshly picked vegetables and eggs our guide carried up in his bag. It was nice or were we hungry?

Well, in the end, we did not take a nap and carried on up the hill. We stopped occasionally to take some photos. And before we know it, we were heading back down towards the lake. From our view, it seemed that we had trekked a long way from Nyaugshwe. We were even further than the canal that led out of Nyaugshwe to the Lake.

We passed by some more villages and about 5 plus pm(we started about 8 plus am), we reached one canal where we took a boat ride back to the town. We were little surprised by the additional cost of this boat ride as we were not told that it was not included...however we still paid, afterall we were quite some distance from the town and it was not too much actually.

As we were still early, we decided to try some pizzas or pastas in a restaurants recommended by LP. It was called Golden Kite. We did some shopping before that...tried to find the biscuits we had during our lunch. Managed to find one packet(500kyats) in a provision store, so tomorrow we would come back and look for more. These are great stuff to bring back for colleagues. Jas and me tried the local "cold noodles" (I called it, for I did not know its name). The lady mixed it with sauces and chilli powder accompanied by pepper soup. It tasted quite nice actually...hmmm....maybe we were getting used to the local food. Cost about 1200kyat or USD1. However, I was still not too adventurous enough to try the meat stuff (afraid my stomach could not take it).

Ok, back to my dinner, the restaurant was pretty huge....We sat outside(got lots of mossies, huge ones, and was bitten quite a fair bit even with mosquito coils. Sigh, they always love me more...) We ordered a banana milk shake, mango juice and a mixed fruit juice. They tasted nice and thick. No ice was added, but it was still a cool drink. Probably they put the fruits in the fridge instead. CH ordered a pasta. Delicious too. And while waiting for our Hawaiian pizza to be served, CH managed to find a guitar in this restaurant. He tuned it for them and started to play some songs....we also had a great time remembering all the old songs or favourite/ nice songs. However, as the sky turned dark, we realised that we had waited 1 hour for the pizza...hmmm...was it that slow? So we asked the waiter and it was then we realised that they had missed out our order for the pizza. No wonder we kept waiting...anyway it only took 15mins for the pizza to be ready in the end. And the pizza is realllly nice. thin crust with fresh ingredients. made my mouth water as I think of it now...
The whole meal cost about USD15. So each of us about USD5. Quite reasonable.

Opps...we realised that the sky was really dark now, and some parts had no street lamps and shops were closed....hope we can find our way back. It would take at least a 10 to 15mins walk back. In the end, we managed to find our way back except one turning that we missed and walked a little more.

Myanmar trip - part 2

Day 2
We went for the boat ride. It's one of the must-do thing here in Inle Lake. The Lake is much bigger than I thought. We took almost whole day to explore it. Weather was cloudy with occasional drizzle turning to slight rain throughout the day. However, we still managed to get sunburnt.

We had our breakfast in Four Sisters. The breakfast was nice, banana pancake, toasts and even fried eggs with tea/coffee. But there was so much and I did not want to waste the food. So we shared some of the food instead.

First we went to Nam Pan market. It's about half an hour of boat ride but it felt very long. On our way, we saw how the locals live by the lake. Most of the houses is built on stilts, and they will have canoes as their transport. We could also see the fishermen fishing and their famous leg rowers. I guess they use their leg instead of hands because it's more practical to do so since the lake is so huge.

The market though it's not the floating market, is interesting. Lots of Pa O people, one of the ethnic group of Myanmar doing their daily marketing and selling what they have got. Though there were also many stalls selling souvenirs for tourists, they were not those hard sell people. They only asked you to take a look and would still smile even if you did not buy in the end. There were many locals having their breakfast in coffeshop like stalls, and some fried stuff like you tiao were being sold too. In the end, I didn't buy anything much except the you tiao.

Next we went to the silk weaving factory. It was just a few houses that had the equipment to make the cloth. I had some difficulty in understanding what the person was trying to explain. However, roughly I could catch the gist of it. The job was definitely labour intensive. Especially the threads that were made of lotus fibres, that was why although the cloth made out of lotus fibres were rougher, but cost more.
Again, I was not too much of a shopping person, so I only bought a silk tissue holder.

Afterwhich we went on to see how the local cigars were made. It was a simple process with few tools. But I did not think I can do it properly unless with lots of practices. However, the ladies there did it leisurely while chit chatting. Seemed like a relaxing job. The lady boss even gave us some tea and roasted soya beans(taste nice) despite we did not buy anything from them. She even helped Jas and me put the traditional Myanmese sunblock that were from a block of tree. Its bark was grounded into fine powder and mixed with water. It certainly was effectively as in the end, CH got the most sunburnt face, whereas I got it on my nose where I did not put the "sunblock".

We had our lunch in one of the restaurants, then visited a monastery nearby. It was one of the more holy shrines. It was there where I met some real friendly myanmese ladies who were still students. Though they spoke very little english, they seemed keen to interact with tourists and perhaps wanted to learn some english. They even wanted to invite me to their village. From my boatman, they were speaking different dialects and came from a village far from here, so I was unable to go with them for a visit. Even he did not really understand what they were saying. I thought they were disappointed when I could not go. They asked for my address and I gave them(no harm), may be they would write to me some day?

We went to see the paper umbrella manufacturing, silver and gold jewellery making
and the ancient stupas. The ancient stupas must have look great and magnificient in the past, but now, much restoration works needed to be done. Here I lost CH and Jas as I stopped to look around and in the end went another direction. I came back to where the boat was and together with the boatman waited for them. Got to know the boatman more, though I could not remember his name. He came from a big family too and worked for the four sisters actually. The motored boat was not his as he could not afford. He studied a little, so could speak some english.

Afterwhich, we went to visit the jumping cat monastery. We did not get to see the act of these jumping cats, maybe because it was getting late. Most of the stalls were closing too. However the scenery of the floating tomatoes fields are beautiful as the water here was calm, and the sky view was reflected on the water surface.

This was the last visit of the day, we proceeded back to Nyaugshwe and stopped over for a while on the lake to view the sunset. The sunset was nice but would be better if it had been redder.

We thanked him for his service and paid a little tip to him. We had our dinner over at Four Sisters Inn. They made curry chicken for us this time and we had mangoes for fruits. The curry chicken taste was great but oily and to me, not spicy enough. Mangoes were very sweet and I enjoyed it.

My Myanmar trip - part 1

Just came back from my Myanmar trip. It's an interesting experience and generally a pleasant one, except for my stolen money from my baggage. I especially enjoyed my stay over at Nyaugshwe, Inle Lake. 3 of us went for this trip, my cousin, CH, and his gf Jas.

Here's a review of my trip:

Day 1
We took Jetstar Asia and left Sp ard 830am. The time in Myanmar is slower by 1.5 hr. We reached there abt 10 plus 11am. Initially, we wanted to book the internal flight to Heho thru internet, however the airline company did not reply. So looks like we have to stay one night in Yangon before going to Heho. I was surprised the JSA offered meals in this flight, always thought these budget airlines will not include meals. Anyway, I had my breakfast in the airport, MacD, so was too full to eat.

The myanmar airport has basic ammentities. And I was surprised that the toilet actually has automated taps....hmmmm so high tech...but we waited quite some time for the luggage. Anyway, we managed to buy the tickets of air bagan from the airport. There's a booth by Myanmar tourism. They also had free tourist maps that are comprehensive. The ticket costs USD68 for one way to Heho. It's an hour ride. It's the fastest way compared to bus ride that will take 10hrs but much cheaper. We don't really have much choice for a 5d trip, although we did think of going by bus, coming back by plane. The staff, Jacki and Sarah also introduced a money changer to us. The rate is 1USD to 1150Kyats. Although this rate was lower than what we found in internet, should be about 1200 to 1300Kyats, we decided to accept it, and changed USD100...this should be enough to last us for the trip.

The domestic flight departs at 2.30pm, so we will check in 1.30pm. With only 2 hrs break, we decided to have our lunch outside the airport as directed by the staff. They recommended a restaurant outside the domestic airport. We had boiled noodles soup, and fried rice and some tea. At first, we were puzzled why the waiter brought 2 tea and 3 chinese tea(that we did not order). We wondered if there's a way to drink, to drink tea first then chinese tea or what? Until we observed that the locals also had 2 cups of tea, then we realised that this chinese tea was like their plain water, free of charge. Oh.... haha different culture.

The domestic airport had a HUGE weighing machine for the luggages. This was the first time I see such a thing. We also saw other tourists while waiting, mainly Ang Mohs. The Air bagan flt is a twin propeller aircraft, ATR24 or 27 if I did not remember wrongly. We had light meals on it(the fish were very salty, unless you took it together with the pasta. Still it was quite tasty. The desert was something like noya queh). It was quite a small plane and because of the weather, some turbulence was felt along the way. It took about 1hr or so to reach Heho. The weather in Heho was nice and cool. We followed the locals walk out of the airport to take taxi. We tried to bargain when the taxi driver leader wanted to charge us USD20 to Nyaugshwe, which was 30min ride, but because of the monopoly, there was no way to bargain and we really needed the taxi.

At first, we asked the driver to send us to Aquarius Inn, one of the guesthouses recommended by others, but that there was no vacancy. So we went to the next better choice, four sisters inn. The rooms are nice and clean too. This inn was managed by 4 sisters as the name suggested. However, the 3rd and 4th sisters were married to Holland and Germany, so only 2 sisters were around.

After leaving our baggage in our room, we went out to look around this small town. The myanmese are generally very nice and friendly. You will see lots of smiles and hear lots of hello on the streets. We came back to have our dinner at the Inn. There was no menu, interesting. But the meal was not bad, though it was a bit too salty for some dishes. There were lots of vegetables and one dish with pork, pineapples were served as fruits(quite sweet). Myanmar was not a carnivore's place definitely. We played with the little girl and talked to the Big sister. She would help us arrange for the boat ride and the trek. Though it would certainly cost more, we just let her earn the extras, since we quite like here.

Some photos here in this link:
http://dolphymanta.multiply.com/photos/album/28

Older, Wiser?

Older again by the stroke of midnight. Am I wiser? As of now, I'm still searching for ultimate goal in life...

Strange creatures

Look at the strange creatures you can find at our shores...Amazing I must say....

http://www.wildsingapore.com.sg/wildfilms/blog/2006/07/what-crab.html

IPPT over for me

I took my IPPT this morning, and passed it. Yeah, I can relax for a year before training again. It took me about a month or so to prepare. Actually, my preparation is only to try and maintain my stamina for the run. I tried to run at least once or twice a week. And only the last 2 weeks then I took my timing to get an estimation of my time. I didn't train for the static station though.

I realise that it was getting more difficult for me to do my pull up, and was feeling the strain at 10. Looks like next year I have to train for that too. I remember it used to be so easy for me for just do 20 too...Sigh.... However, for today I was very surprised that my running timing was so fast, 11 plus min. I usually obtain around 12 plus. Maybe it was because I had no timing to gauge and no one to pace this time....and everyone was faster in this batch. Well, I do have a watch, in fact the new one I bought recently. But I was trying the heart rate monitor transmitter that was strapped to my chest. Apparently, I did not strapped securely enough and it fell to my stomach. Great! I gotta continue my run without the timing and heart beat. To think I was going to test the system. Seemed like the elastic band was too long for me. However, I did manage to get some readings after the run by putting it close to my chest to measure my heart beat after.

My junior also ran, she started off slower than me, but ran faster and faster until she overtook me last 400m I think. I could not really catch up with her and in the end was probably 100m slower. But it's ok, cos she's 10 years my junior and I thought it was very good for me to be still able to run such timing. Hah! It was one of my fastest records.

Talk about saving...

Yesterday i just put up my post about trying to save up. Well, today, I can't control myself. I met up with my insurance agent who is my uni friend. I have to pay added premium for my diving. TRied to see if it can be waived off, but apparently not. After meeting her, as usual I will walk around the shopping mall, and happened to pop in to a watch shop to take a look. Been wanting to get a new watch to wear for my exercise. The price of 100 plus is about my budget, and when I start querying about the watch, I get more interested and decided to buy it. Got it for abt 115 after some bargaining for some discount. It's a fitness watch although my initial intention is to get a running watch, but well it's too ex, at least 200 plus. It's Polar Fs2c. Now after buying, I better make full use of the watch and go jogging often to use the HRM function. Although I am happy with my purchase, I just seem to love spending $ on such expensive sutff or gadgets, so got to tighten my control for spending more. Sheesh.

The link to how my new watch looks like.





Btw, i just receieved my traffic offence letter, another $120 gone. Shucks.